Amidst the devastation of the final battle, in which the arrows of the Furies rained like silver shrapnel spat from the cannon of a god, and in which the black clouds of death swarmed and swept through the ranks of the Daimons like the miasma of plague incarnate, and where the blasts of Ylia’s hand-cannon blazed and ruptured the air in incandescent bursts, Telos faced The Warden alone.

  The Fall continued its fruitless plummet into the great pit below them. The Nergal rested on the lip of the Falls, a black tomb bearing doom and hope in equal measure within its alchemical confines. A stillness had come over Telos, a sense of rightness. He was arrived, at last. This was the moment his whole journey, his whole life, had prepared him for.

  “At last,” The Warden whispered, and Telos thought he heard a dark joy on his voice, an almost sensual anticipation.

  “Yes,” Telos said, rather more sadly. “But know this: I never wanted to do you harm, Warden. I merely wanted freedom. But now, after what you have done, I have to kill you. For all our sakes. For Erethia’s sake.”

  The word kill was sour on his tongue. A hex. But it was the truth.

  “If you can kill me,” The Warden said. “Then I will not be worthy of life. Come, let us see which one of us feels the flames now.”

  The commencement of that conflict was almost awkward, like two lovers beginning to doubt whether their dalliance was a wise choice. Telos stepped forward. The Warden rushed to meet him. Both stepped unevenly, sluggish given their augmented forms.

  The Warden retained a human shape, but from the inconstancy of his own body produced a black blade, long as a greatsword, forge from some kind of bone, serrated and cruel—a worthy match for Darkbite.

  The two swords met and the ringing of Qi’shathian steel on bone was a brutality upon hearing. Telos staggered back. The force of The Warden’s blow was tectonic, beyond what he could have reckoned.

  The Warden smiled.

  The black blade of Daimonbone rose and fell again and Telos leapt to the side. The ground where he had stood moments before shattered. A crack ran down through the stone, marring the Falls forever with a scar of riven earth.

  Telos swung on the counterattack but found his blade parried with horrid ease. The Warden swung his sword at Telos’s middle, intent on cutting him in half. Telos somersaulted backward and landed atop The Nergal.

  He felt the foreboding pulse of it through his feet. The machine-life of its occupant. A living virulence, held at bay by arcane sorceries and technologies. Waiting, waiting to be unleashed. A Reverse-Daimon, Telos thought. A Daimon engineered against its own kind, to infect the mind-link. The horror of it had sunken deep into his soul. The only reason it had not overwhelmed him was the pressing need to survive his present encounter.

  The Warden smiled again. Too many teeth crowded his mouth. He wore the shape of a man but was already forgetting its precise definitions. Some men are monsters long before their form changes; he is one of them, Telos thought, grimly.

  He cast his eyes swiftly over the battlefield. He could not see Ylia now. Jubal lay farther afield, close to the lip of the pit, alongside Qala—who was still unconscious. That they had not been trampled seemed a miracle. There was no sign of his mother, either. A pang stabbed through Telos’s heart.

  He almost missed the thrust of The Warden’s blade.

  He was horrifically fast. More like a scorpion than a man. Telos somersaulted once more and landed behind The Nergal, using it to put distance between them and allow him some breathing space. For all The Warden’s madness, he would not risk damaging the casket. Within it was the annihilation of his species.

  The Warden now leapt onto the sarcophagus. He seemed wrought of the same unknown material, a shadow made viscid.

  “Your crimes will be answered for, Telos!” he snarled.

  “My crimes?” Telos hissed. “My crimes? You killed Beltanus…”

  The Warden grinned.

  “Yes. I killed him. And drank of his strength. The same strength with which I will now defeat you. But did you not kill the guardsmen of Aurelia? Did you not fire upon them with the gods’ weaponry?”

  Telos felt ice in his soul, strength draining from his limbs. How did he know? And how could Telos have forgotten… The screams, the burning, the corpses piled against the barricades… He told himself it had been done to save many, many more lives. But how was he any different from The Warden, who had always killed with one justification or another.

  “Perhaps our souls bear similar stains, after all,” Telos said. “But I intend to do no further evil. You will make the world a graveyard!”

  “I would see it that humanity no longer fears the grave,” The Warden whispered. “Under me, that suffering would cease.”

  Telos shook his head.

  “No, Warden. You are deluded.” Telos smiled then, a flash of inspiration bursting forth in the form of dark humour. “And the gods are still laughing at you.”

  The Warden looked stricken. Then his face changed, and all semblance of humanity was lost. It was flesh-only, a smear of physical matter from which toothed holes and eyes emerged, like the first squalling life. The horror of it paralysed Telos for a second—too long.

  The Warden swept down toward him, changing as he did so. The sword of bone swung.

  Telos answered. His reflexes were swifter than any mortal’s. And he had concentrated his will into a single point, anticipating this furious assault.

  Darkbite was no god-forged weapon, but it was made of Qi’shathian steel, and had been loved by its former master. It was just strong enough—and Telos’s will focused enough—to do the deed.

  The black blade of bone in The Warden’s hand—which in truth was a part of him—shattered, chitin-like fragments raining about them.

