46. Maxim's Wish

Maxim walked amid a field of twisted corpses. He scanned left to right with keen eyes until he found the ones he was looking for.

The bodies of fallen Heroes, two of them. He had already collected four over the course of the night. The ritual would require at least a dozen.

Their apprentices were not directly necessary but would make a fine kindling upon his fire.

It was ironic. Upon this eve of bonfires and celebration, he would create his own.

A bonfire to draw The One Among the Stars to this world. An offering so bright, so tempting, that she would have to give him whatever he desired.

His daughters.

It was the only thing that gave his legs strength. The only thing that kept his mind from collapsing under its own weight.

He had his spawnlings gather the corpses of Torchbearer, Thorn, and one other apprentice.

Six more.

Only six more, then this nightmare could finally be over.

He would finally see his daughters again.

Once the Heroes’ bodies had been collected and shuttled off towards the ritual site, he turned his gaze on one final corpse.

That of Gorod, his accomplice, who now lay dead in a sprawling pile of slick meat which was already rotting, giving off a stench like sulfur and dead flowers. His broken puppet lay nearby.

“Weak…” Nasaizh hissed through Maxim’s lips.

He couldn’t help but agree.

The humanoid should not have allowed himself to be felled by this kind of opposition.

At least he hadn’t come away from it completely empty-handed.

Regardless of Gorod’s untimely end, he had been a powerful being. Maxim could not afford to let any of that power go to waste. He would need every shred of it, for tonight’s plan.

Almost all the Heroes had already retreated into their walled compound. Nearly a hundred fighters, not counting the apprentices. They would be ready for his arrival.

They were strong. He couldn’t deny that.

So he had to be stronger.

He got on his knees in front of the dead Beast and pulled up his mask. He lowered his face to its rotting flesh and ripped off a chunk with his teeth. He grasped handfuls of putrid flesh with his hands and chewed at it. As soon as he had swallowed one ash-tasting handful, he pushed another into his mouth.

Yes, good, Nasaizh whispered in his mind. We will put Gorod to better use than he did himself.

*****

Paragon drifted at the center of a stone dome, twenty meters in diameter, perforated with hundreds of holes the size of a man’s head through which her light could shine. On the outside the dome had been treated with gold leaf, increasing its splendor.

She was at the heart of the Second Sun.

Here, it was peaceful and silent. She simply allowed herself to drift and kept her eyes closed.

Outside, in the city, there was chaos. And yet, here, she could pretend that all was well.

“My Queen,” came a hoarse, aged voice from far below, its echoes barely reaching her. “We need to talk.”

The words pierced her calm like a spear to the back.

It was Ingemar, of course.

She couldn’t ignore him.

Paragon let out a long sigh. She allowed herself to drift towards the floor and opened her eyes once more. As the effects of her practiced meditation slowly slipped out of her, all the weight and ache of responsibility seeped back in.

Her arm was the worst of it all.

The useless stump. The wound that would never heal. The reminder of her failure.

It hurt like hellfire, not lessened an inch by the passage of years since she had received it.

Her feet touched the cold stone floor, and immediately an attendant rushed forward, gaze averted, to hold out a burgundy robe of soft fur. She slipped into it, eager to cover up her left arm.

Paragon allowed her light to recede, waved aside the attendant, and turned to face her visitor.

Sage lay in his wheelchair, swaddled in a veritable sea of fabric like a toddler. He was surrounded by two royal guards. Two of her best.

Sage was pushing a hundred, and every year showed.

He had braved all the stairs to come here in person, which meant there was something important.

“Any changes?” Paragon asked.

“The battle-priests have secured the perimeter around the Second Sun and Wiseman’s Temple,” Sage said. He stared blindly in her direction with foggy eyes. “However, the rest of the city isn’t doing so well. It appears the Heroes’ Guild is struggling to maintain control of the streets, and are retreating to the Lodge. The guard force has barricaded themselves inside their precincts. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Beasts are loose inside Goldbrand.”

Paragon nodded. “I see. Then I have no choice. I will go restore order. I cannot allow the city to be further molested.”

“A poor idea, I’m afraid,” Ingemar said. “You can’t go out there, not while the flickering problem persists. If you engage in combat like this, against those kinds of numbers, you may yet…”

“Die?” Paragon asked, taking a step closer to the old man. Her light flared instinctively, and those present in the room covered their eyes. She took a deep breath and forced the light to recede. “Have you seen that in your visions, then? Tell me the truth, Ingemar Starborn, or I swear I will hang you from this tower by your toes.”

