Yes! Oh, yes! Bark for me.
Russ uttered a panicked prayer, and a ward shielded him. Her voice dampened to a scratching of leaves against a door during a late-summer storm, and when he next opened his eyes, the smoke from his incense drifted toward the form of his old friend, who stood still, his hands behind his back. “Jeom.”
“There’s no need to yell,” said the old Master. “I’m just a call away. Always have been.” His manner evaporated to concern when he saw the fear on Russ’s face. He approached and placed his ethereal hand on his apprentice’s head. “Close your eyes. Calm”—Jeom breathed, and his next words reverberated through the room—“your mind.”
Russell’s nerves cut, and he entered pense. The sun coated his old Master in twinkling light that reflected in pinpricks on the room’s walls. All had quieted.
Jeom leaned against the cabinet. “Better?”
“No.” Russ’s voice came from him in a growl of anger. Though D’niqa no longer pressed against him, a tedious unraveling of his trust—in most everything he knew—edged toward erosion. The room’s air had cooled, and smoky sage had replaced the mint he’d become accustomed to.
Jeom huffed. “Could set that upon you again if you’d prefer.”
“If you can take it away, why let us live with it?” Goddess, he wanted to hurt the man—to hurt him.
“Don’t confuse me for a god. You’ll need it back, you just can’t process it right now. Look at you: you’re scuffed. Let your mind work through what it can, through what you want of me, and maybe you’ll come out the other side of this with something worthwhile.”
“How could you keep”—
“I wanted to tell you, but those decisions lie outside of myself.”
“Do not presage my thoughts,” Russell said in gnarled speech. “You’re here. You must think—you must know how important this is.”
Jeom responded, emphatic: “I’m here because I must be.”
“Then why did you stay away for so long?” Russ wiped snot on his sleeve and sniffed. “How could you keep this from me?”
“It’s the main reason She kept me away.” Jeom’s tone edged on instability, a mode Russ hadn’t heard or seen during the former’s life. “I can’t act against the gods’ rules. It is for you to understand why They kept from you what They did.”
“But you knew.” His words stabbed in accusation. “She knew, didn’t She—that this would happen?”
“Not even gods can tell the future.” Jeom’s right brow flicked. “Not all of them.”
“I’m not talking about the future!” Russ’s voice didn’t echo. “I’m talking about—about Lillie. M’keth.” A tear streamed down his cheek onto his lips. “I was never supposed to find her, was I? We’re just pawns in the gods’ stupid game.” His thoughts cleared, and suddenly the forest scene became clear again, when his wife had spoken with him from the barrier’s other side, her face illuminated and gaunt. “They don’t even care about all the pain and misery They”—
“Do not!” exclaimed Jeom. His voice resounded in the small prayer space. “Do not besmirch Them. Their control is as makers, not wizards and wish-fulfillers.”
“But They can set events in motion. Why give us life if all it’s for is shitting on everyone? This whole thing is a damn joke.”
“Life? The gift of life, to have our essences ripped from the void of nonentity, for the gods to make us part of Their puzzle. That’s a joke to you?”
“If not, then it’s a cruel truth.”
“The truth normally is.”
Unless it says something you like hearing. When will I understand? “Gods damn you. You were supposed to have defeated him. I dared to let myself think it was true. And now he’s just gained power. How in the hells are we supposed to stop him now? You’ve—you’ve doomed us all.”
“I knew my sacrifice would undo itself in time,” Jeom said, sure. “Didn’t know how long exactly, but it would happen. The chosen—the preferred, whatever you want to call them—hadn’t been born yet. Karli guided me, and my destiny was to give everyone the most precious commodity I could.”
Russ snorted. “But it was all a lie.”
“Not a lie,” Jeom said, shaking his head. “Hope is never a lie.”
“It’s not a whole truth, either,” said Russ, his words pocked by sobs.
Jeom raised his voice. “That’s because the whole truth is meaningless to most everyone. What do you want me to tell you? That I didn’t want to do what I did, but I bound myself in duty and did it anyway?”
