by Greg Curtis
“No!” He screamed in terror as she dug her way through the metal. “Not you! It can't be!”
But it was. And the cat was absolutely demolishing the metal. Somehow hanging on with her back feet to his armour, and scraping away with both front paws like a dog digging in the sand. She was actually sending sprays of metal filings in all directions. Soon there was so much metal lying in a pile at the Master's lava bound knees that Elodie could see the dark grey skin of his back poking through. And then she could see blood. Dark red blood.
He screamed, as the cat continued digging – a cry of pain and terror – and then tried to shake her off. But it didn't help a lot. The cat wasn't budging.
“No! Please!” The Master began begging, as he realised she wasn't budging and he was in danger. And then he tried to save himself by throwing himself backwards and hoping to crush her underneath him. But the cat was far too quick for that. She was on the ground and racing around before he hit the ground. Then she was on his chest his chest before he even knew what was happing – digging away again. And when he tried to grab for her, an angry winged pig, tore half his arm off with a squeal of fury.
After that the battle was over. Elodie hardened the ground, cooling the lava, and watched as the two animals continued their grizzly work, ridding the Master of his metal protection bit by bit. Tearing his skin apart too as they exposed it. And everybody else just stood there, or lay there, and watched in disbelief.
Soon enough the pair had him loose. They were ripping his tiny, broken and bleeding form free from the metal armour, and dragging him along the stone, while he was trying to fend them off. But by then he was too weak and too slow to do anything. His arms waved around pointlessly in the air, as the animals began dismembering him.
“It's mine,” he yelled at them between cries of pain. But by then he had strips of his face missing, and there was so much dark red blood pooling around him, that it was obvious he wasn't going to say much more let alone back up his claim.
“Don't think so Emperor,” a familiar voice replied.
Elodie looked up in shock to see Fylarne walking towards them, carrying the somewhat broken form of Chy in his arms.
“He's a bit battered,” Fylarne told her as he laid Chy beside her. “But he'll be alright.” And then he wandered off, stark naked, presumably to grab the next of their wounded.
How could he be alive? She had seen him dive into the Heartfire! She had watched him die! But as Chy was groaning by then, she didn't have time to wonder about such things. Or even about the Master – the Emperor? – slowly gurgling his last as a cat and a winged pig slowly tore him to pieces.
“What's … happening?” Chy murmured at her, not sounding at all well. “Did … we … win?”
“I think we did,” she told him as she heard the Emperor gasp as his eyes were ripped out of his head and then start sobbing.
“Why?” The fallen Emperor cried out at no one. “It was mine!”
“Who's … that?” Chy asked.
“No one,” Elodie answered him as she started calling for the pack and the bandages. “He thought he was someone. But he wasn't.” And really that was as much as she knew.
But it didn't matter. Fylarne was alive again – somehow. Chy needed help. And the Master or the Emperor was about to finally enjoy a well deserved death at the hands of a pussy cat and a flying pig! Already the air in his lungs was coming in ragged gasps. And the man she loved needed her help.
What else did she really need to know?!
Chapter Fifty Nine
Things weren't quite right. He kept trying to pay attention, but for some reason he kept missing things. Every so often he would just open his eyes and find that things had passed him by while he hadn't been looking. But they'd stopped the bleeding so that was something, Chy thought. And Elodie was alright, and that was more important. Fylarne was back from the dead too. That probably mattered too, though nobody had told him how it had happened. And his cat was in fact the hero of the day – that he just didn't understand. Where had the damned cat even come from?! Maybe he had been hit on the head a little harder than he'd thought!
But who cared? He had the lap of the woman he loved to lay his head in. And she kept telling him he was going to be fine and gave him ale to sip. After that very little else mattered. And someone had even made the ale cold.
There were people everywhere now. They kept arriving when he wasn't looking. But some of them were healers, and there were plenty of patients for them to tend to, himself among them. There were more healers below, checking on the survivors of the Master's army. But someone had said there weren't many. The Master had killed nearly all of them. Sacrificed over twenty thousand people just to gain a few seconds of distraction.
There were also some of the leaders from Stonely. Lots of other leaders too, from the other towns that had been set up to deal with the ongoing crises. They'd turned up somewhere between him listening to someone saying something about the funny looking sky, and his being stripped as the healers started looking for injuries. But he didn't know why they were here. And in any case he'd thought there wouldn't be any portals created on the volcano.
Someone had also told him that the slaves were now free. When the Master or the Emperor had died, the enchantment had failed. It made sense he supposed since the enchantment was in essence his. But what had happened since then, he didn't know. No one as far as he knew, had said anything about the former townsfolk of Stonely.
Obviously he'd missed a few things here and there.
