by Ben Galley
I looked back to the Nyxwell, where the river was now bubbling like an overheated pot. Where the smoke gathered thickest, veins of lightning and fire ran through the darkness. I saw more hands and gurning faces at the edges of the overflowing well.
The old religious types say the apocalypse will come with the sound of trumpets and horns. When I heard the mournful blares over the battle noise, I hung my head, and cursed myself for doubting them.
‘Look!’ Nilith wrenched me around by the shoulders.
To the west, a wall of barrels exploded in fountains of splinters and Nyxwater. Through it came a monster I had never seen the like of, and I immediately wished I hadn’t. It was an enormous centipede, striped black and purple, with reaching, hook-like claws around its fearsome head. Mandibles lined with needle fangs dribbled green spit. A rider sat atop its neck, strapped tightly into a saddle. The huge insect reared up, legs rippling in a mesmerising fashion, and screeched at the top of its lungs. As the chilling noise filled the plaza, two more of the monsters broke through the wreckage to join the first. They too had riders atop them.
I could feel the moan of the dwindling survivors as a wind on my cheek. Nilith had turned an ashen white.
‘Dunewyrms,’ she breathed, voice trembling.
‘Flee, you moron!’ Temsa bellowed within my ear.
Hirana’s broken hands groped for my neck. ‘I will not die twice because of you, Caltro Basalt.’
I pressed them deeper within me, feeling the strain of the haunting begin to tell. Pointy’s force within me was an ally, but it didn’t help that I agreed somewhat strongly with the ghosts. The only thing that kept me from running was the fact the creatures were not interested in the living, nor the fleeing, but merely anything wearing red. Cultists flew like chaff before the scythe as the monsters went to work destroying their phalanxes.
Through the smoke that had enveloped the plaza, I caught the glint of green and silver armour. Soldiers were pouring through the broken barricade. There were plumes on their ridged helmets, and glittering longswords and tridents held high. Triggermen with sacks of bolts sat atop armoured spiders, whose fangs tore at anything robed and dead. Men in robes of mail heaved against shrieking, slithering creatures on copper-link leashes. Slatherghasts, like the one Nilith had killed. They were as pale and slimy as month-old meat. They disturbed me greatly, but their shining blue claws and fangs had an unquenchable thirst for anything glowing, and they decimated the cultist ranks. More wonderful still, the citizens that had been kept at bay began to flow into the plaza alongside the mysterious soldiers, like villagers with pitchforks marching to the monster’s cave.
‘Who the fuck are they?’ I cried, as Pointy dispatched a scarlet-painted man with a knife.
‘I don’t care, but they are most welcome!’
The arrival of the gold and green ranks was a glowing dawn compared to this gruesome night that had consumed us. The citizens of Araxes seemed to feel it, and the grip of chaos began to break. Even the nobles began to stand side by side, forming battalions that duelled with the endless swarms of ghosts.
I threw a glance over my shoulder, challenging the sisters. Their grins made me wish I hadn’t looked. ‘It’s not over yet,’ I cursed.
Another horn was sounded in reply, high-pitched and ululating. Glowing streaks ran across the walls of the plaza to the south as gangs of naked ghosts clumped around the towering knight statues, three with scaffolding and huge glyphs chiselled across them. Vapour pressing across the stone, the ghosts started to fade into the statues, and in their dozens. Peering through the haze of smoke, I began to see the glyphs and veins in the stone glow a deep purple, then turquoise, then white. Stone chips crumbled away. Cracks appeared where its limbs began to move. Fresh screams of terror rose from the masses.
‘Are you… are you fucking kidding me?’ Nilith sighed heavily, hefting a spear at a nearby ghost and turning him into a blue cloud. ‘Now this?’
Though I was as shocked and gut-wrenched as her, at least I had an answer. ‘The Cult’s Strange Ranks! I’m not the only ghost with gifts, Nilith! It’s an endgame.’
Thunder rolled with every wrenching, twisting movement that got the stone knights to their feet. Prising their stone swords from the earth, they wasted no time in swinging them through the masses like a callous artist splashing scarlet on a bleak canvas. The screams were silenced in huge numbers, replaced with great rumbles of stone and breaking bones. With every sweeping blow, the ground shook beneath us and lightning flickered overhead.
