Hasdrubal's Tale

Chapter Seven

The demon laughed.

It was a hellish sound, ringing in our ears and tearing into our minds. It had known all along the ritual would fail… of course it had known! Our awareness was still expanding… we could feel the demon drawing on our spellware, altering it to allow more and more of the demon’s true form to manifest in the human world. It could no more survive in our world than I could at the bottom of the sea, but just like any magician it was already working to fix that problem. I could feel the walls of reality threatening to crumble as the demon rewrote the world to allow it to exist. Horror flowed through us. We hadn’t just failed. We’d doomed the entire world!

Move, I thought. Or spoke. I wasn’t sure. We have to stop it.

There was no time to worry about our personal safety as we plunged our minds into the spellware. The demon was immensely powerful, and perhaps even more intelligent than us, but it was operating at a severe disadvantage. There were limits to how much of itself it could push into our reality, not without rewriting the rules again and again. It could move with terrifying speed, yet as long as it was hampered… I felt reality itself scream, heard ghastly voices howling at the corner of our world, as we started to counter the demon’s attempts to rewrite our spellwork. We worked in unison, countering its moves and even starting to push it back. But we were just buying time. The demon had all the time in the world.

Our thoughts were one. Our own spellwork is holding it in place, we thought. The spellwork has to go.

We fought to hold it back as we tried to think of a solution. The demon was on thin ice. We’d already drained the wild magic that might have let itself manifest on the human realm if the spellwork collapsed completely, which meant that it would lose its grip and fall back into the darkness. And yet, it was already making it difficult — if not impossible — to destroy our own spellwork. It would have won by now, if someone else had carried out the rite. Even us… all we could do, really, was buy time. The demon had already secured its position.

I recoiled as the laughter grew louder. The demon was still fighting, extruding more and more protuberances into our world. Our spellwork was changing — and, with each change, more and more protuberances pushed through the hole we’d punched in reality itself. I cursed under my breath, our minds racing as we considered and discarded possible ideas. How the hell did one beat an enemy who could see the future? Everything we’d done had already been countered… what sort of options did we have? I couldn’t think of anything and yet… we had to do something. We were desperate enough to consider cutting our own throats, but even that wouldn’t be enough. The wretched thing had already drained most of our magic. It was on the verge of being able to block us from accessing our own spellware.

And that would be the end, I thought. We were tried and drained and on the verge of complete collapse. The demon could keep up the pressure until we fell, then blast us from existence — or worse — in the blink of an eye. What can we do?

An idea struck me. The demon might be able to see the future, but that wasn’t the same thing as being able to change it. The books had cautioned that demonic predictions would come true, yet not in the way the watcher thought. And our demon hadn’t even made any predictions. It couldn’t have lied — unless the books had lied — and… the thought gave me hope as I rallied my brothers to my side. There was one last chance.

“This is all your fault,” the demon said. Its words were as cold and hard as its eyes. It spoke from a position of complete superiority… and yet, I couldn’t help thinking a person sure of his superiority would never need to put someone down. “Whatever happens next is on your head.”

I ignored him as we rallied for one final effort, drawing on our power to mend the tear in reality. The demon lashed out at us, power crackling around the warding circles, but our own spellwork absorbed the blow and channelled the magic back into the wards. Stalemate, part of my mind noted. The demon couldn’t break our protections, but we couldn’t get rid of it either. I felt my head throbbing — again — as I channelled power from the wards and directed it at the fabric of reality itself, trying to re-impose the old laws by naked force. I’d never heard of anyone doing anything of the sort, but…

“The wardstone,” Void said. Or thought. “Where is it?”

I saw what he had in mind at once and directed my power — our power — to support him. I’d thought of icebergs earlier… the wardstone had become an iceberg in truth, resting on the gap between our world and the darkness. I saw strange shapes flickering around the wardstone, alien eyes — awful eyes — peering through as I reached out to touch the stone. It was too strong to destroy — the pressure of two realities was holding it in place — but we didn’t have to destroy the stone to render it useless. We just had to erase it. Wherever he was, I hoped Professor Bodoh was watching as we destroyed his spellwork. He’d shown us how to do it. I hoped he’d take some solace in it…

Reality quaked. I felt time itself twist as the wardstone fell right out of our world. Our minds threatened to follow. I had the sense of hungry eyes watching us, of things reaching for us, as the gap in reality started to close. The protuberances snapped, one by one, as easily as a thread might snap when a door slammed closed. And the demon howled in pain.

