Page 62 of The Malevolent Eight

‘Now!’ I shouted at Corrigan. ‘Blast meright this fucking second!’

To people like us, wonderist war mages who’ve seen more than our share of battles and bloodshed, there’s an unspoken understanding that some day you’re going to find yourselves in an unwinnable scenario in which death is preferable to the alternative. I’d always figured that Corrigan, whose spells are the very definition of destructive magic, would be the one person I could trust to obliterate me instantly when the time came.

Instead, he was staring at me, wide-eyed and helpless as a boy about to get into his first schoolyard fight and discovering he can’t get his fists up. ‘I’m. . . Cade, I. . . I can’t—’

You might be wondering why I didn’t explain to them that Tenebris had screwed us, that everything he’d told us until now had been absolutely true and yet had obscured what was really going on. But there wasn’t time for explanations any more than I had time for recriminations over the secret I’d kept from them– the secret not even Tenebris had guessed, and which was about to bring all his plans to fruition far sooner than he’d expected. Right now, that missing piece in his knowledge was the only thing giving us this last chance to prevent his scheme from unfolding.

‘Galass, bleed me to death–right now– do it!’ I shouted, and when she too hesitated, I spun round to Alice. ‘Whip-sword,’ I implored, ‘please–now. Slice me to pieces before it’s too late! Fuck it, Temper,rip my damned throat out!’

Maybe this is the problem with friendships. Maybe this is why heroes always go it alone in the end. The six beings I was closer to than I’d ever imagined possible were about to let the Mortal realm fall because none of them could do what they must surely have sensed by now was vitally necessary.

‘Never figured you for the type to lose his mind so young, Cade,’ Tenebris said. ‘Calm down– nobody’s pulling a fast one on you.’ He gestured to the cosmist wearing the mask made from the Auroral Banner. ‘It’s just like I said, we’re trying to find the Mortal wonderist attuned to the. . . to—’ The grin that came to his angular features was far more diabolical than I’d ever seen on his face before. ‘Oh, man. This issosweet!’

‘It’s me, you idiots!’ I shouted at my friends. ‘I’mthe fucking Pandoral wonderist they’re looking for!’ I turned to Corrigan. ‘Do you get it yet, you big idiot? Blast me now– before it’s too—’

At long last, he brought up his hands and finally, I could almost see the breaches manifesting between this world and the Tempestoral plane. If he’d cast the spell just a split-second sooner, I would have been dead, fried to a crisp, nothing but ashes and whatever failure and self-loathing turns into after you die. And the Mortal realm would have been safe. Well, safer.

Alas, Corrigan was too late.

The scrawny wonderist with the long greasy hair had already thrown the strips of Auroral Banner into the air so some perverse incarcerationist magic could wrap them around my wrists, binding me securely. His portalist companion had taken one of the keys from her bandolier and opened the ground beneath my feet. I had time to look down at a grassy expanse somewhere far from where my friends could ever get to me in time.

I fell, and along with me came the ‘Apocalypse Eight’– I still think it’s a fucking stupid name– who were indeed secretly working for Tenebris. Unfortunately, Tenebris was also working with the very enemy the Lords Devilish and Lords Celestine were too afraid to fight themselves.

That’s how, in less time than it took to say, ‘Well, Cade, guess you shouldn’t have kept your attunement a secret from your best friends because maybe they’d’ve been prepared for this,’ I found myself in a dank prison, surrounded by eight uniformed wonderists and a being whose entire body was made up of a swarm of gleaming insects. Tenebris had handed the Pandoral the last missing piece needed to create a gate between my world and his own, so all that was left now was to torture me until I was so broken and desperate, I’d be unable to resist my attunement being twisted to transform me into a living gate leading to a realm of pure chaos. . .

. . . but since torture’s kind of a drag and we’ve already been through all that, let me tell you about how I brought a kangaroo from another plane of reality into this one and then accidentally turned him into a vampire.

Chapter 34

The Kangaroo

The most common cause of death among wonderists is not, as you might expect, violent confrontation with competing wonderists. It’s not being burned at the stake by enraged mobs either, although that’s not entirely uncommon. Cleverly orchestrated executions by military leaders, religious zealots and, of course, Glorian Justiciars are frequently responsible for the head of a would-be mage decorating the top of a pole, but even those account for only a fraction of the wonderist corpses out there.

