“We called you that. Dear Lillie, she’s been so helpful through all this, keeping tabs on you. The two of you have got this”—a grotesque smile spread across her lips—“disgusting connection.”
“You have her,” Russ said. He’d been right. “Where is she?”
“Still!” D’niqa yelled. “Still hasn’t figured us out! Even when we dangle the answer right in front of him, still”—she lashed at the nearest demon and swiped its head off its shoulders, like taking an apple from a bough. Then she pressed a claw against the bubble and traced a mark. Where she touched, her magic formed a black outline.
While she distracted herself, Russ made efforts to push against the forces that threatened to overpower him. The other demons had relented when D’niqa showed herself, but they conspired in a new way, channeling dark magic against his Light.
“Russell,” said D’niqa.
He flicked his gaze toward her, then double-took the shape she’d traced. “What have you done?” Everything in him called for her annihilation. The black mark that hung over him loomed in eerie benevolence: an ‘L’ and ‘R,’ integrated into the holy shape—the rune he and Lillie had made on the night they’d wed.
D’niqa laughed for his emotion, and she transformed.
Her image became an approximation of the woman Russell loved. But her hair no longer hung from her head in strands of golden-saffron; a drape of black seaweed instead dangled over her face. Her lips pursed in a manner he’d never seen in life, and the dirty woman’s gray eyes covered hers of brown. She stood naked, save for where her hair hung, down to her thighs.
“Hello, Russell,” Lillie said, her voice corrupted, ragged.
“Lillie.” Russ gazed upon her for the first time in the natural world since the War. He hung his hammer in luxation.
“Look at Coroth,” she said, D’niqa’s voice behind her own. “So fractured. The king means to subjugate it. But we could burn it, remake it in our own image. Us. Just like we’d envisioned, how you always wanted. You’ve sacrificed so much to find me. With that sacrifice, we could be more than before. We could rule the world. You know how fucked it all is, seen how the people squabble over nothing. It is ours for the taking.” Lillie’s voice came marked with deadly surety. “M’keth can grant you the abilities he’s granted me. Join our powers, and we will become unstoppable, my love.”
He stared at the image of his wife from under a folded brow. It couldn’t—couldn’t be, couldn’t happen. She looked almost pure, like a film had cleaned her image, made her more perfect than she could have been. Should have been. The woman who stood before him did so in effigy.
“Lillie,” he said. “This isn’t you. Can’t be you. We have—had—a life, and it was more than enough.”
She stared at him a few seconds. A sneer twisted her face in an absurd approximation of itself, and she laughed, a disbelieving mania that screeched insanity into the hot air. Blackness filled her eyes and flowed across her skin, descending in veins toward her chest and stomach. “Listen to this bullshit.” The other demons guffawed and wailed. “Lillie thinks of you on the constant, by the way.” D’niqa’s voice became an approximation of Lillie’s. “‘My world, my love, all I need is you with me. Don’t hurt him!’” She chuckled. “Humans are so pathetic in their wanting need. Can you really be this stupid? We have won. Take our deal.”
“Lillie,” said Russ. The mark the master had made against the barrier still burned. Parts had run down the Light’s face in inky lines. Russ traced his own copy of the symbol in the air in front of him.
D’niqa’s eyes bulged in crazed mirth when she laughed at it. The demons joined her and filled the air with their song. But D’niqa’s voice caught in her throat, and her form burnished to silver, then bright white. Disbelief etched against her craze, and again, she transformed.
The darkness left her eyes, and they returned to their chestnut-flecked-with-honey. Veins that strained from her neck drew upon the holy Light Russ channeled and softened into her skin. Her hair furbished into its brown-blonde normality and fluttered across her shoulders, and Lillie covered herself with her arms.
Russ lowered his hammer fully, let its head drop to the ground, his mind filled singularly with the person who now stood before him. Demons above and below watched as he stepped against his own might toward the barrier’s edge and lowered his helmet. The shield flickered, but it held as he walked toward his wife, who leaned against the wall, weak and lilting. Her gaze didn’t leave his.
