ENDGAME
With his hand flat
against the ground, Isak watched lightning strike the chains around
the earthen platform. A haze of white fire encircled it, leaping up
from the iron links and between the steel-capped stakes set in the
surrounding ditch. Great chunks of soil flew up into the air as
great thick-limbed figures of earth and stone rose up on all sides.
The figures moved slowly, but with strange grace, reaching to the
sky as they ascended from the churned ground between platform and
ditch.
Their inhuman faces
were serene as they advanced on the black-armoured white-eye, quite
unlike other elementals Isak had seen before. But these were
Ralebrat; they were a breed apart from the rest - and they had the
chance for atonement for their deeds during the Great War within
their grasp. Some looked carved from stone, others were made of
pebbles and dirt, like a statue without its skin. As the fire all
around intensified, they attacked.
Isak stood, letting
the cloak slip away from his shoulders. Underneath, he was
shirtless, displaying the heart rune engraved on his chest, and as
faces turned his way, he felt their gaze like needles, pricking
into the long swathes of twisted tissue that covered most of his
body. One hand covered his belly and the jagged scar that ran up
his stomach. That wound he’d not received in Ghenna. That memory
the witch had not been able to erase.
Isak watched Styrax’s
blade, remembering its presence in his own gut - the white-hot
pain, the way it jerked through flesh and bone, how it ripped out
his guts . . . and he remembered his own high-pitched screaming. At
that moment he’d smelled the hot, foetid breeze and he’d heard the
chittering voices as darkness fell like acid eating his vision, and
the emptiness of the grave swept over him.
Isak pulled his body
straight as he faced the man who had killed him. On his chest the
heart rune blazed hot and fierce on his skin, but this pain was welcome.
Styrax didn’t see him
at first. He moved with dazzling speed, wielding Kobra with
strength and precision, hewing a space in the centre of the
platform, even as more Ralebrat rose to ward off the assault of the
Menin bodyguard. As he moved, the white-eye lord weaved a skein of
magic about him, a net of light spun from his sword to tangle the
Ralebrat as they closed in on him. Already a dozen lay on the
ground, looking like shattered monuments as the injured elementals
struggled to escape the broken forms they had taken.
Then he caught sight
of Isak, and Isak felt the look like a blow. It took all his
strength not to shy away from Styrax, to lift his eyes and match
the gaze of the one to whom his life and death had been bound, long
before Isak was even born.
Styrax hesitated too,
and the Ralebrat pulled back, keeping just beyond range of the
fanged sword. On the other side of the ditch that encircled the
earthen mound, the battle was still raging fiercely. Within the
defensive boundary, there was a moment of unearthly
calm.
‘I killed you,’
Styrax cried. ‘I saw you fall into Ghenna.’
Isak felt the words
like a punch in the gut. Above him, as the sky was torn by
lightning he cringed from the brightness, raising his left hand to
shield his eyes. The thick lines of shadowy scarring on his left
arm were vivid against his pale skin.
‘I know,’ Isak said
in barely more than a whisper, slowly lowering his arm again. ‘You
killed me. And here I stand.’
‘How?’ Styrax
asked.
Isak gave him a
broken smile, though his damaged lips and missing teeth made it
more a grimace. ‘Your arrogance - your rage - they showed me the
way. We are all slaves to our birth.’ He brought his right hand
from behind his back and in it was Eolis, shining unnaturally
bright against the storm-darkened moor.
‘You want to fight me
again?’ Styrax laughed coldly.
Isak shook his head,
though the damage to his neck and shoulder made it almost
impossible for him to turn to the left now. ‘The Gods made you to
be peerless in combat,’ he said. ‘I cannot beat you. No single
mortal could beat you. And now no God would dare try.’
Styrax was silent a
moment, then he removed his helm, and Isak saw his face properly
for the first time. In his dreams it had always been covered, and
the day Styrax had killed him, pain had blurred his vision. To his
surprise, it was an unremarkable face, neither ugly nor handsome.
Lord Bahl had looked rough and unfinished, but that was not the
case with Kastan Styrax: his face was simply a canvas upon which
power and strength had been painted. It was with the set of his jaw
and the look in his eye that made Lord Styrax arresting to
behold.
‘Then why are you
here?’
Isak saw his finger
brush the Crystal Skull fused to his sword-hilt, summoning the
wyvern. The Menin Lord knew a trap when he saw it, but he was
content to talk while his wyvern braved the lightning-lit sky to
get to him.
