Eva and Layla looked up, staring at my change.
I lifted my arms wide to encompass the army intent on ravaging my home. “Die.”
Thousands of Skallgrim warriors, Free Towns Alliance soldiers and Scarrabus-infested shaman screamed and dropped, their minds blown away like autumn leaves in a storm. Daemons and fleshcrafted monstrosities died in their hundreds, their alien animal minds uncomprehending as burning power overwhelmed and crushed their feeble thoughts.
I was so far beyond what the Arcanum had feared I would become that I had to laugh. I recalled my old landlady calling me Setharis’ nightmare, but in this moment I embodied the entire world’s worst fears, but also their most desperate hope. “I am a god!” I cried, voice thundering across the sky.
The Scarrabus queen wearing the flesh of an elder magus was now the only threat. It did not seem overly concerned. “A small god, and half-baked at best,” it said, then pointed at Dissever busy flaying the last of the infested ravak.
The Shroud cried out as it was rent asunder. Cold yellow skies belonging to another realm engulfed my daemonic ally and it was gone, the Shroud scabbed over. They struck at me with all they had.
Filled with the power of a city, I contemptuously swatted it. Or I tried to. I found myself not as irresistibly strong as the magic had convinced me. For a moment the stalemate held. They pincered me – two separate incredibly powerful wills trying to burrow through my defences. Human tyrant and Scarrabus queen attacked with bewildering speed and irresistible might. I drew deeper on the magic of the populace, causing some atop the walls to collapse from the strain.
I dropped to the earth, forced to concentrate only on keeping them out of my mind as Abrax-Masud’s robed form approached us. The city’s defenders attacked while he focused solely on me. Arrows and magic alike bounced off an invisible sphere.
Eva and Layla charged. He waved a hand, disdainfully flinging them aside. They bounced off rocks and daemon corpses and rolled to a stop. Layla was dazed and out of the fight, mask torn, blood welling up from underneath.
I slid a hand into my pocket and drew forth a ward, flinging it at the bastard’s face. It detonated in a ball of churning flame, but succeeded only in singeing his warded robes. His body had been changed and reinforced with magic for over a thousand years and it seemed the wards would have little effect.
The moment he came within reach I slashed at his throat. He tried to block it with a bare hand, and hissed as the blade bit deep. Power and bloodlust sang inside me, only to be cut off as his other hand wrapped around my wrist and squeezed. Bones shattered and Dissever fell from numb fingers.
My mental resistance faltered, and so did the belief of the entire city watching. The power flowing into me dried up as they lost faith.
I was going to die. We were going to lose, and with us the world. Humanity would become a slave race if it survived at all. He started to crack open my mind.
A dark hand wrapped around my throat and pulled me close. “You too will be Scarrabus.” I was all out of luck.
I glimpsed Cillian on the battlements. She lifted a hand and the elder tyrant stumbled, choking as his bodily fluids tried to burst free of his body. He spat blood and laughed as his flesh settled once more. “Good try, girl.” With but a thought he caused Cillian to scream and claw at her eyes.
With the last of my strength I kicked him right in the balls. His eyes bulged and that moment of distraction was all it took for Cillian to drop out of sight, unconscious but alive.
I flailed in panic as they penetrated my mind and pushed deeper. There was only one option left, something incredibly stupid, and so very me.
Eva staggered upright and our gazes met. She started to come for me despite knowing it would be the death of her.
I slipped a hand into my pocket, wrapped my fingers around the remaining slivers of warded stone, and then I let the enemy in. I let them win. They burst through my shattered defences, exulting in their absolute victory.
Then my trap descended. Walls slammed down to keep them inside this body. In their shock I had a few heartbeats to act before they broke me and escaped.
You fool! Abrax-Masud sneered as I pulled out the wards. That will not be enough to destroy my body.
“Not yours, no.” I’d always said heroism could get a man killed, but I never said I’d go alone.
I smiled at Eva, stuffed the wards in my mouth, and bit down hard.
Chapter 36
I stared in horror as Walker smiled at me and then broke the wards between his teeth.
Light.
Burning heat.
Roaring in my ears as the shockwave ripped me from my feet, tumbling and bouncing and screaming until I slammed into the wall of a ruined building in a tangle of bent armour and fallen beams. I rolled in the dust and rubble, screaming, frantic to put out the flames until a moment of clarity pierced the terror. I was not on fire. I was fine. Fine. I had been far enough away to escape the worst of the blast.
It took me a few tries to get to my feet, the world and city walls spinning as I blinked away tears and tried to focus on Walker.
A huge crater in the earth smoked where he had been locked in dreadful mental battle with the enemy, their hand around his throat. I could not see anything moving. The defenders on the walls grew silent, expectant and watchful.
What was left alive of the daemon horde started screaming. Some began choking, vomiting up dying Scarrabus before perishing themselves. Others turned tail and fled in terror. Had… had Walker won?
The defenders atop the walls stared in silence, bows and magic at the ready as the billowing smoke gradually cleared. Ballistae cranked round to take careful aim.
I limped towards the crater. I had no weapons left but then I didn’t need any; I willed magic into my hands, making them hard and strong as steel. If anything but Walker moved I would punch its accursed head right back into the Clanholds.
Metal crunched underfoot, shards of black iron. Fragments of bone and blood splattered across the churned earth. Tattered ribbons of cloth, the rich silken robes of the enemy and grey wool from Walker’s coat…
The smoke thinned, cleared. Walker was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the enemy. A groan of relief erupted from the walls.
I searched in vain for any sign of life, expecting at any moment to see Walker rise from the earth to spit mud and make a bad joke. Instead, in a pile of jellied flesh and blood, I found a finger bearing the darker skin of Abrax-Masud, ripped free by the explosion.
Nausea rose as I spotted something else in the crater.
I fell to my knees in the red baked mud, staring at the partial remnants of a man’s jaw with white bone and broken teeth. Ragged scars ran down through the stubble.
There would be no more bad jokes.
Edrin Walker was dead.
Chapter 37
Two months after the end of the Scarrabus war and the death of Edrin Walker right before my eyes, it was strangely unsettling to be standing alone before a newly raised Archmagus. Krandus had been a constant and reliable presence in my life, one far more understanding than my conservative and disapproving parents for whom even a sip of alcohol or flash of leg and cleavage was a scandal, and I a constant disappointment. After the mistakes made during the war he had been forced to resign his position by the magi that had only barely survived the trap the Scarrabus had set for the Arcanum army, despite being largely responsible for disposing of the monsters laying in wait for them. He did not seem entirely sad to be relieved from that responsibility, and I did not blame him in the slightest.