Page 83 of The Malevolent Eight

‘But youaren’t– that’s what I’ve been trying to show you, Cade! Every decision you’ve made–every single one– has brought us to this exact moment. Even this final gambit, making a last-minute deal with the Pandoral entity to give him an avenue of escape because you think once he’s back in his realm he’ll be able to access the full might of its chaos magic– you think the Celestines and Devilish will be forced to flee back to their own realms and be denied their war.’

‘Sounds. . . like a. . . good plan,’ I said. I was starting to choke, but only because my lungs weren’t really lungs any more.

She slammed her fist against my chest, which hurt more than it should have, given what was happening to me. ‘This isexactlywhat my employers wanted you to do all along, Cade!’

Yeah, Tenebris always has been a little too cunning for anyone’s good. Can’t believe the Lords Devilish never saw him coming.

My body felt as if it were coming apart, but it was only Eliva’ren shaking me, shouting in my face as if this was all my fault. ‘I’m going to collapse the Pandoral realm, Cade. I’m going to bring forward its eventual demise by thousands of years so that the limitless energies there flow back into this realm while I twist your attunement first to Infernalism and then Auroralism, channelling all that power into Tenebris and his cabal. They’re going to become gods!’ She swung an arm to the battlefield. ‘Look at what’s already happening! The Celestines and Devilish are beginning to fall. The cabal will take their place, but a hundred times more powerful than they ever were, all because of you—’

‘Not only me,’ I reminded her.

All her anger and despair drained from her, leaving only determination behind. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like to have given birth to a son you’ve never seen, knowing his entire life is being spent in a place where he’s utterly unlike any other living being that exists there. Nine years my child has lived in the Pandoral realm, raised by an illusion, wondering why his real mother never comes to rescue him.’ She hit me again, a right cross to the jaw this time. I barely felt it at all. ‘Damn you for making me hate myself even more than I thought possible!’

I’d worked out most of the details of how Eliva’ren’s son had been kept alive all these years and how Tenebris intended to bring him back here. With the energies he’d channel through me from the Pandoral realm as it collapsed, he’d have more than enough power to transform the boy’s physical body into one that could survive on the Mortal plane. He’d probably even recreate the breach to Eliva’ren’s home so that mother and son could reunite with their own people. My failure to master Pandoral magic aside, I’d studied almost every other form of wonderism, and had a knack for esoteric theory. The mechanics of this scheme were intricate, almost beautiful in their way. But as flawless as they looked, there was one missing piece in the clockworks of destiny: an extra gear Eliva’ren had been incapable of seeing.

‘I’d imagine it’s uncomfortable for someone who can perceive the dooms of everyone and everything around them to be surprised,’ I said to her. My voice was weaker, little more than a whisper. Whatever was left of my insides was held together with Pandoral energies, but I fought to make sure she could hear me over the din of battle.

‘Fate is never surprised, Cade. How can you still not see that?’

I glanced back at the war being waged by the oh-so-gullible Lords Celestine and Devilish against the Pandoral. The swarm was thin now, mostly a person-shaped cloud of erratically buzzing insects that weren’t long for this world, or any other.

Eliva’ren didn’t hear me.

‘What?’ she asked. Thousands of images were appearing and disappearing all around her now in a wild dance of potentiality so strong that I could feel them tugging against the chaos of my own attunement.

‘I said, Fate can’t see itself.’

She stared back at me, sympathy for my impending doom giving way to resignation. ‘Your consciousness is coming apart, Cade. It won’t be long now.’ She reached out and touched me again, but this time there was nothing human connecting us. This was power against power, chaos against inevitability. Had I been given an entire lifetime to master my attunement, still I couldn’t have beaten her. Then again, I had no plans to do so.

‘Ever since—’ I coughed, which is a strange sensation when your throat and lungs are no longer made of flesh. ‘Ever since I met you, you’ve shown me how easily you can see the destinies and dooms of others.’ Pain assailed me; it was getting harder to make myself heard. ‘But. . . but it occurred to me that you’ve never spoken about your own destiny, Eliva. Not once.’

