Of course it was a waste of time. They were just postponing the inevitable. Behind her the Monk was aware of fire. It illuminated the interior of Lug’s head. It looked like a vast living plane of serpents writhing across the resinous landscape towards them. Her armour and the P-sat sent the images of what was happening outside to her neunonics. Ludwig was fighting the vast fleet of dragons coming up behind them. They bathed the automaton in their plasma fire. In return, black light projected out of him like a prism, slicing open ancient biomechanical machines, spilling their contents like guts. Out-of-phase ghost bullets went looking for minds, dragons de-cohered into vast showers of dust, DNA was hacked and Naga-craft fed on their own energy to regress to protoplasmic states. Viruses infected flesh, dragons turned on one another, projected high-energy particles, disrupted atomic structures. Ludwig was a ghost, wreathed in a corona of fire, moving between them, through them.
The Monk’s combat armour ’faced structural integrity warnings as she was bathed in plasma fire. There was only so much the energy dissipation grids could do as molecularly-bonded hardened composites took on a semi-liquid state and started to melt and run. As one, the four of them fired their grenade launchers. They surrounded themselves with explosions to give themselves room, to buy another moment of time.
The Monk was aware of Naga spores trying to infect her armour. It would make no difference. Their initial onslaught had caught the Naga before they could fire, but eventually the serpent plasma weapons would turn them to so much slag. It would be over quickly. She was just pleased that the Naga didn’t seem to be using electronic warfare of any kind.
The serpents were charging her now, firing. At the last she would move to Talia and give her sister the coherent energy field generator. She should have done that beforehand. She ’faced over the operation codes and instructions. She could see them up close now. Tall, thin, bipedal forms in biomechanical armour fused to scaled flesh. They carried organic-looking plasma weapons, and barbed spears that she knew were for injecting eggs – effectively voracious biological nanite factories – into host flesh. There were too many of them. The shotgun ran dry. She fired the carbine one-handed, the weapon partially melted, as she reached for another solid-state magazine. The closest serpent was almost upon her, appearing through the fire, its spear reaching for her. The magazine slid home, she dropped her hybrid weapon, and reached for both her thermal blades. It was the wrong decision. She should have triggered her P-sat. The spear touched her armour. Everything stopped. Her vision was filled with frozen fire.
And Beth was in darkness. There was a moment of panic. This shouldn’t happen. Her eyes should always be able to see, no matter what her condition. Torches burst into life. They were in a low, dome-shaped, stone and earth structure. Jewellery and ancient weapons were laid out around the chamber. There was even a chariot. She guessed it was supposed to be the representation of a burial mound, similar to those found in Ireland before the Loss.
She was dressed the way she used to dress so many millennia ago, her hair in a ponytail, boots, the leather jacket. Her sister was standing next to her. Scab was in his suit and hat, but it took her a moment to realise that the nominally human-looking figure, dressed as anachronistically as Scab, with four arms and compound insect eyes, was probably Vic.
‘An improvement?’ Talia said hopefully. She was pale and shaking.
‘Fuck!’ odd human Vic shouted. ‘It’s an immersion.’ Now the Monk was starting to get worried. Whoever or whatever had done this had gone straight through their neunonic security like it hadn’t existed.
‘So?’ Talia said. ‘Still better.’
‘Even sped up as fast as our brains can interpret the data, time still passes, events still happen, no matter how quick this is. It’s just postponing the inevitable,’ Vic explained.
‘We will arm you, armour you.’ The voice sounded like old paper being rustled. The corpse sat up on a stone bench, ancient leathery skin spread across bone, the tattered remnants of fine clothes hanging off its frame. It was difficult to look at, as though it kept folding in on itself. Its movements left permanent fractal images behind it, somehow reminding the Monk of a pupa. Talia let out a little scream, and her hand clamped over her mouth. ‘My grandchild knows what to do.’
Talia turned away from the corpse-like entity. ‘Your hair’s come back,’ she said to her sister. Vic turned to stare at the pair of them. ‘Oh calm down, we’re dead anyway.’
‘Are you Lug?’ the Monk asked. She was struggling to look at the corpse-like entity.
