Talking about choking, my mouth was a desert and my belly rumbled angrily – of course, I hadn’t been in this body for a day and a night so I hadn’t actually had anything to eat or drink save whatever Jovian might have poured down my throat, if the mad little Esbanian had even thought of it.
I exited the tent and winced against the afternoon sun, sinking low and red over the half-frozen and shadow-wreathed valley. The looming bulk of the white-furred ogarim was stood waiting right out in the open and my coterie guarding the tent were completely oblivious of either it or myself. The Eldest was in their minds fogging all memory and perception with the casual ease afforded by millennia of practice.
Come with me to a place of power, it thought. I must show you more. You must make an informed choice.
That did not sound good.
I shook my head. I need to warn them about the elder tyrant and Scarrabus queen. Can’t you just quickly dump all I need to know into my brain as you did before?
It exhaled, its breath sharp with the scent of raw onion. They can do nothing until your other humans return. The full understanding of this ancient knowledge is more important and will require a period of reflection. You have time enough to do both.
Its urgency pressed on me like a lead weight, so I nodded my acceptance.
It led me through the camp, past men and women busy preparing wooden stakes, sharpening blades and fletching arrows. Their mood was nervously buoyant – they had no idea it had all gone to shite in the north and our forces were fleeing for their lives. I spotted Secca in her black and white hood and she paused, brow furrowed, eyes scanning across the camp as if for a second she had sensed something was amiss. I thought about passing on a warning of what was happening to the north, but the ogarim warned we would be revealed and delayed. Everything that could be done was already being done. She blinked, shook her head and moved on.
How far away was Eva now? Could I contact her?
I opened myself up and reached out across the valley, speeding north as far as I dared, as far as I could without straining my Gift, but it was a big place and I found no sign of her mind, or any of her wardens. It was as futile as looking for a handful of raindrops causing ripples somewhere on the surface of a lake. Hopefully that meant she would also be safe from that smug shite Abrax-Masud as well.
We took our time climbing a gentle incline above camp. I didn’t think the ogarim kept a relaxed pace out of consideration, and thought it more likely it was never in a habit of rushing anywhere. At the peak of the hill a stone circle had once stood proud, the great slabs worn down by age and element until only stumps remained jutting from the bones of the hill. Nearby lay the crumbling ruins of an ancient temple of human design, the remaining vaulted arches and tumbled granite blocks only hinting at the vastness of some ancient clan’s long-vanished halls and forgotten gods.
The Eldest entered the stone circle and planted its great hairy arse down in the very centre, heedless of the snow. I had to kneel, and even that was an ordeal, the wounds in my back pulling tight. It said nothing and my impatience grew – Eva was out there fighting, fleeing, dying; I didn’t know which.
This is a place of peace and power where the magic sings if you open yourself to it. I got the distinct impression it thought me incapable of that kind of subtlety. Long ago the elders of my race gathered here to share their wisdom. Here we shall wait until the stars emerge and broken Elunnai rises to her fullness. <Guilt> <Regret>
“No we bloody won’t,” I replied aloud through irritation. “I don’t give a crap about your crusty old traditions. People are dying out there and the enemy is upon us. Why would I care about a gods-damned history lesson? Tell me what you want right now or I’m fucking off to go and do something actually useful.”
A glacial, slow surge of irritation submerged just as slowly back beneath calm waters. So be it.
All of its race’s history opened up before me. War. Ogarim fighting huge towering monstrosities crafted from flesh and bone. Winning. Always winning as their magic eventually overpowered everything and anything the Scarrabus queens could throw at them. The problem was numbers, and the towering guilt and pain of causing such bloodshed. The ogarim were so pitifully few compared to their enemy, and they could not be everywhere at once. The war required nine tenths of their entire population to leave their home realm, with only the very young and a few ancient guardians left behind free from the suffering of war.
Over hundreds of years – not so long to a race of Gifted immortals like the ogarim – realm after realm was cleansed of the Scarrabus presence, until finally they came to a lush tropical world that had been turned into a breeding pit for those vile creatures’ abominations. The ogarim had never seen anything like the scale of it: an entire world’s resources bent towards a single horrific purpose.
The Eldest witnessed this for itself as a youth: a group of ogarim advancing on a great beast rising from the largest of the pits. This beast was formed from the bodies of countless thousands of other creatures, including their own kind captured or killed in the wars. As they had every time before, the ogarim set the unrivalled might of their awesome magic against it, expecting total victory.
I shuddered inside the vision. I knew this creature. It was the Magash Mora, the beast that devoured all magic. It fed on their magic, engulfed the ogarim and absorbed their flesh and Gifts into itself.
The Eldest’s pain was raw despite the passage of millennia. Formed from a seed taken from their god-beast and grown in a pit of flesh and blood.
How did you defeat it? I asked.
We could not. We destroyed that world by pushing it closer to its sun. All life burned.
Sweet Lady Night. They had that kind of power?
Yes. Which is why the Scarrabus desired to possess our flesh at all costs. With our magic they would reign unopposed for all the tomorrows yet to come.
With their greatest breeding pits destroyed, the long war among the Far Realms was all but done and won, and what few Scarrabus remained were scattered and in hiding, slumbering in the deep dark places beneath minor and forgotten realms. Without the Scarrabus their great god-beast was lost, blind and starving in the void between realms. The home of the ogarim – here – was finally safe. Nine tenths of the ogarim race had left their home to wage war in alien worlds, but after centuries of battle only two broken remnants of the nine returned alive, expecting to experience an age of peace and rest, and to rediscover the joy of dancing under the stars with their innocent kin who had never known that abomination called war.
What they found waiting for them was… us. Humans. Broken Ones.
The infested Eldest they left behind to die had mastered their magic and somehow slowed its inevitable death. It had broken free, with only younglings and a few decrepit guardians to oppose it. Ogarim did not kill ogarim, but the Scarrabus had no such compunction. It slew the guardians and used the younglings as raw material in vile flesh-crafting experiments. It broke them apart and bred a lesser form of being, one with a more restricted access to magic that the parasites could safely tolerate. That Scarrabus queen had succeeded in creating their perfect host. And then it had hatched its eggs.