  But the surge of victory Telos felt was stolen the next second as he felt Darkbite battered aside. The Warden’s charge had not halted. The weapon left Telos’s hands and tumbled over the cliff—into the darkness below.

  The Warden no longer bore a sword, but it mattered not. He struck Telos with a fist that seemed more stone than flesh.

  Whatever had been done to Telos was not enough to withstand the force of that wrath. He felt ribs crack. Blood rose up in his throat and spat it across the earth, staggering back, all the air having left his lungs.

  He blinked away dizziness and tried to rise.

  But The Warden was on him again. Feral.

  Throughout his journey, Telos had often feared his friends suffered for his curse more than he did. Jubal had lost the ability to wield a bow, his home, and his people. Ylia had lost her fortune and security—and her father. Qala had aged almost beyond recognition. Xheng had lost his arm, his ship, and his friends.

  But as The Warden set upon Telos like a starved dog upon fresh meat, the debt was finally paid.

  Telos suffered.

  The second blow dislocated Telos’s jaw and sent teeth through the skin of his cheek. Blackness crowded his vision as he nearly lost consciousness. The Warden seized his neck and slammed his head—which had developed a boned ridge—into Telos’s.

  Something cracked. The pain was extraordinary, dreamlike. Hallucinations swam before his eyes. He saw Ylia, naked, gasping for breath as he pushed into her. He saw Jubal smiling, extending a hand. He saw Xheng, diving toward him, pushing him out of the way. The flutter of Tarod cards.

  The Idiot.

  A fist hit him in the belly and he vomited equal parts bile and blood. Another struck him around the face and more teeth flew into the back of his throat. He tried to scream but all that came out was a gurgling sound.

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  The Warden was babbling, incoherent madness spilling from his lips. His rage was elemental.

  What did I do to deserve this? Telos could not help but think.

  You abandoned your family…

  Another blow struck his chest and more ribs cracked. He tried to swing a punch in return but The Warden caught his arm and snapped his elbow. The pain made him gag.

  You broke the law…

  The Warden struck him around the side of the head with a taloned hand, and his ears rang as though a thunderbolt had struck his head. He swooned but The Warden would not let him go so easily. Another blow struck him from the other side and kept him standing. A bone in his shoulder had broken, might even be jutting out of the skin. He could hardly see through the blood and disorientation and damage.

  You led others into misery…

  Hands stronger than even a gods’ gripped him, lifted him overhead. Dimly, he remembered Tecleon—the golem of Sumyr—lifting the iron giant over his head and casting him down. Now the same would be his Fate.

  Telos hung suspended. He could not even shriek, for the blood was too thick in his throat, and the pain was so world-ending; his body was not responding to the signals his brain was sending.

  The Warden brought Telos down over his knee. His spine should have shattered, but some augmentation of unholy science made the interlinking vertebrae stronger even than The Warden’s fury.

  Disgusted, The Warden hurled him over the edge of The Falls.

  Down he plummeted, toward the pit. Oblivion waited there. Welcome, at this point. For was this not the only way his curse could end?

  Yes, he saw it now: this was simpler. Why struggle against the vicissitudes when all that was required for it to end was to submit?

  He fell.

  To his super-heightened senses, prescient of his death, it was in slow-motion. He saw every particle of water racing him down into the black maw of earth. He saw the speckles upon white fletchings as arrows sailed passed him, slow as lazy dragonflies. He saw the giant shapes of Daimons, ravaging the brave Furies. He heard the war-cries of the women, still fighting, still dying for the sake of a world they had rejected.

  And then he saw Danyil.

  He appeared below Telos as a spectre, no more than mist; a shadow cast by the angle of sunlight, gone in the blink of an eye.

  And yet, there he was. Telos had seen him first in the fire, but now he saw him in the miracle of watery spume as it plunged down into death. He was still there, still watching over Telos.

  Danyil smiled.

  The beauty of it drew a tear that was more blood than water. Telos recalled Danyil’s last words. But look at me now, Mother, he had cried, as tears streaked his withered cheeks. The fires of Time have ravaged me, too. I go to you… I go to you…

  But Telos’ mother might still live—or she might be dead. Her Fate hung in the balance, as did the Fates of his friends. If he left them now, then their Fate was likely sealed.

  But he had to try. After all they had done, all they had sacrificed for him—he had to try.

  He stretched out his hand towards Danyil, and it seemed for one heart-stopping moment that Danyil’s hand touched his in return. They clasped, and Telos was suddenly swinging, the trajectory of his fall altered less than an inch, less than any eye could perceive. Possibly it was his imagination. Yet, he still felt the warmth of Danyil lingering as, buoyed by an invisible force, he lurched forward and his fingers caught the rim of the pit.

  His body slammed into the stone and the scream that’d been trying to break free for so long finally came.

  A mortal man would not have been able to grip such a ledge, but the Godseed still lived in Telos. One arm was shattered and hung limply by his side, but with his other hand, the hand that shone silver like moonlight, with tendons of god-steel beneath the translucency of his skin, he held on. He could not pull himself up. His feet scrambled vainly for purchase on the stone.