‘Ever come up against this in all your decades, Pointy?’ I cried, desperate.
‘No,’ he replied.
‘Suggestions?’
‘Few,’ said Nilith, sagging with weariness. ‘At least these swords can cut through stone. And I have this,’ she said, pulling a pouch from around her neck.
‘A coin-purse?’ I spluttered.
We had little time to debate the issue. A roar from the flooded pit of the Nyxwell wrenched us around. A great mushroom of smoke belched from the well. I saw a great shadow without form rearing up within the billowing smog, reaching for the dais. Ghosts reared from the waters in droves, wailing at the top of their voices. Unholy shapes moved in the shadows behind them, the ghost-glow lighting only fangs and curling claws; older things that the Reaches had long forgotten. The earth slipped beneath us, making me stumble. Fell and foreign words filled the air.
I looked up, meeting Nilith’s wide gaze. The determination that had burned within them since the moment I had run into her should have been sputtering out; a lantern withering under the gales of a storm, like me, even despite the anger threatening to burst out of me. Instead, I swore those eyes burned brighter. I wanted it.
‘More,’ I hissed.
‘Don’t you dare!’ chorused the three ghosts inside me. My restraint almost failed as they revolted against me. I plucked the half-coins from my neck and stuffed them into her hand.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m sorry, Nilith,’ I said, seizing her glowing arm, and throwing Pointy into the air.
‘Wh—!’
The effort brought darkness to my vision, even before my vapours had melted into her. It was a duel that took every ounce of strength I had. Each soul fought me in their own way, and I found myself surrounded on all sides, lashing out like a rabid beast at them all. Even Nilith. But as I willed myself through bone and skin, through the heat of her muscles, the cold of her sweat, Nilith caved, and an inferno erupted within me. I opened my eyes, dizzy, as I reached up to pluck Pointy from the sky. His vapours flooded across Nilith’s armour, and every inch of my body began to convulse. White light shone through her armour. I felt the raw power of each soul entwine, willingly or not, each a piece of clockwork clicking into place. In that moment, we became complete.
The cultists roared around us. ‘SESH! SESH! SESH! SESH!’
I stared up at the burning sky. As lightning raced through the billowing black smoke, I saw a mighty figure pulling itself from the pit. Fire flowed through its limbs, like wind breathing life into charcoal. Two enormous orbs of light flared in the darkness. The earth quaked as the black tusks of the Nyxwell began to topple outwards, like a colossal yawning maw. One crashed behind me, spraying Nyxwater and screaming bodies.
The voices in my head were deafening, but I willed us towards the nearest stone knight, pouring everything into one singular drive: to win.
I sprinted through the nobs of ghosts, soulblades held wide and dealing death all around us with shocking ferocity. Mist fought to escape the confines of the golden armour, sketching shapes of arms and hands and roaring faces. White fire and blood streamed behind us. We were a whirlwind of rage and vengeance.
‘Caltro!’ came their cry as the stone knight noticed our approach, and raised its gigantic sword to smite us. Light rippled across its glyphs, and its rock face bent into a despicable grin.
I let their cries rip from me as my boots pounded the flooded stone. A hundred voices
answered me as the sword descended. Lungs burning, I exploded from Nilith’s chest, soulblades raised like javelins. Vapour streamed like a banner behind me as Temsa, Hirana and Sisine were wrenched from me one by one, propelling me like a triggerbow bolt into the knight’s chest.
Stone crumbled before the two blades as they dug deep. I dug deeper, pressing through the glowing breastplate and straight to the heart of the stone monster. Countless hands battered me within the roaring darkness, but like Nilith, I hadn’t come all this way to lose now. I felt my own heaviness, the roughness of my fingers, and clenched them into a fist.
White light seared through the air, burning the Cult ghosts from the knight’s body. Blue smoke poured from its cracks like volcanic vents. I alone was left inside the crushing, cold stone, dizzy at my height above the writhing masses, but I was its master. I couldn’t help but cheer. My voice was the roar of a landslide.
