Blood sprayed over him as the blade opened the kneeling angel's neck all the way to her spine. She fell without fanfare, the illusory double next to her winking out of existence as she keeled over to the side and lay still.
He was alive after all. And all swordplay aside, he knew exactly who was responsible. He looked up, toward the machine and the throne that controlled it. It's working! he sent over the mental link. You're doing it, Roshad!
Yet something was wrong. Roshad didn't have his usual veiled smirk, the one he treated Bors to whenever he felt he'd said or done something particularly clever. Instead, Roshad sat rigid in the chair, clutching its arms so hard that the veins and tendons stood out on the back of his hands. His eyes rolled back in his head, and even as Bors looked on in horror, blood began to bloom on the sorcerer's veil.
Bors ran for the stairs.
∗ ∗ ∗
And I thought the problem would be making it work.
Roshad's veins ran with fire, surging up from the tubes in his arms and coursing through his chest, his legs, his brain. The great hall around him faded in and out of view as his senses were overwhelmed and relinquished by those of the machine.
The machine. Roshad had been able to reverse its process, all right—every invisible thread he'd grabbed and yanked had pulled down another artificial angel, reeling the stolen soul essence back in and depriving Heaven's heretics of another trooper. He smiled through clenched teeth as he saw Bors's opponent go down, clutching her head for the seconds before Bors relieved her of it.
But the machine hadn't stopped there. Roshad had reeled in a few of the spiritual kites, but then the machine had gotten the idea and taken over. Just as a tiny crack in a dike is torn wide by the pressure of the water behind it, a few pulled threads was all it had taken to reverse polarity and send every soul the machine had stolen streaming back down its tether, into the machine.
And into Roshad. He could feel the pressure building, collecting inside the union of his body and the machine. Frantically, he tried to push it back out, send it sailing up its strings back to the angels it sustained, but the machine was having none of it.
The Redemption Engine was calling its children home.
All of them.
∗ ∗ ∗
They were winning, and yet they were losing.
As nice as it was to have Maedora back on her feet, it wasn't enough. The morrigna had to be hurting more than she let on, and her movements were getting progressively more sluggish. Even in their top shape, Salim and the psychopomp might not have been enough for the angelic siblings, their incredible strength and perfectly synchronized timing. All around them, angels plummeted from the sky or went down under the skeletal claws of the avian psychopomps, yet none of the Spire's minions seemed inclined to come to their leaders' defense. Another test from the Gray Lady?
Nemeniah swung her hammer, and this time Maedora wasn't quite fast enough. Instead of angling her staff to deflect the blow, she caught it flat, taking its full force. The staff shattered, Maedora crying out as she stumbled backward into Salim and almost fell.
Instantly, Salim was there, parrying the follow-up blow and swinging wildly to try and keep Nemeniah from closing. If this were a one-on-one fight, he'd want her close, want to slip inside her guard where the length of that hammer would be a hindrance, but with Malchion behind him...
He spun just in time to feel the hooked tail of Malchion's hammer head slide around his calves. The angel yanked, pulling Salim's feet out from under him and sending him sprawling in the dirt. The hammer rose high for the killing blow—
A flaming blade slashed downward, severing Malchion's left wing. The angel screamed and dropped to one knee as blood gouted and bright feathers fell to the ground.
Arathuziel the Chained stood behind him, iron-bound wings spread wide, one hand holding the blazing sword. He smiled—not a friendly smile—and the motion changed the courses of the bloody streams that ran from his black eyes.
"Malchion!" Nemeniah broke off her attack on Maedora and ran for her brother.
"Not so fast." Maedora's tendrils whipped out and caught the angel by the ankles, dragging her down to the ground as well. The two giant women grappled in the dust, clawed hands tearing at each other.
"I thought Heaven didn't make exceptions." Salim couldn't stop the question from popping out.
Arathuziel's smile widened. "As my friends here will tell you, sometimes you have to break the rules for the greater good."
From the ground, one hand clutching at his bleeding wing-stump, Malchion attempted to swing his hammer up and around. Arathuziel responded by stomping down on the angel's wrist, pinning it to the earth with a crunch of bone. He looked to Salim. "Mind if I do the honors?"
