I sprinted to an outcrop of red rock and climbed atop it, wincing as it crumbled to sharp edges beneath my bare feet. In the distance mounds of sand shifted and sped towards my location, but the burrowers seemed more interested in squabbling over the remains of their own kind than in me. The sand churned as the daemons fought one another. I was safe for now, but they were just one of many monsters in this alien desert. Wind swept dust and sand up into the arid air, forcing me to squint as I surveyed the blasted lands around me. Clusters of fungal stalks reared like a forest from the cracked earth, shedding spores like autumn leaves. Smaller furry creatures moved through that forest’s nodules and frills, eating and being eaten in turn by things that looked like iridescent armoured snakes, those themselves being sucked up by armoured behemoths with horns and razor-tipped teeth on the end of a long fleshy protuberance.
This realm was kill or be killed for whatever scant resources it had to offer, a world consisting only of eat, fuck and fight.
“Show yourself, Queen of Winter,” I shouted. “We have a war on and I cannot afford your tardiness.”
I waited and listened, both with my ears and with my Gift. The great spirit was coming, her chill creeping across the rock I stood on. A struggle of wills was about to take place, and I refused to let her win. The Arcanum did not rule me, nor did the gods of Setharis, and I’d rather cut my cock off than bow and scrape to anything, especially not the inhuman spirit my vile grandmother worshipped.
Unfortunately, the Queen of Winter was not the only entity to hear my call.
In the fungal forest, immense stalks of growth cracked and fell squealing as something huge crashed through, charging right towards me.
Just what I needed. I awkwardly hefted my spear in my left hand and held up my right to serve as a crude shield – it was mostly iron at the moment after all.
The smaller creatures fled the forest in a tide. The tusked behemoths trumpeted and lumbered off. Burrowers hid their heads and dug deeper into the sands. I discovered why moments later as a massive, fearsome ravak daemon emerged from the gloom.
Normally it would be more than a match for me, but this one bore gaping wounds all down one side, and half the smaller claws were severed oozing stumps. I didn’t fancy meeting whatever monster had chosen such a powerful daemon as its prey. Perhaps it had been wounded in conflict with its own kind.
I tried to spit on the rock at my feet, but this spiritual body boasted no spare moisture. “Hurry the fuck up you accursed spirit,” I snarled as ice slowly encased the rock below me. My bone spear was a pathetic threat to such a powerful daemon, but then my mind was a far more potent weapon.
It spotted me and surged in my direction faster than a horse at full gallop. I drew in as much magic as I dared hold and prepared to assault its mind before it could attack, but that was not its intention. It slowed and studied my arm instead; the iron a match to its own blade and crown.
Three eyes remained fixed on me while the others slid across its head to look back at the forest it had come from. “Fight with me, small deformed ravak-spawn, or it will devour us both,” it hissed, and somehow I understood its daemonic language though it was nothing I had ever heard before – the one I had encountered previously had spoken the Old Escharric of ancient humans.
Part of the fungal forest exploded and I felt its fear. Something even larger was approaching.
I swallowed and licked dry lips, for all the good it did in this body. “What hunts you?” I demanded, my voice coming out in its own sibilant tongue.
“The Old One comes,” it replied, looking at my two legs far less suitable for sand than its serpentine form. “Fight the Severer with me or I will flee and leave you to delay it alone.”
I eased back on the mental blow I was preparing and extended my senses into the surrounding area.
From the ravak by my side, terror and pain and Scarrabus stain shot through its mind. This daemon was infested by the enemy. My knuckles whitened around the spear.
From the forest, bottomless hunger and unquenchable bloodlust. And, oddly, vast and almost-human amusement. This thing loved the hunt and kill.
From the frigid air around me, a hiss of stray magic as the Queen of Winter manifested in physical form. She had found me.
