A Practical Guide to Evil-Chapter 61Vol 7 : Break

We came at the wall in waves.

Thirty feet of stone, topped by an army’s worth of dead. Bastions that rose even higher to make room for the siege engines to fire, bristling with catapults and ballistae. Wards crackled with power as the first ladders were laid against the wall, cracking the steel-capped wood, and out of sight dead mages stood in circles to weave rituals that would turn men to screams and dust. I sent away Zombie after the second time she was shot under me, back on my feet with a sword in hand. Legionaries – mine and Praes’, in the smoke and ash it was hard to tell them apart – put up their shields above their heads as the dead shots bows and threw chunks of masonry.

I saw an orc’s head turn to pulp as rock the size of a table went through his shield, the corpse toppling to the ground with it. Javelins punch through plate, sorcery tore burning holes in the shield walls and above us the clouds were turning dark again. I tossed around Night heedlessly, feeling the coolness in my veins begin to turn raw – like sandpaper was being dragged around my insides – and shattered a parapet just in time for a young legionary to land her ladder into the rubble. A heartbeat later a skeleton wielding a hooked pole tried to push it back, but Akua’s hand shoved me aside as she yelled out an incantation in the mage tongue.

A ball of translucent sorcery formed around the top of the ladder, expanding into a shield that blew the skeleton off the rampart.

“Forward,” I shouted, ducking low to avoid a whistling arrow. “It’s the last wall!”

Half a lie. The palaces would have walls of their own and the Dead King’s lair as well, but it was true there were no ramparts left lying ahead. Behind the heights of stone stood the inner city of Keter, the central third leading to the ancient hills turned plateau the city had been built around. It would be the hardest fight yet, I knew, but my blood still sang at the knowledge that we were there. We’d nearly made to the heart of Keter, past all the horror and madness. We were so close to the last struggle I could almost feel it on my tongue. The girl who’d landed her ladder began to climb, but three rungs up she dropped with an arrow in the throat. Her body fell to the side, rising a wight, and a large orc began his climb.

I hurried there, elbowing soldiers as I went and Akua following in my wake. Legionaries kept taking the ladder and they kept dying, the dead intent on snuffing out the first ladder landed, but concentrating their fire cost them. Other ladders began to stay up, and as the twentieth body died to rise undead my own boot touched the bottom of the ladder.

“Catherine-” Akua began.

“Keep them off me,” I interrupted, and sword in hand began the climb.

My bad leg throbbed. It’d been too long since I’d last put on full plate as I now wore and I wasn’t used to the weight anymore. But climbing up the ladder wouldn’t require me to dance around, just to keep going. Akua cursed profusely, but even as arrows began to fall on me from both sides roiling winds shot up to blanket me. A rung, then another, and as I rose a legionary stepped in to follow. A javelin came from above and I had to press myself against the wall, the wood of the rung digging into my throat, and though it passed me the man behind me took it in the eye. Another rung. There was a shout from below and I looked to my left, drawn by instinct, only to find a blur of movement.

I pulled on Night and threw black flame at it, the heat and power of the impact forcing the ballista bolt off course. Gods, that would have gone right through my ribs.

I hurried up and I was two-thirds through when the shield Akua had bespelled to protect the top of the ladder shattered under a stream of curses, breaking into shards that soon faded. Even as I desperately dragged myself up I saw a pair of skeletons with hooked poles catch the side rails and begin to push. There were soldiers beneath, enough that the ladder weighed too heavy to easily push, but it moved backwards half an inch and my heart leapt up in my throat. I climbed another rung as Akua blew one of the skeletons way, but it was replaced in a heartbeat and more began to put their hands to the pole to push. Fuck, I thought as I went up another rung and saw I wouldn’t make in time.

The ladder was pushed back another inch, and it was so close to the angle that’d topple us that I hissed. I threw Night in clumps but the skeletons I shattered were replaced, and as I went up another rung the ladder began to topple – until I snarled, sending Night racing down the edge of my blade, and hacked at the hook of the closest pole pushing us back. The strike went right through, the headless pole dipping down and getting stuck between rungs as the weight shifted. Half the ladder was against the wall again, and with a triumphant cry I went up another rung. Close enough to hack at the legs of the skeletons, though I had to duck back under to avoid getting impaled by a spear.

I tossed a ball of black flame over the edge as I did, and a heartbeat later I was atop the wall.

