He sank his clawed fingers into Kest’s face and pulled them free with a jerk. The Beast Rider gasped and thrashed, and Renna’s eye construct rose away from his face, an obscene pyramid pointed at his red, empty socket. The thing was still tethered at its tip by a writhing purple vine that disappeared into the depths of his skull. The line pulled taut, and Bakal wrenched it free in a spray of blood. Kest screamed from the depths of his being. Blood welled from the mauled socket, and his feet kicked spasmodically. The Devourer threw him aside like a rag doll and considered the putrid thing in his hand. The gaping mouth at the end of the attaching vine writhed and searched blindly for a new host. I WAS CREATED TO KILL, BUT THIS KIND OF TORTURE IS BEYOND ME. TRULY, HUMANITY HAS BEEN LEFT TO FERMENT TOO LONG.
Nira cried as she vomited on the floor. Oh Kest. Not like this. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him again – she didn’t want to see the gaping hole in his beautiful face. It was worse than the Weaver eye, a thousand times worse.
Bakal wrought his destruction on them with an impersonal, workmanlike sense of duty. She thought back to her first vision, that first glimpse of a convergent future that the Pure Light had pressed upon her. Gamarron was supposed to take up the Chaos Shard and defeat this evil. But he’s dying. And he couldn’t have ever held the Shard anyway. Whatever possible path could have led to that future, they had missed the turning somewhere. It all felt like some vast cosmic joke, but the laugh it brought to her lips was bitter. All for nothing. Better if I had stayed home and let Madra and Da rule me. I’ve unleashed the death of the whole world. She tried to muster the Chaos, but she hurt too badly in both body and soul. She couldn’t think clearly enough.
Bakal was standing over her. GIVE ME THE ESSENCE, he commanded. I HAVE WAITED FOR IT LONG ENOUGH. The black lips parted, revealing a mouth that flickered with the same inner light as his eyes. A forked red tongue hid within, licking at pitch-black fangs.
She had nothing left. Her fight was all gone, and the probabilities she could glimpse dimly in the swirl of Chaos showed her only torture and death. No one could do more than I have, she told herself, and she offered the Shard up to the destroyer of humanity. He took it from her, his fingers crushing hers in passing, but in an entirely impersonal way. He didn’t care to hurt her; it was simply the way of things. The ebon Devourer sighed, a vast sound like the crumbling of distant mountains.
ESSENCE OF THE ARTIFICER, he mused. SHE CREATED MY PRISON. WISEST OF THE THREE, PERHAPS. He held the Shard forth. The great shining Box of his prison folded in on itself and compacted until it was no larger than a stonefruit lying on the floor of the Chamber. YES, the Devourer said. THIS IS WHAT I NEED. He held the Shard not like a prized trophy, but like a tool. Bakal had work to do.
Nira looked at her fallen friends, at the wreckage of her life, and mourned. They had tried so hard and meant so well, only to become the engineers of humanity’s downfall. Bakal would roll across the face of the whole world, and perhaps not a single person she had ever seen would survive.
Renna was dragging Kest’s body to the door of the Chamber, but from where she crouched, Nira could see out into the tunnel, and new, unharmed demons had infiltrated the great cavern. They were picking their way through the dead and killing stray animals. There was no escape there. Let her go. Who am I to say how anyone should spend their last moments?
Her eyes fell on Gamarron. Incredibly, he still lived. He had pulled himself against one of the walls and was sitting against it, exhausted. His eyes met hers, and she saw the sadness in them. He was sorry, she knew. He’d said it more than once, but now she felt it. All the anger and resentment she’d felt toward him drained away. She didn’t want to die feeling angry at the man who’d shown more fatherly regard for her in a single conversation than her own father had in seventeen years. She wished she could ease his pain.
In her numbness, she realized there was something she could do. The Chaos was gone from her; she couldn’t change anything. But she still had the Pure Light, and while it wouldn’t save either of them, she could ease the old man’s death. Carefully, lovingly, she crafted a net of thoughts and threw it at him like she’d done with that nasty little lordling in Megalith. She didn’t know if it would work without touching him, but she tried anyway. In her thoughts, she imagined herself, Gamarron, Kest, Renna, and Guyrin sitting before the hearth inside of one of the black stone houses she had seen back at his holdfast. It was a simple seeing; it did not trick him out of seeing the true present, but rather gave him another window in which he might see life as it could have been. As it should have been. Gamarron was regaling them all with a tale of his youth while Kest and Nira shared the chore of making their meal. Renna was puttering with some experiment at the far end of the table, and Guy was stretched out lazily before the fire, dressed for once in clothes that fit
