by K J Taylor
‘That’s the best you can do?’ said Ambit. ‘“I thought you were dead”? Come on. You could at least ask me why I didn’t come here years ago.’
‘Why did you not?’ asked Phos. ‘I tried to kill you.’
‘Yeah, but you missed,’ said Ambit. ‘You killed everyone else instead.’
The cracks spread over Phos’ tail and chest. ‘And for that . . . I am sorry.’
Ambit blinked. ‘You’re what? You’re sorry? You’re sorry you sent demons to eat the bones of everyone I knew and loved? For fuck’s sake, Phos, if you’ve done something like that to someone, you don’t apologise. You run a mile, or you kill them before they come and get you. “Sorry” isn’t going to fix anything and it’s not going to stop them spearing you through the nuts. If demons had nuts, that is, but according to Snarl, you don’t need them.’
‘I am sorry,’ Phos repeated. ‘I did what I had to do, for the sake of all. To stop the prophecy from coming true.’
‘I didn’t want it to come true either,’ said Ambit. ‘You could’ve asked me. I never even wanted to come here for revenge. They had to force me into it. Why are you cracking like that?’
The cracks had completely covered Phos’ throne by now and, as Ambit asked the question, the demon lord suddenly wrenched one arm free. He freed the other arm then, and his legs and tail next. The throne crumbled as he pulled away from it, revealing a great wall of lava behind it. The heart of the Sixth Mountain, exposed.
‘I am sorry, Chosen One,’ Phos rumbled as he stood up, ‘but you cannot be allowed to live.’ With that, he brought his massive hand crashing down on Ambit’s head.
Ambit ducked an instant before it hit him, but he forgot to lower something other than his head: the spear. It stayed pointing upward at an angle, and as he dived out of the way the point sank into Phos’ hand. Ambit kept hold of the shaft, and as Phos pulled his hand back the spear came loose, spilling the demon lord’s blood.
Phos roared and came at Ambit again, tail smashing into the walls and demolishing them, releasing more lava. Ambit ran from side to side, trying to avoid the gigantic creature’s attacks, and he mostly succeeded. There simply wasn’t enough room here for Phos to manoeuvre and Ambit was too small a target to be easily hit.
Phos swept his hand from side to side across the floor, trying to catch Ambit. If he managed to hit him he could have easily crushed him against the wall. Ambit darted back toward the entrance, jumping over a claw thicker than his whole body. Phos roared and pushed forward, making a grab for him. Ambit ducked under his hand and ran toward him, spearing him in the leg. The spear went in through one of the cracks in the demon lord’s rocky skin, making a deep wound. Ambit quickly stabbed the spot again, twisting the spear shaft. Lava trickled out and ran down Phos’ leg, and Phos made a groaning sound like two boulders grinding together. His leg buckled, and he half fell.
Ambit leapt aside and kept up his attack, sheltering from the demon lord’s tail behind the demon’s leg, which he kept on doggedly stabbing. He needed to cripple Phos as quickly as possible if he wanted to stay alive.
It worked. Phos tried to get up, but couldn’t. His leg looked as if it were actually coming apart. Lava was leaking out of the cracks and pooling on the floor, and when the demon lord made another, more determined effort to put weight on the leg it twisted sideways and he fell against the wall of his throne room.
Ambit gasped, narrowly avoiding being crushed. ‘Now will you stop trying to kill me?’
Phos only bellowed and twisted around, grabbing at him again. Ambit wouldn’t be able to avoid him forever. He pressed himself against the wall and stabbed him in the hand. One of the claws caught him a glancing blow and he stumbled sideways with a cry, landing hard on the floor.
Phos loomed over him, raising a claw over his head. ‘Goodbye, Chosen One,’ he said, and then fell back with a howl that made bits of rock rain down from the ceiling.
Ambit scrambled upright, catching a brief glimpse of the arrow sticking out of the demon lord’s neck. The eight companions came charging in as Phos recovered himself and Elyne pulled Ambit to his feet as they drove him back, stabbing, slashing and clubbing. Phos tried to get up, flames dripping from his fangs, but with eight attackers coming at him at once he had no way of avoiding them all. Rigby threw his trident, hitting the demon lord in the face, and Northrop hacked off one of his claws. Srawn’s axe slashed Phos’ other leg wide open, and the demon lord pulled back toward the ruins of his throne.