She looked irritated. ‘That’s not how it works. I can’t—’

‘You can’t see your own influence over the world because the power emanatesfromyou. You’re always in the eye of the storm. You can predict all the choices, the critical decisions that fork the destinies of others, but only the ones that don’t involve you, because you’re incapable of perceiving yourself aspartof another’s destiny.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What are you talking about, Cade?’

It was becoming hard to see her now. A haze was coming over me, my perceptions losing their grip on the Mortal realm. I smiled, or tried to. ‘I was never meant to be a hero. I was an angry young man who thought joining the Glorian Justiciars would make me righteous. When that failed, I became a mercenary, convinced that having fallen so far, I was absolved of ever having to care about anyone else.’ I couldn’t make out the shapes of my friends any more, only the swirl of colours in the eruptions of their magics. ‘Then I met a bunch of idiots and too late I discovered that my destiny didn’t belong to me any more.’

‘It’s a nice thought.’ I felt sure she was smiling back at me. ‘Hold onto that thought for as long as you ca—’

‘You’re still not getting it, Eliva. You’re not seeing how I’m beating you at this game of destinies because you’re not seeing yourself in mine. The Cade Ombra who hadn’t met you would’ve done precisely what your abilities are telling you I’m doing right now: negotiated a last-ditch pact with the Pandoral to make my body into a gate so he could get back into his plane of reality and force the Aurorals and Infernals to retreat. ButthisCade Ombra? The one who met you, who fell in. . . Well, let’s just say thatthatguy’s got an entirely different plan.’

‘Cade, what are you. . . ?’ Too late, she finally understood that because she couldn’t perceive her own destiny, she was also blind to how someone might make a choice entirely foreign to their own nature because of her. ‘Cade, it won’t work– you don’t understand how the Pandoral realm operates, never mind how to—’

Silently, I let the Pandoral know it was time. The paltry swarm of surviving insects containing what was left of his consciousness flew towards me, a gust of glittering wind. As my sentience finally lost its hold on the gate my body had become, I let it come apart in hundreds, maybe thousands of fragments of consciousness, each one finding a home inside one of the bugs as they flew into the gate inside me. I managed to utter one final message to the remarkable, dangerous and altogether entrancing woman who’d unwittingly brought us both to this moment. After all, when you’re the hero, it’s important to have the last word.

‘Stick around, sweetheart,’ I heard what had once been my mouth say. ‘I’m going to bring your son back.’

Chapter 47

Curtains of Possibility

I entered the Pandoral demesne unencumbered by expectation– or any sort of viable plan. All I’d known about this realm was that its denizens were reputed to be small in number, no more than three hundred beings who stepped onto other planes of existence as tiny bug-like creatures. I’d assumed that swarms of glittering-carapaced flying beetles just happened to be a hardier solution for the Mortal realm than, say, dried leaves or choleric butterflies. Certainly, the evidence suggested that each Pandoral split their individual sentience across a multitude of tiny physical forms, my clearest proof being that my own consciousness was currently divided between the hundred or so bugs that had survived the recent assault.

It was kind of cool, really, fluttering about as a hundred separate pieces of oneself. Gives you an entirely different perspective on solitude. As for the esoteric environment in which I’d found myself, it was like nothing I’d experienced before. I wasn’t entirely sure it even qualified as any sort of measurable physical space. I was passing through endless curtains made of shimmering strands of a silky fabric that reflected everything around it, only. . . No, thoseweren’treflections. The images were erupting from the strands themselves. Each one contained myriad unfolding events, like tiny stories inscribed along the threads of silk.

The images were incomprehensible at first, until I began to move through the tendril-like curtains and the events I was seeing became more familiar. People and places I recognised came into existence, lived and died a thousand thousand times in every way imaginable. I saw Corrigan, retired from his career as a mercenary wonderist, telling grand tales to a gaggle of grandchildren. Along the next strand, he was hurling bolts of Tempestoral fury at some sort of Infernal behemoth. In some, he was dying from Tempestoral sickness eating him up inside, despite being the age he’d been when I first met him.

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