Chainworld

by Matt Langley

  He didn’t care.

  It isn’t betrayal when you deliberately engineer it.

  He didn’t care if he never left this place, so long as fighting for eternity kept the others safe…

  Guild Assassins rushed from the Aether Stages into the Quantum, through the Sun-Machine onto the Plain.

  “The Nest is defended! To arms! The enemy shall fall!”

  Vilow, Xaxax and Rhoan, surged out of the Aether onto the moor. Weapons ready. Vilow, three legged and swathed in Techtomesh called to the Assassins. “Attack! Attack! Attack!”

  And they answered the call, turning from Summer to rush into the Dreaming Armies, the battle redoubled its ferocity.

  The Dreaming Armies swelled forward to meet this new enemy.

  The combatants locked weapons and blood burst in all directions.

  The Plain was war incarnate.

  Then…

  BOOM.

  Then another…

  BOOM.

  Barl wasn’t tall enough to see over the heads of the warring Assassins locked in battle with the Dreaming Armies, but he could feel the ground shivering beneath the onslaught, just as it had when the newly giant Summer had charged across the Plain.

  There was another.

  Huge booming footsteps ate the ground between them.

  The ground began to buck and shake beneath Barl’s feet.

  The boy was thrown to the ground.

  He looked up.

  Summer watched the horizon.

  She shielded her eyes with one huge armoured hand.

  PREPARE Summer said.

  The ring of protection dispersed, and the battle was upon them once more.

  At first Galdar couldn’t work out what she was seeing, or what that bitter taste in her mouth was.

  She thought that the God-Queen had raised her body up into the high reaches of the sky above the Plain, but that was a lie. As she looked down from this impossible altitude, she saw the Dreaming Armies and Guild Assassins fighting around her feet like ants.

  This just couldn’t be.

  How could she be hundreds of feet in the air and still walking over the marshy landscape?

  Then it hit her. Although the warriors below were tiny and multitudinous, her feet and legs were exactly as she would have expected them if she had just looked down.

  Galdar had become a giant.

  The smoke shivered and shimmied around in her innards cackling before it yelled with triumph.

  EAT! It said. EAT!

  Galdar had no choice. Her hands reached down to scoop up a handful of warriors, and brought them screaming and terrified, to her mouth where she ate, her teeth grinding them into a bitter paste that burned on her tongue.

  As the paste slid, cold and slick down her throat, she felt the rank warmness emanating from it. Her bones resonated with new energies consumed from the fresh dead. Her muscles tightened. Her breaths deepened. Heady. Excited.

  MORE.

  “Please! No. I can’t!”

  MORE!

  Galdar, the giant, reached down double-handed this time, gathering more running warriors to feast upon. She bit down. She crunched. The juice spilled out over her chin. The tiny screams between her teeth lost all meaning as flesh and bone was ground to jellies and cold splinters.

  She swallowed.

  Each mouthful made her grow stronger.

  Each death made the God-Queen stronger inside her.

  The God-Queen forced her on, driving her towards the armoured giant swinging the axe. She fed as she marched.

  Galdar’s mind was a cauldron of terror and disgust.

  Wanting it to stop.

  Wanting to wake.

  Wanting to go back to how everything was before.

  Then as her body bulged and swam with new energies, a sword—black and pitted with age from a billion battles, as long and as wide as the river valley in the Thalladon Climbs, shimmered into existence in her hands.

  The God-Queen forced her to lift the sword with one hand.

  She opened her mouth wide, screaming out a battle cry that echoed off all the surfaces of the Plain and the sky.

  ONWARDS TO VICTORY!

  WE FIGHT TO WAKE THE DREAMING ARMIES OF THE PLAIN!

  Shryke saw Galdar, giant now.

  Twice as tall as Summer. Feasting on dreaming warriors.

  Her chin black and wet with their blood.

  Eyes red with mania.

  Running towards their position. The ground trembled beneath her feet.

