Page 21

Chapter 21

Perspective

‘The problem with you Mortals,’ Tenebris began, ‘other than the fact that you’re dumb as cows and twice as graceless, of course, is that you lack perspective. It’s not that your lives are any shorter than ours. The average demoniac– like the crazy chick over there playing dress-up as a Glorian Justiciar– they rarely make it past sixty or so. Even a diabolic like me packs it in before we hit a century. The Aurorals, now, they live for centuries, millennia, sometimes. And yet they’re just as stupid as you are, Cade. You know why?’

There’s really nothing quite like a Diabolic Contractualist who only hours before ripped whatever fraying threads of friendship there were between you launching into a lecture about. . . whatever the hells Tenebris intended lecturing me about. I kept my mouth shut, though, and motioned for the others to stay quiet as well. My former agent wanted to rub my face in something and the best way to get him to say more than he intended was to let him revel in his cleverness.

Which he surely fucking did.

‘That’s right,’ Tenebris went on, taking my silence as acquiescence, ‘Mortals and Aurorals? You both lack perspective. You’re so obsessed with the supposed righteousness of your actions that you forget everyone else thinks they’re righteous, too. It’s all insult and injury with you people, feuds and vendettas and —

‘Oh, you think we Infernals are just as bad?’

I swear I hadn’t said a word, though I may have had a tell-tale look of nausea on my face.

‘Well, that’s just more proof of how clueless you are, pal,’ he went on. ‘We Infernals are always thinking about the big picture, and we do that better than anyone else because we got the one thing the rest of you don’t.

‘ Perspective.

‘For instance, capturing a refugee wonderist from another plane of reality and then sticking her in some prison to experiment on her without her consent? Short-sighted, pal . Idiotic. They could’ve offered her a deal, promised to send her back to her own realm with enough power to make herself Empress or Mage Sovereign or whatever the hell they call it where she’s from. But no, instead they torture her, figuring once they’ve learned what they can from her crazy tattooed sigil magic, they’ll just execute her. It’s like these guys just wipe from their collective memories all the times someone’s escaped from them in the past.

‘Now, those Glorian Justiciars and Ardentors discovering said refugee is also pregnant and hiding that fact from the Lords Celestine and still experimenting, trying to use the unborn child’s innate potential for wonderism to alter the mother’s attunement to the Pandoral realm? I mean, seriously. . . we Infernals may hatch from eggs but even I could tell you how fucked-up that move was. Cruelty for cruelty’s sake is one thing, but cruelty for stupid’s sake? That’s another thing entirely.’

And I could’ve told him that all cruelty is inherently idiotic and this included the hours the Lords Devilish had wasted torturing us. I had the feeling he already shared my assessment.

‘So, yeah, like you’ve probably already guessed,’ he continued, placing the back of one hand over the palm of the other as he mimed the rocking of an infant in his arms, ‘when the baby’s attunement took hold, your genius Gloran Justiciar pals figured they could channel all those crazy Pandoral energies through the mother– they also figured they’d be able to hand the Lords Celestine an unstoppable arsenal of chaos magic with which to win the impending war against my side. Too bad they accidentally collapsed the metaphysical foundations propping up the entire Pandoral realm in the process. Suddenly, it wasn’t such a nice place for the three hundred or so sentient beings occupying it. This was a few years back, of course. The Pandorals managed to attune those seven morons up north– not your morons, you understand; I mean the Seven Brothers. Can’t believe those bug-faced idiots actually thought they could get away with using the brothers as a gateway for them to take over the Mortal realm,’ Tenebris continued, rolling his eyes in amusement, ‘but hey, perspective , you know? They lack it, we got it. Anyhoo, I put together the scheme that not only locked the Pandorals– I call them “Pandas”– on the other side, but also refocused those gates so that my bosses and the Lords Celestine could finally come across and fulfil the promise of the Great Crusade.’

I glanced over at Shame, who rarely displayed anything resembling human emotion. Her expression hadn’t changed all the while she was being stuffed into the Infernal machine grinding her flesh and bones to paste. Now, however, humiliation and misery were etching themselves across her features.

‘Son of a bitch,’ I swore quietly, remembering the smug air of righteousness on Fidick’s perversely innocent face as he’d forced Shame to do his bidding so the Celestines and Devilish could invade our realm, leaving her emotionally and spiritually shattered. ‘One of these days, I swear I’m going to put you in the ground,’ I muttered, a promise to myself, and Shame.

‘What’s that, Cadey-boy?’ Tenebris asked, then, mistaking my meaning, whispered, ‘Yeah, I know, I think this whole “Great Crusade” thing is pretty dumb, too. But someone’s got to put the smackdown on the Lords Celestine once and for all, so it might as well be my team.’

He glanced back at his bosses and again I noted he wasn’t exactly in awe of them; in fact it seemed to me he was barely aware of their presence. ‘As for this Spellslinger chick? Well, there’s a reason the Glorians kept what they’d done to her a secret from their own bosses. Instead of delivering a walking Auroral arsenal of chaos magic, those dumb fucking Ardentors turned her into the most dangerous Mortal ever to walk this realm– or any other. That destiny hoodoo of hers? It doesn’t have any limits that any of us can find. One person, an army, an avocado or an entire civilisation, she can bring forth one of their three so-called “dooms” at the drop of a hat.’

And that confirmed my worst suspicions about Eliva’ren. Most magic doesn’t scale up that well. Corrigan can put more and more of himself into a Tempestoral spell, but there’s only so much lightning or fire or mayhem he can pull from that realm without blowing himself up. Galass can exsanguinate the blood from an entire division of soldiers if she’s willing to lose her mind and soul, but there’s still a limit to her abilities. So a wonderist whose spells can encompass an entire realm? That’s a catastrophe just waiting to happen.

