The then-Eldest of the ogarim party went to meet with the supposed peacekeepers. Then she… disappeared. This was not death, for they would have felt her passing. This was something else – a cutting of ties. When she returned to them she was no longer ogarim but attempting to pass as one, like a predator that wears the hollowed shell of another before striking. They reached into their Eldest’s mind and felt what was now in her.
I shuddered, remembering my own encounter with the Scarrabus queen and its host.
War. Conquest. They understood it then. There was no reasoning with the Scarrabus. The enemy did not value all life as they did – the life of others was just another resource to be used and abused. They were selfishness incarnate.
The six surviving ogarim defended themselves and destroyed the daemon hordes of the Scarrabus in an awesome display of power that left me shaking. They felt bone-deep sadness at causing such great loss of life. The alien sky boiled and the ground burned as they disabled their Eldest and retreated back through the realms to their distant home where others better versed in healing could remove the parasite.
So foolish…
The Scarrabus infestation of their Eldest proved to be incompatible with the incredible power of the innate ogarim connection to magic. The flood of magic was slowly killing the Scarrabus, and the decaying parasite was in turn killing the ogarim. They tried to remove it from its host and keep both alive, they tried and failed and tried again but it proved impossible. Ogarim did not kill ogarim; it was not something they were capable of, so in the end they locked their Eldest away to die an unfortunate and unnatural death.
They still did not understand the enemy’s uncaring desire to possess and kill other sentient beings, so they gathered at their most sacred temple with a number of Scarrabus-infested prisoners recovered from across the Far Realms and then they forced open their minds. They discovered that there were many Scarrabus queens scattered across realms near and far, each one a hive mind controlling all the lesser spawn hatched from its flesh.
The ogarim invaded the inner mind-realms of the parasite queens, linked through the minds of their offspring. I had felt the power of a Scarrabus queen, and it was no easy feat to conquer one, but somehow they managed it and learned exactly what the
Scarrabus were. Then they experienced true terror on a racial scale that sent ripples of fear infecting all ogarim that walked this land.
The ogarim knew spirits well and saw the greatest as intelligent beings no different to beings of flesh, treating them with as much respect as they granted any other sentient creature. They knew of gods too, beings made powerful by leeching life’s magic from lesser daemons and primitive races that worshiped them on strange worlds. It came as no great surprise to discover that the godlike hive minds of the Scarrabus too worshipped an even greater progenitor-being, but this entity was vast and terrible beyond anything the ogarim had ever dreamed of.
The Scarrabus hive minds were obsessed with a singular goal to the exclusion of all else – the parasites called their god-beast across the void between realms to come to them, to feed and spawn, to devour life-bearing worlds whole, then to feast on the beating crystal hearts of those realms’ suns, and leave the dying husk behind to collapse into dark and dense nothingness…and it was now fully aware of the ogarim.
The peaceful giants were beyond horrified. The sea of magic gave birth to suns, enormous power flowing into their hearts to make them beat with heat and light – granting the realms around them life, whose struggles and growth fed back into the sea of magic itself, enriching all in an endless cycle of life. This natural cycle was being broken to feed that entity’s endless hunger.
As the stars were snuffed out one by one, coming ever closer to their home realm, ogarim searchers went out among the realms searching for answers and allies. For the first time in their history the ogarim went to war. The gathered host of their race worked a great magic, sacrificing lives to create a Shroud around their world to stop daemons from the Far Realms coming here unless summoned from within. Then they formed an army with what few strange allies they could gather and moved from realm to realm rooting out Scarrabus queens wherever they were located, burning them and their armies of enslaved daemons with overwhelming magic and bitter regret. They were victorious on the battlefield but had forgotten a danger lurked in their very home: a young Scarrabus queen had been left behind in this realm to die, but it lingered on and had been laying eggs ever since they brought back their Eldest, and those ancient ogarim had no idea it had been learning how to use the Eldest’s magic.
Another time… soon. You must understand more.