"Not at all." Salim rose to his feet.
Arathuziel lifted the burning sword. "Malchion, by the authority of Heaven, the righteous gods, and the ideals you claim to serve, I hereby find you guilty of treason and heresy. Do you have any last defense?"
Malchion spat up at Arathuziel, the gobbet landing on his white robes. "Go back to Hell, devil."
Arathuziel inclined his head. "Maybe someday, cousin. But not today."
The blazing sword came down, severing Malchion's head from his shoulders.
Nemeniah screamed. With a burst of strength, she slammed the head of her hammer directly into Maedora's masked face, sending the psychopomp flying up and off the angel to land on her back in the dust. The angel rose, still keening like a wounded animal, and started toward Arathuziel, hammer high.
Over the corpse of her brother, Arathuziel spread his arms and let her come.
The gesture seemed to trigger something in Nemeniah. Through the bloody haze of her fury, she managed to check herself, pulling up short. Her fingers traced complicated paths through the air as she spat words of making.
A column formed in the air, twenty feet high, with her at its center. At first Salim took it for some sort of cyclone, but then he looked closer and saw the thousands of dagger-sized blades whirling and dancing within it. It solidified, flashing steel almost obscuring the angel.
"No," said Arathuziel, stretching out a hand. "I don't think so."
The tower of blades collapsed, cascading down and vanishing at the point where each blade would have touched the ground.
Looking more scared than furious, now, Nemeniah began weaving a new spell, arching her arms and wings over her head.
Arathuziel's outstretched hand twisted, and a ray of green light shot from his palm to strike Nemeniah in the chest. It coursed over her without seeming to harm her, the emerald light clinging to her skin.
"No running away, either," Arathuziel noted. "We finish this here."
Nemeniah screamed and charged. The chained angel met her wild stroke with a perfect two-handed parry, and Salim saw his smile turn predatory as the fight began in earnest.
Salim ran over to kneel at Maedora's side. "Maedora? Are you alive?"
The blank mask stared back at him, its white webbing stained with blood. Then she coughed and sat up, clutching at his arm for leverage.
"Alive?" She hacked again, spitting blood onto the dirt. "This is no time for philosophy, Salim."
Salim grinned and put a hand on her shoulder. "Stay here and heal yourself."
He turned. Above Malchion's body, the fallen angel and redeemed devil lashed out at each other again and again, sparks flashing as their weapons met. Nemeniah fought like a berserker, her despair making her fearless. Despite his burning sword, Arathuziel was the opposite: as cold as a snake, each movement of his great blade precise and calculated. It was a surprisingly fair fight.
Good thing Salim didn't believe in fair fights. He hefted the Melted Blade.
Remembering the Censors in the Vault of Corrections, Salim called upon the goddess's magic once more, bending the light in a veil around himself. Silently, he crept across the space between them. Over the din of the surrounding battle, he could hear Nemeniah's gasping sobs as she hammered ag
ain and again at Arathuziel's impeccable defenses. To her credit, the chained angel was no longer smiling, a look of intense concentration on his face as he countered each massive blow.
"Malchion!" Nemeniah called as she swung again. "Malchion!"
For a moment, the angel's pain was so real, so obvious, that Salim couldn't help but feel sorry for her. In this moment of grief, she was no angel, no traitor—just a woman robbed of her brother.
Then Salim remembered the man strapped to the altar of the Redemption Engine, the spike piercing his chest as his soul was drained from his body. Had someone wept over him as well?
Fair was fair. Putting all his weight behind it, Salim lunged.
The tip of the Melted Blade entered directly between the roots of Nemeniah's wings. After all that he'd been through, it slid in with surprising ease, and Salim found himself with the basket hilt pressed against the angel's back, hot blood running down between his fingers. On the other side, two feet of red-washed steel protruded from between the angel's vestigial breasts.
Nemeniah made a small sound of surprise, and then the hammer dropped from nerveless fingers. She slumped, and Salim took her weight, lowering her to the ground. When he could finally crane his neck around and see the glaze of death on her eyes, he withdrew his sword, wiping it on her robes before sheathing it.