The ancient god-spirit constructed a human female form from sparkling ice. Unlike my slight and slender grandmother, she had opted for a functional beauty with thighs like tree trunks, arms like a blacksmith’s and a face plain as an anvil. I supposed that back in ancient days, when the first humans to wander the Clanholds had been armed only with their wits and weapons of wood and stone, that this might have been their idea of beauty. Her head cricked and cracked around to stare at me with eerie blank eyes.
“Edrin Walker,” she said. “I have come for you.”
The ravak attacked immediately, its black blade whipping out at the spirit’s head. An arm of ice rose to block it and the blade bit half-way through before sticking. Those weapons could cut through almost anything, but it seemed the Queen of Winter was made of sterner stuff.
The spirit drew breath and exhaled a storm. Spiritual body or not, I felt her chill nip at my naked flesh as it stabbed into the serpentine coils of the ravak. The daemon screeched as frigid winds ripped it from the ground and flung it through the air, ice crusting its black iron scales. Ravak were hard to kill, but the spirit merely flicked it away like an unpleasant bug.
I felt the Scarrabus’ terror as the spirit sent its daemonic host plunging right back into the fungal forest it had only just escaped from. Then red pain bloomed as the hidden presence engulfed it. An almighty crack echoed through the forest and its thoughts snuffed out.
The spirit’s blank eyes turned to me and she stretched out her arms to welcome me into her embrace. I felt a compulsion to obey wash over me. “Give yourself to me.”
The spirit’s blatant attempt to coerce me only served to piss me off. I was a tyrant for fuck’s sake, did she really think mental manipulation would work on me? Or pass unnoticed? Anger began building inside my breast and my right hand itched to punch her in the face. “Nah,” I answered. “But we can thrash out a deal of some sort.”
There was a moment of silence, perhaps confusion. It was hard to tell from her lack of expression. She had no human tells. “Give yourself to me,” she repeated.
“This is a pact, pal,” I explained, as if to a particularly stupid child. “I don’t give myself to anything. What do I get out of this? What do you get?”
“I get?” she repeated as if puzzled. “Angharad has already given of her blood and magic many years before now. You are mine to wear when I walk in the human realm.” Oh shite. That treacherous little bitch had lied to me. It was only a small surprise she was stabbing me in the back. This was no pact, this was a blood sacrifice.
She reached for me and I backpedalled, heading towards the forest. Better to risk whatever was in there than let the spirit touch me. “I am an independent sentient being, Queen of Winter. Angharad does not own me and has no authority to promise you anything.” She did not deign to reply as she floated towards me, fingers of ice reaching towards my heart. Reason had been worth a shot but I hadn’t expected it to work. Now it was time to kick her fucking head in… somehow.
My mental probing had nothing to latch onto, no brain and no real body to invade so I snarled and poured magic into my muscles, such as they were in this current body and in this place. It seemed to work as normal, unspeakable strength flushing through me, ready to fight. No crusty old spirit was going to wear me like a cheap tunic, and my grandmother would suffer for this if it was the last thing I did. I kept backing away. There was something horrible in that forest that even the mighty ravak had feared, a monster that had eaten it if I was to guess. Perhaps I could introduce it to this piece of crap spirit and watch them murder each other.
The icy form darted forward in a streak of mist. I batted her arm away with my hard right hand and thrust my bone spear into her face. The point splinte
red on impact. I ducked a swipe and rammed my iron fist right up into her jaw.
I convulsed and sparked from the impact, like I’d punched lightning.
The spirit reeled back, her icy jaw riven with cracks. My hard black fingers dripped with water, and drank it in like blood. Stolen strength flooded through me.
I shook off my surprise and took to my heels, speeding towards the looming trunks of mottled fungus. I was brimming with energy as I leapt over rock and dips, feet pounding the sand like a drum.
My hand burned and the blackness crept up past my shoulder to caress my neck. An unbearable itch under the skin like thousands of insects trying to bite their way free. Hungry, came that old familiar voice in the back of my head. Dissever! I had hurt the Queen of Winter and her watery magical blood had fed the taint. Fuckity fuck fuck.
