Yet giddiness sent a chilly pulse down Russ’s body, and he felt sure of what he said. “We’ll get there.” Everything—not just in the last two days, but the last twenty years—had led to this, and now, it would end. How he ever could have thought it wouldn’t lied somewhere beyond him. Goddess guide me to know what is right.
Almost at once, the maw’s throat opened around them, and the walls pulled away. Two steps further brought them to the edge of a sheer pit, where the air shimmered with heat, buffeted each time the cave exhaled. Gargoyles flew through the open space, lit from below in a hazy orange glow, hopping between portals that pinned to the air and the great hole’s sides.
At the bottom, a pool of magma bubbled. A crater formed near the middle whenever the cave breathed, and from the fluid, demons hoisted themselves and screeched into the infernal air. Their voices carried to Russ and Kendra, even from miles below, and lumbering behemoths with legs the size of ancient oaks pulled the demonlings from the crashing lava, swiped at their faces, and growled against their screams.
“Gotta be two miles across,” said Russ. The scale toned panic into the assuredness he’d felt just minutes before. The vanity of demons: to show him the hive—the hive—and let them walk in. It made no sense. Something more waited here, something he hadn’t accounted for.
Across from them, a dull point glowed and pulsed the same orange light each time a new demon manifested into the realm. The excavators tossed the new ones to the gargoyles, who lifted them with enough speed to clear the blazing liquid from them, then threw them into a portal. Where they went, Russ could only surmise as the demons’ home worlds, never visited by someone from this plane. He and Kendra watched it happen, removed yet so close, on the precipice of just—falling in.
“It’s too much,” Kendra said through labored breaths, her eyes wide.
Russ put out his arm when she stepped forward, stopping her a foot from the edge. “This has gotta be the main portal,” he said. “Took us ages to find it last time.” He heard a voice—no, two—coming from—“Do ya hear that?” He strained to listen, and they came to him again. A conversation. The basso drawl spoke, then Russell’s mind itched, trying to glean the other half.
“There.” Kendra pointed to that light across the way from them. “There’s nowhere else. Can you understand them?”
Russ didn’t answer. His mind had raced ahead of his actions: no footpath led away on either side, but he had to see who made that voice—his voice, it had to be.
He lowered his helmet. The blaze knocked into him, sulfur and smoke overcasting his senses, and he beat Uniquity’s head into the rock to steady himself. “Can you mindsight us?”
Kendra narrowed her eyes as she tugged at the neck of her leathers. A moment later, she nodded, and they stepped toward each other. She stepped on nothing to bring her head level with his, wrapped her right hand around his neck, and pulled their foreheads together. He encircled his right arm around her body—
“To stabilize us,” she once told him, on a morning a long time ago when she’d wanted to peep on a couple in the room above theirs. The Order had assigned Russ to Downdarren for a stint of training in High Tower’s city. Rain pattered against a window that Kendra had inched opened to a dull-gray sky.
She’d laughed and wrapped Russ’s arms tighter around her waist. “Gods, don’t be such a prude.” Her body pressed against him, and she pulled his head to hers as she did now. Their closeness had flustered him—her heartbeat against his own. She had smelled of lilacs and cream, and the skin on her face had sparkled in the fire of her room’s hearth. “Eyes closed, Russie,” she’d said, even though she hadn’t opened hers.
Now, sweat and tar and smoke replaced her perfume, and Kendra’s face gleamed in the pit’s glow, a stolid frown in place of the smile that had played across her lips. Her body shivered against his.
She whispered in Ley, and Russ got what she meant when a small knocking rapped at the front of his skull. Her consciousness took hold of his, pulled his sight outward, and for a second, they hung over their bodies. Then they shot toward the hole’s other side.
Though he didn’t have the intimate knowledge of having studied them, Karlians still understood the base-level thinking and interactions under which demons operated; their contact with the Fel made it impossible not to. Grenn had been right—righter, Russ thought, than Willa and Cedacere. Demons acted as animals, and that meant finding food, escaping danger, and staying alive. But copulation and reproduction didn’t exist for them, not in their natural state. That imperative relied on that of their master. The scale here could only mean one thing, and D’niqa had already assured him of its start.
