The Crippled God

is surrender. Where is the battlefield? In the heart of despair. How is victory won? It lies within reach. All you need do is choose to recognize it. Failing that, you can always cheat. Which is what I did.

How did I defeat death?

By taking its throne.

And now the blood of a dying god had gifted him with mortal flesh — with a return to mortality. Unexpected. Possibly unwelcome. Potentially … fatal. But then, who has a choice in these matters?

Ah, yes, I did.

A rumble of laughter from deep in his chest followed the thought. He resumed his climb.

Ahead was a broad fissure cutting diagonally across his path. He would have to jump it. Dangerous and undignified. His moment of humour fell away.

He could sense the nearby unleashing of Telas — could see how the air around the Spire was grey with smoke, and the stench of burnt flesh swept over him on an errant gust of wind from inland. This is not by the hand of an Imass. This is something … new. Foul with madness.

This could defeat us all.

He reached the fissure, threw himself over its span. His chest struck the edge, the impact almost winding him, and he clawed handholds in the rotted ice beyond. And then waited for a moment, recovering, before dragging himself from the crevasse. As he cleared it a solid shape flashed past on his left, landed with a crunch, claws digging into the crusted snow — a dog.

A dog?

He stared at it as it scrabbled yet higher, running like a fiend from the Abyss.

From behind him, on the other side of the fissure, Hood heard furious barking, and looking back he saw another dog — or, rather, some shrunken, hair-snarled mockery of a dog, rushing up to the edge only to pull back.

Don’t even try-

And then, with a launching leap, the horrid creature was sailing through the air.

Not far enough-

Hood cursed as jaws clamped on his left foot, the teeth punching through the rotted leathers of his boot. Hissing in pain he swung his leg round, kicked to shake off the snarling creature. He caught a blurred glimpse of its horrid face — like a rat that had been slammed headfirst into a wall — as it shot past him, on the trail of the bigger animal.

He glared after it for a moment, and then the Jaghut picked himself up, and resumed climbing.

With a limp.

She had been hurt by the fall, Stormy saw, watching as she laboriously made her way back up the stairs. Her left arm was clearly broken, the shoulder dislocated, skin scraped off where she had struck the unyielding bedrock. Had they been a dozen steps higher, she would be dead now.

The marine swore under his breath, twisted round to glare up at Gesler. He’d reached some kind of rest platform, maybe twenty-five steps below the summit. What’s he doing? Taking a damned breather? There’s no time for that, you idiot! Go!

‘I will kill you!’

At the shriek Stormy looked back down. Ten steps between him and Sinn. Her face was lifted towards him, made demonic by hatred and rage.

A billowing gust of scorching heat rushed up to buffet him. He backed up the steps. Two, three, five.

She climbed closer.

The air ignited around Sinn, red and orange flames, white-hot where her body had been. Yet from that raging, incandescent core, he could still see her eyes — fixed on him.

Gods below, she is not even human! Was she ever human? What manner of creature is this?

The fire roared words. ‘I will kill you! No one touches me! I will burn you — I will burn all who touch me! I will burn you all! You will know what it is to hurt!

‘You said you wanted the fire inside me — you said you would kiss it — but you lied! You hurt me! You hurt me!

‘You wanted the fire in me? You shall have it!’

The flames exploded out from her, stormed up the steps and engulfed Stormy.

He howled. This was not Telas — this burned. This reached for him, took hold of him, bursting and cracking open his skin, tearing into his flesh, burrowing to clutch at his very bones. His screams vanished though his mouth remained open, his head thrown back in the stunning agony of the fire — his lungs were burned, useless. His eyes erupted and boiled away.

He felt her drawing closer — knew she was directly below him now. He could feel the stone steps against his back, could feel his body melting, pouring down as if molten.

Her hand closed on one ankle, crushed it to dust.

But he had been waiting for that touch. He had been holding on — to what he knew not — and with a silent sob that seemed to tear his soul in half Stormy threw himself forward. Closed what remained of his arms about her.

Her shriek filled his skull — and then they were falling.

Not like the first time — he’d drawn her almost half the way to the top — and he could feel her body inside that fire, or thought he could.

They plummeted.

Ges — take this — all I could-

He was dead before they struck, but enough of Stormy’s corpse remained to hammer Sinn against the bedrock, though it was not needed. The impact split her skull, sent burning meat, blood and flesh spraying out to sizzle on the superheated rock. Her spine broke in four places. Her ribs buckled and folded under her back, splintered ends driving up through her lungs and heart.

The raging fires then closed on her, consuming every last shred, before dying in flickering puddles on the bedrock.

Gesler could not keep the tears from his eyes as he climbed the last few steps — he would not look down, would not surrender to that, knowing it would break him. The fury of heat that had lifted up around him moments earlier was now gone. He’s done it. Somehow. He’s killed her.

But he didn’t make it. I feel it — a hole carved out of my soul. Beloved brother, you are gone.

I should have ordered you to stay behind.

Not that you ever listened to orders — that was always your problem, Stormy. That was — oh, gods take me!

He pulled himself on to the summit, rolled on to his back, stared up at the chaotic sky — smoke, the Jade Strangers, a day dying to darkness — and then, gasping, numbed, Gesler pushed himself on to his feet. Straightening, he looked across the flat expanse.

A female Forkrul Assail stood facing him. Young, almost incandescent with power. Behind her was a mass of bone chains heaped over something that pulsed with carmine light. The heart of the Crippled God.

‘Where is your sword?’ the Forkrul Assail demanded. ‘Or do you think you can best me with just your hands?’

My hands. ‘I broke a man’s nose once,’ Gesler said, advancing on her.

She sneered. ‘It is too late, human. Your god’s death assured that — it was your god, wasn’t it? By your own prayers you summoned it — to its execution. By your own prayers you lost your war, human. How does that feel? Should you not kneel before me?’

Her words had slowed him, then halted him still three paces from her. He could feel the last remnants of his strength draining away. There is no magic in her voice, none we would call so, anyway. No, the only power in her voice resides in the truth she speaks.