Page 82 of The Malevolent Eight

Tridents.I tell you, some beings have no shame.

‘I’m guessing you still share sentience with the rest of your swarm,’ I said to my transmogrified bug delegate, ‘so I don’t have to have this conversation ten thousand times. You’re about to get destroyed, and once that happens, the Pandoral realm will have no guardians. I’ll be forced into becoming a gate to your realm, and whatever’s left of what you call a people will also be destroyed. Basically, you’re fucked.’

‘So are you,’ the bug-being said nonchalantly. However, he uncrossed and crossed his arms defiantly, which is always a sign of anxiety.

‘So, that’s one thing you and I have in common. The other is that we both hate the Lords Celestine and the Lords Devilish. Unfortunately, they’re far, far stronger than you or I will ever be.’

‘You, perhaps,’ said the bug-being, uncrossing his arms, then not sure what to do with his hands. ‘We, however, are eternal. We are—’

I cut him off by reconfiguring my spell and removing his mouth. Honestly, I don’t like screwing with the bodies or free will of others, but I didn’t have time for this nonsense. ‘Listen, arsehole, this is a simple proposition. You’re on the verge of extinction. My people? Humans? We’ll survive. I mean, sure, our lives will be utter shit, but we’re adaptable like that. Practically unkillable– like cockroaches, which are insects in the Mortal realm that, unlike you guys, aren’t about to be exterminated. So, here’s my deal. You’re going to do exactly what I ask, which is going to suck worse than almost anything you can imagine– the “almost” in this case being the alternative, which, I shouldn’t have to remind you, is obliteration. In return, if we’re both very, very lucky, at the end of this there’ll still be a Pandoral realm, it won’t be collapsing in on itself, and the Infernals and Aurorals will get their noses figuratively broken.’

Literally broken, too, if I have anything to say about it.

‘Now,’ I continued, pointing to the bug-being’s face, ‘I’m not wasting another spell giving you your mouth back, so just nod if we’ve got a deal. And before you concoct any thoughts of betraying me’– I drew on the Pandoral energies being unleashed by the swarm to cause the air around me to warp and shimmer, which is not as impressive as an Auroral glow, but it got the point across– ‘I might not be able to defeat your boss or your swarm or whatever the hell you are, but I can still mess with the forces you need to draw on to fight back against the Aurorals and Infernals until you’re wiped out. With that in mind, do we have a deal?”

I guess the rest of the swarm were getting pretty beaten up, because my newfound bug-faced ally didn’t hesitate before nodding.

‘Good,’ I said, then, because I’m actually a nicer guy than I might make myself sound sometimes, I used up some of the Pandoral energies I’d summoned to return him to his natural form. He flew back to rejoin his swarm, and I caught a subtle shift in the massive head of the Pandoral as he too nodded his agreement.

I looked back at Corrigan and gave the signal. Once the Aurorals and Infernals figured out what I was attempting, all hell would break loose. My friends would have to protect me from more attacks than any gang of misfit wonderists could long hope to repel. Meanwhile, I’d have my own battle on my hands.

Closing my eyes briefly, I drove my hands into the air in front of me, using my attunement to form a breach between this realm and the source of my abilities. Once it opened, I took hold of it and pulled it into me.

Okay, Cade,I told myself in the way self-centred morons always hesitate before doing what they know can’t be avoided any longer,let’s be honest. Your time on this plane of existence hasn’t contributed much to humanity. You were a smug, self-righteous bastard when you joined the Glorian Justiciars and a whiny, self-righteous prick when you became a mercenary war mage. Now six of the bravest lunatics this misbegotten universe ever spawned are throwing away their lives so you can do this one thing that’s probably not going to work because. . .

Okay, I admitted to myself,it turns out I am pretty shitty at pep talks. Maybe let Aradeus or Galass give the speeches from now on.

I don’t know why, but that thought brought a smile to my lips– maybe the last I would ever have to offer this unfortunate little world of my birth. But that smile also reminded me that whatever villain I’d been in life, in death, I was damn well going out a hero.

Right, I thought, expanding the breach within my chest,time to unleash a little chaos.