But even so there were things that he just couldn't explain. Like why, he had to wonder, was the damned cat sitting there regally, her tail curled up around her and her head held high as she peered into the distance? Did she think she was a queen or something? Actually he thought, she probably did! She was a cat after all! And why was Fylarne standing behind her with his arms crossed proudly across his front? Why wasn't he dead? Why was Bacon beside him, doing her best to stand up straight – something that wasn't easy for her when her belly was almost on the ground? She had been putting on weight lately.
And someone, somewhere had said that the cat and the Master had been husband and wife. Several someones. But that didn't seem possible.
Then a group of ancients suddenly appeared on the rocky edge of the volcano – and he forgot most of his questions when he recognised them. They were the thrones. Of all the people to be here, he thought, why them? They were still trying to recover their memories.
“Honey?” he asked, realising that he'd missed something.
“Hush, Love.” Elodie ran her fingers through his hair. “This is important. We need to listen.”
But it wasn't important, Chy decided when he suddenly saw all twelve of the thrones unexpectedly go down on their knees before the damned cat. It was insane!
“Empress!” They all bowed as low as they could to the cat, who continued sitting there regally, studying them. Their noses were practically on the stone!
Chy stared at them, wondering just who it was that had been hit in the head, before he decided he needed more ale. And really, Emperor, Empress – it all made sense somehow. Or it would all make sense eventually he supposed.
“The Empress wishes you to know that she extends her heartfelt sorrow to the twelve of you for what her husband did,” Fylarne announced. “It was a terrible betrayal and the act of a true monster and she extends the apologies of the Royal Family to you all. She prays that you will put this terrible act behind you and find new and worthy lives in this new world.”
None of that seemed likely to Chy. The damned cat wasn't an empress no matter what people seemed to be saying, and she would never extend her sorrows to anyone. Just ask her husband! The half dismembered corpse only fifty feet away from them. Not that anyone would shed a tear for him. The man had after all, just murdered twenty or thirty thousand of his own soldiers, simply to give himself a few seconds of distraction.
But at least Fylarne was dressed, he thought as he sippe
d at his ale. Chy had a distinct memory of the man wandering around stark naked at some point. Bending over him too!
“The Empress is as wise and kind as she is beautiful,” Strength told her still on his knees and with his nose on the stone.
Did the man not see that he was talking to a cat?! Did no one see that?! And she was a horrible cat at that! Mean! Chy wanted to point that out, but instead he decided what he really needed was more ice cold ale. Maybe if he drank enough of it, something would start to make sense!
“Honey?” He tried again when the ale had restored a few more of his wits to him. “Has the entire world gone mad?”
“Don't be silly!” She smiled at him. “This is just the worst ever marriage and divorce in history.”
“Eh?” he mumbled at her, becoming confused all over again.
“Oh very well!” She sighed a little. “It's very simple. A tale as old as time. There was once a noble born boy who met a beautiful girl on a mountain top. And she was very lovely and had great magic, so naturally he fell in love with her, and they married. But unfortunately he was mortal and she was a goddess, not wise in the ways of mortals. And even more unfortunately he didn't really love her. He just wanted her power for himself. Any love there might have been didn't last. And he set about gaining her power.”
“So first he had her make him Emperor, and extend his life a little. And she did that thinking that that was what a wife would do for a husband. But soon that wasn't enough for him. He had an empire. But still what he really wanted was the magic she had, for himself. He hungered for that power.”
“So the Emperor found all the wisest people in the land and set them a simple task – to make him a god by granting him her power.”
“Naturally they studied the problem carefully, and they first noticed that her power, her magic was linked to the mountain somehow. They didn't know how, but they realised that her mountain was linked to a second one, and that some of her power could be found there. And they decided that if they could simply use a little of that power to transform people into her form, it would give them some answers.”
“So for a couple of centuries that was what they did, using the power from this second mountain, to change people into new forms capable of containing a little of her magic. But it didn't go well. They carried out experiment after experiment, created race after race, tinkered with them, and got some success. But nothing that pleased the Emperor. And of course there were so many of them and they were growing stronger, especially because they did have a little of her magic, that there were escapes. They began causing him trouble.”
“So he had his wise men create the shades. The most powerful prison guards they could train. And build fortresses of stone to hold them.”
“But in the end it still wasn't enough. They still kept escaping. And in time there were so many changed people, that a rebellion was forming. He was in danger of losing his empire.”
“Still he persevered. Pretending his love for the Empress, and forcing his wise men to work ever harder. And they found a new way in time. The thrones. So he persuaded his wife to let his men dig their way to the very heart of her mountain, and she agreed. And so the Temple was created while the empire trembled on the very edge of anarchy.”
