Page 2 of The Malevolent Eight
Such beneficent architectural gifts had become common in the six months since the Lords Celestine and Lords Devilish had passed through the gates left behind by the Pandoral wonderists whose invasion plot we seven had foiled, only to discover we’d been played by the Aurorals and Infernals. The temporary truce was over and now both sides were intent on claiming as much of the Mortal realm as possible before they finally settled down to the mass slaughter of their Great Crusade. The fact that a troop of demoniacs had seen fit to capture and torture a squad of Angelic Valiants meant war was getting closer– the very war Corrigan, Galass, Shame, Aradeus, Alice and I– along with Temper, assuming he understood any of it– had sworn to avert.
‘Kneel,’ the four-horned Schemelord commanded. The demoniac looked rather dashing in his bronze uniform, though it wasn’t so much a uniform as a gooey orange oil Infernal soldiers dunked themselves in which hardened into a type of flexible lacquer armour impervious to most weapons.
Which is different from being impervious toallweapons.
An ear-splitting thunderclap accompanied the bolt of indigo lightning that tore through the Schemelord’s chest. It left behind a hole big enough to see his terrified subordinates cowering behind him. The confused Schemelord, not yet aware he was dead, reached up a hand so his fingers might trace the curve of one of his ram’s horns, something they generally do when trying to puzzle out a particularly thorny problem, like,Why is there a hole in my chest?I found the gesture oddly human in a way that pricked at my conscience. Fortunately, I’d taught my conscience to shut the hells up long ago.
Corrigan’s spell hadn’t quite finished, so the rest of us stood and watched as the last sparks of his Tempestoral obliteration spell dissolved that impressive oil-lacquer armour into blackened ooze and Infernal flesh into ashes which blew away in the gentle breeze.
‘Speech?’ Corrigan asked.
According to all the literature on ethical warfare we’d consulted these past months, it’s considered good manners to make at least a token effort at diplomacy.
‘The laws of armed conflict demand an overture,’ Alice reminded me sternly, as if I hadn’t been a Glorian Justiciar long before my former mentor– a crazy old bat named Hazidan Rosh– had decided to indoctrinate a demoniac into an Auroral order, and one which no longer existed because the Justiciars were almost all dead. With her long silvery hair and bluish leathery skin engraved with the esoteric markings of her lineage, Alice looked as if she should be taking the dead Schemelord’s place rather than giving me grief about the proper etiquette for wiping out enemy troops. Like generations of petulant teenagers before her, she crossed her arms and declared, ‘I will not fight until the speech has been given.’
The Infernal troops, having decided that their commander’s death had not, in fact, been some sort of practical joke, were now being formed into attack lines by a demoniac Subjugator who had quickly promoted herself to acting Schemelord.
‘Cade?’ Corrigan asked with rare deference.
‘Yeah?’
‘Can I give the speech this time?’
‘That depends. Do you think you can deliver a diplomatic overture without making reference to your genitals?’
A look of long-suffering patience darkened the thunderer’s already onyx-black features. ‘That wasonetime, and it was only a practise run. I needed a word to rhyme with “massive cock”.’
‘That’s not how rhymes work,’ I reminded him. ‘Also, that “practise” speech went on for half an hour. You’d think someone whose magic revolves around sudden explosions could get to the point expeditiously.’
Aradeus drew his rapier, plastering one of his dozen or so debonair smiles on his lips. ‘Those Hellions look better organised than other Infernals we’ve fought,’ he warned. Dressed all in grey, with paradoxically youthful collar-length grey hair, neatly trimmed beard and whiskery moustache, Aradeus Mozen cut a fabulously dashing figure. He pointed his sword at the enemy as if awaiting permission to challenge them– all of them– to a duel. ‘I do believe there might be a pair of Malefic Blademasters among their number.’
The subjugator who’d taken the reins of command was tall, with a septet of short curved horns protruding in a circle around her hairless skull, which made her look as if she were wearing a crown. I supposed that qualifies a diabolic for rule as much as any formal leadership training.