It was a bloody whirl after that. I couldn’t even tell how many of them I was fighting – they were coming from all sides, with swords and axes and spears. I ripped a dagger out of one’s hand after blowing through his head with Night, taking it as parrying blade, but Gods I wished I had a shield. Legionaries followed behind me and we were pushed back-to-back, forced to keep our foothold on the wall open with the clash of steel. I parried and struck with the strength of my Name, shattering arm bones and cracking skulls, until I felt Akua behind me again and suddenly the wall to our left was a frozen block of ice. I moved to cover her while she stood back panting, face trickling with sweat, and took off another skeleton’s head after turning his blade aside with the dagger.

Legionaries kept coming up, wights among them, and I took a few steps back from the melee to catch my breath. It allowed me a look at the fighting on the wall beyond us, which was a grim sight. We were landing ladders more easily now that we’d forced the dead to fight us up close as well, but soldiers were dropping like flies. Would I even still have an army come nightfall? If the Praesi hadn’t come we would all be dead, I thought.

Akua’s ice broke as curses struck it from below, exploding into a shower of shards – I felt some cut up my cheeks and the side of my nose, blood flowing free – but a ladder was being landed past it and I moved that way, sword high as I called for soldiers to follow. The push was aborted, though, when arrows of bright red flame tore through the enemy and there was the howl of wind. A heartbeat later the Rogue Sorcerer landed with a fluttering coat among wisps of flame, footing uncertain from the wind magic he’d used to aid his lip.

“Clear the wall,” I shouted, pointing my sword at the enemy laying beyond him.

Legionaries charged, sweeping past him and colliding with thick ranks of skeletons. I didn’t go with them, instead moving towards my friend as soldiers began to come up the ladder to our side.

“Where the Hells are the Procerans?” I asked him, shouting to be heard over the din. “We’re getting butchered out there, Roland.”

“They got bogged down,” he shouted back. “Ran into the Grey Legion.”

I spat to the side, spit sticking to lips and flecking my cheek. Yeah, I couldn’t blame them for slowing in the face of those monsters. I’d been hoping the Dead King would hold them back like an honour guard, but apparently they were worth committing to keep Procer off his back while the inner wall was fought over.

“Is the Prince of Bones leading them?” I asked.

“No, he isn’t,” the Rogue Sorcerer said. “Catherine, something’s wrong. There’s word from the League, the Hawk isn’t at the battle out in the Ossuary. Hanno says he fought the Seelie and a pack of Revenants but-”

A crack of thunder drowned out his last words. I got the gist anyway. The Scourges that’d fought had been held back from serious engagements, the Prince of Bones and the Hawk had yet to make an appearance and it all stank to the high Heavens. I went to look for a story, and though I couldn’t quite feel out what it was about my stomach sunk when I was faced with tangible proof that there was a story. One about the last remaining Scourges, who numbered five. About them fighting as a single band. Indrani went out with the army, I thought. We have no one who can check the Hawk except for… I grabbed Roland by the collar and dragged him close.

“Get the Silver Huntress here,” I ordered. “As quick as you can. Send the Painted Knife to get her if you have to, otherwise we’re-”

If Akua hadn’t slammed a shield in place a heartbeat later, I would have died. The arrow would have gone right through my neck, instead of slowing as it punched through the panel of sorcery and letting me move just quick enough it bit at the side of my helmet instead. I backed away hastily, once more cursing my lack of a shield, which ended up saving my life for the second time in two heartbeats. I heard the crunch even as I felt the air against my face. It was, I realized, a rock. Someone had thrown a rock the size of a small house my way, and it’d come close enough to me I’d felt like a whisper on my skin. It tumbled past the wall, earning screams and then a wet crushing sound, and for a heartbeat terror seized my throat.

Akua was alive, I saw. She’d been moving between me and the edge of the rampart, so she’d been out of the way. The knot in my guts loosened, but only so much. I turned to Roland, who was gaping, and my hand went back to his collar.

“You still have that wind magic?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Why do you-”

“Get me the Silver Huntress,” I cut through, and threw him off the rampart.

It was only thirty feet. Wouldn’t kill a hero even if he didn’t get his artefact out in time – which he did, ending up rolling across rooftop tiles like a human tumbleweed. By the time I turned, Akua had stepped back from the rampart’s edge and closer to me. Her free hand was low, magic dancing across her fingers in subtle shifts of light.

“That was the Prince of Bones,” the golden-eyed sorceress told me. “And it won’t be the last stone he throws.”