Halfway across, Russ looked back at his and Kendra’s bodies. On the wall a half a mile below them, a gog patrolled, slinging its long arms across the rock walls. It seemed unaware of their presence.
Like a séance, a voice wailed in haunting tones that passed by them like a name on the wind; the voice called out, but not for them. A basso growl answered, and his tone emanated without care. As they neared the other side, excitement bundled with dread within Russ over what came next. He clung to the obsequious hope that coming here would solve everything, but if nothing else, they would get ahead of his inability to understand the truth, to see his consequences.
Kendra set them down in a dimly-lit room. A collection of wax provided the little light, and burnt offerings lent themselves to ashen dust that swirled whenever he spoke.
A sharp chill not of his rune wracked the right side of Russ’s body.
M’keth’s image walked across a rock shelf, his body projected in holographic miniature. He clasped his hands behind his back while he spoke to D’niqa, who knelt next to M’keth’s pedestal on one knee, her head bowed. The avatar and she spoke in the Demonic tongue, and Russ understood them through the rasps and gags and hacks that made up its words.
“… This is almost over, my pet,” M’keth said. His voice reverberated through the small space. “But do not confuse my clemency with leniency. You have failed to break through his mind, and practically all your venture at their capitol did was expose us.”
“Our lord, if we’d understood the full implications of what happened, we might have been able to control ourselves. But without the host, we were—erratic, not of our right mind.”
“You mean to blame me.” M’keth gazed upon her. “There may be an ounce of truth to that. But you knew the one we needed, and she has proven far more useful than I imagined. Even in your missteps, your competence of human emotion has unseated and shaken him.”
“Our Lord”—
“I already brunt the responsibility for what’s happened. No more shall you speak of it. We must now look to what’s next. I take your kind as a gift from the god Himself. You are special because of the new ruleset, but that will not win us this game. If we don’t stop the Grand Master, he will lead to your and my undoing, as they always have. But it will be the True End this time, of that Nilrius has assured me.”
A demon materialized from the shadows at the back of the hall and joined the small council. Like a frog on its hind legs, he shuffled as he walked, a limp under his left foot. His right eye bulged in its socket, the left barely more than a bead, and he held his right arm to his chest as though holding a book, yet no book did he grip. Russ recognized this one, too.
“Our undoing won’t happen again,” said the frog, his voice a staggered rumble. “Can’t happen. Too strong we are this time, my Lord.” When he spoke, his mouth opened too wide with each syllable and bared rows of tiny human-like teeth.
“A fine sentiment,” said M’keth. “But as we gain in strength, so too do they.”
“What opinions could you possibly have on that matter?” D’niqa said to the arrival. “Couldn’t even keep track of a book.”
The frog’s mouth opened on a hinge and became a flat plane when he threw back his head and laughed. “Do not forget that I have been here for nearly as long as our Lord. I talk with His v
oice and authority. When I speak, it is His Lord’s opinion.”
“Granech speaks true,” M’keth said. “And the tasks I give you, my queen, are so simple they border on nonentity. Yet still we fail. It’s false comfort to say we won’t fall this time. The gods keep their field even, and we cannot control that any better than you can your charge.”
“But we knew he couldn’t have disappeared,” Granech said, “and we already held the perfect pawn to drive him back into it—we just didn’t know until almost too late.” He addressed D’niqa. “Consummate happenstance was all that saved your reveal four nights past. Since life sees fit to proffer no difference based on how we achieved our outcome, it’s pointless to talk of unseen intangibles.”
“The holy Goddess wouldn’t have wanted Her renewed presence in this game of life to go wasted,” M’keth said. “He has acted as I knew he would.” He paused, considering the frog. “How goes your search?”