  And then a shadow descended, easily flying over the pit, and landing before him.

  The Warden loomed. He had regained his composure—to a degree. His face now dwelt somewhere between the prison warden’s and a hornet’s. It was a dreadful face. A face of nightmare.

  Telos stared up. He knew, then, this was the end. He could not do anything. He had futilely gripped the edge, but it was for nothing. A last desperation, nothing more.

  “I am your better, Telos,” The Warden whispered. “You now have no alternative but to admit it.”

  Something moved behind The Warden. Not the chaos of the unfolding battle, but something slower, more purposeful. Could it be Danyil, again? You are seeing ghosts because soon you will be one of them. Telos gritted what teeth he had left.

  “Fuck you.”

  The Warden sneered. He brought his foot down upon Telos’s hand. Two of his fingers cracked and he screamed, but through the dark engineering that’d remade his body, that made his tendons more cable than tissue, he was still able to hold on. I’m more machine than man, Telos thought, bitterly. I am just like that golem I slew.

  The thing behind The Warden moved again, and now Telos saw what it was.

  “Admit it!” The Warden snarled. “You cannot laugh now. I have brought you to ruin. I am your better, Telos. Say it!”

  Telos forced a smile through the agony of his rent face.

  “Maybe you are my better, Warden. But there’s one who is better even than you, Warden.”

  The Warden sneered.

  “And who is that?”

  “Jubal…”

  The Warden wheeled around—but he was too late.

  From the edge of death, the theront had risen. He was bloodless, barely standing straight. His breathing came in the wheezing, deranged rasps of a ghoul. His eyes were glazed, near blind.

  But he saw enough. He saw his enemy. And the god-forged hammer of Beltanus—red hot with the never-dying flames of the forge—was swinging before The Warden could react. It struck the Daimoniac with tectonic force. The sound nearly caused Telos to lose his grip and fall into the abyss.

  The fighting ceased as all heads turned to see the cataclysmic blow—a blow that resounded on the level of spirit as much as matter.

  The Warden staggered. At the last second, he had swerved away from the pit. His left arm and a chunk of his torso were missing, the edges of the wound incandescent, like magnesium put into fire. He opened his mouth to speak—but Jubal’s hammer answered.

  “You sent me into hiding!” Jubal roared.

  The hammer fell.

  “You turned my people into ghosts!”

  Again the hammer struck. Pieces of The Warden were blasted away. The hammer seemed to detonate on impact, sending shockwaves through the air and ground. The Warden reeled back from each strike, his whole body vibrating with aftershocks of agony. His eyes were wild terror.

  “But I won’t hide any longer,” Jubal snarled. “I will bellow and roar. I am alive!”

  “W-wait!” The Warden whimpered, holding up his one remaining hand.

  Jubal ignored him. “This ghost is flesh and blood!”

  The final hammerblow caused The Warden to erupt. The flesh flew, like a murder of crows dispersing at the arrival of a brilliant eagle. Gore disintegrated even as it was spilled, vapourised by the red hot energy of the hammer.

  But that was not the end. As those tatters were rent, something solid fell to the ground, something that resisted even the hammer of the god.

  A black stone thudded to the earth. Polished like obsidian. A perfect gemstone of impenetrable mystery.

  A cry went up. For all its alien tenor, Telos knew it was despair. A hundred throats of different configurations, different species, were all emitting the same word of defeat. The Daimons were breaking, changing into fleet, small forms. Fleeing.

  Telos felt his grip slipping. He could not hold on much longer; nor did he want to. He had seen the end of The Warden, the end of the battle. He could go no further.

  I go to you… father, Beltanus, Danyil, all those who have fallen…

  Telos let go.

  He fell only a few feet before something caught him. A web of golden light that erupted from the darkness. The web swept up towards him and caught him in an embrace of light and warmth. He gasped.

  The web drew him up—and there, stood on the edge of the pit, was Qala. Ancient, she looked. Wizened. And yet, her eyes still shone with the hard, proud beauty of her destiny. She smiled at him, with wrinkled lips. The web bore him to the edge.

  Jubal stood before him, clutching the terrible wound in his belly with one hand, the other still holding tight to the hammer of Beltanus that smouldered, as if pleased by its work.

  “Where’s…” But Telos’s question was answered as his feet alighted on solid ground. Ylia stood beside Qala, covered in blood and grime, sporting an array of minor injuries, but alive. Alive.

  How could he ever have thought of death? How could he ever have thought of leaving?

  He tried to take a step toward her—and his legs gave way.

  He had almost forgotten his injuries in the sheer pleasure of looking at her face—even covered in the filth of war.

  Jubal and Qala caught him on the way down. He gasped for air. Breathing, even, was painful. The Warden had ruined him.

  “Qala,” Ylia was saying. Voices were inchoate, indistinct, swimming in and out of clarity. “Qala, you must… heal him.”

  Qala was shaking her head.

  “I… I lack the power, now.”

  “But he will… die...” Jubal said.

  Telos wanted to agree, but he was close to darkness now.

  “You may lack the power,” a dark voice said, at once feminine and thundering. “But I do not… I am the Flesh-shaper, after all…”

  And then there was light.