We reached for it, trying to channel the remains of the spellware to shove it right out of our world or consume it. We no longer cared which. The demon howled again and reached for us, ghastly hands grasping hold and pulling… it struck me, too late, that it was somehow pulling us right out of the warding circles. The storm had been bad inside the circles, but it was far worse outside. The laughter rose as the demon’s power crackled towards us…

No, we thought.

Our minds linked together, one final time. The spellwork was ours and the demon no longer had the power to rewrite reality at will. We pushed hard, turning its power against itself and pushing down and down and down until the demon started to lose its grip on us. The walls of reality were closing… I hoped, prayed, the demon would vanish when the hole in our world vanished too. Or… was there enough magic left to keep it going? I hoped not and yet… I thought, for a horrified moment, I was wrong. The demon wouldn’t have to survive very long, just long enough to get to Whitehall and drain the nexus point there. All our hopes and dreams were splintering around us.

We’re no better than the idiot who summoned the last demon, we thought. It was a grim realisation, enough to make us quail. We could have destroyed the world.

The thought galvanised us. We pushed as one, shoving the demon back through the hole before it closed. It lashed out at us and my eyes snapped open and I saw…

I saw…

I saw… I saw the demon itself.

I can’t describe it. I saw… something so big and yet it was just a skin cell of something far bigger, something so big… my eyes flared with pain, the agony so intense I was sure someone had stabbed a knife into my eyes. My legs buckled. I heard my brothers cry out, felt their agony…

The world went white, then black. I collapsed.

“I’ve got you,” Void said. My head was a mess. I’d fainted… hadn’t I? The world was so dark. My face was damp… had I been crying? “Hasdrubal?”

“I can’t see,” I managed. My magic was so low I couldn’t have lit a candle. I was afraid, terribly afraid, I’d lost my magic completely. “I… where are they?”

Void’s voice was grim. “They’re dead.”

I… for a moment, I didn’t believe him. Our brothers were dead? They couldn’t be. They were strong and powerful and two of the four against the world… I was barely aware of Void fussing over me, muttering a string of healing spells. I was in pain and I couldn’t see and my brothers were dead and… my head hurt every time I tried to remember what I’d seen in the last few seconds. The demon had been…

A horrible thought crossed my mind. “Void, what happened to my eyes?”

Void didn’t try to sugar-coat it. “They burst.”

I touched my face. The warm liquid was blood… my blood. I muttered a healing spell of my own, but nothing happened. It was easy to restore someone’s sight, if the damage was solely physical, yet much harder if the victim had been cursed blind. My spells didn’t work and that meant… I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about it. The demon had left its mark on me. And I might never recover.

“Use a seeing eye spell,” Void advised. “It might work.”

I tried. The world turned grey. I knew, somehow, I would never see colours again.

Void stood. “We should have killed the brat. Or kept him prisoner.”

The nasty part of my mind feared he was right. Professor Bodoh might have been suspicious, after I’d accidentally lied to him, but he wouldn’t have known something was wrong until he’d examined Robin. And then… I wondered, numbly, why he hadn’t told the Grandmaster or the White Council. Had he thought Boscha had sanctioned our experiment? Or had he intended to confront us himself and only discovered, too late, what we were really doing? It didn’t matter. All that mattered, right now, was that he was dead.

We dug two graves and buried our brothers near the shrine — there was no point in trying to bury the remains of the professor — then cleaned up the mess before heading back to the tents to collect our supplies. The shrine’s magic had been tainted beyond all hope of recovery. The grass would never grow again…

“They didn’t sense anything in the castle,” Void said, quietly. “They’d have sent a small army if they’d known the truth.”

I scowled at him. “What now?”

“We leave,” Void said. “And go our separate ways.”

I’d thought, at first, that the demon had left him unscarred. It wasn’t until he spoke so plainly that I knew the demon had left a mark on him too. Our connection, the link the four of us had shared, was as dead as our brothers. And that meant… I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“There’s no point in going back to the family,” Void added, as he hefted his pack. “I’ll see you around, I’m sure.”

He turned and walked away.

I’d like to say I never saw him again, but we both know I’d be lying.