My puppet frowned. “That fat fool was a bad man?”
The hooded man sighed and muttered something unintelligible. “Yes, yes, he was the bad man who burned my stockpile and caused so much delay. Now please stop asking stupid questions and pour.”
It crystallized in my mind. The green wax and pottery fragments on Lynas’ warehouse floor, imports from the Skallgrim lands. The robed man with inhuman strength and daemons at his beck and call. The butchering of mageborn. It all fit together: Lynas had picked up a new delivery from the Harbourmaster and accidently broken a seal on one of the jars, then realized he’d been importing mageblood. When he investigated and found out what it was to be used for, he torched that old temple trying to destroy their whole damn mageblood supply. He had delayed the birth of this monster before running to warn people. They murdered Lynas to cover up the truth, then paid Layla’s assassins to slaughter everybody else that might know anything, like the Harbourmaster and the Iron Wolves, and Bardok the Hock huddled alone in his warded shop.
Lynas, you stupid bastard. Why couldn’t you have just run away instead of trying to be a hero? Because Lynas wasn’t selfish like me. He didn’t leave me in the Boneyards to die alone in the dark, and he bloody well wouldn’t have turned his back on everybody else. He’d been through the Forging, and that carved loyalty to Setharis into every mageborn’s heart, but he’d have done the same by choice even if it cost him his life.
I watched through my puppet’s eyes as a bloody hand lifted from the water to caress his master’s arm. No, that wasn’t water, it was thicker. It couldn’t possibly all be mageblood – so, blood of the unGifted perhaps? That meant hundreds or even thousands of bodies. It seemed likely this was where the missing people of Setharis had ended up.
He pulled his glistening hands from the pool and dozens of arms burst from the depths, grasping towards the sorcerer, their human skin replaced with thick grey leathery hide. Faces surfaced – men, women, children, and animal – with mewling cries of hunger. Ropes of flesh and muscle writhed across the surface like the tentacles of some great sea monster. He stroked them, murmuring sweet words. “Hush. You will feed soon.”
Hunger and pain blasted through my mental defences. Blind animal rage. All-too human horror. A maelstrom of madness. Overwhelmed, my eyes were drawn to a single face among that vast melded bulk, only now rising from the depths of the pool. Free from the heavy cloak of blood magic, the Gift-bond pulsed into a weak and twisted semblance of life.
Lynas. My brother in all but birth, his face now a mottled grey mockery of life. I scrubbed at my face and looked again, found it all too real. His eyes stared at me, devoid of anything that had once been my friend, then his mouth opened and began screeching.
The sorcerer stiffened and spun to face me. “Edrin Walker! Still alive and breathing we see.”
I stepped out. “You know me then, sorcerer?” I did my best to ignore the animalistic urges pulsing in the back of my head.
He chuckled, voice almost lost amongst the gibbering mewling cries of the thing in the lake. “Oh yes, we know you. And you know parts of me very well indeed.”
Parts of him?
He looked left and a glittering shard beast crawled down the wall, he looked right and two burning green eyes stared from the shadows. “The Arcanum were fools to believe your false death. My shadow cats should have torn you to shreds years ago, but when they didn’t return with your head I knew you must still live.”
Flames licked up his hands and robed sleeves, burning him not at all. “Such a happy day when I finally get to dispose of filth like you. All these years I have wanted to see you burn and now my god has granted my wish.” He waved a hand towards Lynas, “Say hello to your fat fuck of a friend. Will your screams be as pathetic as his when we skin you alive and feed you to my pet? When I am done with you perhaps I will pay his lovely daughter a visit.” He noted my shock, “Oh yes, we know of her. I have learned many things these last few years.”
Power filled me to bursting. God or magus, this fucker needed to die. Dissever leapt into my hand, lusting for blood.
He laughed, voice subtly different. “Such a unique pleasure seeing you again. It’s been far too long, my little Edrin. Bring him to me.”
Three of his minions pulled out knives and shambled towards me, my puppet remaining where he was, still pouring. The magus opened himself up and pulled in more power than I could dream of handling. He levelled burning hands at me.
The magus was the bigger threat. His Gift would instinctively resist my intrusion, so I put the full might of my rage behind the blow. His mind was a fortress of control surrounded by a spiked moat of alchemic haze. Fuelled by rage and hatred, I blasted through his first lines of defence. Inhuman thoughts tainted his mind, fragmented shards both unknown and unnatural. There was something unspeakably alien inside. As flames roared up around him I pressed in deeper, touching something of immense power. It flinched, inexplicably fearful of me. Then a third power scattered my attack with a surge of more-than-human will – it felt like a god – and its relentless force tore me out of the magus’ head. We both screamed.
He fell to his knees, dazed, grip on his power lost. Fire exploded from him in an uncontrolled sphere. One of his men was blasted through the air to crunch into the cavern wall. The thing in the pool surged up in a glistening mass, enveloping and consuming my puppet and not shying from the flames but lapping them up. I stared in shock as its heaving bulk devoured the otherworldly fire.
Two of his servants had almost reached me when the shockwave of hot air reached us. They stumbled, disorientated. I clamped a hand to one’s arm. With the skin contact I was able to smash through his drugged mind with a mental war hammer, then crudely twist his perceptions. It was all so easy and I felt like a god playing with a new toy.
He drooled idiotically, then turned and stabbed his friend in the belly. In his mind his friend wore my face, and me his beloved master’s. He sawed open the man’s belly, intestines spilling out like links of sausage.
The magus blood sorcerer climbed to his feet. Flame began spiralling round his hands, faster and faster, building to a firestorm. He cocked his head to one side, listening. “Really? Must you find out what this secret locked away inside his head is? I know, I know, you don’t like anything kept from you.”
I went cold. Who was he talking to? What was he talking to?
The flames intensified. “Surely it is safer to burn him to a crisp? Oh very well, if you only need his head intact, your wish is my command, my god.”
I went cold. A god. He said there was a god inside him.
The thing in the pool was agitated, bulk crashing against rock. Earth and pebbles trickled from the ceiling. From the darkness above, a handful of glittering shard beasts scuttled down stalactites towards me.
There was still a small chance I could kill this murdering bastard. I could open myself up beyond my limits and rip my way into his mind. If I did that I’d likely die, or end up a twisted insane wretch even if I succeeded. If I fought and failed then this blood sorcerer would be free to carry out his foul plans. For Lynas’ sake I almost risked it, but with Charra sick he would have beat me black and blue for even contemplating it. Charra’s life was not something we would ever gamble with. If only I’d kept that damn alchemic bomb, then I could have blown the bastard to little pieces – yes, and no doubt bury Charra and yourself in the resulting cave-in.