For the first time in minutes that felt like days, Salim looked around. Outside of their little hurricane's eye, the battle was already decided. A few angels—presumably those Nemeniah and Malchion had convinced rather than created—still fought on, but far more had already fallen, or staggered like drunks as they fought. Roshad's magic had done the trick.
Maedora, dirty and bloodstained, walked over to stand beside him. She pointed. "What's he doing?"
Salim looked to Arathuziel, who knelt between the bodies of the angelic siblings, burning sword thrust into the ground before him. The two had fallen close together, almost touching.
The angel bowed his head over the sword's hilt. "The ends justifying the means is exactly how you end up in my former position, cousins." He paused, then said, "May your example show the rest of us the truth."
He stood as Salim and Maedora approached.
"Thank you for deciding to help us," Salim said. "We couldn't have done it without you."
"My pleasure," Arathuziel said. Then he frowned. "And in that, perhaps my fellows are right to judge me. No angel should take pleasure in this."
"They were corrupted," Maedora said. "A threat to the entire multiverse. You did what needed to be done."
Arathuziel shrugged. "They violated Heaven's laws, and had to be punished. Yet they also truly believed that their heresy would help our cause in the long run. Morality is rarely the simple thing we pretend it to be."
Something made a clicking noise, and the three of them froze. Then came a long rattle as one of the chains binding Arathuziel's wings slid off, falling to the ground alongside its sprung lock. The angel stared at it in shock.
"Looks like someone agrees with you," Salim said.
"Come on," Maedora said, grabbing Salim's arm. "Let's finish mopping up while your friends have the machine disabled."
Your friends. Salim realized he'd been so focused on the here and now that he'd been steadfastly ignoring the psychic link with Bors and Roshad. He closed his eyes and willed himself to touch their minds, seeing what they saw.
And then he did. His hand shot out and closed hard on Maedora's oversized wrist.
"We've got a problem."
∗ ∗ ∗
On the dais, Bors gripped Roshad's arm. "Roshad! Roshad, can you hear me?"
Below him, Roshad shook in the chair, his body—such a small body, so delicate—twitching like a dying animal. Blood from his nose spread out into a wide stain on the gauzy veil.
"Roshad! Please!" Bors grabbed the little sorcerer's head in his hands, pulling his face close. "We've won, Roshad! Shut it down and we'll leave!"
Slowly, Roshad's sky-blue eyes rolled back down, focusing weakly on Bors's dark ones. "Won?" The damp veil clung to his lips, making a relief sculpture of his weak smile. "We did win, didn't we?"
"Yes!" Bors felt tears trickling down beneath his litchina, and he ripped the metal mask off and threw it aside. "Whatever you're doing, you can stop now!"
Roshad shook his head. "Can't stop. Too much energy."
"Show me. Maybe I can help." Bors knew nothing about sorcery—had never studied magic at all—but he focused on the mental link between them, striving to see what Roshad saw.
And hit a wall—something huge and all-powerful, pushing him back. He gasped at its swollen weight. "Roshad?"
Roshad shook his head again. "The machine. If I let go, it'll burst."
"So let it!"
No head shake this time, only the feeling of negation flowing out from Roshad. "Too much energy. You have to go now."
"Damn right I will! And I'm taking you with me!" Half-blind, Bors felt for the tubes in Roshad's arms, the horrible conduits pulsing beneath his skin like parasites. If the machine was going to explode, so be it. He'd tear the tubes out, throw Roshad over his shoulder, and run like hell for—
Roshad smiled again, and this time his face lit up for real, in that way only Bors ever saw. "My Boar," Roshad whispered. "Always so stubborn." He raised a weak hand, and Bors took it between both of his own. "I'm sorry."
∗ ∗ ∗
"I'm sorry."
Bors's eyes widened in sudden understanding, but Roshad had already completed the incantation. The bigger man froze as the magic took hold, seizing muscles locking him in place, still bent over Roshad's seat.