I saw the darkness of the Nyxwell rear above me. Fire burned in the heavens. Thunder rolled, and lightning showed me a great beast towering against the storm, still yet to take solid shape. It was enough to chill me. Gigantic, twisting horns pierced the sky. Great wolf-fangs gleamed. Nails like lances tested the choked air. Its forge-like eyes seethed with anger as they looked down upon me, as if I were but a worm.
‘Caltro!’ came the tiny shout beneath me. With another rumbling cry, I slid the huge Pereceph from my chest with my oversized hands and drove the stone knight at the Nyxwell. I stumbled, fell, but forced the stone upright, over and over. Sesh rose above me still. A great, booming laughter dwarfed the thunder, and stunned all about me to a horrified silence. I alone moved, and my enormous feet cracked the flagstones beneath me as I ran.
‘It is over, little thief,’ came a voice that made every pebble in my body rattle.
‘You’re right about that!’ I cried as I vaulted over the rubble, sword raised like a dagger in my fist, its glimmering point aimed for Sesh’s calf.
Pereceph slammed into the god’s brimstone skin. Fire and black smoke erupted from the wound. Lava dribbled, and still I drove the sword deeper. Light scorched his veins, soaring up his leg and across his chest. His roar made the very ground dance. I could feel the soul in the sword screaming as her blade melted. With a twist, Pereceph came free, broken to the hilt and smoking. Above me, Sesh was still bellowing, reeling from the pain. Wings of fire and lightning rippled across the dark clouds.
‘Again, Caltro!’ came a voice from my chest. Pointy was yelling at me over the maelstrom. ‘Strike him again!’
‘Didn’t you see what happened to your sister?’ I shouted, drawing him free. He looked like a nail in my stone fist. I stared at the resolute face on his pommel stone.
‘You still have one soulblade left!’
Horror ran through me like an assassin’s dagger. ‘No! You’ll be destroyed!’
‘Stand back!’ Nilith came wading across the shaking, flooded stone behind me. She had a knife in her hand, that infernal pouch in the other. That determined fire was back in her wide eyes, unable to tear away from the sight of a god.
‘There’s no time!’ Pointy pleaded. I refused to listen. I felt him tugging at my arm, but I wrenched him back. Fire spat upon my stone, starting to work its way through the glowing glyphs. Pain racked me.
‘I’m the only weapon that can hurt him! Even you can’t haunt a god!’ yelled the sword. I hated him for being right. The darkness was returning to my vision. I was spent.
‘I won’t. I can’t!’
‘STAND BACK!’ Nilith shrieked, throwing the pouch into the bubbling fire that still poured from Sesh. ‘For Old Fen!’
‘Just make sure they remember me. That was all I ever wanted, in truth,’ Pointy whispered in my head. In the flash of fire and lightning, I swore I saw him wink. ‘To be remembered.’
The right thing can be an evil thing when it doesn’t align with what you want.
With a last roar, I threw my weight behind his blade, and thrust him high into Sesh’s leg, dragging him down through the charred, smoking flesh. White light began to pierce through holes in the god’s midriff, chest, and shoulders as Pointy’s soul flooded him. Flame poured from the eyes of the god of chaos.
Before the explosion ripped through me, before my hand was torn from Pointy’s handle, I heard his battlecry echoing and echoing through the dark and empty cavern of my mind. I knew not what he shouted, but I knew Sesh heard it also. One of the last sights I glimpsed was the god grasping at his curling horns, as if deafened.
A sledgehammer struck me in the chest as the world was consumed with fire. I fell apart as I flew, stone crumbling to rubble. I was jolted from the haunting violently as I hit the water, and skidded through the corpses. Heat scorched my back, and I felt the pull of the dark Nyx beneath me.
Chapter 27
A Second Dawn
‘Get up,’ spoke an echo in my head.
I could smell burning crumbs from the bakers across the pockmarked street, hear the clatter of cleaning in the cathouse above. The linens refused to give me up, and I willingly let them hold me as rays of red sunlight poked through my window, warming my cheeks, nursing my hangover and the dream of battle and murder I’d been trapped in.
‘A new day awaits,’ said the voice, familiar in some way.
‘I know,’ came my mumble.
‘Harbinger of change.’
I jolted upright and awake, immediately blinded by the hot sun poking through dark clouds. Rashes of sunset were breaking through patches of smoke. I clenched my fists, feeling nothing but cold. No skin. No hot breath against covers. Only vapour.