‘To judge you,’ Isak
said simply. ‘Look at the Skull in your hand.’
Styrax stared at the
shining object for a few moments. ‘This is not the one King Emin
took from Scree?’
‘It is Dreams,’ Isak
confirmed, and held Eolis awkwardly out before him. The sword bore
another Skull. Behind him three figures were slowly approaching.
Legana and the witch of Llehden flanked him, one on either side.
Their part in this was played. Mihn stood behind, in his master’s
shadow. They watched in silence, bearing witness to the
consequences of their actions.
‘This one is Ruling,
first among the Crystal Skulls,’ Isak said.
He stabbed the sword
down into the ground and unleashed the power of the Skull. White
cracks appeared in the ground, racing through the trampled grass
towards the mage’s platform.
Styrax immediately
raised his defences and a cocoon of energy burst into life all
around him before the shining cracks could reach him - but the
shimmering power raced around the platform, well clear of the Menin
lord.
Once again the
tortured air roiled under the magical assault. Isak felt the scars
on his skin come alive with pain, but still he continued, guiding
the force through the Skull and into the sword.
Now, for the first
time, he raised his voice, crying out, ‘Obey me — come
forth!’
Colours burst all
around and lightning lashed the ground between them, ripping the
air apart to reveal a swirling column of darkness
behind.
‘Come!’
The darkness writhed,
coils of energy spreading to encircle the platform. Jagged
lightning forked across the sky, again and again, striking all
around the perimeter of the earthen platform. The Ralebrat reeled
and cowered, some dying even as they supplicated
themselves.
Isak pulled Eolis
from the ground and levelled it towards the darkness, and the
column wrenched around so violently the air itself ignited, burning
white-hot. Death stepped out of the dark and raised His golden
sceptre and all around the platform the Gods of the Upper Circle of
the Pantheon stepped forward, obeying Isak’s call.
The Skull of Ruling
was tied to Death, the Chief of the Gods, and it was the most
powerful, and the most perilous to use. Aryn Bwr had seen that, and
known that possession conferred the strength of rule, but Death’s
place was at the very centre of the Land, and that was too much for
even a king to bear long.
At the sight of the
Gods who’d abandoned them in punishment millennia ago, the Ralebrat
attacked once more, throwing themselves with abandon at the Lord of
the Menin. His protective cocoon burst blindingly as they destroyed
themselves upon it, but still they did not stop.
‘Peerless you were
made, and unmatched you will die!’ Isak shouted over the wind that
churned around them.
The Gods of the Upper
Circle knelt, arms outstretched in the torrent of magic that was
whirling, faster and faster, around the platform, all focused on
Lord Styrax - save for Nartis, whose blank, midnight-blue face
watched Isak.
‘But death is not the
only defeat. You taught me that.’
An incantation tolled
through the fractured air, the sonorous voices of Gods drawing such
a torrent of magic down from the sky that the very clouds above
were dragged down.
Styrax didn’t wait to
hear more, but started to fight his way towards the platform’s
edge, but the Ralebrat continued to bar his way. They didn’t make
any attempt to fight their preternaturally swift opponent, just
threw their stone bodies in his path to slow him as the energies
surrounding the Gods and Isak struck at everything within the
circle, battering elementals and mortal alike. The Ralebrat were
shattered, but the white-eye was only driven back a step or two as
the Crystal Skulls on his armour pierced the blistering hurricane
of magic, flaring as bright as the sun.
‘They gave you
power,’ Isak cried, feeling the sparks of energy burst from his
white eyes and race across his skin. ‘In their fear they gave you
more power than any mortal should possess, and with it came pride,
and arrogance: an understanding that nothing was beyond your
skills. That no being - mortal or God - was your
better.’
Isak took hold of
Eolis in both hands, letting the blade cut deep into one palm. The
blood seemed to boil on its surface and some droplets were
scattered by the wind, but there was enough of the viscous liquid
to run the length of its edge.
His voice dropped to
a whisper, but it resonated around the moor like the heartbeat of
the Land itself. It shuddered through earth, flesh and God alike.
Somewhere far away he heard Mihn cry out.
‘And so I curse you,’
Isak gasped, both with the pain running through his body and the
memories of Styrax’s vengeance.