Russ could hardly speak for the emotion in his throat. “No—I know it’s not true at that. I want to kn—know whether I wasted my life searching for somethin I couldn’t have found. Something that, for Her reasons, She wouldn’t let me have.”
“Yeah, because it fits your story—that She took Lillie from you to keep you safe to fight in another War. Poor you. I’m not going to feed your victimization complex, especially because that’s not what She did. You don’t even know what you’d be without it now, do you?”
“Don’t,” Russ said, his voice thick. “You can counsel, but I’ll be damned if you talk down to me—if you talk down to me.”
“Then what would you like counseled on, my apprentice?” Sarcasm coated Jeom’s words. He crossed his arm and waited.
Russ let his mind float. All his thoughts swirled around one emotion, one he’d felt for the first time in a long while when he saw M’keth pacing in the hell maw. “Were you afraid of dying that night?”
“In a way,” said Jeom. “Do you wish to see what happened?”
Before Russ answered, the room dulled to a gray fog and resolved into a throng of demons. At their center, a lone man stood in sheened golden armor, his hammer on the ground next to him. A rat-demon’s head lay under it, smashed from a simple assault. Snow flurried in bursts around them, and a quiet wind howled far away, as distant as the darkness that pressed toward them from all directions.
Only the radiance from Jeom’s body lit the scene. “I wish to speak with your master,” he said, talking at them in Demonic, his tongue as fluent as theirs.
They jeered, swiped at him from out of reach.
“Not here,” one of them said, an ugly goblin whose lop-sided head sat on his shoulders of the same. His good eye bulged in its socket. He stood hunchbacked and left-leaning, and his jaw opened far too wide when he spoke. “You will have to go to His realm.” Even in Demonic, Granech spoke with a twisted accent. “But why would He see you this day?”
“I wish to sue for a time of peace.”
The demons laughed. All around him, they skulked. The humanoids stood close by, and the rats and other animals marshaled behind them, weaving underfoot, vying for any opening. Jeom’s gaze passed over each in turn, his face devoid of emotion or inclination.
“Our master has no interest in peace,” the mouth said. “His interest lies in your peoples’ destruction, so this place might become a new ground for our march. We are winning. What would M’keth”—the name reverberated through the crowd—“gain from such an auspicious position?”
“Information.”
The mouth’s laughter came as crushed gravel. His jaw clicked a few times before he spoke. “What could you know that M’keth does not already?”
“How to get inside Karlian defenses.”
The speaker squinted his good eye and turned his gaze fully upon the Grand Master. “Would you betray your own people just to have peace? How long would you bargain for? A day? A week? For your lifetime? Such things do not interest Him. You made a mistake coming here.”
Jeom sighed. His breath fogged in the frigid air. “I will speak with him.” He bowed his head and clasped his hands.
“And who are you to command such an audience?”
Jeom remained silent. A bat flew from above and swooped toward his head. Quicker than Russ could see, Jeom reached for it, crushed its head in his fist, and threw the demon aside. “I wish to speak with your master,” he said, no
longer in Demonic. “It’s understandable why he’s afraid.”
The demons howled. Their laughter filled the air, loud enough for Russ to wince against it. A mouse-like creature scurried toward Jeom, pattering along the ground as a bereft shadow until it materialized from the dirt, and dove at the Master’s ankle. He lifted his hammer and crushed the small demon beneath it. Its hind legs twitched while the rest of them screamed with hilarity.
Jeom stood still against their noise. “This isn’t a game, and even if it were, you have lost. I will give you a dozen seconds, no more, before I kill you all”—he pointed at Granech—“including you, and then be on my way.”
They wailed louder and pointed at the man before them like a sideshow, bantering amongst themselves: “Thinks he can take us all,” “He would die shitting himself from the pain,” and, “All part of the plan.”