“We’re fucked if we stay here on the wall,” I said. “Almost all of them are nasty customers from a distance and we’re out in the open. We need to-”

It was prettily done, I appreciated that deep down. First the stone – large as the last, and this time I saw where in the streets it came from – drew my eye and I pulled on Night by reflex, spinning rope around it to swing it around like a sling to throw back. But it had been meant to get caught, and in its wake came an arrow. Akua caught that, belted out a spell that had steel shivering all around us and froze the arrowhead in the air. Then the both of us took the Mantle’s curse right on, as we’d been meant to all along. I dropped my working on the stone, abandoning it to gravity, but the Night I tried to throw up in the way was just a shade too slow. I was blown off my feet, blinded as I felt myself fall through dust. Stone, she broke the stone.

Akua screamed, as much in rage as fear, and the two of us fell down in the street below. I felt blades scrape at my armour and one cut across my face as I abandoned my flesh eye and looked through Night instead. We’d fallen into a knot of enemy soldiers, Akua missing a chunk of her left pauldron and the shoulder beneath it. I glimpsed bone even as she laid a hand on it and flesh formed anew with a hiss. I slashed through a head, then was driven back by a warhammer I awkwardly stopped by hitting the handle but still bounced off my shoulder plate. Snarling, I leaned forward and pulled on Night: I spat out a stream of black flame, incinerating the undead before me. But they’d lasted long enough to slow us, damn them.

I helped Akua back to her feet, hacking away at a spear that came a little too close, the two of us finding out backs to a powder-covered wall.

“We need to get to stairs,” she said. “Get back to your troops.”

“We need to survive,” I grimly replied, looking ahead. “They’re here.”

The Prince of Bones was hard to miss, hulking shape of steel that he was. Like half a dozen armours had swallowed slightly smaller ones, leaving only a monstrous golem with the outline of a man. His face was a mask of steel, frowning sternly with eyes that were sculpted. Not a hole anywhere on him, only shifting layers of steel and the large greatsword he held in a single hand as he marched towards us. The Mantle was but a step behind him, mace hoisted on her shoulder, but of the Hawk and the Tumult I found no trace. They would remain hidden until they struck, I thought. As for the Seelie…

“Steel yourself,” I warned.

A heartbeat later, it struck us like a wave. Love me. You love me, love me most of all the things in the world. You love me, so obey. Rip her apart. In the back of my mind Komena sneered and the force broke into smoke, but at my side Akua went stiff. I was already striking by the time the mane of red hair appeared in front of her, but as I opened the throat of a voluptuous redhead in a ballroom gown it faded without my steel touching anything solid. An illusion. The tricky pest always –

“Fuck,” I snarled as I felt a knife slide between my ribs.

The Seelie’s impossibly beautiful face leaned towards mine, smiling as she went for a kiss, but I grabbed her by the throat and drew on my Name to toss her up. She flew for a moment, then shattered into rose petals as I put a hand to my side. My armour was unmarked. A real wound or another illusion? I’d never fought the Scourge up close before. I shifted under my armour, but the wet I felt could be sweat as well as blood. The pain, though, that was real. Akua was back to herself just in time to throw up that magnetism spell again, though she put her back into it this time: not only did it catch the Hawk’s arrow but it also crumpled the three closest ranks of skeletons into balls of metal.

“That,” Akua bit out, “was most unpleasant.”

“Tell me about it,” I grunted. “Never been good with redheads.”

My flesh eye had been working for some time, but it was still with the others I looked around.

“Stairs to the left,” I said. “It’s our best chance.”

“Depressingly true,” Akua noted, which I took as agreement.

We made a break for it. If there was one weakness to the Prince and the Mantle, it was that their bulk made them slow – especially in broken terrain like the ruined street full of undead soldiers we were fighting our way through. The enemy wasted no time in trying to stop us. Rain began to fall in front of us, a ball of clouds gathering and being milked dry of water that is spat out as a torrent of water filling the street. Undead were knocked aside, and though there wasn’t enough flow to topple us the street ran wet and our footing slowed. I evaporated the could ball with a blast of blackflame, in time for Akua to send a spike of sinuous darkness right into the heart of a sizzling curse – it broke apart instantly.

