The ground lurched as more of the Magash Mora exploded free of its stony womb. Boulders and fragments of buildings rained down over the city, smashing against the walls of the Old Town. The ancient defences groaned, cracks webbing out through the stonework. Blocks the size of horses shattered and fell outwards, crashing down into the Crescent below. Wardens screamed and scrambled away from the crumbling section of wall. Glimpsed through the gaps, limbs of writhing flesh as large as ships crushed whole streets as an abomination of flesh, blood and bone heaved the last of its mountainous bulk from the dark places below the city. Trailing tentacles snatched up corpses and screaming people and sucked them into its churning flesh.
Balls of liquid flame hissed from the magi manning the outer walls of the city, a flight of deadly fireflies. Incandescent forks of lightning stabbed out from a magus somewhere down in Docklands, thunder booming. The thing ate their magic the moment it touched flesh. Cries of shock and horror rippled through nearby magi.
Shadea signalled to Krandus. He glanced at her note again and ordered groups of pyromancers and aeromancers to the battlements. She snapped orders while several geomancers under her command prised blocks of stone from the ruined section of wall. The pyromancers concentrated their magic until the blocks glowed hot, red rivulets of flaming melt beginning to pool. Shadea lifted a hand, then dropped it. “Loose!” Aeromancers launched the fiery missiles out into the air.
It made sense. Molten rock was molten rock with or without magic. The missiles blasted into the creature, burning pitifully small holes in its hide and slowing it not at all.
Examining the great wall of the Old Town, it seemed that I was just noticing how shoddy it really was. Any defensive structures it might once have boasted had been left to crumble into picturesque neglect. They must have asked themselves, “What fools would ever dare to attack Setharis?” Such mundane defences as catapults and ballistae would be pointless to their minds when the Arcanum could use magic to obliterate any attackers. What arrogance. Instead they had wasted their coin on faerie lightshows and elaborate feasts.
“Harailt and the Skallgrim planned this well,” I said as Cillian returned. “You were complacent.” It earned me a medley of glares from every direction.
The ground shook again and despite the desperate attempts of a nearby geomancer, the damaged section of wall collapsed in a shriek of tortured stone. In the haze of smoke and flame beyond the gap a behemoth of twisted stolen flesh crawled through my city, crushing temples, workshops and family homes beneath its bulk. The magi attacks seemed pitiful against its monstrous mass. Somewhere dozens of voices shouted and screamed, too far away to make out what the clamour was about.
Archmagus Krandus ran over, dismissing me with but a glance before focusing on Cillian. “Our attacks are inadequate; whatever damage we inflict is replaced by new flesh as it devours all within reach.” His face was grim. “I fear a full quarter of the populace lost in the creature’s emergence. The Magash Mora grows ever larger.” Screams and shouts again drifted on the wind.
I shuddered. With all the merchants and migrants flooding into the city for Sumarfuin, that had to be around two hundred and fifty thousand dead – worse than dead. The numbers were staggering. Unimaginable. My own plight as a hunted rogue was shown for the petty thing it was. I felt sick and powerless.
“We do have one thing that the capital of ancient Escharr did not,” Cillian said. “We have the cliff walls of the Old Town. Newly recovered histories detailing the fall of their empire suggest the creature may starve itself to death. Something of that size must use up enormous amounts of both magic and physical energy. It likely needs to keep eating or die. If we can hold out long enough we may yet survive.”
Krandus did not hesitate, “Agreed. If no other plan presents itself we will wait this out. The gates of the Old Town are to be kept closed. Make preparations to demolish every route up.” He unfurled a small map-scroll of the city and began studying it with Cillian.
I looked around in shock, realising that all the people around us were well-dressed, all from the Old Town. The lack of sooty peasants scarred by fire, screaming mothers or barefoot children hit me like a hammer. Those clamouring voices and screams were people outside the gate pleading for safety.
“You callous bastards,” I said. They would make the rock of the Old Town an inaccessible island. “You can’t cut us off and leave all those people down there to die. If that thing doesn’t kill them then the Skallgrim certainly will.” Martain stayed close to me, hand hovering over his sword hilt.
Krandus narrowed his eyes. “As much chance for them to flee into the countryside as to stay. Likely more. We cannot take the risk of insurgents entering these walls as they did the lower city. Nor can we risk more magi being devoured. That would further strengthen the creature.”
Rage grew inside me. I reached for my Gift, felt the sanctor’s power clamping it shut, my mind scrabbling at a slick wall that offered no purchase.
“It is useless to fight,” Martain gloated. “Your Gift is sealed.” Oh, how he loved this, the smug little prick.
And then an insane idea reared its ugly head and burst into flames. I stared at Martain in utter astonishment. He didn’t like that one little bit.
“Cillian,” I said. “How many sanctors are in Setharis right now?”
“Three,” she replied absently, glancing up from a map of the city. “Why?”
“What would happen if we stuffed them–” I pointed at Martain, then towards the gap in the wall and the Magash Mora beyond “–down that thing’s throat? It draws power from stolen Gifts, so what if we get the sanctors close enough to shut them down? It might kill it.”
A sudden silence rippled out from me as magi turned to stare first at me and then at Martain. His jaw dropped, face draining of colour. The signal rod slipped from Archmagus Krandus’ fingers and clattered to the stone.
“Now wait just a minute,” Martain said. “You cannot be serious.”
“I know some of you can sense the Gifts open inside that thing, the torrent of magic pouring into its flesh through the magi and mageborn it has absorbed. Sanctors can block that source of power.”
Martain’s mouth opened and closed, not a sound emerging. His eyes bulged in horror.
“Cillian, is this viable?” Krandus said.
She shuddered. “Magus Edrin Walker would be the expert in this particular field. In the catacombs below the city he was able to destroy the smaller offshoot. If he says that their still-living Gifts are being used to draw in magic to grant that creature life…” Cillian glanced at me and I wondered if she was about to reveal the secret of my Gift-bond to Lynas, “…then I believe him. I felt it trying to absorb my own. It certainly explains how something so massive lives against the laws of nature instead of collapsing under its own bulk. Their massed Gifts working together may also suggest how it is able to warp reality in order to devour our magic.”
Martain sensed which way the wind was blowing, his face going pale, fists clenching, but even he had to acknowledge the sense of it. “I cannot guarantee my power will work against that thing,” he said with a shaking voice. “It may be immune.” He was a smug git, but he was brave. That I could respect.