by HDA Roberts
"Yes, Milady," said an obsequious tone.
I opened a Gate and slid out carefully behind a column. I took a peek, and it wasn't good.
As you know, certain things couldn't be seen from inside the Shadow Realm; people, for example, of which there were quite a few. Well, not people, per se, it was the Hyde, about a dozen of the smaller ones in addition to Sutton and her followers.
But there was also a colossal glowing object directly above the platform. It swirled, white, black and grey light shifting and flowing. There were about a dozen men and women, tied hand and foot with Spelleater Manacles to the platform. All but one of them was dead, their throats cut, and the last was about to follow them to a similar end. I nearly gagged at the sight of so much blood and death, but that would have been fatal.
I cast Mage Sight and saw that the last man was Dirk Wallace, the Mage I'd met at Michelangelo's.
Wallace's head was held in the hand of a huge Hyde, almost seven feet tall and broad with it, his skin marked by metal staples and green with rot. He wore a loin cloth and his body was soaked in blood, his head a grotesque amalgam of cyclops and ogre that made me queasy.
Sutton was on the upper level, walking away from the chamber, only to halt and raise a hand towards the Hyde executioner. It stopped, looking towards her. She stood for a long moment, concentrating hard; I felt Magic flow and what looked almost like a ghost appeared in front of her, vaguely male, wrapped in long robes that concealed his face. He held a staff in one hand and a glowing sphere in the other.
"My Lord," Sutton said, bowing low to the figure.
"Namia, what have you done?" the ghost rasped, "You've unshackled the entire city!"
"I had to! The Archons are here, they were going to stop me!"
"Do you have any idea how important Gardenia was to me? How crucial it was to my return? That's ruined, now! The city will be nothing but ash by the end of the day! The Five ignored it because it didn't draw attention; now they'll raze it to the ground!"
"Not with Ankiala roaming around; they won't have time," she said, her expression distinctly worried.
"Foolish girl! Ankiala is a means to an end, nothing more! It can't be allowed to 'roam', it's an Elder God!"
"Then... why am I doing all this?" she asked, her face creased with confusion and just a trace of her usual anger.
"Because Ankiala's soul being in the Newtonian World weakens specific parts of my prison, that's why! Just enough for me to break them and bring me a little closer to my return! I told you all this, weren't you paying attention?!"
Alright, who the hell was this prick? From the sounds of it, he'd orchestrated this whole mess!
"I thought... I thought you were being coy."
"Coy?! Who the hell do you think you're talking to?!" he barked, making her cringe, but then she stopped, standing up straight to glare at the figure.
Sutton's eyes blazed with sudden rage, "I think you're a trapped old man with no power other than what I give you. This is my organisation, my power and my plan. You'll get your precious resurrection, but Ankiala is mine. I will bring her back, I will use her and I will take what I deserve, what I've always deserved!"
"You stupid girl," the apparition said, sighing, "Don't say I didn't warn you."
He vanished, leaving Sutton swearing like a sailor. She snapped a command at the executioner, and left the room, leaving me with no time to contemplate the appearance of this new player, as Wallace's eyes had widened in terror. The Hyde holding Wallace raised a bloody knife, his mismatched eyes on his victim's exposed neck. I threw a quick Illusion around the platform and dropped the Hyde with a blast of concentrated Force that blew his monstrous head off and dropped the rest of the corpse to the ground. I darted out from behind cover and snapped Wallace's manacles away with an effort of Will before helping him up.
The other Hyde hadn't even noticed, yet. It was nice to know that Illusions worked on Reanimates.
Wallace yanked the gag out of his mouth.
"Thank you, thank you!" he said, "She's gone insane! She's killed almost everyone!"
"What can you tell me?" I asked.
"I didn't know about all this when we last spoke, I swear, but she's trying to resurrect an Old God!"
"I know that bit, tell me how," I said, a little impatiently.
