Plunging forward, Larn charged to Vadania’s side to offer support. Guided by rage, Eugenie released a barrage of attacks. The silver blade cut through the air and parried their strikes, allowing Eugenie to force her way closer to Sawwse and the machine. Vadania and Larn redoubled their efforts but still struggled to hold her back.
Still more knights appeared in the chamber. The leader of Dorienne had clearly spared no expense for this expedition. It wasn’t that she thought of her knights’ lives as expendable, it was just too important a task for her to stop. Besides, once she used the device, any dead would return to life anyway.
Slǣpan Gigas was incredibly powerful, but its force took a toll on its user. Rangrim tired from the weight of it. The reinvigoration he’d received from Sawwse had faded once her drumming stopped. Rangrim had taken a series of slashes to his shoulder and his chest, and yet he persisted, swinging the zweihander round and round. The others were faring no better. Corinne’s confounding spell had begun to fade, and as the affected knights came round, they refocused their rage on her. The trainee mage’s blasts of energy were weakening, and the sheer volume of knights in the cave was making it harder and harder to halt their movement.
Dorienne soldiers managed to squeeze past each of the adventurers. They approached Sawwse, now backed up against the seemingly dormant machine. Their reward would be massive, they each thought gleefully, and all they had to do was despatch this defenceless gnome.
They heard the roar first, which put fear into them, and then they saw the instantaneous flash of sharp claws, and they feared, nor felt anything, any longer. The great bear-like beast swung its arms and smashed the knights onto the floor like dolls, slashing at any flesh it could see. Sawwse watched as the soldiers were knocked out one by one.
The beast turned to Sawwse and screamed in her face. The gnome wiped the flecks of spittle from her face and then beamed her most infectious wide-mouthed smile. The beast’s hair slowly withdrew into itself, and it shrunk smaller and smaller, morphing into Ruby’s human form as it did so. She threw her arms around Sawwse.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ruby wailed. ‘I hate it. It’s sickening and I can’t control it.’
Sawwse rubbed Ruby’s hair, holding her close as the battle around them forged on, and then taking her by the shoulders and staring into her eyes, she said,
‘You were brilliant.’
They turned to face their fellow guild members. The situation was bleak. Vadania and the others had given so much ground that they were now very close to Sawwse and Ruby, and with every blow, the Dorienne forces moved an inch closer.
Eugenie stared at the gnome, all the while knocking back attacks from Vadania and Larn. Through gritted teeth, she said, ‘You choose this moment to cower, demon.’
‘There has been a huge misunderstanding,’ Sawwse pleaded.
‘Face me like a true warrior.’
Even as she spoke, her remaining rationality told Eugenie that this gnome couldn’t be the demon that had killed her father and the royal guard. Her tiny frame surely hadn’t the strength to wield a weapon so powerful.
As she was standing right beside the machine, it was Ruby who noticed it first. A single piston began pumping, slowly at first, but quickly increasing in speed. This was followed by a sharp, piercing breeze. It found its way between the chinks in every piece of armour in the chamber, and chilled everything it touched.
Eugenie immediately stopped her assault.
‘Halt!’ she shouted to her knights. The soldiers looked uneasy. The story about the killing wind was familiar to all of them.
The guild fell in beside Sawwse and Ruby, while the Dorienne knights shifted uncomfortably. Ruby tugged at Sawwse’s sleeve, pointing to Mirrah’s corpse. They watched in confusion as the machine secreted a creamy white mist which caressed her body, and then in terror as Mirrah snapped upright, grotesque and uncanny. Her body floated in the spot where she’d died. As her feet touched the ground, the arrow reversed out from her neck and disintegrated into dust. The wound healed and life returned to her eyes. The machine gave a deep gurgle, satisfied that its most powerful foot soldier was now completely under its control.
‘It was you,’ Eugenie said, anger replaced by horror. She remembered vividly the feeling of the killing wind outside the carriage when her father was killed, and the immense aura of power that had accompanied it. She realised, with a deep and sorrowful rage, that her father’s true killer undoubtedly stood before her, and that the gnome she had sought for so long could not possibly have commanded the power she now felt emanating from Mirrah.
