Casting a complicated and powerful spell is a dangerous business, more so when there is more than one wizard involved. A total commitment of mind and spirit is needed to maintain the harmony of the magic that has been summoned, with any significant imbalance likely to create a reverberation that would only worsen the longer it was allowed to continue.
The cabal that Navar had assembled to weave and control the forces bound to the Lance numbered twenty, and between them they had woven an intricate lattice of sound and intent, binding the raw power of the Songlines and channelling it into the predatory vortex of the Lance through countless layers of eldritch runes and enchantments. It was, in simple terms, as if all twenty of them were holding a single enormous pot of molten metal above them. Provided they all stood calmly and supported it, they were safe and Navar could pour the ‘metal’ into the shape he desired. That fine balance also kept them from coming to his aid as he burned and screamed, as much as any of them may have wanted to.
But now he was gone, and his brain and whatever else had writhed and crawled within it had boiled to a black mass inside his charred skull. The iron grip of his will had perished with him, and was no longer there to guide and shape the swelling magics they were gathering. The harmony of their spell had begun shifting even before the fires had finished their work on his corpse, subtly at first, but at their heart humans are creatures of fear and distrust, and as I rose from the smouldering ruin that had been their master, that same fear began to leach into their magic.
The steady pulse of crystal veins dimmed then brightened considerably, growing until a blinding arc of light flashed from the end of the Lance and struck one of the wizards, instantly burning the flesh from his bones with a sharp crack that was felt more than heard. The pulsing light stuttered and I felt their fear ripen within the magic that suffused the cavern. Their great pot of metal was overfull and becoming steadily more unbalanced with every passing moment.
I hurried across to where Tatyana and Lucien lay. She was badly burned, her flesh punctured with dozens of metal rings from her blasted armour, while blood frothed and bubbled from Lucien’s mouth. They were alive though, which was far more than I had expected, and I dragged both to the mouth of the tunnel, clenching my teeth against the sawing pain in my leg. It was unlikely that they would survive the coming conflagration, but they at least deserved a chance, however remote.
Another of the sharp cracks sounded in the clearing, and then two more in quick succession. I stepped out, squinting my eyes against the now blinding light beaming from the crystal seams and saw the bloody skeletons where three more wizards had been. As I watched, one of them abandoned the spell and sprinted towards me, but as he ducked under the golden wire binding the stone pillars a blast of light from the nearest pillar cut him in two. I couldn’t hear his scream as his legs walked away from him, but I imagine it must have been quite shrill.
The discord within the cavern was growing exponentially. The remaining wizards were desperately trying to fill the gaps left by the dead men, but they could not do both that and restore the harmony. I edged back into the tunnel as another of them was transformed into bloody chunks and steaming bones. This was too much for the others, and like the first crack in a dam, the great energies they were trying to contain broke free and rushed back along the channels that had summoned them, which in this case was their bodies. Such unworthy vessels had no chance of containing even a portion of such a deluge. Few had a chance to scream before they were explosively unmade by the energies, filling the cavern with a scalding red mist.
The light stopped pulsing and swelled ever brighter while a whistling shriek unlike anything I had ever heard filled the cavern. I felt it pull at me, a sharp and cruel sensation, but I sunk my claws into the mud and bound what sorcery I had left into deflecting it; there was no chance of resisting it head on. It felt like my bones were going to shatter, and not a few of my teeth cracked as I clenched my jaws against the pressure and noise.
The light flickered, and suddenly it was gone, the cacophony replaced by the tinkling of the small waterfall that tipped from the top of the cavern. I pried my claws free and rose to my feet, slowly realising that I wasn’t dead. I held fast to the walls until I was confident that my bones had not in fact been transformed into jelly. The crystals were flickering arrhythmically as I staggered forward, beyond the now dark stone pillars. The golden wire had melted away and several pillars had shattered, but the runes on the Lance were still lit with the same white light. The air was colder than it had been before, and the spirits gathering around it were thicker in the air, each trailing light behind them like tattered gowns.
The enchantments upon the Lance didn’t care that Navar was dead, nor that the wizards were now little more than an assembly of rapidly freezing bones. The complex enchantments embedded within it had been woken and they would continue to pollute the Songlines and hold the gateway to the world of the dead open while power still flowed through the node.
The dissolution of the wizards’ magic had been one thing, but they were only manipulating the discharge from the Lance. To end it I would need to break the magic bound to it, and like any enchanted item, doing so would release its power in a single catastrophic discharge.