‘We need to get back,’ Scab said, looking around the burial chamber as if he could find a way out.
‘What is it?’ Vic asked quietly. It took a moment for the Monk to realise that the ’sect was talking about the Destruction.
‘We don’t know. Different intelligences have different names for it. The Screaming, the Destruction, the Hungry Nothingness. Somewhere in the fire and pressure of the birth of your universe was some kind of sentience. It was born into pain and light, like all of us. As we cannot even begin to imagine the extent of its sentience, we cannot begin to understand the depths of its suffering. Its existence was agony.’
‘Is it God?’ Talia asked, awed.
‘It was born with, it did not give birth to, the universe. Perhaps to your species it is, as it is responsible for your creation.’
‘I thought that was the Seeders,’ the Monk said.
‘In fleeting moments of what passed for clarity, it created the Seeders. It wished company. It sought to soothe itself, to matter, to not be alone.’
‘Well, that worked out well,’ Vic muttered, his body language displaying his impatience in a very human manner that the Monk thought, in other circumstances, the ’sect would be very pleased with.
‘They severed links with their creator to protect themselves, and I suspect that may have driven it over the edge. Then something went wrong and contact was re-established.’
‘And it drove the Seeders and anything linked to them, like the Naga, insane,’ the Monk said. Lug nodded.
‘So it is God?’ Talia asked.
‘No, it is just another form of life. It did not create us, and there are many other forms of life it did not create. I do not think that there are gods. I think that there is only nature.’
Beth found herself thinking briefly of Churchman.
‘So now it will consume the universe?’ Talia asked.
‘Seriously, we need to—’ Scab started. Beth rounded on him.
‘Look, we’ve lost that fight. I want to know what happens next before I trigger every last piece of ammunition on me to cook off so I don’t get turned into a Naga egg sac!’
‘It has already consumed the universe, many times.’ Suddenly Lug had even Scab’s attention. ‘Eventually, as the expanding universe cooled, the Destruction was able, over billions of years, to marshal its thoughts, to understand the nature of its pain. Using the meagre remaining energy resources it could marshal it was able to open a wormhole, a bridge into the red universe that the minds of the Seeders had expanded from the quantum foam. Utilising the energy of the younger universe, the chaotic space, and the now-weak thermodynamic arrow of time, it went back and started to consume. It collapsed each branch, each possible universe, in on itself at progressively earlier times, each going further and further back, until eventually …’
‘The Universe never gets born?’ Vic asked quietly.
‘Yes,’ Lug said. There were tears on Beth’s face. She wasn’t sure why. The whole thing still sounded too large, too abstract, even after all these years.
‘That poor thing,’ Talia said. Vic was staring at her as though she was mad. Beth glanced at Scab. He looked completely passive. This bothered her.
‘So nothing can be done?’ Vic asked. He sounded almost relieved.
‘Each time we try,’ Lug said. ‘Each time we fail.’
‘Because this Screaming has servants,’ the Monk said.
‘Broken things, mad
with the pain that leaks into them, that try and stop any agencies who would prevent the consumption of dark energy that leads to the collapse. Their instinctive understanding of five-dimensional physics, however, provides them with a great deal of power.’
‘Like Patron?’ Beth asked.
‘He is always there. Each time he sends people back to help him make things worse for the future, to make resistance all the harder.’ Lug pointed at Scab. ‘And each time it makes him worse.’ Scab remained completely still. ‘Your strand will be the last time that the universe gets this old.’
‘Are you saying that this is our last chance?’ the Monk asked.
‘I do not know, but I suspect it to be the case.’
‘Why do you care?’ Scab asked. Beth was worried Lug’s neck skin would tear open when the strange collapsing entity turned to look at the human killer.
‘Nothing will have time to ascend, to move beyond. So what will be the point?’ Lug asked. Beth frowned, she wasn’t quite sure she followed, but the answer seemed to amuse, if not satisfy, Scab.
‘If we’re the last chance then it’s over,’ Vic said. ‘We’re fucked.’
