The Traitor God

Chapter 31

The figure wore half-melted siege-breaker armour, sword dangling from a limp arm and scraping along the ground, while the other hand was fused to the remains of the cuirass. Their hair was burnt to stubble and the left side of the face was a mottled mess of black and red, cheekbone exposed, teeth showing through burnt flesh, the eye socket a charred and empty pit. The other side was almost as bad, skin broken and weeping, what was left of the cheek twisted into agonized grimace, but one pretty green eye was intact – and I recognized both eye and the iron will behind it.

Fear forgotten, I gawped at Eva. “How are you still alive?” She emanated indescribable agony, pain enough to beggar what I was feeling though the bond from Lynas’ Gift. Even for a knight those wounds surely had to be beyond healing, and yet she fought on. Shame overwhelmed me. We had left her for dead.

Her breathing was ragged and wet as she struggled to speak, her voice emerging as tortured groans. Instead she dragged her spirit-bound sword forward into guard position and glared at me. Her intention was clear: she intended to finish this. I shuddered, forcing myself to turn back to face the Magash Mora. If Eva could fight on in that state then so could I.

Martain recognized her sword and his face crumpled, trembling on the verge of losing control. He lifted his sword in salute.

Titanic metal met bone, tooth and claw in ponderous battle: it was not the cut and thrust of merely human fighting but awesome blows exchanged between two giants so massive that even the vast power granted by magic could not entirely overcome their incredible weight.

The mountain of flesh split open like a giant maw to engulf the titan, and once inside I imagined the sheer weight of its body alone might serve to crush the ancient war engine. Blood and charred meat rained down as the titan hacked an entire cliff-face from the beast and spat more liquid fire into the wound.

For a moment I thought it was all over – how could a creature of flesh ever beat solid metal? But then I noticed the severed parts of the monster were being reabsorbed by the flowing mass, and meanwhile metal chipped and dented, cracked and leaked steam where maces and spears of bone slammed again and again against its armoured form. Hooks and claws worried at the cracks, trying to pry them open. I had a horrible feeling that one titan was not going to be enough. Lust waded through the mass of churning flesh, sword cutting vast chasms into the Magash Mora’s body, but it all flowed back, as futile as fighting the sea.

“What do we do now?” Breda said, looking at Martain, then Eva, and finally me. As if I had any more brilliant ideas.

Eva wheezed, struggling to speak. She gave up and instead pointed a trembling finger first at me, and then to her head. I shuddered, but did what she wanted: I opened my Gift wide. The miasma of blood sorcery in the air made me gag, feeling like plunging head-first into a plague-pit of rotting corpses. I struggled to tread water above the sea of fragmented screaming thought. Somehow I managed to rise above it to latch onto Eva.

A torrent of magic was roaring through her broken body, more than she could possibly handle for long. She was hanging on by a thread, but then she didn’t expect to survive. With her mastery of body-magic she’d managed to dull her pain, the signals from her dying body throttled down to mere agony.

She let me right into her tortured mind. She trusted me, and that was not something I often encountered. I endured her pain and did my best to wall it away from her consciousness, but her will and Gift were strong and my hasty tampering wouldn’t last. Her ruined face wasn’t capable of conveying much emotion but I felt the cooling balm of relief wash over her, then a throb of gratitude.

Drops of burning liquid splashed nearby, setting tenements smouldering as another wave of flame engulfed the Magash Mora. It flinched back, retreating until the flames ebbed, only to surge forward once again, swinging a bone battering ram into the titan’s side.

A whole section of the titan’s torso caved in with a squeal of tearing metal. It staggered, leaking steam and spraying thick black fluid from the wounds as blow after blow slammed into it. Metal plates were wrenched apart as the Magash Mora wormed into its guts. Lightning flashed from inside and thick greasy smoke poured out. The war engine shuddered.

A spike of bone tore through that inhumanly beautiful face and lodged inside. The titan stumbled and nearly fell, limbs now afflicted with a palsied shake. Lust was dying.

I voiced Eva’s fractured thoughts for her: “She says we must wait for an opening and then charge in and cut out its heart.”

The titan righted itself and waded into the flesh for one final strike, shearing though the mountain of flesh and the stone beneath. I felt a surge of animal fear as the huge blade cut near to what had to be the heart of the beast. Gifted minds pulsed with momentary agony before fading as a meatslide of severed flesh the size of a small town buried the shady gambling dens of the Scabs. I felt Lynas’ Gift anew, a beacon shining amongst a cluster of Gifted minds, and I knew exactly where that part of him was.

“There!” I said, pointing to the gaping chasm of red and pink left by the titan’s last attack. “The heart is in there.”