I ignored the souls that gathered around me like little nibbling fish and walked closer to the Lance, pausing only to kick a wizard’s charred skull from my path, sending it bouncing across the frozen ground. It rolled until it came to rest against the enormous wooden figure that lay at the edge of the cavern, its position marked by the cluster of swords and spears embedded in its back. I was curious about it, but my priority was the Lance and how its now undirected magic was filling the cavern, coating the crystals in a feathery dusting of ice crystals and thickening the air into a milky fog. Reality here was already warped by the presence of the node, and given enough time the pervasive pressure of so much death could well erode it entirely.
I took a deep breath and bent my will to fashioning two sets of wards. The first was for me, as protection against what lay ahead, and the second was to deflect what was coming from the tunnel where Tatyana and Lucien lay. I could still feel the spark within her valiantly trying to heal her wounds, but once I perished it would only be a matter of time before it winked out.
I rolled my neck, releasing a frightening amount of crunching noises from my twisted back, then hobbled forward. It was like entering a blizzard, and as I passed the ring of bones that had quite recently been a cabal of wizards I felt a scrape against my arm. Then another. The spirits were coming at me in greater numbers, their distorted faces more distinct with every step I took, and I watched one dart forward and latch onto my arm with hollow teeth; my blood shone like gold as it shook its head and burrowed deeper. I swatted at it, but my hand passed through it. More souls pushed in, their faces peeling back to reveal rings of translucent teeth.
As before, it wasn’t my blood they sought, but the life within it, and the sorcery I thought I had shielded myself with was a beacon to them. These weren’t the mindless shoals I had encountered before though. More bit into me, nipping viciously at the back of my legs and neck, pushing their mouths harder against me with every mote of life they sucked from me. I swallowed the urge to lash out at them and concentrated on lifting my feet. One step forward, then another.
My body was anchored to reality, as was the physical body of the Lance. I could feel the souls drawing the life out of me but the pain of their attacks was a hidden blessing. Pain was familiar and fed my anger, and anger in turn fed my strength. Swarms of milky shapes crowded in on me, biting and clawing in a frenzy so that no patch of skin wider than my hands was left intact, and my life and my blood were streaming away in red and gold ribbons around me.
My outstretched hands touched something solid. The Lance. A dozen souls flew at my other arm as I fought to lay my hands upon it, savaging it to the bone, but my anger had lit the fire within me and I roared my defiance even as they tore pieces from me. I set both hands upon the shaft and my roar turned into a scream as the full might of its terrible, fell magic flashed through me.
The ring of light that marked the boundary between life and death receded to barely a pinprick of light as I fell through the gateway and into a darkness broken only by the luminous shapes of men and beasts, thousands of them, that swirled around me. I somehow knew then that they were the spirits of those I had slain in my life. Of the spirits of the men, some were laughing, some weeping, while others screamed and cursed my name. These I ignored. The animals were wiser and simply watched with soft, dark eyes as the circle of life was completed, then slowly faded from sight. I no longer felt the cold as I fell, for it was part of me now.
My body shattered like glass when I hit the barren plain that waited below. There was no pain, not even when the pieces reassembled themselves once more. All I felt was disappointment, for I still wore the body of a man, although at least no longer one as deformed as the one I had died in. The spirits who had chased me were drifting away, and at last I was alone.
A desolate plain stretched out around me, featureless and flat in every direction, visible only by the pale, watery reflection of the gateway above that glittered like a lone star. I waited, perhaps for a moment or for many years, and when nothing happened I began walking. I could barely feel my body as I walked, and with no change in the land around me there was no way to tell how far or for how long I had walked. It may have been moments, or perhaps it was years. I tried to sing as I walked, simply for the sake of hearing something, but while I could feel the words upon my lips, the sound vanished between my mouth and my ears.
At some point I became aware of another light, a faint glimmer ahead of me, but I had no memory of when I had first seen it. I kept walking, and could not tell if I was getting closer to it, or if it was drawing closer to me.
Eventually I came to a point where the ground fell away in a sharp line from horizon to horizon, as if cut by an impossibly large knife, leaving only a spar of rock barely as wide as my shoulders arcing away over the impenetrable blackness below. The glow came from the other end of this delicate bridge, a golden sheen that held the promise of something better. I set out across the bridge, my torn arms held out at my sides for balance at first. Behind me the bridge fell to dust as I passed over it, but I felt no sense of danger. When I reached the midpoint, I found that I could see what lay ahead. Where the plain behind me was desolate, the land in front dropped away into a series of sunlit valleys and canyons, each filled with rivers and trees. I could feel the soft, welcoming warmth of it from where I stood, and I felt my icy skin crack as a smile found my face.