Granech held with him a notebook, which he clasped in his right hand and cradled close against his body. Blood and mud covered it, seeped into its pages and congealed against the demon’s grip. A centipede crawled across his mottled face, and when its head neared the demon’s lips, he opened wide his jaw and crunched. He pulled the rest of bug into his mouth while he watched Jeom, listening. “Silence!” The word came laced with basso tones; from his maw issued echoing blackness. The others quieted immediately to hear him. “Your insolence shall be the end of you.”
A whisper of wind sounded behind Jeom, and when he turned, M’keth stood before him, twice a man’s height, three times as wide at the shoulders, his human-like face purer and more terrible than any Russ had seen—beautiful, yet awful to behold. Perhaps despite themselves, the demons nearest him cowered for his presence.
“The hubris,” M’keth said. He cast his gaze over the horde. “You think you can face he who is the Light?”
“Do you think you can?” Jeom asked. “M’keth, I’ve come”—
“Speak not the Demonic.” M’keth spoke in Plainari. He held his arms behind his straight back and walked the circle the demons had made around Jeom with an uncaring grace, almost floating. “Though your exposure to the Fel has left your tongue perfect, your speech sickens me.”
“I’ve come to bargain with you,” said Jeom. He stared at the avatar’s face, turned with him.
M’keth laughed. “And what could you offer me that I could not simply take?”
“Lay down your arms. Banish your armies. Let Coroth alone for a hundred millennia. If you do, this planet will be yours when that time comes.”
M’keth’s gaze probed him. None of the demons looked upon their master, their gazes cast toward the ground—all except for Granech, who watched, calculating.
“I will admit,” M’keth finally said, “your presence here is propitious, though I cannot imagine the Goddess approves of such slaneisch. You say you’ve come to bargain, so do so, before I lose my patience. I would say to think twice about your words, but for your kind, I’m sure it wouldn’t matter.”
“I’ve made my bargain. Leave, and when you return, Coroth is yours.”
“Offering me what is already mine is not a bargain. You fail to understand what is truly at stake. Our motivations aren’t so different; in fact, they align more often than you’d imagine. My master and yours do not operate in manners so unique, and theirs are missions with scope beyond your comprehension.”
“But you pretend understand them.”
Though nothing could touch him here, Russell stepped backward when the avatar bared his teeth—a perfect, human-like grin that both assured and reviled him.
“I will offer you this,” said M’keth. “Join me, and we can put to rest this little game. There’s no reason we must fight against the other, apart from the rules the gods have made. Lay down your arms, and the rest is simply like ripping off a bandage. No other choice exists for your kind.”
“I would never accept”—
“This is not a bargain. Consider it pity.”
“I would rather die,” Jeom said.
M’keth raced toward him, grabbed the Grand Master around the neck, and lifted him off the ground. “I can arrange that,” he said, his jaw clenched. “If you will not join us, then you will all die.”
A crooked smile rearranged Jeom’s face, and he spoke through M’keth’s crushing grip. “That’s—the idea.” He pulled the Light to him, and just like every other time in his life that Jeom had called upon it, an immense power set upon the world. Coroth trembled, and Jeom guided and set that force upon M’keth.
The demons’ lord dropped him, and from the avatar emanated a Fel so powerful that it pulled at the fabric of reality. Around the square, holes opened and sucked demons through, tearing them when they caught on the fissures. One plugged with a lumberer’s backside, and he swung his arms trying to free himself, bawling in grunts.
“Shouldn’t have touched me,” Jeom said, his voice cracked and wispy. He fell to one knee, rubbing at the blackened skin on his neck. The veins that flowed into his face traced onyx, and his lips puckered bright red. “If nothing else comes of this”—Jeom made sure the demon lord watched him, heard him—“know that I came here with every intention of seeing you die, but I’ll take what I can get.”
“No.” M’keth’s mouth hung open. Fear guised his face, burrowed into his eyes. A cloud of ash and sooty darkness surrounded him when he tried to port away, but the Light held him in place. He looked to the demon who served as his mouth. “You fool! Make away!”
The demon called Granech ran at his master’s command, then Nilrius’s avatar turned toward the Grand Master, both ugly and resigned to their fates.
