‘Are you in there?’ she screamed in Elvish to the collapsing form. ‘Is anybody in there?’
Since she’d never known whether or not Friday himself was a person, she didn’t know to ask him separately but she figured
in the circumstances all bases had been covered. Friday had once had the means of independent motion. If he’d wanted to save
himself, he could have.
‘Please!’ she shouted, unable to feel her face.
Then that possibility had passed for ever. The body became a flat ooze. The holes of the eyes and mouth and nostrils gaped
for the last time and exhaled a final burst of scalding air into the ash clouds – and something else went with it. She saw
a bright shadow streak towards her. Cinders furled in its wake just as Friday’s remains pooled around her hand, glowing cherry
and orange.
At the same moment the precariously balanced mass of the ceiling surrendered to gravity and the entire weight of the dead
house crashed down upon her head.
No, she thought. No, this was a mistake. She took a breath and the shadow zipped inside her mouth in a fleeting second. Her
mouth melted and then there was nothing as the entropy storm took her.
The spirits of the long dead had inhabited Friday Head the golem for fifty years. This was nothing compared to the time they
had been interred within their own dessicating bones in the deserts of Zoomenon, preserved by charm against the chance of
their discovery and the possible telling of their miserable tale. The command that had preserved them against Zoomenon’s special
case of entropic decay had also preserved them for the duration of Friday’s immolation, although the same couldn’t be said
of Friday himself.
An earth elemental who had grown to semi sentience under Zal’s babbling insistence, he had long-since deserted his insignificant
form to join the wellsink of primal forces gathered deep within the cavities that honeycombed the region beneath the house
and surrounding low hills. Tiny calderas of pure forms had been accreting there since the detonation of the quantum bomb.
Bomb faultlines riddled the area of Bay City and the entire western seaboard of the collated states of what had once been
America, and was agreed, in general story and some histories, to be the site of that astronomically unlikely explosion. Thus
that part of Otopia was like a piece of rotted wood, decomposing to some interesting elements and propositions whilst at the
same time
being woodwormed by concentrations of aether. It was as curiously porous and also strong as a bone.
The quantum inferno at its heart was the marrow of this bone, generating fresh chances, fresh possibilities, and scattering
them into local potentials. It was a place that was as close to being a raw furnace of creation as anything that had ever
existed. It was the kind of place that, if you were going to make something very, very impossible, you would go to.
Most makers capable of this sort of thing stayed well away, because the furnace itself was as likely to undo them as help
them. It had no mind and didn’t take kindly to the sort of linear organisation that most minds required. Only a fool or someone
who felt extremely lucky would try to use the furnace to fire a new being into existence.
Or someone who had no choice because they were stuck and temporarily stunned by several tons of falling rubble and because
the last moments of their only protection from annihilation had just melted into a puddle of treacly, golden goo. You could
go there to die in the hope of rebirth.
Lila understood all this to be true and concurrent as she regained consciousness. She was glad, because otherwise the feeling
of being inhabited by screaming, endless planescapes would have thrown her presence of mind and prevented her from blasting
out of the inferno in the form of a ballistic missile, engines on full throttle, moving from subground to high atmosphere
in something slightly under ten seconds.
As she ascended, soaring, cooling, the tale of the lost elves and the Three Betrayed unfolded in her head. The Three Betrayed
were three of several thousand who were put through the soul forge that the mages had created in the heart of Delatra. All
were volunteers.
Some emerged as the forerunners of the shadowkin, but others came back deformed beyond recognition as the Saaqaa – more beast
than elf – and in noncorporeal forms, which could only be detected or communicated with in
andalune
form. The vast majority were of these three sorts. For the purpose of defeating the horror of the intangible Sleeper, they
were useless. The void energies and spirits that had been forced by pressure into them had remoulded them, but it did not
make the spirit warriors that the mages needed. Not that they didn’t try it. Those that were able to make the transit to the
spirit plane didn’t return. The embodied ones, who travelled astrally, died in their beds.
They added other beings into the mix, first separating out their
parts with elemental fragmentation, then recombining them. This killed most subjects outright. It would have been abandoned
altogether if they had not raided Demonia and captured the eggform of an archdemon of the wilds. Within the shell a physical
aspect had not yet been determined, and this embryonic creature was the first to emerge and live as a successful hybrid.
It destroyed a large part of Delatra in a bloody rampage before it was subdued and imprisoned in a psychic cell. It spoke
by telepathy in an unstoppable flood of hate that drove almost everyone who survived away from the city, glad to have their
sanity merely shredded instead of consumed. It whispered, it cajoled, it played with them. Its name was Hellblade.
Eventually they found a way of putting it to sleep. And it lay there, flickering like a malefic fire between worlds as they
worked feverishly on the geas that would bind it to the single task of slaying the Sleeper. Needless to say work of this scale
consumed most of Alfheim’s wealth and all of its greater minds. It was a time of plunder and raiding, of open war with the
Fey in the name of acquiring artefacts of power with which to gain mastery over the new creatures. Since that first trial,
Demon crossbreeds were abandoned.
Void elements created the next phantom Titan, patterning themselves on the flayed frame of a girl whose own spirit was pulled
from the brink and left as bait in the Void ocean for all the forces to consume. This one named itself Nemesis and had no
physical form at all. By the time it came into being the geas was in place and it was bound, unable to act until the command
to seek the sleeper was issued.
It was rumoured that Nemesis was held prisoner in Delatra, but this was just conjecture – how could a place hold a noncorporeal
being? Nemesis didn’t speak or rage. Nemesis was silent, though those who came close to the point of contact with her on Alfheim’s
plane reported experiencing an unbearable terror that forced them away.
