God of Clocks

Carnival raised her sword. She felt it tremble with fear.

The things that rushed, lurched, creaked, and hobbled into the tower were unlike anything the scarred angel had seen before. She rolled the blade in her hand, testing the weight of it. And then she dived in amongst them.

… warriors in pale ceramic armour that crackled and dribbled sparks upon the floor, and skinless figures with skulls full of teeth, and winged shades that could only be seen out of the corner of the eye, and human men bolted inside brass carapaces, and clattering wheels of bone or steaming machines full of spinning blades, and black jackals and aurochs and ragged howling priests on metal stilts, and dwarves with mirrored eyes and iron limbs, and swords, spikes, maces, pikes, bludgeons, whips, spears…

Carnival slaughtered them all.

And still they came, until she stood atop a mound of corpses and hacked at them from above. Her scars burned with the pleasure of the battle, as her hair clung to her face in a bloody net. Carnival snarled and laughed and spun in circles behind her demon sword, gutting and slicing, painting the walls with blood. She inhaled the dying breath of her foes and exulted in the taste of it. And the blade in her fist only wailed in agony.

The horde stopped.

And a soft male voice called down from above: “Those souls within your veins… are they all unbroken?”

Carnival looked up.

A tall warrior sat upon one of the steps some twenty feet above her. He wore darkly sculpted glass armour bristling with spikes and extrusions like wind-blasted ripples of ice. His opaque mask had been fashioned to resemble the face of a young man with arching cheeks and a narrow sloping chin, but Carnival imagined she saw another, even more beautiful, face behind it. Golden eyes peering out through the glass? There was something odd about the way the light fell on him, as if his translucent garb altered reflections in subtle ways.

“I can see through you,” he said. “My Icarates should have known better than to pander to your desires. You came here deliberately looking for slaughter, didn't you?”

Carnival just stared at him.

“Not one for conversation, are you?” the man said gently. “I am Alteus Menoa, son of Ayen and destroyer of Iril, and,” he paused, “father to the river god that brought you here.” He raised his gauntlet, indicating the flooded chamber below her. “The poor thing loves me like a puppy dog, but I see it is fond of you, too.” He let loose a burst of bright, musical laughter. “All Hell is mine,” he said, “and you are most welcome here. Will you stroll with me upon the citadel balconies? The view is extraordinary.”

Carnival stood knee-deep in gore upon a mounded summit of her victims, her heart thundering. The stink of death filled her nostrils, and her bloody leathers hung in rags about her. She couldn't drag her gaze from this strangely compelling figure. Something about him … She became suddenly aware of her scars, and shifted awkwardly in a pointless attempt to hide them from him. The demon sword shuddered in her grip and wept.

“You've used that shiftblade badly,” Menoa continued kindly. “By the way it's trembling, I'd say it is unaccustomed to the demands you've put upon it. Allow me to forge you a better one, a sword with purer memories of war.”

“It cuts,” Carnival said, and felt immediately ashamed of her own voice. What was wrong with her? Her own self-disgust fueled a fresh surge of anger. She lashed her wings and snarled, “Come down here and I'll show you just how well it cuts.”

The sword let loose a terrible wail.

Alteus Menoa stood up. From greaves to helm his armour warped and rippled before settling around his body once more. Had he grown in size? He seemed at once more imposing than a moment ago.

He removed his mask and helm.

The face beneath was extraordinarily beautiful. Arched cheeks and eyebrows framed almond-shaped eyes that shone like gold. His skin was pale, faultless. He tossed his head, and hair like polished silver cascaded upon his glass gorget and shoulder guards. He smiled at her.

“All souls arrive here naked,” he said, “freed of the natural constraints that so limited them in life. In your world they existed merely to survive, but such order is crude and animalistic. Nature has no other purpose than the continuation of itself.” He swept a gauntlet across the disparate demons that still surrounded Carnival. “Observe these constructs. They have been given a higher purpose, one only possible because of Hell's nondeterministic nature. Your own sword is more beautiful than you in every way. Its purpose is granted by divine will, whereas yours is not.”

He made a gesture with his hand.

Carnival's heart stopped beating. She felt the muscles in her arms and legs twitch. Her fist opened and she dropped the sword. Her scars tightened and seemed to crawl across her flesh. She fell to her knees and exhaled sharply. But her lungs would not draw in another breath.

“All those souls in your blood may empower you,” Menoa said, “but they have never been in harmony with you. They are trapped in the hell that is you, but what can you offer them except rage and murder?” He shook his head. “Yet now that they are here, I can offer them so much more.”

Carnival tried to breathe, tried to scream, tried to move. But her own body refused to obey her demands. Her hand made a claw in front of her eyes. She couldn't open her fingers. The ancient scars writhed upon her wrist and palm like thin red worms. Her flesh seemed to turn pale and crystallize.

She was changing into something else.

Another vibration. Sabor whipped the map from the obscura table and called up to the many Garstones on the balconies overhead, “Lens zero, please, and snuff the lights. Show us what's happening outside now.”

The lights dimmed. In the darkness Dill's vapourous form cast its own blue light. A series of whirrs issued from somewhere overhead, followed by a clunk. Rachel, Mina, and Iron Head gathered around the table, on which a blurred image was forming. Hasp stood back from the group and downed another cup of wine, while his brother Sabor reached under the table and cranked a handle around. The image on the table became suddenly sharper.

It was a view from somewhere high up in the castle. Yellow evening light slanted across the blasted mountainside, leaving shadows as black as the rocks themselves. A great expanse of green forest swept down towards the Flower Lake, from where the waters stretched on to a brooding, storm-racked horizon. Dill's huge, shattered corpse lay at the top of the trench he'd scraped through the trees. Someone had lit an enormous bonfire beside his skull, from which rose clouds of grey woodsmoke. Rachel could see men throwing more branches onto the flames.

“Oran,” Iron Head said grimly. “He's made a signal fire.”

To signal whom? Dill asked.

Rachel pointed at one edge of the image. “To signal them,” she said.

Nine arconites were emerging from the frothing waters of Flower Lake, reeds clinging to their dripping wings. They advanced towards the shoreline, crouching low, dragging their massive blades through the surface of the lake. Torrents of water rushed out of the spaces between their steaming armour and their bones.

A hundred yards further out, the lake suddenly bubbled as smoke rose from its depths, and two more enormous skulls broke the surface of the water.

“That makes all eleven,” Rachel said.

Hasp glowered at the image for a moment, and then said, “Tell me you have a plan, brother.”

Sabor stared at the obscura table for a long time, his hands gripping each side. He glanced over at Dill, who stood nearby, his ghostly wings shimmering in the gloom, and then he returned his attention to the image on the table before him. “Phantasms,” he muttered. “Phantasms…”

He suddenly straightened up. “We're going back,” he said. “Right now. Back to the moment when Ayen's bastard sealed Heaven.”

“Didn't you say that another attempt to stop Menoa could destroy the whole universe?” Rachel pointed out.