Frigid wind swept past me and my foot stuck fast to frozen sand. I ripped it free, leaving skin behind, and continued running, each step burning agony.
Shelter was so close! I could smell the forest’s musty aroma, and feel a dark presence watching from somewhere among the trunks.
A drop of white bloomed in the treeline directly ahead between two trunks, and from it an icy form grew in the space of two heartbeats. The Queen of Winter opened her arms and I could not stop. I slammed into her and bounced off like I had charged headfirst into a stone wall. I sprawled on my back at her feet, shivering as ice enveloped my legs and arms. All my magical might could not free me.
“Give yourself to me,” she demanded, bending to place a transparent hand over my heart, right where my grandmother’s hand had been. By give, she meant to take.
I screamed at her touch. Ice bloomed inside my heart, reverberating with that back in my real body. I could feel both, and the pain was almost overwhelming as they began to merge into one. I screwed my eyes shut, desperately trying to think of a way out of this. I refused to let them have my body – I would die first.
Thunk.
A weight in my lap. The pain in my chest fled.
I opened my eyes to see the spirit’s severed head in my lap; impassive features already melting. The body fell back and shattered on the sand.
The swollen red sun was blotted out as an enormous shadow pulled itself free of the forest and reared above me.
Just my luck.
CHAPTER 25
Looming above me was another ravak daemon, but easily twice the size of any I had ever seen or heard of before – almost as tall as the sodding walls of Setharis itself! Its armoured coils and barbed tail belonged on a monstrous siege engine rather than a living creature. Above shining slitted golden eyes, all staring down at me, the black crown was a forest of spikes, eldritch purple energy crackling between them. In one long six-clawed hand it wielded a wicked black barbed blade identical to my own destroyed spirit-bound weapon grown to gigantic proportions.
I was beyond fucked. My stomach dropped away as I wrenched at the melting ice pinning my arms and legs. It was useless, I was stuck fast. All I could do was lash out with my mind, panic driving me to attempt to kill it if I could, or stun it until I could free myself.
My magic slammed into it. The huge daemon let me in with a warm welcome.
What are you doing, you odious little cretin? Its hissing voice came from the back of my own mind, not from its great maw with fangs like swords. In my shock I stopped the attack on… on myself!
I knew that disdainful voice only too well. My tainted right hand burned with the need to rejoin its progenitor.
“Dissever?” I gasped. This was the monster that had been bound inside my enchanted blade before Nathair shattered it?
The huge blade stabbed deep into the ground beside me. Enormous armoured coils gathered under it as it settled down next to me, lowering its crowned head until it was level with me, golden eyes sliding this way and that across black iron scales. Several long forked tongues flicked out to stroke and taste my naked body.
“You wear a magically constructed body instead of true flesh. Disappointing and disgusting,” it said, not in its own tongue or in Old Escharric, but in modern Setharii with a guttural hint of Docklands an exact match to my own; not surprising since it learned it from me. Then it laughed, a hissing mockery of human mirth. “You are even smaller than I had thought from inside my cramped prison.” Did I not say a great war was coming?
I grimaced as I finally worked my arms free and started on my legs. “Bloody spirits and scum-sucking Scarrabus! Every fucker out there seems to want to try and own a piece of me.” And yet, in this huge daemon’s presence my terror was swiftly draining to be replaced with its own fury and bloodlust. I should have been terrified of the daemon but it was a part of me, linked by the taint consuming my arm. Which should have been worrying in its own right. Meddling with spirits and daemons and blood sorcery was an abomination… except when I did it. I wasn’t like all the rest, but then I supposed that’s what all the bad and the mad told themselves, and I had never been entirely stable in the first place.
“They cannot have you, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood,” it said, repeating the words and feelings of the original pact we’d made when I had been a mere pup in the ossified depths of the Boneyards below Setharis. “I require more sustenance.”
I kicked off the last remnants of ice and got to my feet. “Your concern warms my heart, you vile old thing. That spirit, you killed her?”