‘My grandchild will help, and I will lay myself out on an altar for you,’ Lug told the ’sect. The look of confusion on Vic’s immersed humanesque face was quite comical. Lug turned to look at Beth. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Then she died.
Talia saw it on her periphery first. Just a movement. A distraction from the targeting schematics overlaid on her vision, from her burst-firing, double-barrelled laser carbine, from the chemically suppressed fear, from the chemically suppressed pain as her skin bubbled due to the heat leaking through her partially melted armour. Despite everything seeming to move so slowly, and her thoughts moving so fast, it still took her a moment to translate the image into actual information. Her sister on the end of a barbed spear held up high, one-handed, by a serpent in biomechanical armour. Beth’s armour was already fusing with her body, the biological nanites modifying matter at a molecular level, auto-cannibalising what they needed for the energy to give the new form growing out of her sister’s dead flesh life.
It took Talia a further moment to realise that the screaming was her own.
40
Ubh Blaosc
Wherever Tangwen was, it was dark. It felt like she was in water but it was warm and safe somehow. She could rest. She hadn’t felt that way in a very long time. She didn’t want to leave.
Then everything was hard light and cold metal against bare skin. The metal underneath her felt rounded, like the bottom of a cauldron, but it was huge. Various figures and symbols protruded from the metal. It was odd, they obviously didn’t mean to cook her, as the cauldron was otherwise empty, except for Britha. The ban draoi was naked, like Tangwen, her knees drawn up to her chest. Her head didn’t look right somehow. The shaved half of it looked bulbous, the veins bulging. Like …
Britha looked up.
Tangwen stared. She had quicksilver eyes, like Teardrop’s had been towards the end, tears the same colour sinking into the ban draoi’s cheek, and Tangwen didn’t think she had ever seen anyone look so guilty.
‘What? What’s happened?’ The last thing she remembered they had been standing in the god’s head. Had she fallen asleep? More tears. ‘What have you done?’ Tangwen asked. She felt different somehow.
Britha opened her mouth to speak, but only a strangled noise came out. ‘I’m sorry,’ the Pecht woman finally managed.
Then Tangwen knew. She wasn’t sure she would have known, been this aware of her body, before she had drunk of Britha’s blood. She stood up and jumped for the lip of the cauldron and pulled herself out of it. ‘Tangwen!’
She collapsed onto the too-even wooden floor of the too-pristine longhall. She staggered away from the cauldron, fell onto all fours, and threw up. Teardrop-on-Fire and Raven’s Laughter moved towards her, hands outstretched.
‘Get away from me!’ Teardrop was dressed for war: he wore only skin trews and a loincloth, tattoos on his back, chest, and upper arms; the bottom part of his face painted, symbols picked out in the design; his hair tied back and braided. The pack for his magical armour was affixed just over his left shoulder this time. There was a knife sheathed at his hip, and he carried the case that she had seen Fachtna carry: the case for the giant-killing spear that Bress had wielded at Oeth. There was just a moment of confusion. The last person she had seen handling the horrific weapon was Grainne, but that thought was quickly swept away by her anger.
Raven’s Laughter wore thicker hides, but Tangwen had seen the short, dark-haired woman transform. She knew her for a monster. Her weapons were spines that grew through the skin, though the Croatan woman had an axe, not unlike her own, through her belt, and a knife on her hip as well.
‘What did you do to me?’ The guilt was clear on both the Croatans’ faces as well.
‘It was not them, it was me.’ Britha’s voice from behind her. Tangwen turned around. The guilt was still there, but the Pecht dryw looked more inhuman than ever. Tangwen stared at her, shaking her head, trying to think of something to say. ‘You’ll make a better mother than me.’
Tangwen couldn’t quite believe what she had just heard. She stormed across the longhall to the dryw. ‘When?’ she barked. ‘When my head’s split open by a Trinovantes club? Or when I take a spear in my guts during a raid on the Cantiaci? I’m a warrior! I eat tansy cake after I lie with any man!’ She slapped Britha, hard. The ban draoi looked more shocked than hurt, so Tangwen punched her. Britha stumbled back and bumped into the cauldron before losing her footing and sitting down hard.