‘Don’t,’ he groaned. ‘Don’t . . .’
‘Do it, Ambit!’ Northrop yelled. ‘Kill him! Do it now!’
Ambit said nothing. He pushed Elyne aside and charged straight at Phos, spear raised. Phos tried to kick him away, but Ambit ran straight up his leg to his knee, and leapt, hurtling through the air, spear first. The weapon hit the demon lord squarely in the chest, burying itself so deep that Ambit found himself hanging from the very end of the shaft for an instant before he let go. He landed lightly on his feet and ran out of reach, and not a moment too soon. Phos reached up to grab him, but caught hold of the spear instead. Wailing in agony, the giant demon wrenched it out. The instant the spear came free, Phos’ lava blood gushed out over his chest and stomach in a torrent that nearly killed Ambit, and Northrop as well. The two of them ran for the entrance with the others, leaving Phos to clutch at his wound.
‘What have you done?’ the demon lord moaned, throwing the spear away. It landed near the cave entrance, lava already cooling and flaking away from its surface. Ambit grabbed it and backed off. He started to say, ‘You know what I did. I speared you through the chest, moron,’ but the quip didn’t seem to want to leave his mouth. He stared instead, unable to say anything at all, as Phos fell forward. The demon lord tried to drag himself back toward his throne, as if he were hoping to join himself to it again, but he didn’t have the strength. Nor could he stop the bleeding from his wounded chest. His skin was starting to crumble as the lava inside him poured out. He collapsed, one hand reaching out toward his throne, and a sound like a sigh mixed with the hiss of water on red-hot metal came from him as he died.
At once the heat in the throne room fell. The demon lord’s lava hardened on the floor and walls, and the eight companions pulled together in a group, all staring in disbelief. They had done it.
Elyne took Ambit by the arm. ‘Go,’ she said, ‘take the stone.’
Ambit sighed and walked over to Phos’ body, climbing over his back and onto his head. Rigby’s trident had come loose, so he pulled it free and threw it to its owner. Then he turned his attention to the yellow stone set into Phos’ forehead. It was smaller than his eyes – no bigger, in fact, than any demon’s stone, and already coming loose as Phos’ body decomposed. Ambit stuck the spear-point behind it and levered at it. It popped out without much trouble, and he held it in his palm and examined it.
‘Topaz, maybe?’ he murmured.
Almost experimentally, he pushed it into one of the sockets on his spear. It fitted perfectly, snapping into place as if it wanted to be there. Once it was in it wouldn’t budge, and Ambit thought he could see a faint yellowish glow around the spear shaft. One down, and eight to go.
‘Sorry about that,’ he told Phos’ carcass, and started to climb down.
And then the ground began to shake. Ambit stumbled, grabbing onto one of Phos’ spikes to steady himself. But the shaking didn’t stop. It grew more and more violent, and the heat in the throne room began to climb again. The spike broke off under Ambit’s hands and he fell down from Phos’ body and landed hard on the floor, hitting his head on a rock. He got up, groaning, in time to see what was happening. Behind the throne, the wall of lava had started to move. It was flowing, pushing upward, starting to spill out over the throne’s remains and toward him.
‘Oh shit,’ said Ambit. ‘Run! Everyone run! It’s going to blow!’
He got up and sprinted for the entrance. The others, seeing what was happening, ran as well, staggering and tottering as
the shaking grew worse and worse. Behind them the throne room collapsed, the roof crashing in and blasting them with hot air and fragments of hot stone.
And the shaking got worse. The Sixth Mountain was erupting. And, as Ambit ran, he finally started to realise just what Snarl and the other demons had been trying to warn them about.
Now, it was far too late.
Twenty
Ambit, the eight companions, and the ten or so surviving guards, fled out of the mountain. This time, nobody tried to stop them. The demons they saw were running as well. If it weren’t for them Ambit and the others might never have escaped, but Ambit instinctively followed the fleeing demons, hoping they would lead the way out of the mountain, and they did. Not even they wanted to be inside when the eruption really started.