Beneath his partner's outstretched arm, Roshad could see the rest of the room. In the wake of the angels' dramatic deaths and the demise of their leader, Caramine's Freemen were flooding toward the door or throwing up their arms in surrender, appealing to old friendships and acquaintances with the victors. Roshad spotted Vera the cleric overseeing the enemy's retreat and waved feebly to get her attention, tubes trailing from his arms. She saw him and hurried over.
"Get him out of here," he gasped, gesturing first to Bors and then to the rest of the room. "Get them all out of here!"
Vera looked surprised, and then her gaze flicked from him to the machine, which squealed in protest at the energies surging inside it, purple sparks arcing across its surface. She looked back at him.
He nodded. "I'll hold it as long I can. Don't let him come back till it's over."
"Understood." She tucked her broad shoulder underneath Bors's bent form, then spoke a quick prayer, asking her god to grant her strength. Her body glowed briefly with the answering magic, and then she hefted Bors's armored form as easily as a sack of grain and pounded across the room toward the door. "Everybody out! Now!"
Roshad breathed a sigh of relief as Bors and the cleric cleared the door, the rest of the Freemen hot on their heels. The hard part was over. Now there was only the energy boiling inside him, making his breath come short and hot, the magic rushing back and forth between him and the machine through the tubes in his arms.
There was no way to release it. It had been drawn from the bodies of dying mortals, and though the room was covered in corpses, Roshad had no idea how or if the energy could be distributed again. The machine hadn't been built for that, nor for storage. It had taken each spirit one at a time and cast them out into the planes, accelerating them along their new course. It had never been designed to take them back. And now that they were here, they had nowhere to go. Roshad had known enough artificers to know what happened when you tried to put too much magic into an insufficient vessel.
Across the mental link, Roshad could still feel Bors, frozen inside his body, betrayed by the very muscles that made him such a terror on the battlefield. He could feel the big man's rage, and his love, which were of course the same thing. Roshad opened himself as wide as he could, letting Bors see every corner of his soul, making him feel the full brunt of the love that rose like a phoenix within him.
Within them both.
I'm sorry, he thought again.
And let go.
paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas
Chapter Thirty-One
Aftermaths
Another drink, gov?"
Salim put his hand over his cup, blocking Gav from refilling it. "No more for me. I have to ride in the morning."
"Still sure about that, are you?" Gav perched on the little ledge behind the bar used by Canary House's usual halfling tender. "After all y've been through with us, you still ain't fallen in love with the city yet? You're a right cold fish, sire, if'n you'll pardon my saying so."
Salim smiled. "You're not the first one to say so. Though maybe not in exactly those words."
"Something tells me I won't be the last, either." Gav smiled and scampered down the bar to pour more of A'kaan's wine for the celebrants.
Salim leaned back and took in the crowd. Canary House was full to bursting once more with faces from a dozen different gangs and factions, but this time the atmosphere was different. In the wake of the victory over Caramine and the spread of the true story behind events—and no doubt several false ones—everyone involved in the operation was in a mood to celebrate. Tomorrow, no doubt, they'd be back at each other's throats, but tonight Duskwardens drank with Ardocs, and necromancers made wry toasts to black-robed Pharasmins. Most numerous in the crowd were the Freemen—it was Vera and their leader, Halman Wright, who had opted to rent out Canary House. As was only proper, the cleric of the Drunken God was already deep into her cups, and had been persuaded to climb onto a table and regale the crowd with a bawdy song about a man with a wooden phallus, which she did in a surprisingly melodic soprano. Seated at the table, her partner Xulaine blushed furiously, yet still whistled along with the chorus.
At the thought of music, Salim looked up. The golden cages of A'kaan's famous Songbirds hung empty among their yellow silks. Salim had seen to that personally. When Vera had presented him with the Freemen's reward—all of the gold Caramine had managed to take off her victims and squirrel away in the great house's treasury—he'd known exactly what to do with it. A'kaan would buy new slaves, of course—the gleeful innkeeper would no doubt be able to replace them and still pocket a tidy profit. But seeing the care with which Vera and her people struck the chains from the singing girls, then bundled them off to new lives in the Bottoms, had made his heart feel lighter than it had in days.
Pathfinder Tales: The Redemption Engine Page 37
