its power.
“Oh my Goddess,” Amethea said. “Look.”
Blood had seeped, dark and slow, from the axe wound in Maugrim’s belly.
Where the lids of sarchopagi had lifted, they’d left the very inside of the spiral intact – the closest point to the brazier, the platform upon which Redlock and Maugrim had been fighting.
Maugrim’s blood had spilled upon it, it spiralled where Amethea’s had done, mingling with hers.
And the Sical grew bigger.
* * *
For a moment, the horror of the mistake held them all completely still.
Around them, the shamblers advanced. Before them the elemental reached for the surface, for the air and the sky.
Its crystal celebration chimed in their heads – Roviarath would burn, and with it, the rest of the grass.
He was out of options. What the hell did he do, chuck a fucking blanket on it?
Chuck...
The pressure in his webbing-pouch gave him the answer.
And he started to laugh.
* * *
Amethea looked at the dark jester, chilled by the demented cackle of its humour. She was barely keeping her feet – Triqueta’s taer had sealed the wound in her gut, but it was a patch, she could feel the blackness on the edges of her vision, just waiting to crowd in and close over her.
Maugrim was dead. Throttled, broken. She should feel relief, she should be celebrating, kicking his swollen- faced corpse and spitting on his memory.
But the creature he – they – had set in motion was rising like the sun.
She watched as the lean, dark-mottled figure unclipped something from a strange belt.
“Guys?” he said. “Remember this?”
“What...?”
The question was drowned out by Triqueta’s “Oh
And he threw the pouch on the fire.
* * *
The initial detonation tore through the building.
Walls rocked, masonry tumbled and smashed. The first ranks of the stone warriors were blasted backwards and shattered, scattering their followers with dust.
“With me,” Redlock roared. “Run!”
The pomegranate grenades blasted open in every direction, one after another, each one filling the Sical’s form with sparks and scattering pottery shards and hot coals to the bloodied, spiral floor.
But then the brazier started to rumble, the pillars of the stalagmite shook.
The floor quivered. The light in the cavern walls flickered and dimmed. From overhead, a loose stalactite smashed to the floor, then a second.
The writhing of the pillar stopped.
And the Sical shrieked, crystalline and furious – they heard it in the bones behind their ears, in their skin and in their thoughts.
“Yeah,” Ecko shouted, “and fuck you, too!”
The walls about them trembled, dust billowed. The axeman was coughing, coughing, wiping his lips as he ran. Triqueta was half carrying the injured teacher. Ecko, running with them, turned back to see what was happening to the Sical.
It was screaming in his head, livid and shining, brighter, brighter.
Over it, stones were tumbling from the cavern roof. Water was starting to hiss through the gaps, spraying wide like an office failsafe.
“Run, dammit!” Redlock’s hand closed around Ecko’s ripped, skin-shredded arm and dragged him away from the spectacle. “The char path will take us out! That way!”
Ecko stumbled on his cloak hem, but kept moving.
Amethea said, “What did you do? What did you throw...?”
“I was tryin’ to make gunpowder,” he said. “Made a helluva bang.”
The cavern roof juddered, rocks fell and smashed, stone shrapnel slashed outwards.
The great, black capacitor stone cracked from end to end, its lightning shivered and faded.
And the elemental
Then the brazier under it collapsed.
The last thing they heard as they fled into the crazed garden was the piercing, mind-shredding shriek of its detonation.
* * *
Dust settled, drifting across a faint breeze.
Water dripped slowly from the cavern roof, a slow rainfall onto devastation – the destroyed remnants of the garden, the shell of the cathedral, now a scattering of low walls, mud and rubble.
The brazier had been drowned, destroyed, fallen stones cracking as they cooled. The Sical was gone.
In the quiet, Maugrim’s first breath was a rip of noise – a rasp of harshness and debris on his ruined throat. His face hurt, his tongue was swollen against his teeth. He swallowed, rubbing a ringed hand over the bruise across his neck.
Then he began to cough, eyes watering, clearing himself of pain and dust. He inhaled another rasping breath, tried to sit up.
“What a waste.”
The voice was male, as familiar to him as his dreams. It was calm, almost scholarly, but the threat was naked and razor-sharp, its edge under his chin.
There was no point even pleading for mercy.
“Please...”
“Get up now.”
Maugrim rubbed his throat again – strangled with his own chain, indeed – and clambered slowly to his feet.
Something was bugging him, needling at the back of his mind – when his head stopped spinning, he’d place the rasp, the stylised imagery. The accent was familiar... Had he used the word “program”?
The scholarly voice repeated, “I said, Get up.”
Beneath the slash in his t-shirt, the axe wound in his belly had gone, a scar in its place where he’d seared it closed, just as he’d once healed Amethea. Maugrim felt drained, looking out across the mess, the bloody bombsite they’d left behind them. He had no idea where to go.
Then he felt his mentor’s hand on his shoulder, soft, lethal.
“Finish this.”
He could say only, “Yes.”
There was nothing else left for him.
28: GUILT
ROVIARATH, THE CENTRAL VARCHINDE
Evening. The shadows of the Kartiah stretched long across the sunset grass.
In the glowing, dusty air, a green-and-white banner flapped like a live thing, seeking to escape from