My head pounded as the images faded. But the horror remained with me. The Scarrabus were a far larger threat than I had ever dreamed of. I leaned against the wall, panting. “Sweet Lady Night, how do we fight something that eats worlds and the hearts of stars?”
It is contained. Do not worry, it answered, though it was in fact deeply worried itself. It seemed to worry about everything. I now knew enough of the ogarim to decipher that. Worry about the Scarrabus queen. It must be destroyed before it can free their god-beast. Now that you know the history you understand the import of this.
I licked my lips. “Free it? From where?”
Imprisoned below stone and bone and bound in chains of gods. My stomach lurched and fell away. I knew exactly where it meant.
Setharis.
CHAPTER 15
The revelation that my entire world was merely a bright island in a vast, dark sea, and that Setharis was the enemy’s real target in this realm sent me reeling. The stone underfoot began to vibrate, a deep and distant ominous rumble that sent spikes of worry through the ogarim’s thoughts.
Enough. I am pained by the memory of a time become dust, and the river of now runs low. The Eldest held out a huge furry grey hand to examine my own tainted limb.
My grandmother had barely moved and I realised that for her mere seconds had passed while I had explored the ogarim’s racial history and personal thoughts. It really was a far more efficient method of communication, one where nothing could possibly be misunderstood.
What did I have to lose? I pulled off my right glove and stepped forward to let the ogarim examine the hard black metal scales covering my skin. I was tall for a human, but even sitting on the floor it was still my standing height, and my hand was as a child’s in its own.
It felt strange to have so much trust in a non-human creature I had just met, especially one that could rip me apart with its bare hands as easily as I tore off cooked chicken legs. And yet I knew it on an intimate level beyond all but one past lover, and it knew me from our mixing of thoughts. There was no capacity for deception in its mental make-up. Oh, it withheld information of course, as did I. The ogarim knew what privacy was and respected the inner workings of a mind.
It carefully lowered my hand and then looked to Angharad. The ether buzzed with mental power and she swayed on her feet, crystal eyes closed as her lips twitched in pain. Then it clambered to its feet and walked right through the back wall, which rippled and solidified behind it as I stared in puzzlement.
“Is that it?” I gasped. “It just up and leaves without a word?” “Be quiet, conceited wretch,” she snapped. “Show the respect it is due. Their ways are not our ways. The Eldest leaves because it must. Ye are not the most important thing in this world and ye should be honoured it chose to bestow even a portion o’ its vast knowledge upon ye.”
My hand twitched, wanting to be around her throat again. Showed how much she knew – I was actually pretty damn important these days. “What did it say about my hand?”
“It is a spiritual taint as opposed to a natural one. A fragment of malign spirit grows within your flesh, and it will devour ye entire unless dealt with quickly.”
I flexed my hand, forcing the fingers closed against hard skin and black iron plates. The tain
t had indeed taken root where the broken shards of my spirit-bound blade Dissever pierced my flesh when the traitor god shattered it. I could still feel a fragment of that dark daemonic spirit in the back of my mind. “And how do we remove this spiritual taint?”
“We cannot. It has become a natural part of your blood and bone by now. But there is another who can…”
There was always a price for her help, always an angle that furthered her own goals. “Out with it.”
“To force the spiritual taint from your flesh ye must form a pact with a greater spirit. Only another spirit can expel it.”
I laughed. “Of course that’s the only way. I knew it would all come back to your stupid fucking ritual in the end.” I pointed to the ragged scars cutting down my cheek and neck. “The last time you tried to force that nonsense upon me you did this. Why should I ever trust you?”
She sneered. “Because ye have no choice. Ye were a weakling and a cowardly boy who ran from his fears instead o’ facing them like a man. You still are.”
Half a year ago she might have been right. Now I was trying hard to be different.
“Think o’ the power, Edrin! The Queen o’ Winter will fill ye with her might. It is a great honour.”
“I piss on honour and glory. I’d rather hack my own hand off,” I said, moving towards the stairs from which we had come.