‘Ah, the emperor wakes!’ somebody beside me said.
I tried opening my eyes again, finding a woman’s corpse facing me with a bulging, glassy stare. I recoiled quickly, finding blackened sandstone and rubble around me. Puddles of Nyxwater steamed in the sunlight, leaving behind rings of charcoal smear.
‘Emperor…’
Two filthy half-coins dangled in front of my face, on two different chains. ‘Yours, aren’t they?’
My blurry vision cleared enough to find a soot-covered, blood-soaked Nilith staring back at me. Her armour had been stripped away, leaving a simple tunic beneath. Half her jaw had been claimed by vapour, giving her a ghostly leer. Most of her other arm, too. Those emerald eyes seemed to glow a little more dully now, but there was a grim and stubborn smile on her face.
I reached up to take the coins, but realised I still gripped something in my hand. I looked down, finding a broken sword, molten almost to the silver crossguard. Only a thin shard of the obsidian and copper-veined blade, no longer than my hand, had survived daring to strike a god. The handle was split down its centre, as was the pommel, where the black stone was spiderwebbed with cracks.
My face scrunched up, but I had no tears to give.
Instead I took the coins in my other hand. One felt cold and heavy, the other stung me like a hot coal, but I had survived enough pain in the last few weeks to ignore it. I saw Nilith swallow hard, but I said nothing.
I lifted my head and arched my back, moving as far away from my corpse mattress as possible. I stumbled to my knees, then one foot, feeling weak, thin as gossamer, but whole.
‘We survived,’ I breathed, hardly believing it.
‘But at what cost, Caltro?’
I looked around me. The Grand Nyxwell was a ruin. Its jet tusks lay in pieces like the points of a fallen star. The well was no more than its crater, an ugly mess of broken marble, half-drowned in a pool of Nyxwater. Around it lay the detritus of war: ownerless weapons, split armour, and the thousands of dead that the Nyx had yet to claim. Tors, farmers, sereks and soldiers lay alongside each other in death, gold mingling with sackcloth, and as my gaze roamed outwards into the plaza, I saw they were far from alone. Fields of dead stretched out between us and the hazy, smoke-wrapped buildings. Scattered survivors, living and ghost, moved slowly amongst them, plodding with heads down, their tunics or silks ripped and torn. Nobody seemed to know what
to do with their survival, and I didn’t blame them.
The hot air was still, but not silent. In the far reaches of the plaza, in the Spoke Avenues, I could hear the battle for the city was not over, but I had no desire to go fight it. I left that to the ranks of silver-green soldiers, and the spiders and wyrms still growling and roaring.
There came a flapping, and the talking falcon landed on a corpse next to me. By the curve of his beak, I wagered he was no more impressed by the scene than I was.
‘Only stubborn stragglers left, Nilith,’ he said, eyeing me up and down. There was blood on his beak.
I interjected. ‘The rest of the Cult?’
Nilith nodded, gaze now distant, ignoring the falcon. ‘Half of them put their weapons down the moment Sesh collapsed back into the Nyx. The rest fought on, enraged, but the soldiers and survivors retaliated and fought them back into the Avenues. Most have scattered to the wind.’
‘The Enlightened Sisters?’
Nilith’s eyes narrowed. ‘Dead, or so I assume. They stood upon the dais until the bitter end, so I can only hope the explosion caught them.’
I dreaded to think of those two scuttling back to the Katra Rassan, burying their heads for another day. ‘What was in that fucking pouch of yours?’ I asked.
‘Science, a man once called it.’
‘Well, it was almost the second death of me.’ I swayed, dizzy.
‘Is nobody going to talk about the fact a dead god just rose from the Grand Nyxwell, shortly before you two killed him?’ asked the falcon, golden eyes narrowed. ‘Or was I hallucinating?’
Nilith and I looked at each other for a moment.
‘No,’ I spoke for us. ‘I’d rather not. It’s done now. I’m tired of gods. If I ever have to see hide or hair of one again, it will be far too soon.’ I sighed. ‘What of the others? Sisine? Hirana? Temsa?’ All I could see was Farazar, hunched over on a nearby rock, unable to tear his eyes off the death around him.