No, the most pervasive cause of death for a wonderist is, quite simply, blowing themselves up. Well, it’s not always an explosion;implosions are actually more common. Sometimes it’s burning up your own internal organs or causing one or both of your lungs to accidentally appear six feet outside your body. You’d be surprised how often that happens. Infernalists often drive themselves insane without even realising it. Cosmists cover their bodies in a thin layer of the void of space, and if they get the dimensions wrong by so much as a hair’s breadth, they get swallowed up by that same void. Blind luminists are incredibly common, but they’re still rather funny to watch because their magic makes them think they’re still seeing the world exactly as they want it to be. Even totemists manage to kill themselves by accident, although don’t ask me how. Maybe they become so convinced they’re carnivorous beasts that they eat themselves to death?

Basically, every form of magic is, first and foremost, a death trap waiting to consume you two seconds after your particular attunement kicks in. If you’re lucky and you happen to come from a long line of wonderists, you might have some training and– even better– someone to notice the early signs of an attunement. And not all attunements are equally lethal. Before someone attuned to the Auroral plane can manifest any actual abilities, they first have to devote years of their lives to training and prayer to the Lords Celestine, who then awaken those abilities as ‘blessings’. That’s what the Lords Celestine claim, anyway.

But yeah, all those legendary farm boys and milkmaids living in remote villages who suddenly discover they’re incredibly powerful mages? It’s a myth. Those poor fools pretty much always obliterate themselves the first time they feel that mystical itch awaken inside their minds.

The only chance any emerging wonderist has at survival is how quickly they can figure out which plane they’re attuned to, and how smart they are about learning– either from books or other wonderists– how to focus and control the unnatural physical laws of the planes they’re breaching when they activate their magic. It’s these various focusing techniques that become what we commonly refer to as ‘spells’.

Simple, right?

Or itwouldbe simple if you weren’t the type of idiot who, when given the one chance in a lifetime to access the Empyrean Physio-Thaumaturgical Device of Attunal Transmutation, decides not to attune himself to a cool, easily understood plane of reality like, say, the Fortunal realm, or even the Tempestoral, but instead has an attack of accidental heroism and attunes himself to the one plane of reality that might supply enough power to prevent an endless war from engulfing the Mortal realm.

That’swhy I’d attuned myself to the Pandoral realm: to give us an ace in the hole against the Lords Devilish and Lords Celestine.

Logical, right? Some might even say admirable.

What makes Pandoral magic so effective as a potential weapon against Devilish and Celestines alike is that neither they nor anyone else know how its magic operates, which makes it virtually impossible to counter. The problem was that I’d not only given myself an attunement which was, if you’ve been paying attention, both highly likely to lead to my own precipitous demise and for which there were neither books nor experts to guide me in how to use it safely.

Experimenting with booze is unwise. It’s even riskier with drugs; with sex, almost always a good idea. Experimenting with a form of magic you don’t understand is generally considered suicidal.

So I’d approached the problem scientifically. First, thanks to my experience with both Auroral and Infernal spells, to say nothing of my extensive studies of various forms of wonderism under the tutelage of Hazidan Rosh, I’d developed a sensitivity to magic, which basically meant that if I was, say, thinking a dirty thought or getting overly emotional and my attunement was threatening to open a breach to the Pandoral realm, I was able to cut it off quickly. My second step was to figure out what spells Icouldcast, which is where I got into trouble.

The only Pandoral wonderists I’d ever met were the Seven Brothers. I’d seen them use a form of telepathic communication, which I presumed worked only between other Pandoralists (or possibly only blood relatives, although I’ll admit that was less likely). Also, I’d seen them warp reality in ways that were entirely destructive. Although I agreed it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to attempt, I had taken the risk during my encounter with the Spellslinger outside Tenebris’ restaurant and, other than having utterly failed to stop her, I was nonetheless proud of the unmaking spell I’d conjured. The third type of spell I’d seen the Seven Brothers use was the ability to reshape animals into semi-human servants.

Bet you’re seeing where this is going, right?

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