  Each ripple and buck through the plates of the world sought to unbalance them, but they kept their feet.

  The earth heaved.

  Still, the dreaming armies came at the boy and the warrior. More fought Summer’s axe and the ferocious Assassins of the Guild.

  Shryke wove a shorter blade, and shield for his free arm, and stepped out to face Galdar.

  Warriors went down, crushed.

  He and the boy held their own, fighting side-by-side.

  He was granted a glimpse of the future: once the two giants engaged, there would be less protection for him and the boy, Barl, and however well they fought, supported by their own magic, Assassins and Summer’s influence, they would be overrun. It was inevitable. The Dreaming Armies would win by sheer force of numbers alone.

  Shryke stared down at the ruined faces of two warriors he had brought down, then called up to Summer. “Should we retreat, Familiar? We cannot win this fight.”

  WE CANNOT. IF WE LOSE THE DREAMING ARMY WAKES. WE FIGHT.

  “And we die!” Shryke yelled.

  THEN WE DIE. BUT WE DIE FIGHTING!

  “So be it,” Shryke said, and launched another blistering attack.

  Barl saw the shadow of the girl before he saw her giant frame.

  It fell across the heads of the warriors attacking them, turning the sky dark.

  Galdar eclipsed the sun.

  Warriors behind the ranks of those attacking screamed, trying to flee as Galdar came into view. The black blade of her impossible sword seemed to stretch on forever. Barl’s gut lurched as he witnessed her feeding. Even from here, he saw the anguish etched onto her face as she crunched down on the dying warriors. Aguish and revulsion. She wasn’t doing this. This slaughter and wholesale death wasn’t her doing. The God-Queen had grown her, and used her as a weapon, just like a battle-mace or black sword.

  Barl’s heart went out to the girl.

  But it could only reach so far.

  Another wave of attackers came for him, swarming between Summer’s feet, ignored by the Familiar as she readied her axe to meet Galdar’s attack.

  STAND! Summer screamed, raising her axe a mile to meet the black sword as it crashed down…

  Chapter 38

  The Plain shifted on its axis.

  If it had foundations, then surely they had begun to crumble?

  The horizons flexed and twisted.

  Something was punching a hole through whatever world this was.

  Earth was thrown up.

  Hills flattened.

  Rivers dammed with a million bodies.

  On the giants fought, hacking and cutting. The clash of their weapons tore the air into tattered banners of defeat. Sparks bursting the clouds. The sun swung on a thread. The sky buckled. The stars coruscated.

  Summer swung the axe as though it could slice through worlds.

  Galdar met every swing with a juddering vibration that tore the marsh open, leaving behind vast plague pits for soldiers to collapse into, dragged down by their armour, drowning in cold black water. Desperate hands reached up but there was no one to save them.

  YOU ARE WEAK Galdar’s voice shot through every thought in Shryke and Barl’s head, brutal enough to crush their minds.

  YOU TALK TOO MUCH! Summer brought her axe down, three…four…five times, each harder that the last.

  The blade in Galdar’s hand held fast. Her face, slick with the blood of crushed soldier’s, creased in concentration.

  She kicked
out at Summer, catching her behind the knee.

  The armoured giant keeled over backwards, her falling shadow bearing down on Barl and Shryke.

  Shryke grabbed the boy in the shadow and pulled him away from the arc of the warriors’ axe before it could tear him from gizzard to loins. He dragged him clear as Summer fell.

  A huge splash of dark water swamped the marsh as Summer floundered.

  Galdar was on her, stabbing down with the sword, driven by unholy fury.

  Summer curled to one side.

  The sword sank down into the marsh, down, down and down.

  Galdar struggled to heave it clear, screaming with frustration.

  It was a scream that didn’t sound like her at all.

  It was the voice of the God-Queen tearing out of her throat. That vile emanation pushed Galdar beyond the limits of possibility. It wreathed her in the hateful magic of the Gods. It filled her body with its evil.

