The Pure who was named Reverence led the way. She was Eldest among those who remained in close proximity to the Great Spire. Tall even for a Forkrul Assail, she was exceedingly gaunt, almost skeletal. Thousands of years upon this world had turned her once white skin a sickly grey, worn through to bruised tones around her joints, including those of her double-hinged jaw and the vertical epiphysis that bisected her face from chin to forehead. One eye had been blinded centuries past in a battle with a Jaghut, a tusk slash as they struggled to tear out each other’s throat, and the ferocity of that bite had dented the bones of the socket, collapsing the brow ridge on that side.
She favoured her right leg, as the effort of the ascent shot lancing pain through her left hip. A T’lan Imass sword-thrust had very nearly disembowelled her on another rise of stone steps, on a distant continent and long, long ago. Even as the flint weapon stabbed into her, she had torn the warrior’s head from its shoulders. The demands of adjudication are not for the weak, she would say from time to time, whispered as something akin to a mantra, tempering true once more the iron of her will.
Yes, the climb had been a long one, for them all, but soon the summit would heave into view, pure and bristling, and the final death-blows would be delivered. Judgement upon humanity. Judgement upon this broken, wounded world. We shall cleanse. It is not what we chose for ourselves. This burden in truth does not belong to us, but who will stand to defend this world? Who but the Forkrul Assail can destroy all the humans in this realm? Who but the Forkrul Assail can slay their venal gods?
The oldest justice of all is the justice of the possible. Hunter and prey, death or escape, to feed or to starve. Each plays to what is possible and the victims strive to answer their needs, and that is all there is. All there ever need be.
I remember grasses in the wind. I remember skies filling with birds from horizon to horizon. I remember weeping at the silence in the years that followed, when these furtive killers edged out into the world and killed all they could. When they walked ancient shorelines and thrust their greed like bone knives into new lands.
We watched. We grieved. We grew into the iron of anger, and then rage. And now. Now, we are cold and certain. There will be death.
Steady breaths behind her, a source of strength, succour for her will to complete this climb, to push away the aches, the labours of a body as battered as the earth itself. She could remember the day peace was declared dead. The day the Forkrul Assail stood tall, for the first time, and saw before them the future, and the necessity they must answer.
Since then … so many unanticipated allies.
Above, seven steps away, the edge of the altar, the platform’s white quartzite glistening in the thin light. Drawing upon her strength for this last effort, she pushed herself upward. And then, at last, she stepped on to the windswept expanse. The Altar of Judgement, white as freshly fallen snow, the carved sunburst of blood channels leading out from the centre, cut deep, shadowed into darkness.
Reverence strode forward, loosening her thick cloak as the heat bloomed up and out from the crater’s mouth surrounding the Spire, rank with sulphurs. Behind her, the four other Pures spread out, finding their own paths to the centre-stone.
Her lone eye fell to that blackened, rotted abomination, the boulder that was – or, perhaps, encased – the heart of an alien god. She could see no rise and fall from its mottled form, yet to set hand upon it was to feel its stubborn life. The sky tore him apart. Flung across half the world the flaming debris that was his body, and pieces fell and fell, upon one continent and then another. Into the shocked seas. Ah, if there had been more. If there had been enough to annihilate every human on this world, not just the ones whose hubris was so brazen, whose madness reached across the Abyss, to take this wretched thing.
Soon, they would pierce the centre-stone, the Heart, and that alien god’s blood would flow, and the power would … feed us. With that power they could fully open the gate of Akhrast Korvalain; they could unleash the cleansing storm, and it would sweep the world. Drown on your hubris, humans. It is all you deserve. Indeed, it would finish what the Summoners in their insanity had begun.
You chain what you can use. As the gods have done to him. But when its usefulness is at an end … what then? Do you simply kill? Or do you squeeze the last possible drop of blood from the carcass? Fill your belly?
Is there a use for endless pain? Let us see, shall we?
‘Sister Reverence.’
She turned, studied the younger woman facing her. In the few paces between them there was a gulf so vast there was no hope of ever spanning it. ‘Sister Calm.’
‘If we are to hear naught but reports on the disposition of our armies, Sister, was there need for this ascent?’
‘“Need.” Now that is an interesting word, is it not?’
Calm’s eyes remained flat, unwilling to rise. ‘The siege belabours us, Sister. The Watered who command are insufficient to the task.’
‘Whom do you suggest we send, Sister Calm?’
‘Brother Diligence.’
Ah, next to me in seniority. My closest ally. Of course. She turned to the slope-shouldered man standing nearest the Heart. ‘Brother Diligence?’
He glanced over, his pale eyes cold as the seas behind him. ‘I will break the defenders, Sister Reverence. None there can hope to stand against me.’
‘It remains an option,’ murmured Reverence.
Again, Calm did not react.
Reverence looked to the others. ‘Brother Abide?’
‘It is known where blood soaks the sands,’ the Mystic said, ‘that other forces are arraying against us. Beyond the Glass Desert.’
‘We have other armies,’ said Calm. ‘Enough to meet and defeat each one.’
‘Sister Calm is correct,’ added Sister Equity. ‘Brother Diligence can destroy the humans who by treachery gained the North Keep, and indeed he can return in time for us to meet the new threats from the west.’
‘But only if we do not linger too long in reaching a decision,’ said Calm.
And so it divides. ‘Brother Diligence?’
‘The risk remains,’ the warrior said, ‘that we have underestimated the commander of those invaders. After all, they appeared as if from nowhere, and their successes to date have been … impressive.’
‘From nowhere, yes,’ muttered Brother Abide. ‘Cause for dismay. A warren? Most certainly. But to guide an entire army through? Sister Calm and Sister Equity, we cannot discount the possibility of those in the keep simply leaving the way they came, should matters prove too precipitous. In which case, when and where will they reappear?’
‘A valid point,’ said Diligence. ‘For as long as they are held in place, they are no threat to us.’
‘Even so,’ countered Calm, ‘your presence and command of our besieging army will ensure that you can respond to anything unexpected. There will come a time – there must come a time – when it is expedient to drive them from the keep and, if possible, annihilate them.’
‘Indeed there will,’ agreed Reverence. ‘But as Brother Abide has noted before, we are not yet certain that we have accounted for all the threats assembling against us.’ She gestured. ‘The Great Spire, the Altar of Judgement, this is where we remain the most vulnerable. Diligence in command of the Spire Army ensures the Spire and the Heart hold inviolate.’ She paused, fixed her single eye upon Sister Calm. ‘Our remaining Pures command the outlying armies inland. Do you suggest that, in the end, they shall prove unequal to the task? Sister Belie? Sister Freedom? Brothers Grave, Serenity and Aloft? Which of them falters in your regard?’