He was breathing hard, barely this side of running away in a panic, "That glowing thing up there is the collector, storing all the Source energy. The bodies are Magicians she used to open the gateway in that platform, it leads to her grave. The gate opens, the collector releases the life force, and Ankiala is reborn."
"What can I do to stop it?" I asked.
"Nothing, 'My Lord'," Sutton suddenly said from above us.
She had six Mages with her, all Wizard-Class, nobody I couldn't handle. I figured this was probably as close to the end as we were going to get. If I couldn't use Magic on her now, I never would...
Not yet! Rose's voice in my head.
Bollocks.
"It's already set in motion. Lives added to the gateway only speed it along. Not even the Great One himself could stop me, much less a nothing Shadowborn like you."
I backed us up to the wall, Wallace at my side. I was about as ready for a fight as I could be. I had my borrowed stave in my hand, and magic ready to go. Wallace put up some shields, sensible fellow.
"Charming as always," I said confidently. I was preparing to talk my way out of this, to buy time if nothing else.
Wallace had other ideas... the idiot.
He called Will and Chemical energy and hurled it at the wizards, all of whom were standing on the sacrificial platform over Ankiala's tomb.
"I'll protect you, Brothers!" Sutton said, calling her light and throwing up a great, glittering barrier. The Wizards with her called their powers, too, preparing combat spells.
Wallace's attacks fizzled out on Sutton's barrier, and what few defences the Wizards were preparing were recycled into attack spells. They must have felt that Sutton's defences would be enough. Wallace screamed in rage, and in spite of my yelling at him to stop before he got us both killed, he cast another great array of attack spells at the other Mages, all of whom were quite safe behind Sutton's shields.
Or so they thought.
At the last instant, Sutton darted away from them, pulling the shields she'd put in front of them back around herself. Wallace's attacks hit home, and Sutton's Mages died screaming before I could do anything to help them. Their life's blood and death's suffering struck the platform, as Namia Sutton threw her head back and laughed like a lunatic, screaming her joy into the chamber.
The platform... fell away, taking the bodies with it. The collector powered up, and released its energy straight down into the grave of Ankiala.
For a long moment, nothing happened. And then I felt her stir, deep, deep down, further than the planet's volume should even permit. Her presence scraped at the edge of my senses, like an awful itch I couldn't scratch. She was definitely a thing of the Shadows themselves, vast and powerful, and she was coming towards me.
With all my might, I slammed a barrier of Will over the hole.
"Distract her if you can!" I shouted, putting more power into the construct, which probably wouldn't work, but I had to try. If nothing else, I'd force the entity to weaken herself battering through it.
"Yes my lord," Wallace said, steel in his tone as he threw Chemical lances at Sutton and the Hyde around her, which had finally woken up to the situation, only to melt and rot under the power of Wallace's attacks.
Ankiala slammed into my Will while I was distracted, hitting monstrously, enormously hard. My cover bent under the strain.
"Bloody hell!" I shouted, pressing down harder, gritting my teeth against the pressure.
The Goddess was laughing; I could hear her, a sound reverberating down my link to the Shadows. She didn't think much of what I was doing. My Well was draining fast, Magic being pulled into a barrier that wasn't going to hold much longer.
&n
bsp; I used some of my dwindling power to call Light and conjured a great ball of it above the hole. The Goddess recoiled, dropping back into the darkness.
Sutton counter-attacked and Wallace fell back with a burning hole through his head. He slammed into a column and fell to the ground, dead instantly. I turned and caught her next attack on my shields, but it drove me back from the hole.
Ankiala was rallying, and I was flagging. Sutton was firing more and more light at me, and I couldn't stop them both. I lost concentration.
The Old God shattered my Will cap and I staggered back as she pushed herself the rest of the way up from her grave.
Sutton laughed, pausing in her attack to gloat (like an idiot).
"Ha, look at you now, Graves!" Sutton shrieked, "Where's your snide threats now? When the scores are finally tallied, it turns out you're just another weak, pathetic- urk!"