Undead converged on us from all asides and I could not torch them as fast as they appeared, not without slowing too much. I parried and hacked and tried to push forward but that fucking water got everywhere and when I was forced to make an awkward parry I slipped. Akua blasted off the Bind’s head but my back still hit the floor, water seeping into my armour by the neck, and I swallowed a scream as my side throbbed. Yeah, the Seelie had definitely stabbed me. I was dragged back to my feet, slashing blindly at a ghouls coming close, but froze when I saw that above us a hundred spear of sizzling lightning were forming. Gods, we were both drenched. It wouldn’t even need to hit us, just…

I pulled on Night and Akua released me to raise her hand and incant, but the Hawk shot again and I had to spin a sphere of darkness that sucked in the arrow that’d have killed her. From the corner of my eye I saw a flicker of movement – red hair and that fucking smug smile again – as love me, love only me pounded away at my mind. Akua shifted her incantation halfway through, flicking her hand and melting the Seelie’s face to the bone, but it’d been an illusion. Above us the lightning spears came down as she Scourge reappeared to my side, knife already halfway to my lung, but the Beast laughed into my ear. A boot tore into the Seelie’s cheek, her face betraying utter surprise as Hanno of Arwad landed on it feet first.

Above us, the spears had stopped midair. The went an inch down and then back up, as if two wills were fighting for control of the spell. Masego, I thought, you prince among sorcerers. Forty feet away I saw the Prince of Bones stop to casually rip out a wall and throw it our way, but before I could pull on Night the scent of ozone filled the air. The wall crumbled into dust and through I night I saw a silhouette standing atop the wall, a woman in a painted stone mask and a long green cloak. The Witch of the Woods had come, I realized with a pulse of excitement.

“Apologies,” Hanno calmly said, getting back to his feet from the crouch he’d landed in. “I must admit I got lost on my way.”

The Seelie had faded into golden smoke as she fell under him, though not before receiving a cut across the face for her troubles.

“Fighting back against Ashuran stereotypes, I see,” I croaked out, because ‘thank you’ would have been too much.

It got a snort out of Akua, at least. Wait, should I be worried the Doom of Liesse was the only one who’d laughed?

“I try,” Hanno said. “Reinforcements are headed our way, Warden. I called on all we could spare.”

I cracked my neck, wiping away some of the blood still seeping down my cheek mixed with sweat.

“Let’s see what the Scourges of made of, then,” I said, spitting to the side.

Above us the lightning spears suddenly faded. The Tumult, I suspected, had decided it was better to try another spell than to keep pitting his will against Masego’s.

“Let’s,” Hanno agreed, raising his sword with a smile.

The Prince of Bones moved first and I tensed, but to my utter surprise he did not attack. Instead, he turned his back and ran.

“Bold,” Akua murmured, appreciative.

“Fuck,” I feelingly said. “Pursue, go.”

The Hawk tried to put an arrow in Hanno’s eye, who plucked it out of the air with a vaguely irritated look – come on, part of me complained, he’s not even Named right now! – as Akua and I shot forward. The Dead King would have none of it, though. All the undead across four city blocks went still for a moment, and then they began to throw themselves at us. I shouted and let loose streaks of blackflame as I cut through a torrent of soldiers who didn’t even try to kill me, just throw themselves in my way, but even when Akua blew them away with a gust of wind it was too late: darkness came down over us, the Mantle covering the retreat of the Scourges with her favourite trick.

It didn’t last long with Hanno around, Light coming out in a torrent that shattered the curse, but it was enough. The Witch tossed a few houses at them as they retreated but we caught none and I felt frustration bubble up my throat. The Dead King was denying us a scrap, had been doing it all day. Was he trying to tire us out or simply keeping the Scourges as his last trump card? Either way, dragging Named here would just be wasting them at the moment.

“Hanno,” I shouted. “Go help on the wall. Can the Witch help get the Procerans through the Grey Legion?”

“We’ll do what we can,” he shouted back.

I nodded him thanks and he offered back the sketch of a bow. The cheeky bastard. I felt Akua’s eyes on my back and turned.

“To the stairs,” I told her, looking back up at the rampart.

The Legions of Terror and Army of Callow had secured more than a dozen footholds, it was time to turn that into a push. The Dead King wanted to play coy? I’d force his fucking hand.

“I’m with you,” Akua promised, which I enjoyed hearing more than was wise.

We went back up, scything through the dead, and I found a captain to bark orders for me. We took two companies into the closest gatehouse, clearing out the ghouls and the beorn inside, and then forced the gates open. The steel jaws opened below our feet, soldiers pouring through, and I grinned. Now we had the initiative again. Roland should be back with the Silver Huntress soon, but I wanted us to gobble up a few blocks to hold first. We fought our way back down, arms tired and short of breath, to take the lead of the companies that’d gone through the gate. With a shout I took them to the last dead on the avenue, smashing our way through, and we pushed into the inner city.