I started walking again with new energy, but I had barely taken my fourth step when I felt a cold wind upon my back. I turned and nearly fell from the bridge as the darkness coalesced into a huge and terrible shape that hovered above me with the sound of iron chains rattling across bone and the leathery thump of wings wider than the sails of a dozen ships, the wind threatening to tip me into the hungry darkness.
‘Who are you?’ I said, my voice barely a whisper. ‘What do you want?’
The dark shape reached out and grabbed me, and I screamed at the terrible pain that spread through me at its touch. I fought against its grip and felt pieces of my hands falling away, but its grip was loosening. I could feel the promise of the Shining Lands against my skin as I eventually broke free and staggered away from it, clinging to the rocky spur with chipped and broken claws as I dragged myself closer to the warmth and light. I was so close.
‘You promised, Stratus.’
My strength and anger vanished at the sound of her voice. I turned and stared into the darkness that wreathed her.
‘Anakhara?’
I felt a tremor pass through the great shadow, and a moment later two great, fiery eyes opened, basking me in a cold light.
‘Come back, Stratus.’
‘Oh my love,’ I said miserably, unable to do anything but stare up at the writhing shape of her. The warmth of the Shining Lands called to me, but the promise it had held was empty, for she was not there.
‘I failed. My strength is spent, and my body is broken.’
‘Hope endures where hate cannot.’ She drew closer, her shape almost recognisable amidst the shadows that cloaked it. I felt her hands cup me once more and I could not help the cry of pain that burst from me. ‘You are my hope. My last.’
Bone and iron creaked as her tattered wings extended and beat down. I saw the bridge and the light of the Shining Lands vanish below me. I wanted to hold her, to ask forgiveness, to hear her voice, but the pain of her touch burned through me like acid, tightening my throat and driving all other thoughts from my mind. With every beat of her wings the Shining Lands grew more distant and the glittering star that was the gateway grew brighter and the pain more profound. As we drew closer I saw that the cloud that surrounded it was a great press of tormented souls, swirling like a tornado in their desperation to return to the world of the living. They shrieked in dismay and fled at her approach,
‘Bring me home, Greatheart,’ she said, and threw me through the gateway.
My eyes snapped open and the pain and cold redoubled as life surged back into my dying body, my hearts suddenly forcing blood through veins that had started to collapse and empty. I might have screamed, but I had done so much of it recently that I no longer noticed. My hands were still clutching the Lance, and seemed to have melted into it. My body was a mess of torn skin and exposed bone, my blood frozen around me as if I had risen from a crimson lake. The souls that had stripped my life from me like razorfish now turned back with newfound hunger as they sensed my reawakening. I saw their gleaming teeth and greedy human eyes and felt the hate and anger within me rising.
‘Go to Hel!’ I snarled, not so much swallowing the pain as embracing it. I bent my legs and gathered my strength. The souls swarmed towards me, shrieking their unending hunger as I straightened my legs, my muscles straining as I tightened my grip on the Lance. It shifted in my hands, the movement sending a shockwave through the cavern and throwing the tide of the predatory spirits into disarray. I worked the shaft back and forth, using all the strength I could muster. It was a powerful artefact, but its physical presence was its one real vulnerability. I could not break the enchantments but, by the stars, I could break it.
Streams of raw magic shot into the air as I worked it loose. I felt them tearing into me, but I simply didn’t care anymore; all I wanted to do was destroy it. I pulled the Lance sideways, my still frozen muscles tearing with the effort, and with a squeal of metal it began to bend. The first of the runes, those closest to the folding metal, touched each other, disrupting the circuit of power and sending a spray of sparks across the cavern, each potent enough to melt the rock they landed on. The flow faltered, weakening the next rune.
I ripped the Lance from the ground with a roar and brought it down across my knee, mashing more of the runes together as the metal folded even further. A quickening shiver passed through the Lance as incandescent magic leapt from rune to rune, almost blinding in its brightness, adding another layer of blisters to the lacerated mess that used to be my hands. The touch of death still hung heavy on me and I could see the pale circle that marked the gateway to the beyond. I marshalled the last of my strength and hurled the crumpled Lance through it before it could detonate.