Simply put, Ankiala killed her on the spot, and there wasn't a damned thing I could do to stop it, it happened so fast. The tiniest part of the Old God poked over the edge of the pit, a coiling mass of rotten, semi-ephemeral meat streaked with grey and mottled white. A tendril emerged, faster than a snake, the tip harder than diamond.
At that moment I realised why I hadn't been allowed to use any Magic on Sutton.
Whatever process Sutton had used to resurrect the creature had imprinted the essence of her power signature into the fabric of that ancient entity; an imprint that let Ankiala's tendril slide effortlessly through the Sorceress' shields and punch into that poor woman's skull like a spoon through pudding.
I felt the light of Sutton's soul vanish as the Old God fed on her essence; and then there were more Magical signatures in the creature's Aura; Wallace's, Kron's, Killian's, a hundred others, more, even. Every person who'd used Magic on Namia Sutton over the course of her long life, in practice or anger. Each and every one of them was now vulnerable to Ankiala.
And so was I. I felt my own signature in there, too, goodness knew where she'd picked it up, I'd been so careful. I did notice that my signature was muted... different than I felt at that moment. Different enough to make the difference? I hoped so, or I was so screwed...
Two smaller tendrils joined the first in Sutton's head, each a massively dense piece of Shadow fused with immortal flesh, that hit with a wet crunch (the sound alone nearly enough to cost me my lunch). I felt them shove the last few shreds of Sutton out, and begin to replace them with something that really had no right to be in there; it was simply too big. The transfer was slowing, now to a crawl, but it was still happening, Sutton's empty shell was slowly filling up with the ancient mind of one of mankind's first monsters.
Ankiala turned towards me, her eyes black like a Shadowborn's.
"Well met, Lord Shadow," she said, her voice was resonant, like several different tones overlapping at once, "I've been waiting for you, I'm glad you could be here for my return."
Alright, thinking very quickly. Ankiala's 'body' was dead; I could practically feel the lack of life oozing from the thing. That meant that the Source-power had merely revitalised her slumbering mind and given it enough energy to overcome its death, but likely only for a short time.
Therefore, Ankiala needed a new body; her 'divine' one was just unable to support her, anymore. That meant that she was now in the process of compacting a multi-planar creature's consciousness and power into a human being. That would be impossible, except that Namia Sutton was a Sorceress, and a very powerful one, and therein laid the key. If I'd had to guess, I'd have said that the Old God was shovelling itself into the remains of Namia Sutton's Well. That was so disturbing because Wells were supposed to be tied to our souls, and I was sure I'd felt Suttons depart.
Anyway, making those sorts of alterations to a creature, changes that would allow a human body to support an entity of Ankiala's power, would take time; time where she wouldn't be at full strength.
Time enough for me to act? But how? I'd used up a lot of power just trying to hold her back and failed dismally.
"I find that unlikely," I said, trying to buy time while I thought this one through.
I did have one idea; it was desperate, but it was the best chance I had, so I started moving slowly in the direction of the platform.
The body may have been dead, but it was still the seat of most of Ankiala's mind and power; if I could find a way to interrupt the flow, I might be able to stop all this. I cringed as I watched Sutton's skull flex outwards before resuming its previous shape, another wet crunch accompanying the dreadful changes. I could have gone my whole life without seeing that happen. I'd never be able to eat lobster again; it was the same sort of sound that came from cracking a claw open.
"And why's that?" Ankiala said, "I'm not Sutton. I have no quarrel with you or your fellow Magicians; especially not you. You and I are of a kind, born to the dark, part of it."
"I'm nothing like you. Look what you did to that girl! You murdered her!" I said, facing her side on, getting Demise's staff ready.
Ankiala laughed, it wasn't a pleasant sound.
"This creature?" she asked, "When I ate her up, I learned almost everything she knew. This 'girl' as you call her orchestrated some of the greatest atrocities of the last five hundred years and nobody even knew about it."
Are you there? I sent to my Shadows as she talked.