A loud crack of the machine shuddered the chamber, and Mirrah’s open eyes flickered to purest white. An immense gust of wind followed.
The guild mates held onto each other to keep from being blown back. Sawwse raised her hand towards Mirrah, but Ruby pulled it back down and shook her head firmly. Mirrah was now completely lost to them.
A whirlwind of invisible slashes now decimated a group of eight knights to the left of the cave. Mirrah floated forward and whispered an incantation that set another group of soldiers into horrible, shaking fits; a blast of jagged lightning flew from her left hand, the knights’ armour conducting the storm and frying the body inside; a twist in the air and a wave of her right arm turned another group into twitching, belching frogs.
The lost soul then conjured a beam of energy in the shape of a sword and brought it crashing down on Eugenie’s own blade. It was a strength unlike anything Eugenie had known before. Her knee buckled, but she held on, and tried with all her might to fight back. She was so close to the Device. This could all be reversed. Everything could be put back.
Vadania and the others shared a look, realisation dawning. The Device had reanimated Mirrah, and now sought to defeat Eugenie by any means necessary. If they could not stop Mirrah, there was no hope of preventing the Device from unleashing chaos on the world, and their entire quest would have been futile. With what little reserves she had left, Corinne infused the guild’s weapons with all the power she could muster, and created her own energy sword to raise alongside them. Osrik, Rangrim and Vadania stepped forward beside Corinne and joined their weapons with Eugenie’s against Mirrah.
Mirrah faltered, grimacing as she held all five back with her magic blade.
‘Help them,’ Sawwse said, looking imploringly at Larn.
‘There’s no point,’ he shrugged. ‘This is the end. We’re not strong enough to defeat her, and she’ll use the device to reverse everything anyway.’
The gnome put a hand over her mouth. He was right. There was nothing left to do. Sawwse watched as Mirrah, tiring from the distraction, used a magic force to blast her friends away. Eugenie was flung back as well, coughing blood as she smacked the floor.
As though wielding an invisible string, Mirrah yanked in the air and dragged Eugenie back to face her, feet floating inches from the floor.
Mirrah cast back her head and laughed, as she began to strip the Dorienne leader of her armour. As Mirrah clenched her fist, a piece of Eugenie’s armour was crunched tightly to her body, causing her to howl out in pain. As she released her fist, the piece of armour was torn away and flung across the room, leaving long bleeding welts across Eugenie’s arms, legs and torso.
Taking as deep a breath as she could, Sawwse walked forward slowly towards Mirrah, ignoring Ruby’s grasping at her sleeve.
Surely, their earlier connection would count for something? It worked before and it could work again. This had to stop now. Eugenie could be reasoned with, especially without her army. But Mirrah was out of control and needed peace.
Sawwse opened her mouth and began to sing, but Mirrah’s head snapped around to face the gnome. Without missing a beat, she flicked a fatal curse at Sawwse and twisted back to Eugenie.
Chapter 26: The Two
The stage was enormous. Much bigger than it had any right to be. And it was colourful too. Incredibly vivid colours brightened that little corner o
f the forest. Sawwse looked out at the audience: there were hundreds and hundreds of gnomes. Dannse Gan was there, of course, but all the people who had never believed in her were there too. There was Beghs, Morrannh and Dillinn, Hoockh Tammba, Findon Umlock. Even Fuggh Banns was there in his elder’s robes. And they were all cheering, genuine smiles on their faces. This wasn’t a prank, this was actually happening.
Sawwse stepped forward and began singing. Her story-song twisted and turned, and the crowd twisted and turned with her, laughing one moment and crying the next.
She became aware of other figures coming onto the stage. Vadania and Rangrim, Osrik, Corinne and Larn were all running towards her in slow motion. She felt a hand on her shoulder and Ruby appeared beside her.
‘I think she’s coming around.’
The stage and the colours fell away from her, replaced with the cave’s rocky browns. It was far brighter in there than it had been before, as two huge shafts of light beamed through the ceiling.