“Russ!” Willa shouted from behind him, from far away. “What in the hells are you”—
Russell touched the holy magic with his armored palm. Lillie pressed her hand against the Light to match his. Its heat radiated toward him. Where the maw scorched and wanted to make ruin of him, Lillie’s touch and the Light healed and made whole—two sides of a coin that stood on its edge in balance, waiting for a controlling force to tip it.
“You know what you have to do,” Lillie said, her voice weak. “I know what you have to do.” A pained smile spread across her face.
“Lillie.” Russ stared into her eyes, and for a second, bringing the barrier down sounded like a good idea. “How?”
She shook her head. “There’s no time. Just remember what we gave each other.”
Unwanted emotion welled in him. He didn’t need it now, not when D’niqa could surprise him—perhaps her plan in showing him this. “Are you in control?”
“Something like that,” Lillie said, tensing. “Symbiosis of a sort. I’ve kept her from getting through to you. Have I helped?”
Russ couldn’t help the sad chuckle at the insinuation. “Lillie.” He could never tire of her name. She looked so weak, so frail and gaunt—what with the way her collar bones poked over her shoulders and how her cheeks sunk into her face. Her waist pulled in too far under her ribs. “What I wouldn’t give to hold you right now.”
She giggled, then pounded against the barrier as her laugh became a scream. Tears streamed down her face to the cave floor at her dirty feet, and she sobbed. Her pain became Russ’s own. “I don’t get how the gods are so cruel,” she said. “The world faces a danger it’s not seen.” Her eyes glowed against the Light as lambent umber. “We did this already. We earned our Peace.” Her voice warbled. “You more than anyone.”
“Don’t think of that now. Goddess, I”—
“You scare M’keth shitless.” Her voice came from between labored breaths. “He thinks you can fuck everything up for him. And you will, just wait—he doesn’t fully understand.” She winced and pressed her left arm against her stomach. With her eyes still closed, she said, “She’s coming back. Russell, remember what I’ve told you, what I gave you. We will always know each other. I luh”—
Russ equipped his helmet and stepped back. D’niqa screamed and recoiled against her contact with the Light, and she grew and made right the terrible version of herself. Despite her new power, her skin had burned, and she cradled her right hand.
“So that’s how,” she explained. Her voice became an ear-piercing wretch. “Your wittle wifey this whole gods-damned time. And guess what—we’ll keep her nice and safe for you. Just remember Grand Master”—her face lost any meaningful emotion other than pure hatred, and her brow pulled together over her smoldering eyes; her voice growled a deep bass—“she lives and dies with us.” D’niqa raised her fist.
Russ lifted his hammer and retook the brunt of the shield’s effort from Willa. The temptress bashed against it, and when she did, a planet set across the Grand Master’s shoulders. With her claws, she traced a M’kethian mark across its face, and cracks formed across the bubble’s surface that Russ couldn’t heal. His feet dug into the ground as the demons pushed toward them.
“Do not let them leave,” D’niqa said, and the onslaught from her brood reached its pitch.
Russ’s body shook from the collective impacts. Sweat drenched his hair, and his muscles tensed beyond their facility. Fel filled the air, pushed through the cracks the de
mons made against his protection, joined what had already gathered on the other side. A tightening hum emanated around them, and his armor glowed brighter as he channeled, forced more Light through himself, burned himself away.
Yet even for his endeavor, the top of the barrier peeled from the cave’s entrance. A gargoyle’s clawed hand wriggled between rock and Light, and more joined it when they saw its purchase. They widened the gap, until all at once the shield teetered and folded backwards on itself.
Russ threw the Light beyond where Kendra still prepared her spell, and his magic became a dome. He dug his hammer into the ground. As the demons pushed, and as Russ’s power diminished, the Light gave way and dropped over them like a tent.
“Kendra!” Russ yelled.
Burth clung to Willa’s leg, sniveling. “Leave! Please leave!”
“It’s done!” said Kendra, her voice somewhere close.