A shrine of forgiveness was constructed upon the site of its prison, attended fleetingly by priests. Flowers and little texts,
food and milk were left abundantly in peace – at least in peace as long as peace could be felt by someone delivering a plea
for mercy whilst experiencing an inchoate terror. Every offering withered to ash.
The necessary third party was created with spirits that were lured from the dark night of the valleys beyond Last Water. It
was thought that this would be a leader of the three. So it was. Only the best of the
remaining candidates for adaptation was chosen to host their combined forces. He emerged, an elf worldwalker with only a
few visible signs of his change and the ability to dematerialise. He was sane, apparently, and accepting of the task at hand,
though he had sacrificed all memory of his previous life. Like the others he gave himself a name. If this gave cause for concern
it was too late for anyone to care. So Wrath was born.
They woke Hellblade, summoned Nemesis and gave them to his command. He took them and vanished from Alfheim, never to return.
A few days later most of the participating mages, the pinnacle of elvish civilisation, died slowly, withering like spring
flowers in an unexpected winter snap. But no monster from the unknown planes descended though they waited, sure it had all
been for nothing. Night became day, days became years and in the absence of any further incidents Delatra was abandoned, records
of what had happened searched out and destroyed for shame, and the activity moved elsewhere, culminating in the long, grinding
cold war of loathing between the shadowkin survivors and the remaining light elves.
This was the story, neatened, tidied, ordered, made sensible by the ghosts of that long-ago experiment, some of whom died
at the beginning and some after the end. It was the last and only memorial, the last and only weapon, the last and only blessing
that they had. With its delivery they were free.
The tornado of primal destruction took them and unmade them in the moment of their glad ending, and then Lila was alone.
Lila was left gasping, standing on a superheated airstack six miles above Bay City, abruptly enraged and bereft and frightened
to such a degree that she froze there in the bitter cold, thin air, and for a few minutes dared not move.
Escape was so narrow for her. There had been none for her brief guests. She flipped through the story again and again but
each time it remained relentlessly stripped of most of its personality, all particulars that could have made it anyone’s.
All that for what? There were so many dead, and each of them like her and they had not escaped. There was no happy ending
and she could not revise one from it.
She hated this so fiercely and so fully that she felt her heart would explode. She stood in the sky, a useless metal angel
filled with useless tricks. Wrath, Nemesis, Hellblade. She could have chosen those names
for herself, feeling as she did, in the hope that so much pain could be focused through the lensing of the names, and might
galvanise an angry energy that was enough to break any resistance and make a difference to the way things were. But she knew
already that this would not be so. The monster was immortal and would go unslain for ever, and still it must be faced.
She wished she hadn’t let Zal go. She felt she wouldn’t see him again, or if she did it would be in another time and place,
not her. She was so sorry for herself that she couldn’t stand it and with a scream of rage, tore downwards through the cloud
and darkening twilight.
In all of that bloody story nobody had mentioned a name. She still could not fit Sarasilien for the crime.
Around her heart a dark violet flame twisted and whispered but she was so used to the Signal and so full of cares that she
didn’t notice.
Teazle teleported in chunks towards his destination on the far side of the world. He chose places carefully to observe the
progressive effects of the rise of this strange Titan. At each site he stayed only long enough to observe the locals or chat
a few minutes about conditions before he took off again. In this way he was able to build up a picture of the influence of
his enemy and also he was able to pass unrecognised and thus unmolested either by duel challenges or calls for him to champion
the civilised demon world – a call he felt he’d already taken and would have been annoyed somehow to be further spurred towards.
For once notoriety had lost its appeal. He must approach in stealth since it was likely that his best or only chance of success
lay in a surprise assault.
As he closed slowly on his target however, his speed lessened and he found himself pausing at uninhabited sites. He moved
forward and came to a town called Kvetchin, one of those jokey names at someone else’s expense that were popular in this region.
Few demons here had any real talent or power since anyone with these abilities gravitated instinctively towards the capital
cities, but it was apparent at once that someone with great artistic vision was resident. There were piles of stones everywhere
and they were stacked in great abstract sweeping shapes like little paisley hills, decorated by colour in infinitely subtle
shades. The effect was beautiful and it propagated all over, in fields and on roads, cutting around and through buildings
and the other structures of arable life. It was decoration for its own sake on a massive scale. Teazle expected the
perpetrator to be somewhere on the madness borderline, as obsessive as it was possible to be without falling prey to devil
possession – though that was possible. Out here in the wilderness all kinds of depravity could occur. He landed from his flight
position – it never paid to materialise suddenly in the middle of things unless for the purpose of killing – and stood at
the outskirts of the village where the blackened pits of the firewatchers were ashy and cold.
It didn’t take much to see that most people had moved on in the last few days, driven by news coming from the East of the
horrors wiping the worldface. He didn’t expect that this creator would have abandoned their life work however, and he was
proved right. After a short search of empty pitbeds and locked halls he found the centre of town – a circle marked by torch
posts and the wide expanse of the duelling arena.
Sitting in the middle of this space was an old demon, humanoid, tall and covered in tough skin and thick bony spurs, with
a beast’s hairy mane, massive shoulders, drooping wings and a lizardlike head fitted with less teeth than seemed probable.
It was dark purple, and its flare was dulled, a slumberous crimson streaked with the whitish-grey flecks of depression. It
sighed as it saw Teazle, apparently without surprise.
‘You are headed East,’ it said, not so much a question as a statement that wanted confirmation.
‘Yes.’ Teazle was in his natural form, the least angelic or human of his potentials, the most in tune with his fellow demons.
On all four clawed feet he paced across the old stones and sat down at an oblique angle to the old one. At this distance he
could see its massive fingers with their claws worn almost to stubs playing with a few small rocks. As he watched it absently
crushed one and sifted through the pebbly results, sorting by colour gradations so fine they were nearly imperceptible.