‘Your suffering will be the stuff of nightmares,’ she hissed at us. ‘You will join the angelics in the myriad agonies await—’
Alice interrupted. ‘The moron is right,’ she said to Corrigan. The moron to whom she was referring was me. ‘Your speeches go on for even longer than the Fallen One’s.’
‘Fallen One’ is Alice’s pet name for me on account of my having abandoned the Order of Glorian Justiciars.
She jabbed a finger at Corrigan’s chest. ‘Furthermore, you appear incapable of uttering so much as a stanza without dropping your trousers.’
‘Pantaloons,’ Corrigan corrected, hastily refastening the belt around his waist to cinch the blowsy, purple-striped leggings that he had been about to let fall. Given how quickly the temperature rose around him whenever he hurled bolts of aetherial thunder at his enemies, I suppose it was understandable that he preferred a little air circulation to keep from getting hot and sticky down there.
Shame tapped my shoulder. ‘The demoniac artillerists appear to be arming some sort of weapon.’
I tried not to flinch. There’s something unnerving about being touched by someone who can sculpt your flesh any way she chooses and has no real attachment to humanity. Having been created as an Angelic Emissary, her own form was perpetually mutable. To her, the physical world was little more than an ever-changing set of arbitrary circumstances to which she adapted herself as needed. Ever since we’d freed her from the brothel ship to which the Lords Celestine had consigned her to curry favour with a local prince, which gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘all-loving’, Shame had chosen to spend most of her time in the form of a heavyset, plain-faced middle-aged woman. She claimed this made her invisible to most humans, which pleased her no end. At the moment, however, she had adopted the form of an over-muscled armoured rhinoceros on two legs, with crab pincers at the end of her tree-trunk-thick wrists– a wise choice given the Infernal scarab currently aimed in our direction.
One might have expected the Infernals and Aurorals to use more classical weaponry, like flaming longswords and tridents with poisonous tines– although, the Infernalsdidemploy such tridents and they’re rather clever, actually, made from a trio of poisonous snakes, each snakebite delivering a different venom—All right, fine. Fascinating as that particular piece of military cryptozoology might be, the weapon about to be deployed against us right at this minute was of an entirely different order of magnitude.
The scarab, a four-foot-long blue-carapaced beetle, was being jammed arse-first into the barrel of a large cannon whose only function was to generate initial velocity, as the scarab had its own wings and would fly to its target regardless of any inaccuracies in aiming. The Scarabist who’d no doubt raised the creature from birth was currently whispering into what passed for its ear, telling it who to attack and how spectacularly gruesome to make the victim’s demise. That’s kind of a theme with Infernals: these guys really like putting on a show.
So do we, as it happens.
‘Galass,’ I asked, ‘does that thing bleed?’
I could tell from the tightness at the corners of her eyes and mouth that she’d been anticipating the question. Trained as a Glorian Sublime since childhood, she’d been raised to believe that spiritual fulfilment came only from giving oneself utterly to whomever the local Glorian Ardentor gifted her. If you’re starting to think that the Lords Celestine employ this particular brand of diplomacy more often than is theologically sound, re-read your copy of the Seventeen Hundred and Seventy-Seven Auroral Edicts. I’m telling you, whoring oneself out for God comes upa lot.
You’d expect a Sublime to be demure and submissive, but from the moment an Ascendant Prince had tried to reward me with Galass in gratitude for a particularly bombastic piece of destruction Corrigan and I had perpetrated against his enemies, she had proven to be rude– and worse, prone to picking philosophical fights with me. Having someone argue that trying to give them their freedom is an insult to their religious devotion gets really old, really fast. Oddly, the subsequent Infernal pact made on her behalf that turned Galass into a blood mage smoothed out some of those rough edges. I suppose that’s what comes of constantly trying to restrain yourself from exsanguinating every living being with whom you come in contact. Galass was utterly determined never to descend into the madness that was endemic to blood magic, which was why the spell I was asking from her bordered on cruelty.