“No,” Ingemar admitted, “but that does not mean you are immortal. My visions are sometimes inconclusive.”

“They’re always inconclusive!”

Paragon paced back and forth, her bare feet swishing on the bare floor.

I didn’t build this empire from the ground up, just for this city, my crown jewel, to fall to some piddly Beast invasion.

“The Purifiers, then,” she said. “Send them out. Have them mop up this mess.”

Ingemar nodded. “An excellent choice, My Queen. They are already prepared. I will give them the order.”

Paragon turned her back to him, gently massaging the stump of her left arm. “Very well. If they fail, I will have no choice but to intervene personally.”

“Have faith,” Ingemar said.

Paragon paused.

“I have very little of that, these days,” she finally said.

*****

“This seems like a really bad idea,” Lace said, looking down over the edge of the wall. “Even for us.”

“Not like we have much of a fucking choice,” Kiren said. “We owe Excelerate something, at least, after what he’s done for us.”

Lace took a deep breath. “You’re right. So, what’s the plan?”

“We jump.”

“That’s it?”

“Yup.”

They had found a section of the wall around the back which the Beasts had not yet surrounded. Still, there were five meters of empty space between them and the ground. That alone was enough to make Lace think twice.

No one had authorized them to leave, of course, apart from Good Doctor. If any of the other Heroes found out, Lace suspected there would be hell to pay.

Luckily, they were all occupied fighting off the Beasts, who constantly threatened to scale the walls and break down the gates.

The only other people who knew were Tommyn, Haden, and also Veera, who had agreed to drop chains off the side of the wall when they returned so they could climb back up.

“Okay, I’ll create an updraft as we’re falling,” Lace said. “That should be enough to slow us down, at least a little. Not everyone is invincible like you, Kiren.”

“Fair enough,” Kiren said. “What are we waiting for, then? Let’s go.”

Lace shuffled from one foot to the other. She struggled to get over the distance between herself and the ground. Her stomach revolted against you.

“One,” Kiren said.

“Wait, no! I need more time!”

“Two.”

“Three.”

Kiren jumped, and Lace was forced to leap after him. The cobbles below rushed up towards her, and she threw up a wall of air that moved upward to meet them.

The wind hit their bodies, dragged against their clothes, and forced their descent to slow, if only by a little.

Kiren hit the ground and tucked into a roll, and Lace hit against something…

Soft.

Many arms caught her and lowered her to the ground. Wisps of foggy, indistinct energy twirled around her, then disappeared.

“I’ve got your back,” the shard of the Creator whispered in her ear.

Kiren got back on his feet and turned to face her, dusting off his clothes.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said with a wild grin that pulled his long, reptilian lip to the corner of his face.

Lace managed a shaky smile, rattled but no worse for wear. “You’re crazy, you know that right?”

“I know. Now let’s go. Excelerate isn’t going to save himself.”

They set off towards Excelerate’s house. It wouldn’t be too far, considering it was in the same district. They didn’t head true south, however, in the direction of their destination. They went west, weaving between streets as they kept their steps silent.

The Beasts had not yet infiltrated the whole western part of the district. They wrapped around the invading force as best they could then changed course to the southeast.

The Second Sun had gone dark. Lace couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not.

They found Tinker Street, and after ridding the world of a few spawnlings aimlessly littering the road, it was an easy thing to find the building with the red weathervane. It depicted the profile of a rooster.

The home was in immaculate condition, with a dark oil coat that protected the wooden facade from the elements. It was three stories tall, with a number of shuttered glass windows on each floor.

Light spilled out of the cracks of a window on the third floor.

Lace stepped up to the black-painted oaken door and raised her hand to knock.

“You really think we’ve got time for that shit?” Kiren asked. “Just cut it down, idiot.”

Lace didn’t want to think what would happen if Excelerate ever found out that they had cut his door open. Kiren was right, though. It was better than him dying.

Lace pulled out her gale-staff and inserted a sand vial for extra cutting power. She ran a focused current through the hollow metal, producing a wind blade out the front, and used it to make several precise slices that ran all the way through the wooden door, separating the handle and locking mechanism from the rest.

Kiren kicked in the door. Lace let her wind blade fade away, reset the sand vial in her pouch, and stowed away her weapon.

They entered the darkened building together.