Ambit burst into the open air and kept going on toward the valley settlement, but everything had changed. The lava pool had started to rise, flooding the demon town, and the bridges had collapsed. Ambit started to run along the edge instead, hoping to find a way around. Behind him and the others the Sixth Mountain had started to spew lava, and red-hot boulders were falling from the sky, crushing one of the guards.
‘Congratulations,’ Ambit gasped at Northrop. ‘You got your way and now we’re all going to die.’
‘Shut up,’ said Northrop. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
‘No shit,’ said Ambit. ‘That way!’ he pointed, and ran toward a narrow track that led down the mountainside, where a couple of demons were making their getaway.
It took them down off the side of the mountain to a spot where the overflowing lava pool hadn’t reached yet. Ambit sprinted across and away out of demon country with the others on his heels, and when they reached human country again they staggered to a halt.
‘We did it!’ Deeble gasped, leaning against a tree. ‘We destroyed the mountain! We –’
‘Yeah, and we just destroyed everything else around here as well,’ Ambit interrupted. He pointed, and everyone turned to look.
Behind them, the Sixth Mountain was not just erupting. It was breaking apart. The entire thing seemed to convulse, collapsing inward and then bulging outward, up and up, swelling like a boil until it exploded. Lava blasted out, destroying the entire mountain and fountaining into the sky. And once it had started coming, it kept on coming, and coming, more and more of it, out, and out further, destroying the demon settlement and pouring beyond the edges of demon country, on and on, straight toward them.
The humans ran.
Two more guards died during their escape, but Ambit and the eight companions finally made it to a safe vantage point – ‘safe’ being a relative word. They made for high ground, on a hilltop, and stopped there to rest and watch. But if they had hoped they were safe here they were sadly mistaken. The lava kept on coming. They could see it, flowing from the place where the Sixth Mountain had been, setting the forests on fire, completely swallowing the area where Vinewood had once been. And still it came, rolling out and over the hills and mountains. Sooner or later it would reach their vantage point and bury it.
Exhausted, but too terrified to stop now, they stumbled down the other side of the hill and jogged on, Elyne and Wittock supporting Tannock when his injured leg finally gave way.
‘We have to get to Acornville and warn them,’ said Northrop.
Ambit glanced back at the flaming mountains behind them. ‘It’s a dream come true,’ he said.
‘Yeah, if you’re a demon,’ said Rigby.
‘No, it’s my dream,’ said Ambit. ‘I saw this in a dream. Demon country everywhere. No trees, no human beings . . . nothing but that. But granddad said . . .’ He trailed off.
There was no more time for talking after that. They kept going, dragging themselves back into Acornville as the sun set. The people there had already seen what was happening, and were frantically packing up their houses ready to run.
This time, nobody tried to stop Ambit from going where he liked. He ran straight to where Snarl’s cage sat, and when the guards tried to stop him he summarily knocked them all down with his spear-butt. The moment they were out of his way, he tore Snarl’s cage door open.
‘I’m so glad you’re safe,’ she said as she climbed out.
‘Yeah, maybe for five minutes!’ said Ambit, pointing at the burning landscape he had just escaped from. ‘Did you know that was going to happen?’
‘Yes,’ Snarl said coolly. ‘I tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen to me. The demon lords are the only thing stopping the Nine Mountains from erupting. That’s why they join themselves to the heart of their mountains like that. To be one with them. To keep them calm.’
Ambit shook his head slowly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Snarl. ‘Not until my king told me. He warned me about it so I could tell you, but I never got the chance. But come on – we have to get out of here.’
‘Right,’ said Ambit. ‘Let’s dump this lot and get out while the going’s good.’
In the end, though, they couldn’t avoid the others. Everyone – the eight companions, the guards and the residents of Acornville – fled in the same direction, directly toward the lowlands. There was nowhere else any of them could go. Ambit and Snarl fell in with them, and nobody tried to interfere. All that mattered right now was escape.