“But it didn't work for him. The Temple, conceived through pure evil, would allow anyone who had even a trace of the gift, to be taught how to use it and grow it through enchantments laid upon their soul. But he didn't have even a trace of the gift. It was completely useless to him. But worse, most of those who his wise men had changed, could use the Temple. It wasn't easy and in fact the pain was terrible. But when they realised what it could do for them, they captured the Temple.”
“At that stage he had almost lost his empire. He was about to be removed from it by force. And the Empress was finally starting to realise that he didn't truly love her. Everything was falling apart. And then one day when his wife's handmaiden overheard him plotting, he knew his time was up. The rebels had seized hundreds of cities and were at the throneroom.”
“He had the handmaiden, Matrissa here, transformed into a pig. He feared that if he killed her, his wife would know. And he fled to the second mountain. Then he tried to shatter the realm into thousands of tiny pieces using its power. He hoped it would stop the rebellion. And it did. But he couldn't control the magic through mere enchantment which was all he had.”
“The portal walls went up as he'd hoped, but the power caused the second mountain to explode leaving almost nothing behind, while the first mountain connected to it through magic conduits also lost its top and became a volcano.”
“And since then, everybody's been trapped. The Emperor in his ruined mountain in N'Diel. Matrissa and her charge just across the divide in the next realm. And with the walls up, no one's been able to do anything. But the Emperor has had to keep those walls up all these years because he fears what will happen when his wife catches him.” She nodded at the corpse. “With good reason.”
“But she's a cat!” He might not be thinking clearly, but even Chy could work that out. “He married a cat!” And who would do that?!
“No, she's a goddess. A woman of two forms. A cat and a woman. But who was trapped far from the source of her power for ten thousand years while she was in the form of a cat. She simply couldn't change back. Not until the portal walls finally started coming down.”
“Oh.” Chy could accept that, he supposed. Though he was sure there were still holes in the story. Things he was missing. But as he lay there with his head in Elodie's lap and stared at the cat holding court with her subjects – now it looked like a bunch of sylph who had turned up for some reason – he found he didn't care. He was happy and they were all alive – even Fylarne. The man mattered because his being alive made Elodie happy, and that mattered. And he was dressed again!
But so many had died. Couldn't she have done something about that? He asked Elodie between sips of his ale.
“She's far from returned to her full strength,” Elodie told him. “The Heartfire which is her life blood has been contaminated by ten thousand years of being locked away from the world, and absorbing the suffering of the thrones for all that time. And it's also been connected to the Heartfire in N'Diel which has been corrupted in so many ways.”
“The Goddess has done what she can. She has kept everyone who came here to defend the Heartfire, alive even while destroying her husband.”
“Barely alive,” Nga Roth complained from somewhere behind them. “That pissing bastard used us like targets for clubbing practice!” And if her annoyance wasn't clear enough, the hissing from Dulcie made it so.
“I'll take injured over dead any day!” Gris replied as he limped into view with several tankards of ale. One arm was in a sling and his head was bandaged and blood stained, but at least he too was alive.
“Depends on how badly your head hurts,” an ogre growled somewhere in the distance. “How could he hit so hard?!”
Chy could agree with that. He'd only taken a glancing blow, but still his entire side felt like it had been flattened by a mammoth.
But they were alive. He took comfort in that as the rest started bickering and his eyes closed. He could use a little nap he thought.
He was still thinking that when someone started shaking him back to life, minutes or hours later. When he opened his eyes to see an ancient standing in front of him, with a scowl on her face. Whoever she was she didn't look happy. And she was staring straight at him! Who was she?
“And now we come to the wretch!” the woman announced to everyone who was listening – which was everyone now crowded on to the lip of the caldera.
“You tell 'im lassy!” Yarin Coldstream cheered her on at the top of his lungs. “You could kick 'im about a bit too! Just for a laugh!”
Where had the dwarf come from? Chy was sure he hadn't been with them when they'd marched on the volcano. And who was this woman? Or the other ancient woman beside her? Obviously he'd missed something else while he'd
been sleeping.
“Be quiet dwarf!” she snapped at him, “unless you want to be a stink bug!”
“Sorry,” Yarin mumbled.
“In all my years never have I seen such a wretched host!” the woman continued, accusing Chy of his failings. “Someone so churlish and insolent to his guests. Someone who actually calls them childish epithets!”
“Ahh …” he was about to say that he didn't even know this woman when he decided there was no point. She wasn't in the mood to listen. So he just gave up and let her rant. He was too tired for this.
“A man who takes the most scandalous liberties with my attendants,” she continued.
“She means me,” Elodie whispered to him, trying to keep from giggling.
“Who manhandled my handmaid!”
“No I –.” Chy was about to protest his innocence when understanding finally dawned in his aching brain and he realised who the woman was and who she meant. “Oh!”