  More of the Dreaming Warriors threw themselves at Barl and Shryke, the Assassins too far away into the melee to assist. Shryke defended with the shield on his left, and Barl swung the battle-mace with his right. As one they yelled in agony—each thinking that their free hands had been sliced clean off.

  Barl looked at his left hand.

  Shryke looked at his right.

  Then…

  The volcanic eruption of light blinded them and everyone else.

  Galdar drew on every ounce of strength she possessed in her giant flesh, but it wasn’t enough to pull the hilt of the black sword from the marsh. The damned blade was gripped too hard by the Plain.

  It was clasped in the under-clay or the magicks of the Plain, either way, it would never let go.

  The smoke of the God-Queen howled its fury in Galdar’s guts.

  YOU HAVE BETRAYED ME!

  “I didn’t do this. You did! I’m not in control! You are!”

  The smoke rushed up inside Galdar’s torso, dragging like razors up the back of her throat.

  Summer kicked out at Galdar as the Smoke’s attention was distracted by fury. The Familiar’s foot smashed into Galdar’s chest. The explosion of pain burst across her armour and she felt huge brittle ribs stretched too far crack under the impact. Galdar screamed, falling back herself.

  The smoke clouded her brain, shifting her thoughts to one side, as the God-Queen took complete control of her flesh.

  BELIEVE IN ME! The fury in her mind screamed. BELIEVE IN ME!

  Galdar was confused.

  Who was the God-Queen talking to?

  Who was she screaming at?

  Galdar clawed desperately at the fleeing soldiers as they scattered, abandoning their weapons. Their only thought was to flee. Across the Plain. Away from Summer. Away from Shryke and Barl.

  Galdar’s vision filled with light. Blazing. Burning. Fire and heat. The last thing she saw was Summer’s silhouette rising against another sun.

  Then the light caught her body, rushing around her, in her, and through her, blowing the smoke away, blowing the smoke out of her body and away into the sky.

  Galdar fell.

  Barl’s hand was part of Shryke’s wrist.

  Shryke’s hand was part of Barl’s.

  Thirty-five thousand years connecting them at last.

  Each filled with magical power across the vastness of the Quantum Aether, here in one place that energy could no longer be contained by mere flesh and erupted in the spell to end all spells.

  It blasted out from them, surging around Summer’s giant body, smashing into Galdar.

  The shadows of her bones white and clean.

  Cleansed.

  Whatever was left of the God-Queen had scorched free of her flesh and bone.

  The grey clouds atomised.

  Just a blue sky, and a bright sun, and the Plain again as it was before.

  On the horizon, the Dreaming Armies returned, fighting themselves in the fray of energies.

  The Familiars on their hills and mounds waited for wielders of magic to come and make their sacrifices, tearing out spines in return for battle magic.

  Summer held Galdar’s broken body, both diminished, returned to their ordinary size.

  Shryke and Barl fell free of each other.

  “I didn’t believe in her, I swear, I didn’t believe, not once,” said Galdar as she died.

  Chapter 39

  Their eyes opened.

  Shryke lay with Barl and Galdar.

  Both were breathing and both were uninjured.

  They were back in the square on the Sun-Machine.

  The Dreaming Armies of the Plain stood motionless. The Failsafe had not been woken. The eternal warriors were not about to break away and destroy all life across all of creation.

  They had won.

  Shryke looked down at the hand that had been joined to Barl’s.

  It looked no different from how it had on any other day in his life save for the fact that there was now a five-fingered scar on his wrist. It was shaped like the small hand of a child.

  Barl held up his arm to Shryke, on the forearm was a five-fingered scar from the hand of a man.

  Both their arms looked as though they had healed after burning in a terrible fire.

  Shryke held out his hand for Barl.

  They shook wrist to wrist.

  Shryke no longer felt uncomfortable looking into the eyes of the boy.

  Shryke reached down to pick up Galdar.