‘Oh, and she’s seriously pissed off,’ Tenebris added.

Yeah, no shit, ‘old buddy’.

The diabolic shook his head at me like this was somehow all my fault. ‘Since what you wonderists call an “attunement” is really just a pattern of potential breaches between the realm you’re born in and another plane of reality whose physical laws work differently, when the Glorian Ardentors forcibly attuned the Spellslinger’s unborn child to the Pandoral realm — ’

I guess I must’ve lost my cool for a moment, because I felt an Infernal quieting spell oozing inside my mouth, cutting off my ability to speak.

‘Yeah, you just keep swearing your head off, Cadey,’ Tenebris said dismissively. ‘Outrage fixes everything, am I right?’

He came over and threw an arm around my shoulder. ‘But okay, if I’m being honest here– and you know what a sentimental soul I am– even I find it tragic that instead of popping out of the girl’s womb– gross way to give birth, by the way; eggs are so much more civilised– the poor kid slips into a breach and is born trapped in a realm full of Pandas.’

He removed his arm and poked me in the chest. ‘Especially tragic for you Mortals, because I’m pretty sure that nutty Spellslinger chick is going to destroy this place long before my bosses or the Lords Celestine do the job. Honestly, everyone would’ve been so much better off if the Lords Devilish had just let me recruit her to our side when she escaped the Glorians, but no, they just let her slip through their claws. You know what? She spent nine years trying to break through to the Pandoral realm and rescue her kid, but never even came close. Ironic, right? All that power of hers and it’s only good for wrecking things.’

I could see he was working up to the big reveal.

‘Which is why, a few months ago, someone did finally recruit her, promising they’d bring the kid over to the Mortal realm.

‘So, who are these mysterious benefactors, you ask? Ah, I do love that look on your face, Cade: so eager, so angry– kind of like a puppy who can’t figure out how come he’s the runt of the litter. Well, it gets worse, Buttercup, because the guys who recruited the Spellslinger are the fucking Pandas themselves.

At my look, he clarified, ‘Well, okay, to be more precise, it’s the cult of morons who recently rose up around the only Panda existing on this plane of reality.’

Oh, fuck me– or rather, fuck all of us. . .

‘That’s right, Cade: the big bad who’s manipulating those dumb fucks in the Lords Celestine and others’ – I wasn’t sure how subtle he thought he was being when referring to his own bosses– ‘to make this war even worse than what you’ve been imagining so adorably since beginning your own crusade against it? Yep: it’s the guy you allowed to escape!’

Shit, fuckety-fuck-fuck, prick, bastard, shit , I thought coherently. That damned Pandoral —

It had never even occurred to me that both the Lords Celestine and Devilish would have left the Pandoral being to wander the Mortal realm unimpeded while they completed their own invasion. I should have known better, of course; neither side would want to risk any of their own forces– and certainly not their own precious selves– attacking a powerful adversary, because that would have given the advantage straight to their enemies.

‘The Pandoral?’ Galass asked. ‘Cade, we never even tried to pursue it!’

Everyone was staring at me like I was to blame for this mess, which was at least partially true. ‘ You will serve ,’ had been pretty much its only words to us– wasn’t that a big clue that leaving it to the damned Celestines and Devilish to sort out would come back to bite us in the arse? Why had I never tried to hunt down that damned bipedal bug swarm?

Because you convinced yourself the Infernals and Aurorals were the bigger threat , I reminded myself. Because, when it comes down to it, your hatred of them blinds you to everything else.

Tenebris looked delighted by the distress I was obviously failing to keep from my expression. ‘Yep, you screwed the pooch on this one, pal. Since the Pandoral’s home realm is collapsing and he doesn’t have the forces to subjugate this one, his new plan is to use the Spellslinger to speed up the Mortal realm’s eventual doom, so all that raw ecclesiasm released by imploding an entire plane of reality will be channelled through a gate back into the Pandoral realm, preventing its collapse while leaving this place’– he glanced around as if he could see through the cathedral’s scarlet walls to the entire world beyond, where there wasn’t much worth saving– ‘well, let’s just say, you probably should’ve finished the fucking job and killed the Pandoral before it wandered off and gathered a lunatic doomsday cult around itself.’ Tenebris held up a hand as if to forestall the obvious counter-argument. ‘Sure, sure, a sentience composed of thousands of indestructible buzzing insects might look tough, but maybe if you and your band of merry morons weren’t such puss — ’

An Infernal quieting spell is a kind of lesser binding that requires a smidgen less esoteric energy than one binding limbs. Tenebris, being a cheap bastard, hadn’t bothered with that, of course, which was why I was able to deck the smug little prick right in his three-slitted nose. I don’t usually recommend punching diabolics in the face, not least because their internal bone structure is thicker and stronger than ours, to support those idiotic horns.

Totally worth it.

‘ Ow! Damn it, Cade! I was just starting to like you again!’ Tenebris complained, noisily popping the bones back into place.

My brief descent into discourteous violence wasn’t entirely impulsive. Tenebris had confirmed that the Lords Devilish had information we needed. His feeble attempt to goad me was just a typical diabolic’s ruse to get me to reveal anything I might know without them having to pay for it. Now that we’d been through the forms, it was time to get down to business.

In the case of Infernals, this means a pact. This particular pact turned out to be less egregious than most. You might even call it amicable.

The pact began with. . .