D’niqa jumped and landed on top of them. Her hooves left inky tracings of themselves across the folding surface. A mask coated her face in hatred and destruction. She stabbed her pointed hand into the Light, which formed around her arm like a mold; M’keth’s adulterated power hung as death less than a foot above. “No!” she screamed. Her hand flew toward Russ’s head, then the world erupted in a flash of light.
A sickening tug roped Russ from underneath his Light’s protection, and in that instant, his barrier shattered and dissipated into the darkness.
He didn’t know where Kendra had taken them. No matter how hard he focused, only blurred shapes floated through the air. If he neared death, he just hoped it would hold itself off until he told someone—anyone—what they’d seen. If nothing else, he’d saved his friends.
“Lillie!” he said, and the shapes turned toward each other. A quiet buzz filled his ears. “M’keth.” Again, he said, “Lillie,” then the world faded.
4
His armor stood next to him like a guard. The wood upon which he sat pushed into his back such that he could not stop fidgeting while he formed a picture in his mind of the reunion he would soon have with his beloved. The temple’s doors opened in a creaking heave, and a small figure entered. Finally here in the days following the War’s end, Lillie had come to him, and though he wanted to run toward her, Russ stayed himself.
He squinted to see her better, her body a sauntering shadow that did not resolve as she approached, did not grow larger for his waiting. “Lillie.” His voice did not echo as he expected it to, and the temple had changed shape around him to one unlike the ordained workings of the Mother Karli. Halls to his left and right stretched away from him forever. The carpet under Lillie’s feet pulled her like a moving walkway, and he realized at once that if he did not run to her, they would never again meet.
With assured confidence, he stood, eschewed his armor—it would only slow him down—and ran.
The hall stretched onward with each step. Lillie stayed just within his sight but remained no more than a shadow at the limit of his vision. Then her shade flew toward him, and his wife unveiled her face from under the pelts and skins that covered her body. She towered, her face agleam for that terrible smile that floated in the darkness. Her eyes burned an awful orange, and she smelled of something that had laid rotting in the sun for ungodly hours. A beetle buzzed on the back of Russ’s head. He pawed at it, and in his panic, he looked away from the monster before him.
But Lillie’s gaze waited for his, and when she spoke, the world around him blacked out and left only a vision of D’niqa, her eyes the color of blood, her face a twisted pile of black ash and spiked bones. Her voice filled the air when she yelled, “Wake up!”
Russ raced farther north from Karhaal to a plateau where the sun kissed the grass under his feet. Dragons roared in the east, where their barking screeches alone kept away the world’s evil from their domain. A cloudless sky reached to oblivion, and in the distance, the horizon burned a sickly orange. A M’kethian mark blazed across the pockmarked-firmament.
“Away from here,” she said. “Away from where we cannot go. Unless you wish to take us with you.”
“No,” said Russ.
He sat cross-legged on a pillow in the center of a room that had no walls, no scent, and a silence in which nothing even tittered. The cushion beneath him proved a nice change from whatever had come before, and a gray fog surrounded him and stretched to eternity. Russ needed only to wait. Time would take care of him. What more could a man need than peace while he awaited his life’s end?
But he could not escape the gray; it looked the same whether he closed his eyes or left them open. Time stretched onward, but his mind stayed in place, returning to the nothingness as soon as he thought of anything else—an inescapable safety that led him to one place: nowhere.
Though comfortable, he soon became irritated by the constraints his mind put upon him, and as he struggled against himself, shadows gained shape among the fog. The scent on the air became milky and reminded him of spring days at the markets near Hemlet before Brech had brought him to Keep. Russ would never find what he searched for, and maybe if he let himself forget, his life could go on. But he wanted something—needed to find it—and his heart beat harder the closer he got to remembering it.
A shape in the crowd gained the preponderance of his mind’s energy. Her feet danced between the others. The air turned minty, and he figured out the meditation’s puzzle as he watched her: if he thought hard enough about something, he could make it a reality.
His wife stepped from the smoke.
“Hello,” Russ said, calm, content.