Resistance, to my rising discomfort, was sparse. The dead were disorganized, coming at us in disjointed bands, and the push I’d meant to take a few blocks with kept ripping forward through the ranks of the dead. I only began to slow when we were past at least ten blocks, and when I found a great granite gargoyle at a street corner I frowned. I knew this place I realized. This corner. I had once been carried past here on a litter as a guest of the Dead King, dead royalty bearing me to the Silent Palace where I was to be hosted. We weren’t just past the inner wall, we were halfway to the heart of Keter. To victory. My heartbeat thundered against my ears and my steps slowed, my legionaries slowing with me.

“Catherine?” Akua asked.

“We’re getting close to the five palaces,” I said. “We need the arrows in our quiver readied before we go further.”

I kept my words vague, since you never knew who might be listening in this city, but she knew what I meant: the Mirror Knight and the Severance, Hierophant and the Crown of Autumn. Going after the King of Death without either would be madness. Neshamah was the most powerful sorcerer Calernia had ever known and likely ever would, fighting him head on in his seat of power would only get us killed. Not even the Sisters would be able to help me when we got to the hall where the Greater Breach lay and the monster that’d made it would be waiting for us.

“I’ll send the signal,” the golden-eyed sorceress agreed.

The spell was simple enough, a variation on the signal lights that the Legions and the Army had been using for years. Akua flicked her wrist at the sky, incanting brusquely, and three streaks of blue shot out. After rising high they exploded into a broad circle, one large enough that there would be no missing it even through the poison clouds and the ashen rain.

“Thanks,” I said.

Then I turned to the company at my side, its soldiers and officers having ceased to advance when I did.

“We’re in deep now, ladies and gentlemen,” I told them. “Maybe half an hour’s walk ahead are the palace we’re going for, and before we can send in Named to end this we’re going to need to secure this corner. First we-”

Everyone felt it, when the sorcery lit up. Even the most power-blind of my legionaries felt their bones shake, their soul flinch. My hand shot up, Night already raging throughs my veins, and Akua was already halfway through a shield spell before we both stopped. The magic wasn’t coming from ahead of us but from below. Far under our feet.

“Akua?” I asked.

She did not answer, golden eyes gone wide. Instead she knelt down on the ash-streaked ground, ripping off her helmet and pressing her cheek against the stone.

“Akua,” I said again, tone sharper.

“The ritual is below,” she said, palm against the floor. “Far enough not even Hierophant can trouble it. But there is something more, Catherine. It is an array, a large one, and-”

The pulse washed over us in the heartbeat that followed. It felt like nothing at all, I thought, but then Sven Noc was howling in rage within my soul and Night boiled out without my having even called it. Akua had gotten to her feet, I saw, and was panicking as she shouted an incantation and traced glowing runes in the air. Over the three heartbeats it took her to finish the spell, I saw her face under the helmet change. Lines deepened, the arc of her brow grew more pronounced. My stomach dropped as I turned towards my soldiers. Their helmets were open-faced, hiding nothing: faces aged, skin growing thick with lines and hair turning white.

Before ten heartbeats had passed every single one of my legionaries dropped dead of old age.

“Gods,” I croaked, staggering back.

I looked further back at the others who’d followed me past the wall, and saw that behind me lay a trail of corpses that’d fallen down as gently as leaves dropping from a tree. Not a single one of them taken by sword or spear, they’d just… died. The trail of corpses went all the way back to the inner wall, atop which some of my legionaries were shouting in horror. It ends at the wall, I thought. Ice seizing my heart I turned to Akua, who was shimmering with pale green light but was, to my immense relief, alive and no longer aging. She panted softly, sweat trickling down her brow.

“That,” Akua Sahelian softly said, “aged me at least a decade.”

“This isn’t time magic,” I numbly said. “There’s no such thing as time in Trismegistan magic. What the Hells is this, Akua?”

“Not a spell,” she said, straightening. “It is Keter’s Due.”

My fingers clenched.

“You meant he pulled off what you did at the Doom,” I said. “Sucked in the magic of the Due into other arrays and-”

“He was not quite so skilled,” Akua interrupted me. “As I said, Catherine, this is not a spell.”

She shot a look at the stone under out feet.

“I believe that somewhere under our feet are buried artefacts that were empowered by the wasted magic of the Due,” she continued. “Thousands of them, whose only purpose is to tint that emanated magic with a specific kind of entropy.”

