Page 33

Chapter 33

The Unfathomable Eight

There was something truly tragic about standing outside that temple listening to my rag-tag crew of misfits bickering about whether we should let the coven of far more disciplined, far more organised and– according to Corrigan, who was shouting loudest– better-dressed wonderists take on the mission to hunt down and destroy the last remaining Pandoral. Personally, I was entirely happy to let them deal with both the Pandoral and his cult of lunatic worshippers.

‘What are they doing with the banner?’ I asked Tenebris.

He chuckled in that way diabolics do when they’re about to tell you how easily they played you for a fool. ‘You thought we wanted that rag just to parade it in front of the Aurorals, didn’t you, Cade?’

‘Something like that.’

I find letting people convince themselves that they’ve got the upper hand is more productive than getting into a debate over who’s cleverer. Also, the restaurant aside, it seemed to me that Tenebris had been having a rough time since his bosses brought him over to the Mortal realm. No point in ruining all the poor guy’s fun, or not all at once, at least.

‘The Glorian Banner itself never interested us at all,’ my diabolical former agent went on, gesturing to the shrinking piece of gold and ivory fabric which the skeletal-looking incarcerationist was ritually cutting into strips. ‘The fabric, though? I don’t think the Lords Celestine realised just how much potency they imbued into each of those gleaming threads.’ He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together as if he were talking about money. ‘There’s more raw Auroral magic in there than any other relic they ever created.’

‘So what?’ I asked. ‘Your goons are turning it into some sort of weapon?’

Again he graced me with that stupid ‘smarter-than-thou’ chuckle of his. ‘Not a weapon, Cadey-boy. These guys figured out a way to transform the banner into something way more useful.’

The florinist– they’re the ones who usually bring trees and plants to life– was now reshaping part of the banner into a cloth mask, the luminist– apparently not as useless as his vocation suggested– was imbuing tendrils of luxoral magic into the precious threads, while the incarcerationist was gleefully winding several of the strips into a pair of shackles of gold and silver, all of which was making it hard to decide which I instinctively detested more, luminists or incarcerationists.

‘The mask. . .’ I began, trying to imagine how intricate the spells would need to be to redirect the Auroral blessings in the threads in the way the luminist seemed to be doing. Although I was no longer attuned to the Auroral realm, I still retained a certain sensitivity to its magical effects. ‘He’s creating some kind of veil with optical properties, isn’t he?’

Tenebris elbowed me painfully in the ribs. ‘See? You’re not nearly as dumb as you look.’ He whispered the next part. ‘And you’re a freaking genius compared to your idiot crew. You want I should ask these other guys if they’ll let you join their coven when this is all done?’

‘You’d do that for me?’

Diabolics, despite their sarcastic nature, don’t always recognise it in others. ‘Sure! I mean, you’d have to pay me a finder’s fee for getting you the gig, of course.’

‘Isn’t the finder’s fee usually charged to the employer?’

‘I’ll charge them one, too, obviously. Anyway, yeah, Erghroth over there is using his florinist abilities to re-weave the threads of the banner into a mask that will help them track their quarry while Vestisius the Legendary — ’

Yes, you heard that right. Luminists almost all give themselves names like So-and-so the Legendary .

‘Vestisius is binding luxoral magic into the mask so that the wearer will be able to perceive otherwise invisible forces. And since sentient beings of the Pandoral realm entering this plane manifest as bipedal swarms of sentient beetles and are therefore kinda slippery, Direlock there– stupid name, even for an incarcerationist– is performing an esoteric transmutation on the strips of the banner to create a pair of handcuffs not even Bug-face can escape.’

‘Or anyone else your incarcerationist chooses to put them on?’ I suggested.

‘Almost finished,’ Direlock said.

‘Our task is also complete,’ said the florinist who, after a nod from the preposterously facially-haired luminist, handed the mask to the cosmist.

Tenebris rubbed his hands together. ‘How long before you can track down the attuned?’ he asked the cosmist.

She– I was assuming that from the curves of her otherwise nebulous physique that mostly looked like peering into an endless void lit by tiny sparkling stars– spoke with a voice so weary it reminded me that most cosmists die by their own hands before they hit thirty. There’s something about being constantly aware of the vastness of space and how small and irrelevant life is compared to the void. ‘It depends on how far away they are, and if there’s more than one.’

‘More than one?’ I asked Tenebris. ‘I thought you said these guys were after the Pandoral? Only one of them came through the gate inside the Seven Brothers before we destroyed them.’

‘The Pandoral itself is far too dangerous to attack head-on,’ the felinist informed me. The cat-eared woman kept staring at Temper, hopping around on the roof of the temple, looking like she badly wanted to hiss at him. ‘It is that which the Pandoral seeks which we must find and imprison.’

I was starting to get a bad feeling about this, but I’d been getting bad feelings about everything lately.

That’ll teach me never to ignore a bad feeling again.

‘The Pandoral’s intention is to create another gate between the Mortal plane and their own,’ said the cosmist. I wished she’d let someone else give the explanations. Walking voids always sound disturbingly eerie when they talk. Maybe it’s all those echoes. ‘As with the Seven Brothers whom you faced months ago, the creation of a gate can only be accomplished using a Mortal wonderist tethered to this realm, yet attuned to theirs.’

Oh, okay. That explained the bad feeling. I should’ve remembered that the most common cause of constant low-level paranoia is over-exposure to being screwed by those pretending to be your allies.

‘Tenebris?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, Cade?’

‘You remember that Ardentor who delivered the Glorian Banner to you?’

‘Sure. The guy with the stupid name. Promiscuity? Pornography?’

‘ Propriety ,’ I corrected him. ‘You remember how you let slip that something about him troubled you?’