Lillie didn’t return the greeting. Instead, she laughed. Hearing it filled Russ with unbound happiness. He could listen to her laughter until the end, and he wouldn’t have wasted his life. But her merriment morphed, gained over- and under-tones of shadow and darkness as her face angled and deformed. Her hair turned to straw, the veins in her neck and arms ran green with disease and rot, her teeth dropped from her mouth, and she grew and loomed over him.
Russ stared wide-eyed at the mask the master wore, his wife’s skin stretched taut over D’niqa’s face. She bent down and the world around them became black.
“Wake up!” she yelled into the darkness.
Russ tried to pull himself out of pense, but he went nowhere.
“Wake up!”
He squeezed his eyes closed against her shrill pitch. Her voice still echoed in his ears when next he saw.
Below him, a meadow awaited, its grass green and veined with shadow where hills folded into each other, where some great god had thrown wildflowers afield and in plenty. Houses pocked the countryside, their chimneys like castle towers from the stories of old. A river meandered through the land, its path a trumpet to nature’s intention, and children, hardly bigger than ants with how he saw them, played in a lake and on its shore, chasing throwing-discs and budgerigars. Honey scented the air, and a tepid breeze flung itself from the clifftop on which Russ stood to the valley below, where it rustled the grass and danced with the children of the valley. Trees cuddled at the foot of snow-capped mountains in the far distance.
Russell breathed, and he knew he could live here, call it home forever. And at that, he would live a good life.
Yet beyond the mountains, a storm burned orange, and though slowly it moved, its march toward the serenity came with foreboding inevitability.
“We told you,” a woman said.
Russ turned his head and saw his wife, not as he remembered her, but how he knew she now existed. Her arms laced behind her in leather binders, and large crosses stitched over her eyes. A disembodied hand moved her mouth for her.
“You cannot be here, Grand Master. Not with us, unless you wish to take us with you.” She giggled, then fell to her knees and broke into hysterics. Her cries spoiled the peace.
Russ blinked, and the valley below caught orange fire. A M’kethian mark burned across its ruin.
He blinked again, and a bay of screens shined in front of him.
“Sir?” Sieku
said. Russ stood in front of the urlan’s monitors. Part of the middle-upper screen blinked red, and Russ stared, trying to figure out what it meant. “Do you want me to dispatch?”
“Yeah,” said Russ. “Yeah, Sieku. Just—just get it handled.”
“I will, sir.” Sieku swiped through commands, and on the upper monitor, blue hash lines covered the offending area. A message read ‘En Route’ on the primary screen. Russ tried to follow what it meant, but his mind pulled his focus elsewhere, to a cave and a toppled tower.
“Are you all right, sir? You seem—wrong.”
“Sure.” Right now, he could not figure out what bothered him. His brow furrowed, and the image of a face flashing in darkness came to him. “I think—just a dream or something. Throwing me off.”
“Perhaps you should go lie down.”
“Yeah. Yeah, sounds good.” Russ floated to his living room. He knew he had been doing something, but his mind could not pin down what.
Why are the lights off? They turned on, and their glare made it impossible to see outside while he prepared a kettle for coffee. When he reached for a cupboard, its door did not slide open. Russ pounded on it. Nothing.
“Sieku, when did this cupboard get stuck?”
“Everything all right in there, sir?” Sieku’s voice sounded distant.
“You are supposed to keep watch over the house. How am to trust you if you cannot even fix a cupboard?”
“I am trying, sir.” The urlan’s voice grew quieter, and whispers followed after it, blurring the words Sieku used. “But you are not here to”—he still spoke, but Russ could no longer understand him.
“What?”
Sieku whispered. A rustling filled Russ’s ears, like boots crunching leaves on a wet fall morning. An acidic stink caused his eyes to water, caused his skin to itch like he had dropped into stinging nettle. He blinked against the attack on his senses, and then his vision filled with static. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and did not stop for a while.
When he did, the house had dimmed. A light above him flashed and burned out. Smoke stung his mouth and chest, and he cradled his face in the crook of his elbow. “Sie”—he coughed. Grit crunched between his teeth. His dining room table laid on its side, the chairs around it turned to scrap, dismantled. The stool at his desk stood on only three of its legs. Red dripped from its seat to the ash-covered floor.
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