Creeping closer in the snowfall, little mice with sharp teeth, closer and ready to bite. Secca was drenched in sweat and struggling to hold on. The ecstasy of magic lit up her eyes. As we approached I recognised the hillside beyond the portal, and the inn where I had once spent a night. That hill was only two days march from Setharis.
The air tasted like metal. My hair hurt and lifted into the air, crackling. The Shroud around our world was straining to close the wound, and the enemy’s power could not hold it open forever. His two ravak were already through, along with all his fleshcrafted creatures, daemons, and most of his Skallgrim. Only the rearguard of the Free Towns Alliance remained, scouring the hillside for us.
We were moving through the ruined temple, closing in and readying to strike when Secca’s Gift gave way and ripped wide open. She screamed, half joy and half agony as magic roared through her flesh. The air rippled in heat-haze around us as her illusion failed, our tracks in the snow revealed to all. Cockrot!
I stiffened as a spike of mental power slammed into my defences. Strong. So fucking strong. Once, twice, and then piercing through the outermost layer. I threw everything I had left into pushing him back. I could not keep him out for long and the
Worm of Magic was rising inside me as desperation took over.
“You will not thwart my glory, little magi,” Abrax-Masud shouted from the centre of the stone circle. “No more than great Siùsaidh and her vaunted high cabal could. They had to destroy Escharr and bury me alive to thwart us. You are but ignorant children compared to her. Now I head to Setharis to unleash my true power.”
The portal shuddered and contracted. He hastily stepped through mere moments before the hilltop was engulfed in a lightning storm striking the soldiers caught outside the stone circle. Snow began to fall harder, coating the corpses with a white death shroud.
“At least that shut him up,” I said, clutching the throbbing wound in my chest. Nobody seemed to appreciate my humour.
Secca was down twitching, her eyes leaking red tears. She was being twisted by the Worm of Magic. I sank Dissever in her heart before she mutated further.
A few of the Free Towns men left alive after the lightning began to stir, dazed. I limped through the ruins leaving a trail of my own blood in the snow behind me, and fed my hungry blade on the storm’s survivors; its joy singing in the back of my mind.
We approached the ancient stone monument and stared dumbly at the circle of smoking earth on the icy hillside. The air smelled sharp and clean in the aftermath of the lightning storm. I spat blood on a fallen stone and leaned heavily on Eva, shaking with my Gift on the edge of ripping. She steadied herself on her war hammer.
She and Bryden were in no better shape. We had fought four days straight. Even the unnatural vitality of magi had its limits.
I dulled their pain. Eva nodded her thanks. Bryden didn’t seem to notice, his eyes glazed with thoughts of a home and family he would never see again.
We watched the green and yellow tide of soldiers race towards us. I exchanged looks with Eva and calmness descended as we accepted it.
Abrax-Masud was far beyond our reach, taking his ravak and the bulk of his army with him. The remnant of the Free Towns Alliance he left behind trampled our fallen into bloody slush as they ascended the hill intent on finishing us off. I sensed two fresh wholly human Gifted amongst the soldiers. Two others with them wore the blank expression of the Scarrabus-infested. The nerve of them, thinking themselves the match of Arcanum-trained magi.
Bryden managed to stand. He wiped sweat from his brow and managed to look vaguely hopeful. “Four, eh? Can you still fight?”
My back hurt. My bones ached and the wound in my chest was pishing blood – my boots squelched red with every step. I groaned and pushed myself to stand on my own two feet. I would rather die standing than be skewered sitting on my arse. “I can fight but I won’t survive it. I’m so close to giving in to the Worm.” It was at the forefront of my mind, urging me to do so.
“Should we?” Bryden asked blandly, as if we were discussing a second slice of tasteless pie instead of one of the most horrific and dreaded things a magus could ever do.
I looked to Eva, who was also seriously considering it. We were going to die, but the question was, should we give in and lose ourselves to the magic and let it twist us in order to take as many of these bastards down with us as we could? Or die here wholly as ourselves?
“We take these betrayers with us,” she said. “Setharis might still find some way to survive. Maybe they have managed to recover some of our ancient weapons from the collapsed vaults below the ruins of the Templarum Magestus.” None of us believed that was possible. The vaults had been buried so deep, and falling stone alone was not the only threat. Some wards and protections were still in place and the whole area was magically damaged and deadly to all intruders.
The militia were almost upon us, their boots a rhythmic tramping through the snow, steel jangling and mouths boasting.
I extended a hand to Bryden and then clasped hands with Eva. “Never let it be said we did not resist as much as humanly possible. What more could be asked of us.” Ah, her single green eye was pretty as an emerald.
I smiled at her. “We should’ve gone for that drink when we first met. Imagine where we could’ve been.”
Her hand tightened. She chuckled mirthlessly, “Really? At a time like this?”
“It’s not like there will be another,” I replied.
In the face of death her thoughts made it clear that she too regretted we hadn’t gone for that drink – and she had fully intended on going much further than drinking with me!
“Filthy bitch,” I gasped.
I sensed her grinning behind the steel mask.
Bryden rolled his eyes. “Death cannot come fast enough if I am to be stuck here with the both of you.”
I had grown to like him. Shame. We readied our weapons: Gifts and steel. It was time to fuck them up.
This shall not be. The Eldest of the ogarim’s mental voice was quiet but the sheer certainty of it brooked no disagreement. It had been the unknown presence that I had sensed during the battle.
It appeared from nowhere, stepping out of empty air to stand in the burnt circle of stone beside us. Its three eyes were bloodshot, its shaggy white fur unkempt and its decorative beads in disarray or missing entirely. Eva and Bryden panicked but a gentle touch of my thoughts stayed their hands. Its three eyes fixed upon me and I felt its turmoil and torment. It still would not kill; it could not kill again even faced with its race’s ancient enemy rising once more.
I refuse to let this world end without struggling to the last. This was once the womb of the peaceful ogarim. Now it is yours, our broken kin. You are not ogarim, but you are of us. You deserve a chance to live. I will give you that chance.
It placed a hand on an ancient stone and poured its magic into the circle. The air thrummed. For a moment I thought it about to unleash the sort of godly power I had seen in its memories, but it was weary and its life worn thin as paper by the passage of thousands of years. It was no longer able to summon such strength. All of its kind that had stayed behind to guard this world had long since lain down in their black pyramids to take the final sleep, their essence returned to the magic that spawned all life. It had been yearning to do the same for over three thousand years, but instead had stubbornly hung onto its duty as the final guardian of its race’s mother realm. It was not here to fight, but to open the portal to elsewhere and offer us one last chance.