“I have scoured the area where I lost Your touch, my Lord, where I became animal and ran from the Grand Master as You commanded. It would have killed any human who picked it up, and hardly the time has passed for it to lose itself in chaos. Not like before.”
“Good,” said M’keth, though he didn’t sound relieved. “Alert me when you find it. It is paramount we do so first and first thing.”
“Your will is mine.” Granech bowed to his master. His head touched his outstretched left foot before he stood again. “Assurances, I have our people and agents searching for it nonstop. We shall not fall as we have in the past.” He looked pointedly at D’niqa, then turned and left. His body melted into the shadows from where he’d come.
“What of the Grand Master?” D’niqa asked.
“I underestimated Karli’s Light last time—a mistake I assure you I won’t make again. But humans are predictable, and the closest he shall get within our control is right now.”
M’keth looked to where Russ and Kendra watched, and he spoke in Plainari. “Grand Master, so fine of you to join us, and on this auspicious day, as well.”
D’niqa turned her head toward them.
“Give our guests a generous welcome, won’t you?”
D’niqa’s fangs flickered, then she lunged at them. Kendra recoiled from Russ, and his sight rocketed to his body. Her face had turned ghostly white. A wail reached them from across the chasm. A moment’s silence passed before Russ yelled, “Run!”
Kendra bolted as soon as he spoke, electricity snapping in her wake. Russ raised his helmet, and from Uniquity, he fired a missile of Light at the room’s ceiling. Heavy stalactites fell from where it struck. Tendrils of magic tethered themselves to the demons who had already come. Another bolt he shot above where he stood, and a cascade of boulders fell to block the demons’ pursuit.
But Russ hadn’t run five steps when a bomb ignited behind him. He whispered to himself, preparing the initial spell he would need when he reached the cave’s mouth.
“Ah, Grand Master,” M’keth said, his voice chasing Russ alongside the horde. “Don’t run. You’ve not even seen the best part. It’s my magnum opus, if you will. My Grand opus. It would be an absolute shame if you missed it.” M’keth’s laughter came from all directions and echoed into a chorus of itself.
A loud rustling flicked at Russ’s heels, and the hair on his neck stood on end as he outran the vision his mind’s eye conjured: the patters of lizards and rats, the screeches of bats and hell-owls, the roar of beasts large enough to make dragons seem small, and the clatter of hooves and claws against stone.
At the cave’s mouth, Russ raised his hammer high and shot Light at the entrance. Time slowed as a makeshift barrier formed and sealed against the maw, and sure of the other three behind him, he incanted a prayer. “Karli hear my words this day and lend me the strength of the mothers and fathers and old Masters…” With his left hand, he traced his breastplate’s runes, which lit and burned as liquid gold against the night that issued forth in front of him.
A cold bead of sweat ran down his back as he finished the prayer, and a strange peace filled him for a fractioned-second. He reached for the holy book that knocked against his right thigh, unlatched it from his belt, and held the spine on his palm. When the book opened, it did so toward its latter ten percent, and Russ found the words Karli needed of him.
The parable told of a woman who quested for power not of her own, despite her friends cautioning her to not seek it. Karli only gave the power the woman sought to those who at first shunned it, and by striving for it, the hero couldn’t have it; by feeling envy for those who did, she forsook what gifts she’d had before her search began. When she almost killed for it, she ended the story with nothing. During her Atonement, a common refrain in the Karlian holy book story architecture, she prayed the words Russ now did.
“Mother and Father,” he said, speaking quickly. “I come before you today to atone for my sins. I have found within myself the power I sought from others and elsewhere, and I beseech You to punish me no further.”
In the story, Karli answered the hero’s prayer, and by cleansing her of the talent she had tried to take for herself, her own strength returned. Though she’d gained no power, the hero had gained Understanding.
Karli didn’t take from Russ; hearing the words She taught him to pray and seeing his cause Just, She rewarded his faith, and energy surged through him and arced from his hammer like heated metal escaping a forge. It splashed on the ground around him and based a holy site in this place of demonic power. Time caught up with them, and demons crashed into the barrier with unbalancing force.