We broke into a crazed sprint, vaulting up onto the debris of the meatslide, Eva slower behind us. The sanctors ran ahead, splashing though puddles of creamy fat, and wherever they went Gifts that had been absorbed into the mass shut down and died. The thing’s body began to fall apart in the sanctors’ wake; mouths and eyes ceased moving, limbs flopped like their strings had been cut. Nodes of brain-meat exploded, coating our legs with a wet pink splatter. Without magic surging through their Gifts to strengthen the flesh around them the sheer weight of its own body was crushing them to pulp.

I fed my muscles on magic, feeling a mad exhilaration burst out of that self-destructive part of me. Hysterical laugher bubbled from my mouth. The carpet of meat was spongy and slick with juices, the air hot from body heat and stinking of blood, sweat, and bile. Wind whistled in and out of severed tubes all through the thing’s flesh.

The titan struggled to break free, but the Magash Mora was relentless. A shard of metal the size of a horse slammed down a few paces away, spattering us with blood and strings of jelly.

The vast wound in the beast’s side began to close up as tentacles quested out to reabsorb and reattach the section we were running over. If that happened the thing would swallow us and strip the meat from our bones. A pink worm, thick and sweaty as a fat man, squirmed towards the sanctors and promptly had a seizure. I felt a Gift die. The worm crashed down. The Magash Mora responded to their threat by withdrawing the bulk of its Gifted minds deeper into the main body.

“Veer left,” I shouted, tracking the source of my pain. We reached the end of the severed flesh-cliff and paused. The ground pulsed underfoot as it began to re-attach, to live again. I felt the suction on my Gift slowly return and cursed my old boots’ worn soles. We had to hurry. The sanctors could shut down Gifted minds if they were close enough, but they could do bugger-all else.

Fire spewed from the holes in Lust’s ruined face. Flesh sizzled and hissed but still wrenched at Lust’s left arm. In a squeal of metal it tore free.

The titan’s horn blasted one last time, then exploded. Lust’s head spun off into the sky, trailing black smoke. The body screeched and fell. Lightning flashed and crackled from its wounds.

– Blinding light and deafening boom –

– Searing heat –

– A wall of air slamming into me –

I was face down in something warm, wet, and throbbing that was suckling magic from me. I struggled to my feet. I’d been lucky to land on a part only barely attached to the main body. It took a few moments for the lurid spots of light to fade and deafness to wane. I blinked away blood and tears to behold a scene of utter devastation.

The ground where Lust had stood and fought was now a smoking crater. Twisted fragments of the war engine had gouged lines of destruction clear across the city. Huge chunks of the Magash Mora were missing and a cavernous hole gaped in its belly where thousands of dangling tubes spewed fluids and organs plopped and slid down steaming foothills of offal. It quivered and wailed in confusion, throbbing with agony so intense that my eyes watered. I gripped Dissever tight and leant heavily on its rage.

The ground pitched and yawed beneath me, but on seeing Martain and Breda staggering ahead I lumbered after them into the cavern. It was far too late to back out. If there was a chance to save Setharis then it had to be now.

For the first time in decades I prayed properly to my patron god, the only one who might give a damn, the outsider like myself: “Nathair, Thief of Life, I don’t know if you can hear me but on the off-chance you can, some help would be much appreciated. Charra needs healed, and me… I need a fucking miracle.” He didn’t answer.

The walls thudded with heartbeats. The babble of uncountable thousands of thought fragments washed over me, lapping away at my sandcastle of reason. They were less than human, just mindless remnants put to abhorrent use, but every so often I felt a flash of knowing horror and despair.

Some part of the abomination sensed me and roused from agonized spasms, eyes and limbs sprouting from its insides. Pustules grew and burst, birthing clawed limbs that quested towards me. There was no possibility of the sanctors making it to the heart in time if they were spotted, so I had to draw all the attention.

Sweat poured down my face as I wrenched my strained Gift open as wide as possible, drawing in as much magic as I could without giving myself to the Worm. Even without touching the flesh some of my magic was being drawn off and devoured.

The Magash Mora was a simple creature, its mind easier to infiltrate than a still-living human. These pitiful remnants lacked the walls of will and self-consciousness that resisted mental intrusion. I sent out a pulse of anger to draw the attention of its many conjoined minds. “Over here, you stinking carcass!”

My ploy worked far too well. It only took a dozen steps before my feet were sucked beneath the surface. I waded through jellied meat, managing another few paces before something seized my feet from below. I screamed as it sucked on my Gift.

Sudden terror made me lash out, trying to dig myself free using Dissever, as I had with the lesser monster. As quickly as the flesh parted it flowed back, and only then did I think to fear that this far more potent monster might have damaged Dissever’s enchantments, but the spirit-bound blade held firm.

A woman’s supple hand with too many fingers dug jagged nails into my leg. I flailed wildly, leaving the arm a twitching stump. A nightmare of teeth and gnashing jaws rose from the living ground. I dodged, barely managing to save my face from being torn off. Tendrils wrapped around me as it gathered itself for another attack. I was dead. The thing launched itself at me, jaws gaping.