“I am the Light where it cannot go,” Jeom said. His body glowed faintly, and his golden armor heliographed of itself. He coughed, but nothing cleared from his voice. “We are the defenders of the Light on Coroth”—as Jeom spoke the holy words, he shined brighter, ignited the area around them in holy flame, and soon even Russ had to shield his eyes against the luminance.
The scene faded, the demons panicking and scattered, their master held against his will to face the trap Jeom had brought to him.
“I was afraid that night,” said Jeom, pushing through his past’s vision. The rest of the scene fell to smoke. “But not how every layman on Coroth fears death—I knew I walked my last that day. The only thing I feared was not doing what needed done before I fell. That’s all any man should fear.”
Russ breathed. “D’niqa, this new lieutenant, tried to make the same deal with me.”
“Tempting, wasn’t it? But every word from a demon’s mouth is bullshit. These atrocities don’t operate the way you and I do—on good faith, where our words can bind us and hold us against trespasses. M’keth makes deals and breaks them, such is his way.”
Russ looked to the carpet at his knees, threadbare from practitioners using the room over years upon years. Tears pooled in his eyes, yet now he did not cry. “You once told me it’s what made a man, one who didn’t need permission to do his duty when it was right. But I’m not like you. I can’t do what you did—I’m not strong like you were.”
“Russ,” Jeom said, his tone soft. “Karli chose you because of who you are. If anybody else could do what She needs of you, She would have picked them.”
“But not like this. You didn’t have a stake in the War like this. Not that you ever told me, at least.”
“No.” Jeom shook his head. “I’m driven by something different than you.”
“What? Duty?”
“Nothing so esoteric, Russ.”
Russ laughed for a breath. Those words had felt so right to say to Grenn, so frustrating when Jeom used them on him. “But I can’t kill her.” He hung his head. Tears fell from the bridge of his nose, and he shivered. “I can’t kill Lillie. I’m not strong enough for this.”
A dull weight settled on his shoulder, and Jeom spoke: “Nobody ever thinks they’re strong enough to do what needs done. Until they do it. How easy the gods’ tests would be if we knew we could do Their work. They pick us f
or this crucible, and regardless of whether we make it, that’s better than not getting to try.”
“Speak for yourself.” Russ turned his gaze to the ceiling. He held his hands to either side of his legs and pleaded. “I don’t deserve this—any of this—the mantle… I’m powerless, and without a true Grand Master, this War will cause our end. You laid upon me a responsibility that I shirked, and now, I am punished, perhaps forever. At that, it wouldn’t be long enough. But in Your wisdom, if You can somehow find it within Your graces, I know I can prove to You my devotion. Just give me this chance.”
Jeom picked at the corner of his right eye. “Are you done?”
Russ felt none the better for his plea. When he lowered his hands, his right found the soul stone and pulled it from his pocket.
“Good thing no one was here to see that,” Jeom said. “They might have written stories about it, gods forbid. Russell Hollowman’s Atonement. But this isn’t a story, and your life is hardly a parable.”
Silence surrounded them for a dozen seconds before Jeom spoke again. “It’s possible to drown in waters through which others swim. But Russell, She chose you as She chose me and all the Grand Masters in our past. The world isn’t fair—rarely is it. We are powerful, and so too are the demons. When two equal forces meet upon each other, their strength seems as nothing in their cancellation. What I learned, as do all Grand Masters in their time, is that Karlians lose this battle from the moment we’re born, perhaps even before.”
Russell waited, scraping for meaning.
“It is our epic struggle, Grand Master, perhaps in all time and in all worlds. Powers flux. We’re lucky that flux swings in our favor. Some worlds don’t have such luck. Yet this is but a crucible”—that word again. “For what, I’m unaware, and so were all the Masters before me. But time and again the demons came, the best of us fell, and They recalculated what it might take to beat us anew. This, new and old, again and again. And even if this world falls, They start another and repeat the cycle.”
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