They climbed down out of the mountains, women, men and children, old and young, some carrying a few belongings and others with nothing at all. Night fell and a silvery moon rose, but they didn’t need its light to see by. The whole sky seemed to glow with the disaster taking over the mountains. They looked back to see Acornville go up in flames as the lava rolled through it, completely destroying any trace of what had been there before. It came on, covering every hill and mountain and then oozing down onto the lowlands where the escapees had managed to flee. And there, finally, it stopped.
The evacuees had reached a flat grassy plain just beyond the mountains, and they stopped there, some collapsing in horror and disbelief at the sight of what their former home had become. The whole mountain range seemed to glow, the light brightening here and there where forests were still burning. In one night, Acornville had become new demon country. The trees and plants, and the people, would never come back.
‘And if you kill the other demon lords, it will happen again,’ Snarl said softly. ‘And again. If you fulfil the prophecy, the whole world will become nothing but this. The mountains will explode, lava will cover everything, and it will be the end of your people.’
Ambit sat down, rubbing his head. ‘But why wouldn’t they want this? Why did the demon king try to stop it? Why did Phos try to stop it? The whole country would belong to them . . .’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Snarl. ‘Don’t you understand? Lava doesn’t belong to us, and neither do the mountains. They’re a destructive force and we have to control them to support ourselves, the way humans control plants and animals. When the mountains explode, they destroy our homes and kill my kind. They release the lava we use to make our homes and give birth to more of our kind. The Sixth Mountain just created a wasteland. Nothing will live there. Not even demons. We need those mountains. And so do you.’
‘Shit,’ said Ambit. ‘So that’s why . . .’
‘That’s why we didn’t want you to fulfil the prophecy,’ said Snarl. ‘That’s why Phos was prepared to kill everyone in Vinewood to try and get rid of you. That’s why we demons are prepared to do anything to try and stop you. This isn’t about saving the world; it never has been. It’s about saving our lives; the lives of both our kind, in fact. From you.’
Ambit stared at the spear in his hands. ‘So if I went and followed the prophecy, I’d be destroying the world, not saving it.’
‘Exactly,’ said Snarl.
‘But what about the Oracle?’ said Ambit. ‘He was very keen on me doing it. He let the companions out, anyway.’
‘The Oracle is mad,’ said Snarl. ‘You’d be too if you’d gone through what h
e did. He believes it has to happen, whether we want it to or not. For him, free will doesn’t come into it.’
Ambit slumped, half in exhaustion and half in disbelief. ‘I guess now there’s only one thing we can do. We have to go and tell the king. The human one. You have to tell him this.’
‘He won’t listen,’ said Snarl. ‘Not to either of us. He wouldn’t before.’
‘He might when he knows about that,’ said Ambit, pointing at the molten mountains.
‘I suppose we have to try,’ said Snarl.
‘We’d better talk to Northrop first,’ said Ambit. ‘If we can get him to listen it’d be a start.’
‘You do the talking,’ said Snarl. ‘And keep him away from me. I’m not going back in that cage.’
‘I’ll keep them off you,’ Ambit promised. ‘Let’s go.’
He heaved himself to his feet and walked slowly and wearily over to where Northrop was sitting with the others. All of them looked exhausted and shocked. Srawn was sobbing softly, and Tannock held onto Elyne, who looked like she was the only thing stopping him from collapsing. All of them were pale and grimy with soot, and most of them had singed hair.
Ambit sat down with them with his spear across his lap and Snarl beside him. ‘So,’ he said, ‘now you know why the demons didn’t want us to do that. Because killing the demon lords makes that happen. I wish I could say I told you so, but I can’t. I’d say Snarl told you so, but you didn’t listen to her, so I can’t say that either. But will you at least admit that this whole killing the nine demon lords thing is a really fucking bad idea?’
Wittock coughed. ‘It has to be done.’
Ambit looked blankly at him. ‘Please tell me you’re joking.’
‘He’s right,’ said Whitear. ‘It came at a terrible cost, but we destroyed one of the nine mountains.’
‘Yeah, and half the fucking country as well,’ said Ambit. ‘Don’t you get it? That’s going to happen every time we kill a demon lord. That’s why they’re there; to stop that from happening. If we do that eight more times, the whole world will turn into a flaming wasteland.’
