The Archmagus stood straighter. “I will not leave innocents to perish where it can be avoided.” He clapped a hand on Martain’s shoulder. “This is worth the attempt.” With that he picked up his signal rod. “Find all sanctors and gather at the gatehouse. Be quick. Notify all commanders – we march to war!”
Martain’s fate was sealed. “Sorry, pal.” I meant it. Nobody should be asked to do something this insane. But I refused to let Lynas’ body and mind be used to kill our people.
A series of explosions tore through the curtain wall in the west of the lower city, flames billowing skyward in clouds of greasy black smoke.
“Oil,” somebody shouted. “The West Gate is burning and the Skallgrim have taken Pauper’s Docks. More ships are heading for the West Docks and… oh, sweet Lady Night, flocks of winged daemons rise from their ships.”
Krandus’ signal rod chirped and he listened to it for a moment. His brow furrowed, jaw clenching. “The daemons scour the walls and an armed mob has rushed Pauper’s Gates from the inside.”
Even at this distance I could see people milling at both gates, fighting and fleeing, desperate to escape but trapped between the monster ravaging the city, fire, and a Skallgrim army pouring in through the docks. “They’re trapped. Do something.”
Krandus’ nostrils flared. “There will be no escape now. With that many trapped the Magash Mora will gorge itself on the flesh of both human and beast until it can envelop the Old Town itself. To the gates! Gather your wardens and form coteries.”
I shuddered and looked away as the creature wailed, a cacophony of voices like a thousand screeching newborns. It flopped and flowed and crawled and crashed over buildings and streets towards the trapped Docklanders. All the faces of the people I’d seen since coming home flickered through my mind’s eye: the young girl’s wide eyes as silver coins dropped into her bowl, the glowering clansmen brothers guarding Charra’s door, Bardok the Hock and that annoying nobleman dubbed Lord Arse I’d had to endure on the voyage down the coast, and even the barber and his disturbing collection of pulled teeth. How many of them had already been devoured? The thought made me shudder. It was all too similar to the fear I faced every time I used my own magic: that the Worm of Magic would take me and I’d be trapped gibbering in a corner of my own mind, somehow still aware of my own monstrousness. There was no way to know if they were trapped in a similar living death, still horribly aware.
“I’m going down there too,” I said, surprising even myself. I nervously examined Dissever’s edge. I couldn’t just sit back and let this happen. These were my people.
“You shall not,” Shadea said, dropping from the walls and landing easily on legs that looked far too scrawny to allow her to leap about like that. “Did you forget that Magus Evangeline was forced to restrain you earlier?”
“I forgot nothing. You want the truth?” I caught Cillian’s grim nod from the corner of my eye. “My friend Lynas was murdered by the Skinner. His mageborn flesh was used to help create that damned creature out there.” I tapped the side of my head. “Lynas and me, we were Gift-bonded.” More than one person gasped and whispers of tyrant rippled through nearby magi. “There was no enslavement, we were closer than family, and damn what any of you have to say about it. That’s why I’m back in this accursed back-stabbing rat hole of a city. Lynas sacrificed his life so that thing would not be fully mature before the Skallgrim arrived. Without him it would be a damn sight stronger and all of you would already be dead.”
Shadea cocked her head. “Ah. So that is why the tyrant is so pained by the Magash Mora’s emergence. On your Oath, can you bear this agony, Edrin Walker?”
Dissever’s fury bled into me. I held up the foul weapon. “I’ll ram my pain right down its fucking throat. I destroyed the crystal core of the smaller creature with this blade. If we can hack our way in then I’ll bloody well do for this one too.”
Krandus considered it for a long moment. “Very well. Magus Evangeline, assemble the siege-breakers and have somebody bring this magus his possessions. Be swift as the wind.”
Eva nodded approvingly. “This suits me better than hiding behind walls while people die.” She sprinted towards the Templarum Magestus.
Krandus spoke into his signal rod: “I, Krandus, Archmagus of the Arcanum, hereby order the seals broken on vaults three, four and five. Bring forth the articles of war.”
Even through the beat of Skallgrim battle drums, tolling of bells and the screeching of the Magash Mora, the sudden silence of every magus resounded deeper and louder. The most powerful magical artefacts the Arcanum possessed had been sealed in ancient vaults below the Templarum Magestus at the end of the Daemonwar, all save the enormous titans which had been rendered inert. The Shroud where the Vanda city states once stood had been permanently damaged, and though the Arcanum had managed to block the open portals to the Far Realms long enough to allow the Shroud to scab over, the wound in the world there still festered. To this day all magi were forbidden from entering the Vanda desert. They had sworn that never again would the full magical might of Setharis march to war.
Krandus looked like he would rather have slit his own throat than let those artefacts see the light of day again if he had any other choice. To my mind nobody should wield that sort of power. However, I also knew I would use that power myself if I needed to.
After an interminable wait Krandus’ rod finally buzzed and a tinny voice replied, sounding scared. “The wardsmiths have unlocked the vaults.” It was done.
A CRACK boomed across the Old Town.
It took everybody a few moments to locate the source. The spires atop the Templarum Magestus listed, snapped, and fell. The ancient building’s steeple groaned, then caved in. With stately majesty the grand halls of the mighty Arcanum collapsed with a roar of tumbling blocks, shatter of stained glass and crackle of broken wards. Disbelief was written across every single face. This was inconceivable. A thousand years of Arcanum art and history destroyed, hundreds of lives snuffed out.
“No,” somebody croaked. It was me. There would be no articles of war. Not for us. Once the Magash Mora scoured all life from the city then the Skallgrim would walk in and take everything the Arcanum had kept safe for centuries, all that dangerous knowledge and dread power just waiting to be dug up from unlocked vaults. The Skallgrim halrúna might be savages but even without Harailt’s guidance, sooner or later they would learn to use those artefacts.
“How is this possible?” Cillian said, eyes fixed on the column of dust billowing into the air. She blinked and scrubbed at her eyes, as if not able to accept what she was seeing.
Krandus stared at his signal rod in horror, then flung it to the stone. “We are compromised,” he hissed, grabbing a hold of a crimson-robed woman with wispy white hair and a harsh expression, councillor Merwyn if memory served. “Run. Spread the word that the rods are not to be used. Send seers to the site – I need to know what happened. No magus – no group of magi – should have the power necessary to break those wards. This could not have been done quickly, nor easily. This was years in the making. Somebody find that accursed Harailt Grasske and bring me his head!”
Merwyn scurried off, too shocked to notice that the Archmagus was treating a member of the Inner Circle like a messenger girl. Krandus studied the plume of dust rising without visible emotion but his mind had to be feverishly running through our options. When everybody else was rattled he was plotting and planning, and that was why he was Archmagus. Well, that, and he could have made a good attempt at devastating a goodly portion of this city all on his own.