Page 89 of The Malevolent Eight

The field around us began to change, grass and weeds withering away. Shadows appeared on the ground in the shapes of the six people– well, five and one kangaroo– I loved more than I’d ever thought possible. The shadow beneath my own feet wasn’t even human-shaped. I guessed it was going to be a bad death for me.

I forced a smile to my lips, which only made me more nauseous. I decided that Corrigan had been right, that if this was the end of my existence, I was going out with a better speech. ‘Hey, it’s okay. I got to live longer than I had any right to. I’ve cast spells from three different planes of existence– three different forms of magic– and witnessed wonders most people can only dream of. I got to fight alongside the best and most ridiculously screwed-up band of mages this world has and will ever see. And I got to make love with the most remarkable person on this plane of reality or any other. . .’

‘Cade,’ she repeated, a lament this time for all the potentialities collapsing between us.

‘. . . the Celestine of Rationality,’ I finished. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, you were great. That thing with the one leg up in the air and—But I guess I shouldn’t get into that with children present.’

Of all the inappropriate jokes I’ve told in my life, and there have been a great many of them, I really thought this one had landed flatter than any other. All of them were staring at me– Eliva’ren, Fidick, Galass, Shame, Aradeus. . . Even Corrigan looked mildly horrified, and he was bleeding out from a golden wound on his shoulder.

Then an odd kind of miracle happened.

‘Motherfucker,’ Temper said.

As that was the only word he knew, I couldn’t be sure he meant it the way it had come out, but the best jokes are those you don’t see coming.

Eliva’ren’s first laugh came out as a perfunctory chuckle, as if she felt politeness demanded recognition of the irreverent way we were facing our doom. Then that laughter became genuine, and because it turns out that jokes are their own kind of spell, with a power to heal, to change and to make us reconsider our fates that may well be limitless, inevitability began to collapse under its own weight, certainty cracked at the seams, the cold grey stone fragmented into probabilities which shed the dust and mortar to float above us as those most beautiful of living things, possibilities.

‘No!’ Fidick screamed, petulant in his outrage. To be fair, he was only eleven, and he’d experienced a lot of trauma in his young life. Also, he was evil to his rotten fucking core. ‘Kill them!’ he shouted to the Aurorals and Infernals now encircling us. ‘Kill them all!’

I’m not sure why the angelics and demoniacs appeared willing to follow the orders of a little boy, however beautiful– I suppose he was part of Tenebris’ cabal, so maybe they figured he was destined for big things.

Too bad destiny doesn’t always work out like you hope.

Shame overcame her exhaustion from maintaining my body’s cohesion long enough to grab Fidick by his pretty face and quickly mangle it. Alice shouted something in her own language. I didn’t recognise it, but presumably it meant, ‘Hey, you promised I could cut off his feet first!’ I’m fairly confident in my translation because even as Shame was holding Fidick up by his mutilated face, Alice had whipped out her sword and sliced him off at the ankles. Fidick screamed, but it wasn’t especially loud since he no longer had a mouth.

Not content with that, she began to—

You know what? Given our recent conversion to gallant heroism, maybe I shouldn’t describe the death and dismemberment of a beautiful young boy. Suffice it to say, he deserved it, and it went on for a while.

You never want to believe that brutal murder can be a balm for the soul, but I swear, when it was done, I saw something deep inside Shame unclench. It was as if Fidick had kept her in a binding spell all this time, and only now was she free of him– and free to perceive humanity as something more than unconscionably cruel. Aradeus took the despicable little prick’s remains from her and, with remarkable gentleness, set the pieces down in a dip in the field as if he intended to bury him, should we survive the next few minutes. I would have expected Shame to rage at this act of undeserved compassion for so foul an enemy as Fidick had proven himself. Instead, the former Angelic Emissary looked with curiosity at Aradeus, as if he were a puzzle that she was only just beginning to solve. I think that might be what it looks like when a person is starting to realise they’re in love.

Alas, the numbers of Aurorals and Infernals who’d decided to focus all their attention on killing us had swelled to more than a hundred. Eliva’ren shoved Hamun behind her even as she began unleashing her destiny-summoning abilities on a massive scale. The grass that had been dead only seconds ago was coming back to life, while behind us, the ruined fortress reassembled itself into what I suspect might have become a rather lovely palace had not one of the Valiants got in a lucky shot with a golden arrow.

Eliva’ren screamed. Her son screamed louder.

That had always been the problem with her abilities: although she was unimaginably powerful, her powers were still contained within a human body with all its innate frailties. She’d always been clever about when and how to show herself, always preparing in advance to ensure she couldn’t be taken unawares. She’d never before exposed herself to this many opponents.

‘No!’ I shouted, fighting against my own weakness to draw on my Pandoral attunement. It was too late, though. If that chaotic realm still existed, it was completely cut off from this one. I was, for the first time since I was a teenager, just a regular human being without any magic at all.

Eliva’ren fell to her knees and Hamun, brave boy, tried to shield her with his own body. You’d think the gods-damned Angelic Valiants would’ve been moved by such righteous bravery in a child, but they just kept coming, content to murder innocents alongside the same Infernals they’d come to this plane of reality to exterminate.

Corrigan did his best, managing a trickle of Tempestoral magic that was just about enough to give the same Valiant who’d shot Eliva’ren a nasty burn on his cheek. Alice and Aradeus were both caught in Infernal man-catchers, the long poles with spiked levers that wrap around the victim’s neck, digging into their throats the more they try to resist. Shame was unconscious, having wasted the last of her strength on me. Well, also on murdering Fidick, but you can’t blame her for that. Galass, usually loath to unleash her blood magic on living beings, was so weakened by helping Shame to keep me alive that she barely managed to bring a pink blush to the cheeks of the enemies she was trying to exsanguinate.

‘Sorry, buddy,’ Tenebris said, approaching the ring of soldiers surrounding us. ‘I would’ve tried to warn you off, but you never did listen to reason. . . Or Rationality.’

Void take me, how many deaths will I need to suffer to live that one down? The answer turned out to be at least one more.

Tenebris was accompanied by his two fellow diabolics, a pair of Glorians who I guessed were also part of his cabal, and a brand new convert to his cause.

‘Oh, he listens once in a while,’ said the Celestine of Rationality in a rather naughty tone of voice. I suppose with both the Celestines of Chastity and Humility dead, she could afford to be a little risqué. ‘But he never did learn to heed what he hears.’

I saw something then, just a strange jerking motion in the corner of my eye. I knew it might be nothing, but some small part of me, the part that trusts in the perversity of the universe and the unexpected redeeming power of unusual friendships, decided to go out believing that I was due for a second miracle.

‘What did you say?’ the Celestine asked, stepping through the soldiers, both Auroral and Infernal, who made way for her. ‘Come, Cade. There’s something tragically disappointing in the only Mortal I’ve ever taken to my bed making his last words a vulgar insult.’

‘Just one word,’ I corrected her, then I looked to Corrigan, who was only barely conscious, but not even impending death could keep the grin from his face as we said together, louder and prouder than any battle cry, ‘Motherfucker!’

And because the universe is just as perfectly perverse and wondrously insane as I’ve always believed, that’s when the kangaroo exploded.

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