  She wiped her mouth and chin on her sleeve. He didn’t need to be a mind reader to know she was trying to purge herself of that terrible taste. Shryke stilled her hand, “It’s gone,” he promised her. “And it’s been gone for centuries. What happened back there, in that other place, that was a long time ago and so very far away. You’re free of it now. I promise.”

  Galdar hugged Shryke then, and he pulled Barl into the hug too.

  The three stood there. Silent.

  The shadows moved crazily around them and the heart of the clockwork of creation.

  As the suns came out again overhead, Lucillian, the navigator Crove and the fat man, Klane, made their way through the ranks of the Dreaming Armies to greet them.

  Shryke looked up at the still turning suns and dancing Shadewalls.

  He was sure they were safe for now.

  But while the Dreaming Armies of the Plains existed there would always be a threat. No, a promise, because it would come.

  Galdar hugged Shryke tight, not daring to close her eyes in case she was dragged back to that hellish place.

  She blinked back the tears, seeing the scars on his neck and the wounds written across his body from battle.

  She heard his heart beating through his chest.

  As she listened, she seemed able to make out a strange double echo to his heartbeat, one she hadn’t noticed before when she had been this close.

  She listened, trying to make sense of what that echo meant, only it wasn’t from Shryke—it emanated below Shryke’s heart. It was Barl’s heart. But it was beating in the same rhythm as Shryke’s, matching it beat for beat. Just as strong and just as loud. The heartbeats rose in volume as the embrace continued, as if both Barl and Shryke were enveloping Galdar in their love.

  Barl hugged the two of them as tight as he could. Tighter. He couldn’t let go.

  There were no words for the emotions flooding through him. He was free of that place and that battle.

  He vowed silently never to return to that hell, knowing even as he did that he was lying to himself. He would have to return. And return again. Summer was there.

  The heartbeats of all three, his, Shryke’s and Galdar’s, seemed to reverberate around his head. It felt good. Right. Like he belonged here.

  He watched the Shadewalls, the whirling suns on their fifty thousand-mile stalks, and through the crack in the sky, he could see down once again to God’s Heart.

  It wasn’t his home any more, but it would always be part of him, however much time had passed.

  And he knew he never wanted this f
eeling of belonging to leave him.

  Lucillian reached them first. She waited patiently for the three to stop hugging, as did Crove, but Klane couldn’t help himself. The fat man waddled forward and stabbed a thick index finger into Shryke’s back.

  Shryke broke from the embrace and stood arm in arm with Galdar and Barl. He looked down on Klane with a raised eyebrow.

  “You can give me all the dirty looks you want, barbarian. But I have three very important questions. And you will answer me.”

  Shryke waited.

  “One: Are we safe? Two: How are we getting home, and Three: What the hell happened today?”

  Shryke smiled. “In answer: Yes. I don’t know and as to the third question…”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s a story for another time…” said Summer, stepping out from behind them.

  Epilogue

  “Forgive me Mother for I have sinned.”

  “How long has it been since your last confession?”

  “Thirty-five thousand, four hundred and ninety-six years,” he said. There were days and months in there, but he thought such accuracy was irrelevant.

  “This is going to take some time, I assume?”

  “I have much to confess,” he agreed.

  “Start at the beginning.”

  “Difficult.”

  “Start where you are comfortable starting then.”

  “Thank you. I’ll start before the beginning.”

  The Mother Superior, who was really the God-Queen, placed her bony fingers around Shryke’s heart and squeezed.

  Through the window, Shryke could see the Overloop and the cloud bridge. The codespell was cracking open in his head, the true nature of his mission to the Sun-Machine revealed bright and fresh in the middle of his memory.

  The God-Queen revelled in the knowledge, her face illuminated with corrupt glee. She saw everything. And yet…

  Suddenly the fingers unclasped. The arm slithered from the top of Shryke’s head and the God-Queen fell back, tumbling over a stone pew and clattering to the ground.