The ragged man

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.'