“Who do you think ye are to insult me in my own hold?” she demanded. “Ye are every bit as ungrateful and wretched as your mother was. I smell your fear and know ye crave the power necessary to defeat the Scarrabus. Without me ye will never achieve anything but witnessing all ye care about burn to ash.”
She dared insult my mother? “Who do I think I am?” I snarled. “I crave power do I? Here, let me show you who and what I am and exactly what I can achieve without you.” I stabbed my memories into her…
Limbs of writhing flesh as large as ships crushed whole streets as an abomination of flesh, blood and bone heaved the last of its mountainous bulk from the dark places below the city. Trailing tentacles snatched up corpses and screaming people and sucked them into its churning flesh.
…I growled, heaving until every muscle shook with the effort. The crystal finally broke free in a welter of blood and the screams of thousands pounded my skull more frantically than ever, then… ceased.
…Rivers of blood and fluids burst from the walls as the thing’s weight crushed down. The ground decayed quickly, making the footing slippery and treacherous, but we made it back onto solid ground before whale-sized ribs snapped and the mountain of flesh collapsed in on itself.
The Magash Mora was dead.
I did that! Coward am I?
Angharad gasped with the horror and pain and emotional turmoil, clutching her head in both hands as my memories burned through her.
Flesh burst in a welter of blood and from his insides a god came forth. My guts churned and my Gift burned as if I stood too close to an inferno. I’d boasted that I would kill this? What hubris. It sloughed off Harailt’s meat suit to reveal a male figure covered head to toe in glistening blood and slime, hairless and horrible. Harailt was left a boneless, bubbling, shivering mound of discarded flesh, and yet somehow still alive. It seemed that a god’s blood and power coursing through your body for so long made you hard to kill, the Worm of Magic reluctant to let go of such a desirable host. Harailt’s one remaining eye looked up at me in agony and horror.
I recognised this god and shuddered. It was something ancient, more potent by far than any poxy hooded upstart. This was my patron deity, Nathair, the Thief of Life.
…of the Thief of Life’s ravaged body, nothing solid remained.
A lightning storm raged in the space where he’d been sitting, bolts of incandescent energy arcing inwards to a single point of blinding light where his heart had been. The storm spun around a shard of glimmering crystal, spiralling ever faster inwards until it met a single point of brilliance that eclipsed that of the Magash Mora’s crystal core. His god-seed.
I did that! Weak am I? I killed a fucking god. Then I gave his god-seed away to one far more deserving of such power. Do not dare say I crave power.
“Without you I will never achieve anything?” I left my deranged and deluded grandmother vomiting on the floor and stormed through the Hall of Ancestors and up the stairs, laughing so hard that tears rolled down my scarred cheeks. To that cold, arrogant creature laughter and derision was more cutting than any knife.
“Ye will come crawling back,” she screamed between retches, voice echoing up the stairwell. “Ye will need to form a pact with a powerful spirit to prevail. I have foreseen it.”
I could not escape the confines of the spiral staircase fast enough. Hot anger kept the thought of darkness and cold stone walls crushing in on me at bay until I lurched back out into the room above. Finally, some peace.
Which is when I heard the clash of steel beyond the massive stone disc-door leading to the rest of the hold. There was an iron rod set into a mechanism, allowing the heavy disc to be rolled back into its recess in the wall, and when I did I found Jovian and the rest of my coterie locked in close combat with six guards, with the two door guards already unconscious. My two thralls had paused mid-punch. Struggles slowed as the others noticed me standing in the open doorway. Vaughn ceased bashing a man’s helmeted head off the wall and the big brute actually looked pleased to see me.
“What’s going on,” I said. “Are we under attack?” “You are well?” Jovian demanded, eyes looking past me. “I’m fucking furious, but unharmed. Put him down, Vaughn.” The clansman dropped to the floor and staggered back into the waiting arms of the other warriors. He coughed and straightening his dented helmet.
