Page 77 of The Malevolent Eight

I glanced over at Galass, who, being younger and more idealistic than the rest of us, was less prone to fatalism. She met my gaze but said nothing. Even her hair was hanging limp and dull.

‘Give me the lay of the land,’ I told them anyway.

‘Well, Cade,’ Corrigan began, the tone of his voice suggesting he was poised to blame all this on me, ‘after you got taken by the Arsehole Eight—How are they, by the way?’

‘Corpses, mostly.’

‘Too bad. I was thinking of recruiting one of them for your spot on the team after you’re dead.’

‘I think the luminist might’ve survived. Maybe you could invite him?’

‘Better than a fuckingpandoralist!’ Corrigan swatted the back of my head hard enough to send me reeling towards the window, where I cracked my skull on the wooden frame– ‘brilliant move, by the way. Fucking genius. You could’ve chosenanyattunement you wanted and you picked the one that turns you into a walking catastrophe waiting to explode? Fucking well done.’

‘I figured we might need an edge when fighting the Aurorals and Infernals,’ I said, rubbing my forehead. ‘Pandoral magic is the only kind that frightens them—’

Corrigan smacked me a second time, leaving me seriously dazed. ‘That’s because, unlike you, they’re smart enough to know it’s nothing but a disaster waiting to happen.’ He jerked a thumb towards the bed. ‘Especially after they turnedherinto a living, breathing agent of chaos.’

‘Well, sure, in hindsight I suppose a different attunement might’ve worked out better. Maybe florinist. I’ve always wanted to learn gardening. But since I have it on good authority you can’t alter your destiny, how about filling me in on the rest of it. What happened with Tenebris?’

Corrigan laughed. ‘After you were taken and he’d explained this cabal of disaffected mid-level Infernals and Aurorals he’d put together to overthrow the Lords Devilish and Lords Celestine, your former agent tried to negotiate a pact with us! Can you believe it? That diabolic little prick offered each of us more than we could ever have hoped for.’

‘And?’

‘What?’

‘Did you take the deal?’

He crossed his arms over his chest defensively. ‘Well, Aradeus looked like he might give in, but naturally, I refused.’

The rat mage looked confused. ‘I fear your memory may be failing you, Brother Corrigan, as I distinctly recall you asking only that in addition to the other terms of the pact they would. . .’ Aradeus pointed to Corrigan’s groin, then placed his hands rather close together before widening them.

‘Lies!’ Corrigan bellowed. ‘Foul calumny—!’

‘That is exactly what happened,’ Alice confirmed.

‘He was rather insistent,’ Shame added, then, because she has neither a sense of propriety nor etiquette, lifted her skirt to manifest the appendage in question along with the proposed alterations.

Corrigan became agitated. ‘It was a ruse, you idiots, I was stalling for time. And it worked, too!’ He turned back to me. ‘While I cunningly stalled the diabolic, Aradeus sent a message through some of his rat brethren to that Ardentor twat we duped into stealing the Glorian banner. He found an angelic to commune with the Lords Celestine, who immediately mobilised their forces. Naturally, spies for the Lords Devilish got wind of what was happening and immediately senttheirforces, which. . . Well, you can guess the rest.’ He gestured through the open window to the vivid golden and crimson fiery flourishes currently devouring the sky even before their avatars on the ground could fight over who got to attack the Pandoral first.

All of which plays right into the hands of Tenebris and his cabal, I realised, though I didn’t mention that to the others. When you’re already doomed, being told you also got played doesn’t exactly inspire the heroic urge for one last fight.

‘It’s madness, Cade,’ Galass said, looking flummoxed by Corrigan’s glib recounting of what my inopportune kidnapping had sparked. ‘Once those two armies reach the Pandoral, it’s going to be absolute chaos.’

‘Destiny, actually,’ Eliva’ren corrected her. She rose from the bed, both more elegant in her nudity and considerably less troubled by the stares of three human wonderists, an angelic, a demoniac and a vampiric kangaroo than I was. Aradeus was naturally averting his gaze. Eliva left last night’s dress on the floor and instead opened her pack to retrieve her everyday clothes, pulling on the tan trousers and sliding her shirt over her head before tightening her belt. ‘That’s what no one understood about the Pandoral realm before. It’s not just a place where the physical laws produce chaos; they produce both chaosanddestiny.’

‘But those two things are opposites, aren’t they?’ Galass asked.

One of the bands of metallic sigils tattooed onto Eliva’ren’s right forearm glimmered and tiny sparks of light began to dance in front of her, each one moving in wild, incomprehensible patterns. ‘Chaos creates unpredictability. Unpredictability makes it impossible for us to control what follows– where each event or decision will lead. This prevents sentient beings, even those as powerful as the Celestines or the Devilish, from being able to truly direct the course of history.’ Some of the manic sparks collided, altering their courses, until, gradually, their paths began to coalesce. ‘No individual action or choice stands alone: they interact with other events, becoming affected by them. So over time, no matter how chaotic or unpredictable the choices, they inevitably form a pattern together. Order cannot prevent chaos, yet out of chaos always comes order.’

The sparks had now become a cosmos in miniature, orbiting around one another in mesmerising and oddly beautiful ways. Kind of like the woman who’d conjured them.

‘That’s. . .’ I hesitated, trying to wrap my head around the concept. ‘That’s how your magic works, how you “bring forth” someone’s destiny. You accelerate the chaos around them. You don’t affect the decisions or events themselves, but instead cause the collisions between those decisions and events to intersect sooner?’

Eliva’ren slid her waistcoat on, then glanced at the dress she’d worn last night as if contemplating whether to keep it. I didn’t need to predict the interactions of chaotic events to know she was going to leave it there on the floor. She came to stand before me, making me feel oddly vulnerable being naked in front of her like that. She sensed my discomfort, because she smiled and kissed me for what I presumed would be the last time. ‘I don’t get to decide anyone’s destiny, not really,’ she said, then stood up on her tiptoes and whispered in my ear, ‘But I’m sorry all the same, Cade Ombra.’

She started for the door, but before she got there Corrigan said, ‘Umm. . . hello? Aren’t we going to kill her now?’

‘No,’ I replied.

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