Page 42 of The Malevolent Eight

‘Okay, Cadey boy,’ said Lord Whimsy. His chuckle told me he’d been expecting my ultimatum all along, and meant to use the proof that they did have the actual intelligence we needed on the Spellslinger’s mysterious employer to further tantalise us into doing whatever they wanted. ‘We’ll give you a little taste for free. Call it a gesture of good faith.’

Whimsy waved his claws as if he were summoning a waiter at a restaurant. The analogy turned out to be at least somewhat apt when part of the outer wall dissolved behind us and in walked the prick who’d sworn up and down to me that he hadn’t known anything about the so-called Apocalypse Eight, even after we’d freed him from a secret Auroral prison and certain torture.

‘You know something, Tenebris?’ I asked. ‘You’re starting to make me question your integrity.’

The diabolic grinned. ‘It’s like I told you, old buddy. I’m a patriot. Gotta think of the bigger picture.’ He sauntered up to us, bowed to his superiors. ‘With your permission, my Lords?’

From atop their thrones, the thirteen Devilish nodded their assent, none of them apparently noticing the note of mockery in Tenebris’ words.

The diabolic turned to me and stroking the curve of one horn, said, ‘So, you want to know about the Spellslinger? You want the missing piece of the puzzle the Lords Celestine are either too clueless to have found out or just decided to keep from you? Well, gather round, kiddies. Fry yourself up some leeches and eyeballs, because Uncle Tenebris has a story to tell you. Oh, and the best part, Cade, old buddy? All this mess you’re trying to prevent? Turns out it’s all your fault.’

Chapter 21

Perspective

‘The problem with you Mortals,’ Tenebris began, ‘other than the fact that you’re dumb as cows and twice as graceless, of course, is that you lack perspective. It’s not that your lives are any shorter than ours. The average demoniac– like the crazy chick over there playing dress-up as a Glorian Justiciar– they rarely make it past sixty or so. Even a diabolic like me packs it in before we hit a century. The Aurorals, now, they live for centuries, millennia, sometimes. And yet they’re just as stupid as you are, Cade. You know why?’

There’s really nothing quite like a Diabolic Contractualist who only hours before ripped whatever fraying threads of friendship there were between you launching into a lecture about. . . whatever the hells Tenebris intended lecturing me about. I kept my mouth shut, though, and motioned for the others to stay quiet as well. My former agent wanted to rub my face in something and the best way to get him to say more than he intended was to let him revel in his cleverness.

Which he surely fucking did.

‘That’s right,’ Tenebris went on, taking my silence as acquiescence, ‘Mortals and Aurorals? You both lack perspective. You’re so obsessed with the supposed righteousness of your actions that you forget everyone else thinks they’re righteous, too. It’s all insult and injury with you people, feuds and vendettas and—

‘Oh, you think we Infernals are just as bad?’

I swear I hadn’t said a word, though Imayhave had a tell-tale look of nausea on my face.

‘Well, that’s just more proof of how clueless you are, pal,’ he went on. ‘We Infernals are always thinking about the big picture, and we do that better than anyone else because we got the one thing the rest of you don’t.

‘Perspective.

‘For instance, capturing a refugee wonderist from another plane of reality and then sticking her in some prison to experiment on her without her consent? Short-sighted, pal. Idiotic.They could’ve offered her a deal, promised to send her back to her own realm with enough power to make herself Empress or Mage Sovereign or whatever the hell they call it where she’s from. But no, instead they torture her, figuring once they’ve learned what they can from her crazy tattooed sigil magic, they’ll just execute her. It’s like these guys just wipe from their collective memories all the times someone’s escaped from them in the past.

‘Now, those Glorian Justiciars and Ardentors discovering said refugee is also pregnant and hiding that fact from the Lords Celestine andstillexperimenting, trying to use the unborn child’s innate potential for wonderism to alter the mother’s attunement to the Pandoral realm? I mean, seriously. . . we Infernals may hatch from eggs but even I could tell you how fucked-up that move was. Cruelty for cruelty’s sake is one thing, but cruelty for stupid’s sake? That’s another thing entirely.’