My eye narrowed. Night raged in my veins, the blessing of the Sisters keeping death from touching me.

“Aging,” I said.

“Specifically flesh, I think,” Akua said. “Or perhaps living flesh?”

“But that means,” I slowly said, “that this isn’t even the ritual from below. Then what is that fucking magic for?”

Fate handed me the answer, bitch that she was, when in the distance there was an ear-splitting rumble. It was so loud as to drown out even screams, but I saw enough. Over the inner wall I could see the top of some towers, and they were moving. The outer city was rotating, Gods save us all. And it got worse, because when the city ceased turning instead it moved another direction: pushed up by some invisible force, entire districts of the city shot up. Though I could not see it, from the way some towers disappeared I guessed that some districts were going down as well. Like some sort of demented jigsaw puzzle, the outer city of Keter had just turned itself into a series of plateaus and chasms.

“Gods preserve us,” Akua murmured.

She saw it too, then. This was death, the death of every living soldier in the city. Maybe not immediately, but that single stroke had ensured there was now not even a single army inside the walls: all our forces had been moved away from the breaches they’d come in through and then split into smaller pieces, left alone on platforms with whatever enemy forces had been in the district when it was raised or lowered. We’d win some of those fights, for sure. But it wouldn’t matter a fucking bit, because now all those soldiers were stuckand the dead would go around extinguishing them one force at a time. There could be no reinforcements, no manoeuvring, and undead could climb goddamn cliffs – or leap down them, if need be. Living people could not.

“I’ve killed us all,” I faintly said. “Weeping Heavens, I’ve killed us all.”

The city was as much an army-killer as the dead within it, and I’d driven us deep into its embrace. There would be no recovering from this.

“The battle is not yet over,” Akua said. “We can still recover. Retreat, perhaps, if-”

Behind us, dead soldiers began to twitch. And I heard the sound of boots coming from ahead. More undead, soldiers that’d care nothing for this curse of entropy.

“Catherine, we need to go,” she urgently said.

I stood there dazed until she pulled at my arm, allowing myself to be tugged away. It was over, I realized. We ran through the rising soldiers I’d just led to their deaths and I felt myself blast those who came too close with Night as if someone else were doing it – Akua could do nothing, all her concentration maintaining the shield that kept her alive – and we ran for the wall, for the gate where some my soldiers still stood and fought. We climbed the stairs, black flames burning behind us, and as Akua finally released her spell I stumbled to the edge of the rampart. There I saw it all, the madhouse that Keter had become. Raised heights of and deep drops, both moved by some mechanism built deep under the bedrock of the capital.

And as the magic below our feet kept burning, the outer city began to move again.

It span, only what had been a mere imposition was now brutally lethal: houses broke, soldiers and undead fell off the edge of those cliffs as the centrifugal force caught them. And for those below, they found those same broken houses dropped atop their heads by the force of the spin. Shields of sorcery and Light bloomed, trying to mitigate the damage and staying there until at last the spinning stopped, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. The Dead King would just keep spinning his city again and again until the ritual burned out, long after the last of our mages and priests had fallen to exhaustion. And none of this, I realized, not a single part of this was actually aimed at anyone. It was all indirect, distant. The kind of danger that no hero would rise against, that no story would help destroy.

“We lost,” I murmured.

The exhaustion of the day caught up to me all at once and my leg gave, tearing a pained gasped out of my throat as I half-fell and had to catch myself against the crenellation. There were shouts of surprise and a moment later Akua was holding me up, arm under my shoulder as she asked a question I didn’t hear. Gods, I was so tired. I’d burned myself out on Night, and now that the strength of my Name – the hope of victory – was fading, the edges of my vision were going dark. And I was seeing thing, too, because suddenly light got harsher. I blinked dumbly, looking up at a sky that was suddenly cloudless.

“What’s happening?” I croaked out.

Akua said something, but it was as if she was speaking through water. I saw them then. Only a few hundred, standing in the ruins of the gate Hanno had broken, but they were impossible to miss: never before had I seen so many giants. And among the Gigantes one stood taller than all the rest, a flame burning within him that hurt my eye to behold.

“Blood loss,” Akua said, talking to someone else. “The fucking fool, she’s going into sho-”

“Young King,” Kreios the Riddle-Maker called out, “let me remind you who is it that you dare ape with your works.”

When darkness came to swallow me whole, I did not fight it.