Sawwse sat bolt upright. Ruby and Larn were crouched worriedly over her, checking that she was okay.
‘What about-?’ Sawwse said, panicking as she remembered the threat before them. But as she looked at the figure of Mirrah, standing only twenty feet away, she realised something was off. Mirrah was completely still. Although she still floated upright, every part of her was motionless, lifeless, from her hair to her cloak.
‘We’re not sure,’ Ruby replied.
There was now a sparkling, glinting quality to Mirrah as well. Eugenie lay crumpled at her feet, weeping in suffering and in sorrow. Vadania, Osrik, Corinne and Rangrim picked themselves back up and walked over to Sawwse, patting her on the arm.
‘I’m glad you’re alright,’ muttered Osrik, leaning in close to her ear.
‘I don’t understand what happened,’ Sawwse replied.
‘You’ll have to thank Larn for that,’ Corinne answered. ‘He shot out a curse-nullifier quicker than a banshee beat.’
‘So Mirrah’s curse only knocked you unconscious, rather than, you know…’ Ruby said, looking awkwardly at her feet.
The gnome turned to Larn and, for a moment, she thought she read concern in his face, but then he spoke.
‘Now we’re even.’
Larn nodded and stood, focus shifted entirely to the shafts of light steadily brightening in the cave, and the movements he could discern within them. Sawwse shared a grin with Corinne and the others as they helped her to her feet. They were all bruised and battered. Rangrim and Vadania had suffered particularly serious blows, but recuperation could wait.
Two figures emerged, one from each light beam. One of the figures was large, substantially bigger than any of the adventurers. The other figure was very small, similar in size to Sawwse and Ruby. An aura of deep and steadfast power surrounded them both. The only time they’d ever felt anything approaching this immense level of power had been from Mirrah.
‘Such a shame.’
The smaller figure spoke in a high-pitched, nasal tone.
‘A truly great talent wasted on what? Archaic nonsense.’
The larger figure didn’t speak, but grunted in acknowledgement.
‘I do wonder whether there was more we could have done, but we weren’t to know this would happen, not really.’
The figures stepped closer to Mirrah’s immobile body. As they moved farther from the light beams, Sawwse was able to make them out. The smaller of the two was in fact a gnome, just like her, the first gnome she’d seen outside of the Blue Forest. His skin was a shade of dark grey, the colour of jet, and his clothes seemed unnecessarily ostentatious: a highly decorative doublet, bright blue puffy trousers, topped off with a white ruff around his neck. By comparison, the larger figure wore a simple green traveller’s cloak, the hood of which covered their head.
The smaller figure placed a hand on Mirrah’s back, and the glittering crystallisation deepened, so that all her body and clothes looked like they’d been frozen in deep time.
‘Right then, we should probably- oh I wouldn’t stand too close to that.’
He gestured behind him to the group, while looking ahead at Mirrah.
‘It’s only halted the process, and we’ll be sealing the place shortly.’
Sawwse and the others shared blank looks with one another, shuffling on the spot awkwardly.
‘Move it. Come on. Move move move.’
The small gnome spun to face them and gesticulated wildly with his arms. They moved away from the Ancient Device, which hadn’t stirred since the arrival of the two newcomers, and crowded around the other side of Mirrah and Eugenie, fascinated by the magical removals company that had stopped the cataclysm.
‘Okay, fine,’ the gnome sighed. ‘Gawk all you like. What are you even doing here? That’s a rhetorical question, please don’t answer it.’
The larger figure began to chuckle, a deep laugh that vibrated the ground underneath their feet. He turned to face the guild members, and one in particular.
‘Sawwse Bohge,’ he said, removing his hood.
‘Marius!’ Sawwse exclaimed, running forwards and throwing her arms around him. They held each other in a warm, comforting embrace, much to the astonishment of the others.
‘I’m-so-sorry-for-the-ogre-drawing-it-wasn’t-me-I-borrowed-the-book-and-wrote-in-it-of-course-but-lots-of-it-was-already-there-and-I-don’t-know-who-wrote-it-but-they’re-obviously-mean-and-wrong.’