Always, came the speedy reply.
That was good to know. If everything went wrong, then the Elementals were my one chance to survive this mess, and that was a slim chance.
"She had plans for you. Though even she wasn't completely sure what she was going to do when she had you in her grasp. She loved you in her own rather twisted way, did you know that? You were the first person to ever really see her as an adversary rather than a victim. She loved that feeling even as she plotted to defeat you, to mutilate you. That was to be my first task after she'd 'freed' me, you know, bring you to her. Stupid girl."
"She still didn't deserve to die like that," I said.
Nearly ready...
"Why?" Ankiala asked, seeming to be genuinely curious.
"Because life is a precious thing, even hers."
"People are transitory things. One hundred years or one thousand, makes no difference, dead is dead."
"Everything dies," I agreed.
I drew Cassandra's gun, pointed it at the monster, and pulled the trigger.
Ankiala deflected the dispel-coated bullet with an easy wave of her hand as I raised the staff and poured Magic through it, aiming carefully. I wasn't aiming at her; the bullet had just been a distraction. My true target was the tendrils connecting the Old God to her new host.
Demise's staff was a Death Magic converter. It took any Magic applied to it and coiled it in Death before passing it out again, a very dangerous, very powerful weapon. I used Light, which erupted from the other end of the staff as a light grey beam, the energy fundamentally altered under the influence of pure death.
Light and Death were a potent combination, especially against something of the Shadow Realm. My power slashed into those tendrils, and for an awful moment I thought I'd failed as my energy signature, captured by the Old God, rose to meet my attack.
But it wasn't the same as what I cast against it, and in that instant, which seemed to last forever, I understood the difference. It was my connection to the Fairies that made the change possible, I knew that instantly. That was a power that Ankiala couldn't understand, couldn't internalise; she was of this world, the Newtonian World, where Magic and science intertwined in their own bizarre way. The Sidhe's power was different, and my connection to them had only grown in the months since I'd first met Sutton in the Conclave, which was the only chance she'd have had to get a real taste of me.
It was almost enough to make one believe in destiny. Was there any other living human being who could have been in that place, at that time, with the powers and advantages necessary to make that one attack in that manner?
Without Evelina and Gwendolyn both, I would have failed.
Without Cassandra's gun, I'd have failed, the same with Demise's staff, Price's information, which had come through Tethys... The most important people in my life each played a pivotal role in helping me be in the right place at the right time, able to do what was necessary.
That thought was simply terrifying. What if I'd made different choices?!
What if I hadn't gone to that conference with the Fairies? What if Demise hadn't wanted to become one of my Wardens?! It could all have been so different!
Those thoughts nearly made me lose my concentration, which would have killed me, so I pushed them aside and focussed, though I needn't have worried so much. My powers were different enough, not a huge amount, but just enough to make Ankiala's greatest defence fail, and my attack strike home in Shadowborn flesh.
My Lance tore those tendrils apart, reducing them to ash, and Ankiala screamed as her dead body fell back into the deep places of the world. Sutton's body fell to the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut, falling out of sight behind the platform. The doorway slammed shut, sealing the Elder God' corpse away forever.
I couldn't believe it. For a long moment, I just stood there like an idiot, not quite able to take it in.
I'd done it! I actually managed to double talk and trick one of the ancient terrors of the worl- wait a minute, why was Sutton still moving?
No. Not Sutton.
Ankiala stood under her own power, her eyes blazing with rage. It would appear that things hadn't gone precisely according to the plan.
I checked my shields, which had recharged and were as ready to go as could reasonably be expected. I had a Plan B. It was really more of a cleanup plan, but needs must.
"I'm going to spend a long, long time making you pay for that," she growled.
She raised her hand and Shadows came for me.
My constructs were generally shaped like the elements; flowing waves of dark water, or sharp and flickering tongues of black flame when I was annoyed. Hers were more organic, taking on the shapes of animals and monsters from the deep depths of time in which she'd been 'born'.