‘I didn’t let anything “slip”,’ Tenebris seethed. He never likes being caught out. ‘I told you, it was how happy the moron was acting, what with his insane conspiracy theories.’

I was sweating now. ‘Yeah. Only, now I’m thinking maybe what bothered you about him wasn’t his mood but that maybe his whole theory about there being a secret conspiracy within the Aurorals to topple the Lords Celestine and how one of them was secretly working with the Infernals wasn’t as crazy as I initially presumed it was.’

Tenebris smirked– that was the truth he couldn’t hide– before saying, ‘You getting paranoid in your old age, Cade?’

Shit.

When a Diabolic Contractualist accuses you of paranoia, that’s when you know without a shadow of a doubt you’ve been well and truly conned into signing your own death warrant.

The cosmist was now wearing the mask made from the Glorian Banner. I could already see twin beams of light sweeping along the ground as she accustomed herself to the otherworldly sight it gave her.

‘Corrigan?’ I said quietly.

He broke off from whatever argument he was having with Alice about uniforms and how much better ‘The Malevolent Seven’ was as a team name than ‘The Apocalypse Eight’.

‘Yeah, Cade?’

‘I need you to do something for me right now, and when I say for me , I mean, for the entire Mortal realm, and when I say right now , I mean, don’t ask any questions and just do it, okay?’

He grinned. ‘You mean because this is a job for the greatest hero of all time, which just happens to be me?’

‘Exactly.’

Tempestoral lightning began swirling around his hands. He’d guessed what I needed him to do. ‘Which one of these fucks do you want me to obliterate?’

‘Me,’ I replied. ‘Corrigan, I need you to blast me out of existence right fucking now .’

‘Whoa,’ Tenebris said, putting up his hands, ‘settle down, Cade. Whatever silly notions are going through that head of yours, I promise I can explain everyth — ’

‘Now!’ I shouted at Corrigan. ‘Blast me right this fucking second! ’

To people like us, wonderist war mages who’ve seen more than our share of battles and bloodshed, there’s an unspoken understanding that some day you’re going to find yourselves in an unwinnable scenario in which death is preferable to the alternative. I’d always figured that Corrigan, whose spells are the very definition of destructive magic, would be the one person I could trust to obliterate me instantly when the time came.

Instead, he was staring at me, wide-eyed and helpless as a boy about to get into his first schoolyard fight and discovering he can’t get his fists up. ‘I’m. . . Cade, I. . . I can’t — ’

You might be wondering why I didn’t explain to them that Tenebris had screwed us, that everything he’d told us until now had been absolutely true and yet had obscured what was really going on. But there wasn’t time for explanations any more than I had time for recriminations over the secret I’d kept from them– the secret not even Tenebris had guessed, and which was about to bring all his plans to fruition far sooner than he’d expected. Right now, that missing piece in his knowledge was the only thing giving us this last chance to prevent his scheme from unfolding.

‘Galass, bleed me to death– right now – do it!’ I shouted, and when she too hesitated, I spun round to Alice. ‘Whip-sword,’ I implored, ‘please– now . Slice me to pieces before it’s too late! Fuck it, Temper, rip my damned throat out! ’

Maybe this is the problem with friendships. Maybe this is why heroes always go it alone in the end. The six beings I was closer to than I’d ever imagined possible were about to let the Mortal realm fall because none of them could do what they must surely have sensed by now was vitally necessary.

‘Never figured you for the type to lose his mind so young, Cade,’ Tenebris said. ‘Calm down– nobody’s pulling a fast one on you.’ He gestured to the cosmist wearing the mask made from the Auroral Banner. ‘It’s just like I said, we’re trying to find the Mortal wonderist attuned to the. . . to — ’ The grin that came to his angular features was far more diabolical than I’d ever seen on his face before. ‘Oh, man. This is so sweet!’

‘It’s me, you idiots!’ I shouted at my friends. ‘ I’m the fucking Pandoral wonderist they’re looking for!’ I turned to Corrigan. ‘Do you get it yet, you big idiot? Blast me now– before it’s too — ’

At long last, he brought up his hands and finally, I could almost see the breaches manifesting between this world and the Tempestoral plane. If he’d cast the spell just a split-second sooner, I would have been dead, fried to a crisp, nothing but ashes and whatever failure and self-loathing turns into after you die. And the Mortal realm would have been safe. Well, safer.

Alas, Corrigan was too late.

The scrawny wonderist with the long greasy hair had already thrown the strips of Auroral Banner into the air so some perverse incarcerationist magic could wrap them around my wrists, binding me securely. His portalist companion had taken one of the keys from her bandolier and opened the ground beneath my feet. I had time to look down at a grassy expanse somewhere far from where my friends could ever get to me in time.

I fell, and along with me came the ‘Apocalypse Eight’– I still think it’s a fucking stupid name– who were indeed secretly working for Tenebris. Unfortunately, Tenebris was also working with the very enemy the Lords Devilish and Lords Celestine were too afraid to fight themselves.

That’s how, in less time than it took to say, ‘Well, Cade, guess you shouldn’t have kept your attunement a secret from your best friends because maybe they’d’ve been prepared for this,’ I found myself in a dank prison, surrounded by eight uniformed wonderists and a being whose entire body was made up of a swarm of gleaming insects. Tenebris had handed the Pandoral the last missing piece needed to create a gate between my world and his own, so all that was left now was to torture me until I was so broken and desperate, I’d be unable to resist my attunement being twisted to transform me into a living gate leading to a realm of pure chaos. . .

. . . but since torture’s kind of a drag and we’ve already been through all that, let me tell you about how I brought a kangaroo from another plane of reality into this one and then accidentally turned him into a vampire.