Somehow I knew what I was supposed to do. Dazed, I placed both hands inside the circle and activated the matrix of wards and protections I’d woven through those the Arcanum had previously set up to protect the warehouse. The hiss of stray magic caused the hairs on my arms to stand on end. It was a work of brute force rather than finesse, but in my experience finesse was vastly overrated – a shovel to the face was every bit as good as a fancy sword.
My circle of wards drew power from the crystal core and fed it to the warehouse’s outer security. This was it, the last toss of the dice. For a moment I felt faint; I was at my limits and didn’t have much more to drag out of my wreck of a body. I sagged, face slick with sweat and my tunic plastered to my back.
Unsure of what to do next, I examined the small sack. Inside were two fluted glass bottles with broken seals, filled with some sort of dirty brown liquid instead of exotic alcohol. I was meant to glass the whoreson and then throw my strongest wind-wall at him. Well, fair enough… if you couldn’t trust your past self… and knowing me I’d probably had some vicious surprise in mind.
I was as ready as I was ever going to be, but I didn’t fancy dying looking like a penniless drunk who had choked to death on his own vomit so I used a little aeromancy to scour all the sweat, grease and blood from my body with blades of air, ridding me of my unwashed stink. I let the congealed mess slop across the doorway, then straightened out my ragged coat and raked my hair back into some semblance of order.
As I stepped inside the warded circle my skin tingled, pins and needles stabbing. I gripped Dissever tight and faced the doorway. My wicked knife exuded a subdued and nervous hunger. I hefted one of the glass bottles and wondered what kind of deadly magic I’d brewed in such a ridiculously short time.
At least he had the good grace not to keep me waiting. Dust drifted down from the rafters as the building began to shake. A twitch of pain heralded the shattering of the outermost alarm wards. I took a deep breath and nailed an insolent sneer to my face.
The door crumbled at his touch. In my Gift’s eye the god blinded like the sun. To my mortal eyes he looked like a wiry little rat-faced shitebag scarred by pox and poverty and the boots of better men, no different from a thousand Docklands scum apart from crimson glistening orbs instead of eyes. He stood at the threshold with blood dripping from clawed fingers and strings of gore drooling down his chin.
The god’s gaze slicked across the room. “Ah, yes, Edrin Walker. So good to see you.” His mind – so bloody strong! – hammered into my own. The probing was clumsy but the strength behind it was gradually buckling my defences inward, allowing him to catch whiffs of stray thought. I was glad I’d burned away all knowledge of my plan.
“The feeling is not exactly mutual,” I replied, struggling to keep the tremble from my voice. “You’ve always stood for freedom and independence, Nathair, so I beg you to turn back from this madness. Nobody else has to die.”
His head cocked to one side. “Freedom and independence? Ridiculous. You mortals have always ascribed meaning where there is none. I care nothing for what the grubbing maggots of this city do beyond providing me amusement. The only freedom that has ever mattered is my own.”
Gods, selfish bastards the lot of them. “Well, then, I don’t suppose you’d care to piss off and die?”
“Tsk, is that any way to talk to your patron god? Give me the crystal. In exchange I will heal your dying friend. That is your heart’s desire is it not?”
He knew it was. Bile seared my throat as his words tortured me. This was Charra’s only chance, but as much as I loved her I couldn’t doom the world for her. “She’s not the sort to choose her life over everybody else’s,” I said. What was left of her life was hers to spend, not mine to gamble away.
His gaze drifted to the crystal core pulsing in the centre of my circle of wards, its jaundiced light staining the room. An eye ticced. His lips twisted into a snarl and he reached for it, hand passing through the doorway. I squeezed my eyes tight.
The world flashed red and white. An almighty concussion rent the air. Splinters of wood rained down around me. When I opened my eyes again blue spots danced and Nathair stood in a smoking crater where the doorway had been, frowning at his charred arm. Blood dripped from a few tiny wounds to hiss into the floor.
I swallowed. Those wards would have painted the walls with me. “Hey arsehole,” I said, every bone in my body screaming to dive out the nearest window and make a run for it. Instead I made him angry. “You helped kill Lynas, you rat-faced imbecile. You will burn for that. When people ask me how you died I’m going to tell them you choked on your own stupidity.”
Lips drew back and his jaw yawned unnaturally wide, teeth elongating into fangs. He surged towards me and slammed headfirst into my second web of wards. Only, these were not designed to harm, but to hold. The crystal core flared bright, its obscene power strengthening my defences.
The god’s advance slowed, then stopped as the crystal pulsed faster. I smiled. “That’s right, you witless scrotum scraping, I made that crystal the keystone of my wards. If you want to break free you’ll need to destroy the very thing you want so badly. Suck on that, you muck-snipe!” A god was likely all that could; the plan to use the alchemic bomb had been a long shot at best. It would be a pyrrhic victory if he destroyed it before tearing me limb from limb, but what more could a mere magus possibly do?
He looked from the crystal to me, then shrugged. “I’ll acquire another. I have all the time in the world now.”
My jaw dropped.
Tentacles of blood, strangely solid, erupted from his back. I ducked as they stabbed towards my face, piercing through layers of my holding weave. They slammed to a stop against another barrier only a hand-span from ripping out my eyes. Wards crackled and hissed as the tentacles inched forward, forcing their way through. The crystal core hummed and pulsed. Unencumbered by any possible warding, the god’s mind was free to batter deeper into my own.
I gritted my teeth. Hold, damn you. Hold! With him temporarily immobilized, I flung the first of my bottles then the second. One shattered across his face, the second against his naked chest. They didn’t explode. There was no eruption of deadly magic. They just left brown sludge oozing down his body. The room stank of shite.
A scream burst from my lips as I twisted my magic into a wind-wall and blasted him with every fragment of strength I could muster. A howling gale briefly tore at him, shedding droplets of filth like a stinking rain into the night air. The wind dwindled to nothing, the strain too much to continue. I sagged, and we stared at each other in silence for a long moment.
“That was all you had left?” he said. “One last, futile insult?” He laughed, wiping tears of blood from his eyes. “Shit, piss, blood, and soured wine. Ah, Walker, you always did amuse me. It must have been blind, idiot luck that you managed to kill Artha.”
He expanded in my mind, magical aura growing until it felt like he would crush me by weight of presence alone. He stepped forward and the crystal core of the Magash Mora shrieked and shattered, instantly overpowered. A hundred dead pieces tinkled across the floor. The warehouse plunged into a gloom filled with a roaring maelstrom of magic that tore at my Gift.