“Kendra,” Russ said, his voice strained. The Light hummed at a frantic whine that played beneath everything else. “Get us the hell out of here.”
“I can’t!” Kendra shouted. Electricity clashed against the demons’ roars and crashes as Kendra’s magic surged against the presence that held them. “He’s holding us here. We need more potential.”
“Can Willa help?”
“Way more!”
Willa surged Light through Russ in pulses, a caramel-like flow that granted him power beyond his own. “More and more,” she said, her voice calm. Her tail flicked and cast a long shadow behind them.
“Conduit’s outta the question,” Russ yelled to Kendra. “Gonna take all we’ve got just to hold this.”
The demons pressed hardest at the barrier’s corners. Russ streamed his Light against them, but he only shored up the breaks in the seal as quickly as they came. They scrabbled against the bubble, unsuccessfully at first, but those behind took over when their mates had burned their hands to bleeding nubs, when their chests had singed to ash from their manic purpose. Their incessancy made their will manifest, and through the small holes, they pushed their heads or arms or legs. Their cries filled the forest before the holy magic redoubled and severed them from themselves, then the process began anew.
Russ kicked the head of a still-chattering demon away from him. “Fuckin hells, there’s gotta be something!”
Kendra patted her body. “Didn’t think I was gonna need”—her hand settled on a part of her left arm.
“The soul stone!” she and Russ said together. Kendra reached up her sleeve. Arcs of electricity strung from her eyes to her hands as she worked, faster than Russ could see when he glimpsed her a final time over his shoulder.
Demons clawed and bit and caught on the shield, buffeted against it with undue force, far stronger than anything during the War. His armor braced against them, yet they came faster and in greater numbers as seconds passed.
Whispers came to Russ in that horrifying basso that coughed ash into his chest and needled at his stomach and dried his eyes. Russ’s ears itched against the slavish Demonic, and despite himself, his mind made sense of the words—etchings in his brain from contact with the Fel.
“Go to him. Reveal our plan.”
D’niqa appeared from throng, first her face above them, then the rest of her body as the demons that slammed against the lower edge parted for he
r. She stopped a foot from Russ’s barrier, a vanquishing smile across her face and lips. “This is the endgame.” Her voice came as M’keth’s. “This doesn’t have to be difficult, Grand Master. How many people will you let die because of your hubris?”
“None,” Russ said, speaking through his strain. “No one shall die in my service if I can help it.”
D’niqa huffed. “We’ll ask you again. Do you not recognize us, Russell?”
“Away with your woven words, bitch. I’ve told you before: they will find no purchase here. You have haunted me, and if the Goddess wills, you shall do so no more.”
She laughed. “What the Goddess wills? Did she will this?” D’niqa tapped against the wall of Light. Her power blasted against Russ’s and pulled from him a surge of Light-energy he hadn’t called. He pushed against her and M’keth, but the more he did, the faster he fatigued. Their magics played against the others’ in a grotesque struggle, until the point where their energies met flared and pushed both of them backwards.
D’niqa let up, and in undue response, so too did Russ. He stood next to Willa, whose lips had pursed in concentration.
The master giggled. “Oh, we know why that’s happening, don’t we?” Her voice had become hers alone again. “Have you figured us out, Grand Master? We hope you haven’t. That will make our unveiling so much more delicious.” She blew against his Light, and flakes of black Fel dropped from the barricade. Her breath somehow touched his face. It didn’t taste of tar and smoke; instead it reminded Russ of home, of wet soil and mint incense and the metal-fire at Cups.
“What spell do you put over me?” he said. “To cloud my thoughts and control my desires. How do you do it, temptress?”
“Oh, Pushkin. You must but accept who we are. All of us.”
The words struck him, and where their struggle for power over the other had taxed him physically, this sunk into his soul and filled him with dread and sadness. “Why did you call me that?”
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