Up above, the Menin’s
wyvern was a dark shape in the sky, compelled by its master’s call
despite the lighting. Styrax reached out with his sword and turned
in a full circle, casting a burning trail of light that drove even
the Gods back, but he could not stop their chant as Isak continued,
‘They made you to be untouched by God or mortal. As I cannot kill
you, so I curse you, not with death but life,’ he choked. Limbs
shaking and bile rising in his throat, he deflected the vast raw
power Styrax was throwing in all directions.
The wyvern dropped
closer, close enough for the Menin to reach its claws, but it was
too late and they both felt it.
‘I curse you — with
the pain of ten thousand days in the Dark Place, with the life’s
blood of a mage’s sacrifice, with Death’s authority held in my
hands.’
He felt it then, the
cold fingers in his mind, and on Styrax’s face he saw the icy claws
reached even deeper in.
‘I curse you, and I
strike your name from history,’ Isak howled in agony and grief,
‘stripped of arrogance and pride, empty of the self you once knew,
gutted of all you are. I take your name and all you have won by the
strength of your hand. I curse you for eternity, to find only
darkness where once you knew your own face.’
He could not speak
any longer as the chill touch of the curse entered his mind,
questing through the brutalised corners of his head for a name and
ripping it away forever. Isak felt the words fade like a whisper on
the wind, a curl of smoke whose shape hung on the breeze and was
then gone — vanished.
The man on the
platform screamed, his hands clasped to his head, his fingers
digging so deeply in that blood welled up. Skull and sword
discarded, he fell to his knees as the claws tore into his brain.
The Skulls fused to his cuirass dropped from the armour, then the
first of the black whorled plates slipped off his body and
clattered to the ground. The man was oblivious; convulsing, he
collapsed to the floor.
Isak heard shouts
from all around as the curse spread, reaching out through friend
and enemy alike to steal a name from all of them before rippling
further out and across the Land. He felt the power of the Gods, fed
by the Skulls in their midst, waxing strong, even as the effort
drained them.
The man on the
platform writhed and shrieked as the claws reached the last
recesses of his soul, shredding memories and excising even the
smallest remnants of the man he had once been. He tried to fight,
beating at his head and ripping his clothes, but to no avail. The
curse bit deep, as he scratched bloody shreds of cloth from his
body. Somehow he fought his way upright, muscles straining against
the weight of the Land, but all the while he was howling at what
was being taken from him.
And then it was over.
The gale subsided, the magic of the Gods dissipated, and the man
fell, exhausted, mewling, to his knees. Isak took a hesitant step
forward, barely able to stay upright himself.
‘And I dub you the
Ragged Man,’ he whispered, blood trickling from his nose and mouth
as he spoke.
He reached Death and
the cowled figure turned to face him. The air smelled of age and
fatigue, of a temple drained of its majesty and power.
‘It is done,’ Death
intoned. He made a dismissive gesture at the Ragged Man, and a pair
of Ralebrat grasped the whimpering figure by each arm and dragged
him into the ground, moving through the earth as easily as a bird
ducking below the surface of a lake.
‘They will take him
far from here.’
‘There is a cottage
by a lake,’ Isak said hoarsely. ‘There is a place for him
there.’
Death inclined His
head. The God’s presence was less awe-inspiring now - the curse had
required so much power that the Upper Circle were winking out of
existence, back to their distant palace. Only Karkarn, Nartis and
Death remained.
‘You know what you
have done,’ Nartis called.
Isak felt a great
tremor of pain run through his body as he nodded, and in the next
moment Mihn was there, slipping underneath him and taking some of
Isak’s great weight on his shoulders.
‘We have weakened
you,’ the witch of Llehden stated, advancing just past Isak as he
wilted under the strain.
‘We have made a
choice,’ Legana added, resting heavily on her staff. The
Gods-touched woman faced Death without flinching, her emerald eyes
shining through the unnatural gloom. ‘A choice that was ours to
make.’
‘You have weakened
us,’ Death said slowly, looking from one to the other. ‘For what is
to come, the Gods will not be able to intervene.’
‘Good,’ said Legana
firmly. ‘It is our fate as much as yours. The choice should be ours
this time.’
‘It is our time,’
Isak agreed wearily. ‘This was the only way, and now — Now the Land
will be remade.’
‘By
whom?’
The scarred white-eye
tried to smile, but it hurt too much. He started to turn away, but
caught sight of one half of Cetarn’s charred corpse, and his gaze
lingered there.
It was the witch who
answered, speaking for them all. ‘By those of us willing to
sacrifice everything.’