And I could’ve told him that all cruelty is inherently idiotic and this included the hours the Lords Devilish had wasted torturing us. I had the feeling he already shared my assessment.

‘So, yeah, like you’ve probably already guessed,’ he continued, placing the back of one hand over the palm of the other as he mimed the rocking of an infant in his arms, ‘when the baby’s attunement took hold, your genius Gloran Justiciar pals figured they could channel all those crazy Pandoral energies through the mother– they also figured they’d be able to hand the Lords Celestine an unstoppable arsenal of chaos magic with which to win the impending war against my side. Too bad they accidentally collapsed the metaphysical foundations propping up the entire Pandoral realm in the process. Suddenly, it wasn’t such a nice place for the three hundred or so sentient beings occupying it. This was a few years back, of course. The Pandorals managed to attune those seven morons up north– not your morons, you understand; I mean the Seven Brothers. Can’t believe those bug-faced idiots actually thought they could get away with using the brothers as a gateway for them to take over the Mortal realm,’ Tenebris continued, rolling his eyes in amusement, ‘but hey,perspective,you know? They lack it, we got it. Anyhoo, I put together the scheme that not only locked the Pandorals– I call them “Pandas”– on the other side, but also refocused those gates so that my bosses and the Lords Celestine could finally come across and fulfil the promise of the Great Crusade.’

I glanced over at Shame, who rarely displayed anything resembling human emotion. Her expression hadn’t changed all the while she was being stuffed into the Infernal machine grinding her flesh and bones to paste. Now, however, humiliation and misery were etching themselves across her features.

‘Son of a bitch,’ I swore quietly, remembering the smug air of righteousness on Fidick’s perversely innocent face as he’d forced Shame to do his bidding so the Celestines and Devilish could invade our realm, leaving her emotionally and spiritually shattered. ‘One of these days, I swear I’m going to put you in the ground,’ I muttered, a promise to myself, and Shame.

‘What’s that, Cadey-boy?’ Tenebris asked, then, mistaking my meaning, whispered, ‘Yeah, I know, I think this whole “Great Crusade” thing is pretty dumb, too. But someone’s got to put the smackdown on the Lords Celestine once and for all, so it might as well be my team.’

He glanced back at his bosses and again I noted he wasn’t exactly in awe of them; in fact it seemed to me he was barely aware of their presence. ‘As for this Spellslinger chick? Well, there’s a reason the Glorians kept what they’d done to her a secret from their own bosses. Instead of delivering a walking Auroral arsenal of chaos magic, those dumb fucking Ardentors turned her into the most dangerous Mortal ever to walk this realm– or any other. That destiny hoodoo of hers? It doesn’t have any limits that any of us can find. One person, an army, an avocado or an entire civilisation, she can bring forth one of their three so-called “dooms” at the drop of a hat.’

And thatconfirmed my worst suspicions about Eliva’ren. Most magic doesn’t scale up that well. Corrigan can put more and more of himself into a Tempestoral spell, but there’s only so much lightning or fire or mayhem he can pull from that realm without blowing himself up. Galass can exsanguinate the blood from an entire division of soldiers if she’s willing to lose her mind and soul, but there’s still a limit to her abilities. So a wonderist whose spells can encompass an entire realm? That’s a catastrophe just waiting to happen.

‘Oh, and she’s seriously pissed off,’ Tenebris added.

Yeah, no shit, ‘old buddy’.

The diabolic shook his head at me like this was somehow all my fault. ‘Since what you wonderists call an “attunement” is really just a pattern of potential breaches between the realm you’re born in and another plane of reality whose physical laws work differently, when the Glorian Ardentors forcibly attuned the Spellslinger’s unborn child to the Pandoral realm—’

I guess I must’ve lost my cool for a moment, because I felt an Infernal quieting spell oozing inside my mouth, cutting off my ability to speak.

‘Yeah, you just keep swearing your head off, Cadey,’ Tenebris said dismissively. ‘Outrage fixes everything, am I right?’

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