Chapter 46

Blind Spots

I hadn’t made much of a study of pandoralist magic in the six months since I’d foolishly attuned myself to that realm of pure chaos rather than something less suicidal. Truth be told, I’d hoped I’d never need to draw on it, other than to one day scare the shit out of the Lords Devilish and Lords Celestine, who understood and feared its cataclysmic potential far better than I did. Oh, I’d intuited a few of the esoteric mechanics involved, most of which involved warping living beings and physical space into alternate variations of what nature had intended. In practical terms, this meant I was mostly good for tearing stuff apart in disturbing and grotesque ways. The one time I’d attempted something more sophisticated, I’d found myself in a punch-up with a seven-foot-tall not-quite-rabbit creature from another plane of existence that I’d accidentally turned into a vampire– which don’t even exist on the Mortal realm any more. Well, they do now, thanks to me.

All of this made the endeavour on which I’d gambled all our lives especially precarious. I had to transform my body into a living gate between our world and the Pandoral realm, and I absolutely, unquestionably had to get it right on the first try. After that? Well, after that probably wasn’t going to matter because she wasn’t going to let me get that far.

‘I warned you it would come to this,’ Eliva’ren said, ‘that it would come down to the two of us.’

I hadn’t planned on opening my eyes, but the sadness in her voice took me by surprise. I’d expected a coldness between us as we reverted to the enemies our respective destinies had intended us to be before our spectacularly odd ‘date’. Business was business, after all, and the Spellslinger’s left little room for sentiment.

‘Why did you have to be who you are?’ Eliva’ren asked, tears filling her eyes. She wasn’t even trying to hide the pain, which in turn, tore at my own emotional defences. ‘Why couldn’t you have been a proper Glorian Justiciar who didn’t care about anything but following Divine Will? Or a narcissistic Infernalist who would have walked away from this mess the first time I showed you what I could do to you and your friends?’

I’m no expert on affairs of the heart, but it seems to me that it’s pretty easy to fool yourself into believing you’re in love when everything else around you is falling apart. Even now, the sight of her, the ache of her voice. . . It was as if the colour of her skin, the shape of her eyes, the curve of her lips, even when she frowned, were all part of a language that I had never before spoken yet had known for ever. When I’d left the Justiciars and the Auroral song had been stripped from me, I’d taken it for granted that for the rest of my life there would be a hole inside me that nothing else could fill. Some observers– cynical pricks, I assume– might suggest a couple of attempts at killing one another followed by an– admittedly excellent– first date hardly qualified as a replacement for the majesty of the Auroral Song, but I was only just beginning to learn the terrible, heart-rending, reckless, wondrous truth: love really is all it’s cracked up to be.

Now that love was threatening to tear me apart faster than the Pandoral energies currently transforming my flesh and bones into a portal. The experience was exactly as unpleasant as it sounds, but there’s something to be said for mercenary work: I’d grown accustomed to finishing the jobs I’d agreed to take on, even the stupid ones.

‘Who would you have preferred me to be?’ I managed to say, expanding the Pandoral rift inside me. It was getting harder to speak and my consciousness was threatening to sever itself from my physical body.

Eliva’ren bridged the distance between us. She was drawing on her own bizarre esoteric energies, cloaking herself in the destiny magic that would enable her to hasten the doom she had, in her way, tried to keep me from. Her hand on my cheek, the warmth of her fingertips and the rawhumanityof her touch, helped me hold on. ‘I wanted you to be a knight without resolve,’ she replied. ‘I would have had you be a courtier who swept me off my feet and into his bed, only to abandon me at daybreak without a second thought. A priest who gave rousing sermons in the morn, only to give in to temptation at night.’ Now it was she who closed her eyes as if to squeeze away the tears. ‘I wish you’d been someone who could’ve beaten me,’ she whispered.

All around us, the war raged, between four different sides now. The Celestines and Infernals were trying to direct most of their efforts against the Pandoral, but many of their troops couldn’t wait and were tearing into their ancient enemies, even as their comrades fell wherever the Pandoral’s gigantic fists struck. My friends were beleaguered too, fending off the attacks Tenebris directed at me– having known me a while, he wasn’t taking any chances despite his confidence in my inevitable defeat.

‘It’s over,’ Eliva’ren told me. ‘Everything you’ve done has followed the same path to this same doom. Why can’t you see that?’

I shrugged, or tried to. I wasn’t sure how much of what lay beneath my skin was actually muscle and bone any more. ‘I guess I’ve always prided myself on being unpredictable.’

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