“The frozen spirit–” the word dripped with the daemon’s derision of all things ephemeral, things it could not devour, “–circles this realm even now, and this time it returns with more of itself. It will prove a far more difficult foe, especially for your breed of magic, but you must fight. You cannot run from that which lies within.”
I swallowed and looked down at my breast, where a crude handprint had been cold-burned into the skin. That bitch Angharad had pierced my flesh with a solidified part of the Queen.
No wonder she had found my mind as it tumbled between realms.
“I came here instead of the Queen of Winter’s domain,” I said, realisation dawning. “Because I already had an existing pact with you? It was your fault the ritual went to shite both times?”
“Yes,” Dissever replied. “This realm belongs to ravak. Ravak belonged to me before the Scarrabus came to enslave us.”
I studied its eyes, unable to fathom just how unutterably old this being was. “They belong to you?”
“All ravak are spawned from my flesh. We are not divided as absurd, fleeting humans and insipid ogarim. Once there were many ravak that were not of me. I devoured them all.”
I stared at it, feeling its bottomless hunger and lust for bloodshed. It lived to fight and eat, and in the end it had devoured all on this realm that could possibly oppose it. “And then the Scarrabus came.”
Its rage ignited. “They did not fight to prove themselves fierce and strong. They are a disease, and when I discovered how many of my spawn had been taken and turned against me even I could not prevail. They buried my body and bound my essence into a weapon. Me! A slave used in their infection of the ogarim.”
My hand itched, remembering holding that blade where the daemon had spent uncountable thousands of years imprisoned. During the Black Autumn I had leaned hard on its anger and hunger to prop up my own fear and failings. I held up the useless lump of black iron that was my right hand. “Speaking of disease, what the fuck are you doing to me?”
Membranes slid across its golden eyes and then opened lazily. Rather pretty eyes too I thought, now that I was close to a ravak without soiling myself in terror. I shook my head, aware of its unnatural influence on me.
“I do nothing,” it said. “You do that to yourself.” “Oh piss on that,” I snarled. “Humans don’t tend to come covered in iron plates. I can’t even bend the damn thing. Fix it.” Its pupils widened like a hunting cat’s and its head lifted, bearing its fangs. “Were you not my pet I would devour you.” It reached out and ripped its blade from the ground, leaving a deep cut right through bedroc
k. The barbed and jagged edges of its blade softened and turned fluid, and the blackness flowed up its hand and merged into its own flesh. “I am not a tool, you brainless bald ape. And I am not an infection.”
I swallowed, feeling the anger and hunger warring in the back of my own mind. I dared not step back. Showing weakness was a stupid idea when faced with a vicious predator, which Dissever most certainly was. But then if the hard black plates were still part of it, a living thing rather than a spiritual taint, then…
The fingers on my right hand trembled, flexed.
The daemon slapped me, a contemptuous blow that sent me sprawling. “Feeble little creature. Your weakness is laughable. You let all those humans die in their hive at Scarrabus hands.”
I shot to my feet, red rage igniting.
Dissever laughed, hissing mockery. “You let your fat little friend be skinned alive.”
I lost it, flinging myself at the huge daemon, roaring, the knife in my hand plunging deep into its armoured hide.
It shifted serpentine coils, knocking me onto my arse with the merest nudge, then rested its crushing weight atop me. Its great head came down to my own until we were nose to nose. Two golden eyes slid across its face to study the knife in my hand. Wait – what knife? I stared at the jagged black knife currently gripped in a bloodied hand of fresh pink and unblemished human flesh.
I gaped first at it and then at Dissever looming above me, utterly unharmed at being attacked with a part of itself.
Your fear of yourself was consuming you, the voice in the back of my head said. True ravak know no such feeling. If we are threatened we fight, we kill, and we devour our foe to grow ever stronger. Be more ravak.
It was all my own fault? That made a twisted kind of sense.
I had been so afraid of myself and focused on resisting my own power that the confused remnant of Dissever buried in my own flesh had seen me as an enemy and had been trying to eat me.
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