‘I am a dryw!’ Britha shouted. ‘You cannot lay a hand on a—’
‘No!’ Tangwen said, looming over Britha. ‘You make excuses, avoid your responsibilities, and then hide behind your black robes, hoping that being strange and threatening will get you what you want! You wreak destruction wherever you go! I wish I’d never met you!’ There were tears in the young hunter’s eyes. ‘And now I’m pregnant with your changeling baby! You’re a coward!’ She was screaming now, face purple with rage.
‘Both,’ Britha said. Tangwen stared at her.
‘What?’ Tangwen asked, very quietly. She was aware of Teardrop and Raven’s Laughter moving closer to her.
‘Both my unborn children,’ Britha said, her face crumpling. There were more quicksilver tears running down her cheek only to be sucked back into her skin. Something about them reminded Tangwen of engorged ticks. Tangwen straightened up, looking down at Britha, her swollen head, her silver eyes, the red metal of her once-woad tattoos.
‘Look what you’ve done to yourself,’ Tangwen said. ‘Has it been worth it?’ She knelt down next to Britha. ‘I want you to know I’ll cut his child out of me,’ she whispered. Then she went looking for her hatchet to bury in the dryw’s head. Teardrop’s armour unfolded, encasing him in metal, his helmet completely covering his head. Shaped like a raven, the helm reminded Tangwen of an enchendach. Even with all their strength, and the magics of the fair folk at their disposal, Teardrop and Raven’s Laughter struggled to stop Tangwen from killing Britha.
Outside, the noise hit Tangwen like a wall of thunder. The Otherworld was falling. High above her a land, on what she thought of as the wall of this inside-out world, burned. A fountain of fire, wreathed in smoke and steam from the oceans surrounding it. She didn’t understand how she could see so much that was so far away. Amid the fire and burning rock she could make out the enormous, monstrous shape of a dragon that surely must have been the size of Ynys Prydain itself. Her bowels turned to liquid, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she did not soil herself. She wanted to go back into the longhall. They had heard nothing of this great storm outside, presumably because of more fair folk magic. She stood frozen, vaguely aware of Britha doing much the same. They should not be here. This was no place for mortals.
‘Come on,’ Raven’s Laughter tried to coax her. ‘We’ll take you home.’
Fire rain
ed down from the hole in the Otherworld, the glow reflecting in Teardrop’s impossible metal armour. Tangwen tried to make sense of the small, fast-moving dots spreading out from the fire. Bright spears of light existed for less than moments in the distance, while closer to them lightning played across treetops. She ducked down, hand on her axe, as two vessels, much larger than their chariot, shot by overhead.
‘They are ours,’ Teardrop said gently. Tangwen had felt fear before. She had almost not made it onto the wicker man, but this was too much. There had been a chance against the Lochlannach, against the spawn of Andraste, even against Crom Dhubh. There was no chance here against such power.
‘These are my Father’s people?’ Tangwen asked. She could not equate this madness with the gentle creature that lived in the crystal cave beneath her village. Raven’s Laughter was affixing another metal plate to Britha’s shoulder, which the hunter knew could grow to become the same sort of armour that protected Teardrop. Raven’s Laughter exchanged a look with her armoured husband.
‘Your Father’s people are the Naga?’ the Croatan woman asked.
‘He is a serpent, but not like this.’ She could hear the desperation in her own voice.
‘I think Tangwen’s Father was spared the madness,’ Teardrop said, his voice sounding strange coming from the armour.
‘You met him!’ Tangwen shouted. ‘You know! Fachtna did not like him!’
‘I know this is hard to understand.’ Teardrop had to shout to be heard. ‘But that was a different Teardrop.’
‘Another changeling!’ Tangwen shouted. Raven’s Laughter turned away from a concerned-looking Britha, and moved towards Tangwen. The hunter stepped back, a hatchet and blade in her hands now. ‘Get away from me!’
‘We just want to take you home,’ Raven’s Laughter said.
‘No! You’ll do something else!’
‘Tangwen, please,’ Britha said.
The Beauty of Destruction Page 60
