"This is it," I gasped. Malcolm nodded, but kept his head down. "What do we do?"
"Nothing," said a voice from the corner. The two men, their tattooed eyes, their bulky robes. They walked toward us like monks, hands clasped at their waists, sleeves hiding their fists.
"Who are you people?" I said as I led my little contingent out of the elevator. "I mean, I've appreciated your help, but what's your part in all this?"
"This is our point," he said, nodding to the Ruin behind him. "And we have appreciated your help as well, Eva Forge."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
The nearer one shrugged and tore out of his robe. Not a man at all, and not wearing armor. He was armor. Bulky chest and backwardbending knees, arms like a giant's. And the tattoos around his eyes? Scales, just like the rest of him. His mouth yawned with teeth, and was as wide as both my hands together. He wore shielded gauntlets, bound to sharp punch daggers. He smiled at me with gods so many teeth.
Rethari.
"Dramatic, my brother," the other one said, calmly drawing back his robe and then rolling up his sleeves to reveal similar weapons. "Can't we keep our dignity?"
"You sent the artifact, didn't you? To get us here, to this point? To reveal the betrayal of Alexander and drive us to war against ourselves?"
"Not at all. We had no idea Amon still lived. That was just icing. All we wanted to do was drive the scions of Morgan away from the godking. This…" He raised his hands and nodded. "This is just serendipity."
"We're here to destroy that thing," I said. "And we're really not going to let you stand in our way."
"What luck. We're here to destroy it, too. Just…" And he cocked his head to the sky. "Not yet."
This gave me pause. I didn't like that our paths aligned. I looked to Malcolm, but he just shrugged. Cassandra stepped forward.
"You mean to free the power entombed in the Ruin, to force the turning of the cycle and ascend your gods. I will stop you," she said.
"Stop us from doing what, little girl? You want to destroy the Ruin? Fine." The one still wearing a robe held out his hand. It contained a tiny wheel and chain. "Here is the plunger. We've already set the charges. We will give this to you. We'll even pull the trigger, so that you might escape and live."
"They won't blow it yet," Malcolm said. "Not until Alexander and Amon kill each other."
"Why?" I asked. "Why wait until then?"
"The power would release from the gods, but the cycle would not turn. Not immediately. Maybe a month, maybe a year, but it would stay in the mantle of mankind. New gods would arise."
"Not if you blow it up," Cassandra said. "That kind of release would overwhelm the city, no matter when you do it." She looked at me. "It might be enough to kill the Brothers, and leave the rest of us mad with divinity."
"Until the cycle turned," Malcolm said. "Which we would have no mind to prevent."
"So," the Rethari said, gripping the plunger. "We seem to be in something of a draw. If you'd all please step back…"
The ghost appeared from the direction of the Ruin, rushing up the bowl of the room without making a sound. He started as little more than a fog, quickly solidifying as he came. Feet away from the Rethari he struck. I heard the blade go into meat, once, twice, and then a tearing slash that buckled the giant creature's back. Those tattooed eyes bulged, and then he tumbled to the floor.
His companion howled and went to slash at the assassin. I drew iron and put him down before he could even take a step.
Nathaniel knelt behind the fallen Rethari, blood on his blade and mouth. He looked up at me, chest heaving, skin white, the wound I had given him still oozing into his shirt. Maybe not so much of a Healer, after all.
"I could not let that happen," he said. His voice was wet with blood. "Not to Alexander. All that I do, I do for him."
"I understand," I said. "Thank you."
"So. Redemption at last, Eva Forge?"
"Let's not be idiots, Nate."
I raised the bully and put lead in his eye. His skull pulped around the bullet's path, bright crimson on his white pauldrons. He tumbled back and was still. In the quiet that followed, I walked over to the Rethari detonation device and crushed it under my foot. When I turned around they were all staring at me.
"I'm not much of a forgiver," I said. "Now show me how to vent this place."
* * *
The sky was a nightmare of light and current and arcane shadow. The city of Ash was cast in stark and unnatural darkness. The surface of the lake rippled with the impact of unseen forces, like a giant rainstorm. A thunderhead of ash and fury was growing over the battlefield, and the two combatants faced one another in utter silence and calm.
With a roaring creak, the great circular tracks of the monotrains shuddered and strained into life. Behind their shrouding towers, the impellors sparked. Glowed with arcane power. Began to move. The trains inched forward on their tracks, slowly speeding up as the cycle of the impellors increased, each pass moving the trains forward a little quicker, each pass coming sooner and with more power. More strength. Strength unrestrained. Something was wrong.
Thankfully, no one was on any of the trains. A small grace, on a day of great tragedy, with more tragedy still to come. The trains turned and turned, howling around their tracks. The force of the impellors exceeded all that the tracks had been designed to withstand, and kept going. Sparks showered down from the iron wheels, the metal of track and train starting to glow as they continued to accelerate. All across the city people stopped their rioting and their persecution and turned to look at the howling iron horses. The smart ones ran.
When the tracks failed it was with a great sigh of straining metal and broken tolerances. In many places, freed Amonites ran to the failing system and tried to bolster them, but this was beyond their ken. Many died, only hours into the dawn of their newly liberated Cult. Many ordinary citizens died as well, for standing too close to faltering tracks, or not realizing what was happening and trying to get close enough to see.
In most cases the trains just toppled from their tracks, skidding through towers and streets and across cobbled paths before burying themselves into a canal or building. Hot metal charred the ground as they rolled, flailing around like chain shot.
On the impellors roared, faster and faster, their power drums glowing to sun's brilliance as they spun. Their force peeled open the towers that hid them, shattering their skin like a struck bell. Feyr boiled up from their hidden places, screaming in mad ecstasy, clawing at their ears. The impellors roared, and soon the towers that had been built taller than the tracks were crumbling. Walls boomed, windows popped, the steel framework splintering like china. The city fell, tower by tower, block by block. Only the ancient buildings stood, those that had been built lower than the tracks. Even those structures sustained damage as the higher places collapsed on them in a cloud of glass and steel.
The impellors howled like sirens, like juggernauts, like the horns at the end of the world, calling damnation down from heaven. The horns sounded, and Ash fell into ruin.
Above us, the sky wrinkled and flexed. The two gods of man screamed along with the ruining of their Fraterdom, and when the last gasp had left them, the world was silent. They fell to earth like broken angels, to crater into the city. The storm broke, the sky cleared, and the world breathed anew.
20
he crater was twenty feet across, lip to smoldering lip. What had once been a smooth stone parkway was now fragmented like cracked pottery. The heat of Amon's entry had fused the stone as soon as it was shattered. He lay at the bottom, venting arcane steam from the fissures in his skin.