“What happened?” I demanded. “We heard you was in trouble.” Coira said, tapping her skull and shuddering. “In here, like you were trapped with a monster and we, ah…”
“We came to smash some heads,” Vaughn said, grinning.
I looked to Jovian, who glanced at the moaning body by his feet and shrugged. Thinking back through my reactions in the rooms below when I had thought myself caught in a Scarrabus trap, I did reach out for help instinctively. Through a mountain of rock they had heard my call, and they came for me, unerringly knowing the way to the place where I had been taken and beating the crap out of anybody in their path. Through them I was discovering that I was more than I had been, something greater and more terrifying than a man alone.
A clansman in bloodied plaid stepped forward “You mad bastards will be sleepin’ in the snow aft’ this. Yer no’ welcome in the hold.”
I’d had more than enough of being manipulated. Forced. Cajoled. Blackmailed. By the Arcanum. By my grandmother. By the other druí of Kil Noth. By whatever the ogarim really wanted from me. Fuck what others might think, and doubly fuck being afraid of myself. My right hand burned and I wanted to ram it into somebody’s face.
I reached out and seized the Clansfolk warriors’ minds tight, letting not a sound escape their mouths as I sunk talons into their thoughts. “Listen well. I do not obey you, and neither do any of the Setharii. They are mine to command and I have left your vaunted seer heaving her guts up onto the floor below. If you think you can do better…”
None of them thought they could. “Fucking interrogations? Taking our weapons? That shite is over. We have a real enemy to fight and I swear I will take you all if you get in my way.” I had an illuminating new perspective on the terrible danger facing Setharis, and the entire world from what the ogarim had shown me. I was not about to let petty rivalries and pettier people impede me.
Lynas and Charra would have been proud of me. They always thought I could be better than I was, and that one day I would be. The Clansfolk and the Arcanum claimed they wanted me to be a general did they? Well now they were bloody going to get one, but not the figurehead they had intended. What was it Layla had called herself? A weapon. And now I was one I wielded myself. I had bathed in the blood of the Magash Mora, and of two gods for fuck’s sake. I
held a god-seed in my hands and resisted the Worm of Magic urging me to use it. If that didn’t prove I was strong then nothing ever could.
I was reborn, forged anew.
I advanced down the halls shouting “Wardens! Warriors! Magi! Prepare for battle!” With my power rushing ahead of me, none of the armed Clansfolk dared try to oppose me as I took back our arms and armour, and some even seemed eager to join me if it meant taking Skallgrim heads. I could feel the frustration and chagrin inside them at being forced by their druí to sit here on their arses while Dun Bhailiol burned.
Those druí who dared darken my path wisely retreated; that or the spirits they were pacted with were far more sensible than they were.
Eva raced around a corner ahead of a group of armed Clansfolk, having heard the commotion and the rattle of weapons. She seemed smaller without her armour, and was unarmed, but behind her steel mask the stern look in that single green eye banished any thought that meant weakness. “What is this?”
“We have been invited here to make war,” I said. “Not to waste time waiting for the enemy to come to us. Get your armour back on.” The group of Clansfolk behind her froze as I infiltrated their minds. Then they lined up either side to clear a path for me.
Eva’s eye narrowed. “We have been told to wait for the hold’s leaders to finish deliberations.”
“Then I declare them finished. They shouldn’t have insisted I come here in charge of an army and expect me to do nothing. This world is heading into the pyre and we don’t have time to play their shitty little games. I have something you need to see. May I?”
I reached out to her mind and politely knocked to enter. She hesitated for a long moment before grudgingly acceding. We were not friends, exactly, nor ever lovers despite a brief flirtation, but we were something to each other. Whatever failings I had, we had been through unimaginable horror together and that kindled a queer sort of trust.
I showed her everything my grandmother had said, and all that the ogarim had showed me. She was not used to my magic dumping everything directly into her mind, it was overwhelming and agonising, but Eva endured. She refused to let pain rule her life.
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