Page 61 of The Malevolent Eight

‘Almost finished,’ Direlock said.

‘Our task is also complete,’ said the florinist who, after a nod from the preposterously facially-haired luminist, handed the mask to the cosmist.

Tenebris rubbed his hands together. ‘How long before you can track down the attuned?’ he asked the cosmist.

She– I was assuming that from the curves of her otherwise nebulous physique that mostly looked like peering into an endless void lit by tiny sparkling stars– spoke with a voice so weary it reminded me that most cosmists die by their own hands before they hit thirty. There’s something about being constantly aware of the vastness of space and how small and irrelevant life is compared to the void. ‘It depends on how far away they are, and if there’s more than one.’

‘More than one?’ I asked Tenebris. ‘I thought you said these guys were after the Pandoral? Only one of them came through the gate inside the Seven Brothers before we destroyed them.’

‘The Pandoral itself is far too dangerous to attack head-on,’ the felinist informed me. The cat-eared woman kept staring at Temper, hopping around on the roof of the temple, looking like she badly wanted to hiss at him. ‘It is that which the Pandoralseekswhich we must find and imprison.’

I was starting to get a bad feeling about this, but I’d been getting bad feelings about everything lately.

That’ll teach me never to ignore a bad feeling again.

‘The Pandoral’s intention is to create another gate between the Mortal plane and their own,’ said the cosmist. I wished she’d let someone else give the explanations. Walking voids always sound disturbingly eerie when they talk. Maybe it’s all those echoes. ‘As with the Seven Brothers whom you faced months ago, the creation of a gate can only be accomplished using a Mortal wonderist tethered to this realm, yet attuned to theirs.’

Oh, okay. That explained the bad feeling. I should’ve remembered that the most common cause of constant low-level paranoia is over-exposure to being screwed by those pretending to be your allies.

‘Tenebris?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, Cade?’

‘You remember that Ardentor who delivered the Glorian Banner to you?’

‘Sure. The guy with the stupid name. Promiscuity? Pornography?’

‘Propriety,’ I corrected him. ‘You remember how you let slip that something about him troubled you?’

‘I didn’t let anything “slip”,’ Tenebris seethed. He never likes being caught out. ‘I told you, it was how happy the moron was acting, what with his insane conspiracy theories.’

I was sweating now. ‘Yeah. Only, now I’m thinking maybe what bothered you about him wasn’t his mood but that maybe his whole theory about there being a secret conspiracy within the Aurorals to topple the Lords Celestine and how one of them was secretly working with the Infernals wasn’t as crazy as I initially presumed it was.’

Tenebris smirked– that was the truth he couldn’t hide– before saying, ‘You getting paranoid in your old age, Cade?’

Shit.

When a Diabolic Contractualist accuses you of paranoia, that’s when you know without a shadow of a doubt you’ve been well and truly conned into signing your own death warrant.

The cosmist was now wearing the mask made from the Glorian Banner. I could already see twin beams of light sweeping along the ground as she accustomed herself to the otherworldly sight it gave her.

‘Corrigan?’ I said quietly.

He broke off from whatever argument he was having with Alice about uniforms and how much better ‘The Malevolent Seven’ was as a team name than ‘The Apocalypse Eight’.

‘Yeah, Cade?’

‘I need you to do something for me right now, and when I sayfor me, I mean, for the entire Mortal realm, and when I sayright now, I mean, don’t ask any questions and just do it, okay?’

He grinned. ‘You mean because this is a job for the greatest hero of all time, which just happens to be me?’

‘Exactly.’

Tempestoral lightning began swirling around his hands. He’d guessed what I needed him to do. ‘Which one of these fucks do you want me to obliterate?’

‘Me,’ I replied. ‘Corrigan, I need you to blast me out of existenceright fucking now.’

‘Whoa,’ Tenebris said, putting up his hands, ‘settle down, Cade. Whatever silly notions are going through that head of yours, I promise I can explain everyth—’

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