Sawwse spoke a mile a minute, until Marius simply patted her on the head and smiled his big toothy ogre grin. A cough from the other gnome and Sawwse spun around to face him. She placed her right arm at her breast, and outstretched one leg below the other.
‘My name is Sawwse Bohge and it’s pleasurable to meet you.’
The other gnome frowned, wrinkling his nose and forehead. Sawwse realised that any hope of kinship with this fellow gnome was dashed when he spoke.
‘It’s the other arm.’
He mimicked Sawwse’s bow exaggeratedly, placing his left arm at his breast.
‘I am Funndus Broxley.’
Marius looked apologetically at Sawwse, but she hadn’t really noticed Funndus’ discourtesy, excited as she was to have met her ogre friend again. She quickly turned to the others and set about introducing them to Marius, but before she’d finished saying ‘Ruby, this is-’, Funndus interrupted her.
‘No, no, no. Absolutely not. There’s no time for this. Come on, Marius.’
Marius shrugged and turned to pick up Mirrah’s body.
‘Wait, you have to at least tell us what happened,’ Sawwse protested. ‘I’ll play you a song,’ she said, trying to appeal to Marius’s memory of her music.
The large, friendly ogre passed on this appeal to Funndus, who rolled his eyes and sighed impatiently.
‘You are Two of The Twelve, correct?’ Larn asked abruptly. He had guessed a while ago that Mirrah had fallen from The Twelve. Judging from the similar aura generated by Marius and Funndus, he’d made this further connection quickly.
‘Hmph,’ Funndus managed, keeping his frown. ‘I’m only going to explain this because I owe Marius one.’
The pompous gnome cleared his throat and then began to explain what had happened. Yes, they were Two of The Twelve. As was Mirrah. At this, Sawwse shot an exasperated look at Marius, who just smiled warmly.
‘Mirrah received information about an ancient relic, a device of some kind. We’re not sure where the information came from, but Mirrah was certain of its authenticity. One day she called for The Twelve to assemble, an extremely unusual request. You have to realise how inconvenient a physical meeting is for some of us. We are often preoccupied with other more… difficult tasks.’
Funndus spread his hands and placed his fingertips together, already concerned that he was divulging too much about their clandestine group.
‘Anyway, those of us who could, convened with her. Marius was there, of course. As was I. We listened as she described the informat
ion she had received. It was an ancient machine saturated with an incredible magical force. The machine had the ability to control time, and anyone who was able to use it effectively could, in essence, control the world. Word of such a device was completely new information to us, but then again, there are dozens of relics buried across the world that stay buried. We had no reason to believe this was any different.’
The other guild members stood in stunned silence. The Twelve were figures of almost mythical proportions, and yet here were two of them, one of whom was deigning to explain what had happened. Sawwse had only learnt about The Twelve relatively recently and therefore felt no awe in their presence. She was, though, very interested in what Funndus Broxley had to say about Mirrah.
‘She told us that she was going to find the device and destroy it. Even though it felt vital to study it, we realised that the flow of time would be disrupted forever after if anyone actually managed to use it. We tried to persuade Mirrah not to go, but ever steadfast and stubborn, she set out anyway, and the rest is obvious.’
Funndus waved his hand and gestured for Marius to go.
‘Wait, wait. What do you mean it’s obvious?’ Sawwse asked. ‘What happened to Mirrah?’
The self-important Funndus Broxley scoffed, his patience wearing thin.
‘Well she clearly tried to stop the machine’s ability to control time, but was driven crazy by a deep curse in its magic. She found Marius near his woods shortly after her attempt and told him that the device was more powerful than she had anticipated. It must have toyed with a particular memory of regret that she had.’
Marius shuffled his feet uncomfortably while Funndus spoke. It was true that Mirrah had contacted him, but she’d stressed that there was a saboteur within The Twelve who she believed had plotted her demise by cursing the Device. This information troubled Marius greatly. It would be the first time that such subversion had happened in the long history of The Twelve, but he trusted Mirrah and she’d made him promise to investigate this in complete secrecy. Now, he eyed his companion cautiously, but allowed no suspicion to show on his face.
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