A flash of steel and its head flew to one side. Eva entered the fray like a storm of slaughter. She was shaking and bleeding everywhere. This was her last great surge of strength, only a temporary reprieve. The sanctors still had a way to go and she was already slowing.

In blind panic I lashed out with my mind. Every bit of power I possessed slammed into the mass of minds – and slid straight through the Gift-bond into what was left of Lynas. Mental shock exploded through the remains of my friend and cascaded though the entire creature. A fit took the Magash Mora, hundreds of limbs shaking and flopping uncontrollably, eyes rolling, mouths drooling. Its bite on my Gift disappeared.

My power twisted deeper into the mass-mind, tearing and cutting, sowing confusion. I could only compare what I found to invading a hive of bees. Deep in the centre of the thing was a searing source of alien magic – the queen of the hive-mind. But it rebuffed my probes.

There were too many people absorbed into the beast for me to contend with for long. Thousands of minds gathered scattered thoughts and desires and threw them against me in instinctive self-preservation. What they lacked in finesse they made up for in numbers. I grimaced, eyes screwed up tight, and drew even deeper on my magic. The Worm of Magic howled for release. I held on for a few more moments as the living cavern shook around me. Run, Martain. Faster!

I screamed inside and out as my already-strained Gift threatened to tear apart. And then blessed relief bloomed in my mind. I opened my eyes to see the sanctors had finally made it to the heart of the beast. Dozens of Gifted minds died as the weight of tons of magic-less meat crushed down on what was left of their human selves. Tentacles and hands slapped blindly at the source of death, but the sanctors skilfully dodged. Their power couldn’t reach every Gifted mind but it was a dire blow.

The grip on my legs slackened and I hauled myself out, clamping down on the flow of magic before the strain tore my Gift apart. But I couldn’t stop the leakage entirely. My Gift was damaged and magic seeped through the cracks, however hard I tried to stop it. Glutted on magic, I grabbed Eva and dragged her towards the inhuman heart of the beast. She could no longer stand but that didn’t stop her sword arm.

My thoughts were too embattled to speak anything of sense so I let Dissever show Eva the way by slicing a doorway into the throbbing wall. Her sword proved far more effective, cleaving a full five and a half feet of meat and bone with each stroke. A hazy light shone through walls of palpitating tissue. It was grotesque butchery, hacking an orifice deeper into the centre of the monster.

A crystal the length of my forearm and thick as my thigh, banded with gold graved with elaborate eldritch runes, was embedded in a socket of bone and cartilage at the very centre of the Magash Mora. It throbbed with sickly yellow light that hurt my eyes and mind. The raw potency of magic seared my skin and Gift. Eva gurgled and forced herself up onto her feet. She hefted her spirit-bound blade and smote the crystal a tremendous blow. Her sword exploded into a thousand pieces. The spirit in the sword screamed in agony, flickering in and out of visibility as its magical life-force was devoured by the crystal. The spirit dissolved with a soft sigh.

Eva stared at the smoking hilt in her hand for a moment, then crashed to the floor. I didn’t have time to help, instead busied myself hacking away at bone and cartilage until the crystal wobbled when I booted it. The heartbeat steadied around me. Flesh pulsed faster and squeezed in to smother us. The tunnel we’d cut was healing up. It was now or never, time to do something stupid – I stowed Dissever away, then grabbed hold of the crystal and pulled.

All my magic drained into it. We were one, and countless howling insane minds tried to consume me. Among the mass of once-human and once-animal thought were three coherent minds directing the beast from someplace else. One was a vast and potent force, something human, or had been once – a god, that Hooded Bastard surely. Fortunately it didn’t hold the reins of the beast and could do little more than dribble its power into the other – a magus. Harailt. The third was something utterly alien and incomprehensible. I didn’t have time or power enough to fight all three mind-to-mind.

I set my feet and pulled, arms and legs shaking with effort. “Come on, you bloody thing. Move!” I growled, heaving until every muscle shook with the effort. The crystal finally broke free in a welter of blood and the screams of thousands pounded my skull more franticly than ever, then… ceased. Lynas’ presence quietened and faded, a soft mental exhalation of all purpose and direction. One by one the sources magic died. I grabbed Eva, and somehow we marshalled enough strength to get out of the collapsing tunnel. The huge crystal felt unnaturally light in my hand, and also strangely right.

The sanctors were already fleeing by the time we emerged from the cavern of flesh. Rivers of blood and fluids burst from the walls as the thing’s weight crushed down. The ground decayed quickly, making our footing slippery and treacherous, but we made it back onto solid ground before whale-sized ribs snapped and the mountain of flesh collapsed in on itself.

The Magash Mora was dead.

Now you can rest in peace, my old friend.

It was a small but comforting mercy.