Page 28 of The Malevolent Seven

The side of the sloop scraped along the massive stone blocks lining the canal before coming to a reluctant stop.

‘Rescue mission?’ I asked as I leaped onto the shore. Mister Bones was at my heels, as if the two of us were comrades about to rage into battle together. Nice to know someone had faith in me.

Corrigan tethered our vessel to one of the huge trees lining this stretch of the canal. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t call it a rescue mission, precisely,’ he replied before joining me on the embankment.

As we approached the unfolding chaos, Corrigan’s right hand close into a fist. Sparks began to appear across his knuckles, tiny breaches between our realm and the Tempestoral demesne. The thick grey fog swirling around his right forearm had streaks of unnatural lightning dancing within. I could hear the quiet echoes of the thunder, and the air smelled like the wick of a candle after the flame’s been extinguished.

It all looked pretty impressive, but I’d been around thunderers long enough to know that he was having to build up his spell slowly, having exhausted himself being our sole means of propulsion for days on end. Guess we should have worked out how to use the sail after all.

The four mages clustered together some twenty feet away from us had been reasonably successful in fending off the rats, although it did look as if their weary thunderer was responsible for most of the fending. Corrigan grinned slyly as he watched her, which suggested he knew her. I guessed their relationship was probably more carnal than intellectual; Tempestoral mages are prone to particularly stormy sex.

My ‘friends with benefits’ hypothesis was quickly disproved. Corrigan drew back his arm and opened his fist, readying the raw, destructive energy he’d pulled from the Tempestoral realm. A single bolt of red and black lightning rested on his palm, curled like a sleeping cat. With a grunt, he hurled it at the swarm of rats surrounding what I presumed were our four recruits. The bolt unfurled itself, stretching out leisurely in the air– only to miss the rats entirely.

Well, maybemissis the wrong word.

The bolt struck the other thunderer in the centre of her chest. For an instant, her own web of silvery lightning resisted it, but soon Corrigan’s red and black bolt tore away every strand of her magic. She just had time to scream his name– so theydidknow each other– before the sparks ripped across her lovely black coat, eating through fabric and flesh, muscle and bone, until there was nothing left of her but spinning embers that scorched and poisoned the soil as they landed.

There’s a reason wonderists try not to batter at each other’s spells with their own: conflicting ruptures between esoteric planes have a nasty tendency to result in permanent tears in reality. We call it ‘breach dross’, and it looks like patches of dead earth upon which nothing grows. Well, that’s not entirely true; things do grow, eventually, just not stuff humans should ever ingest.

Not all forms of magic are equally disruptive to nature, of course. Totemic magic often aligns with natural forces on the Mortal demesne, so that’s fine. Infernal magic comes and goes with barely a trace, possibly because most of it involves tormenting or otherwise manipulating the psyche rather than, you know, conjuring unearthly forms of lightning and then smashing those againstotherunearthly forms of lightning.

Corrigan, seeing my confused stare, shrugged sheepishly. ‘What? I like rats.’

‘Youlikerats?’ I repeated. ‘You just murdered one of your own recruits, you moron! Not that you bothered consulting me on who we were hiring, because if you had, I might have pointed out that two thunderers in a coven is a bad idea, which you’ve just proven by—Wait.’ I glanced at the three remaining mages, who were now cowering behind a glimmering dome shield that wasn’t doing a particularly good job of keeping the rats out. Fucking amateur couldn’t keep his concentration steady, which made him entirely unsuitable as a war mage, which in turn meant. . .

Corrigan’s grin was infectious, kind of like a venereal disease.

Galass came to stand unsteadily alongside us. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, speaking slowly, as if in a drunken torpor.

Corrigan strode off towards the trio of outraged mages and I followed behind. I traced a teardrop sigil just below my collarbone. The narrowed peak was shaped like an arrow. The other spell I’d warmed up wasn’t nearly nasty enough for whatever Corrigan had planned.

‘Apparently, we’re siding with the rats,’ I told Galass.

Chapter 14

The Thing About Cosmists

Our arrival brought about a momentary stand-off between the opposing sides, which is always strange when one of those sides is made up entirely of snarling rodents. But the rats ceased their attacks, no longer advancing, just holding their position surrounding the three wonderists. This didn’t strike me as typical rat behaviour, since they’re usually more of aLook, the humans have stopped fighting back, let’s eat!sort of species.

‘Corrigan, you arsehole!’ shouted a short, chubby, pale-faced man of middle years. His fanciful silk coat, which came down below his knees, was repeatedly changing colour, as were his eyes. Luminists have a pretentious air about them at the best of times, but this fellow sported a curled and waxed goatee that made me want to pin him to the ground and let the rats chew it off him. With remarkable indignation, he demanded, ‘Why the hell did you just kill Elania Scourge?’

‘You mean other than her stupid name?’ Corrigan asked.

No one’s ever been able to explain to me why Tempestoral mages find it necessary to take on last names like ‘Scourge’ or ‘Bane’ or ‘Calamity’. I chose not to point out to Corrigan that his last name was ‘Blight’.

Standing next to the infuriated luminist was an equally enraged woman whose own coat looked as if it were made entirely out of green and brown leaves. Her skin was a deep mahogany– that’s not a metaphor; she had actual bark growing over her skin which enhanced her emerald eyes strikingly. She was currently reaching out, her fingers curling and uncurling as if trying to rouse the trees all around her to life and crush her enemies underfoot– or underrootmight be more accurate. She wasn’t having much luck with it.

Before you go laughing at her obvious incompetence, I should mention that floranistic magic– the ability to induce organic but otherwise inanimate matter to come to life and beat the shit out of your enemies– is exceedingly difficult. Just think about it: breaking the laws of physics to summon a storm or trigger nightmares in people is already complicated, but getting trees to start moving around and swatting people? Roots and branches don’t have muscles, and I’ve never managed to work out how the hell floranists manage to make them walk– why doesn’t their bark just crack and break off, leaving them in an embarrassing state of undress and unable to survive the winter?

Really, we should be revering floranists as the most marvellous of all mages. But since this one was just crouching there, looking more and more constipated while getting nowhere with rousing the local plant life to her cause, let’s skip to the third member of the trio.

‘Cade, have you met Chaos Reaping?’ Corrigan asked, gesturing to a tall, slender figure whose coat—

You know what? You don’t care about the coat. This guy could have been wearing pyjamas dipped in pure gold and you still wouldn’t remember a thing about his clothes, not when it was his skin that left such an unforgettable impression. His face and hands were black as the night sky, save for the pinpoints of stars piercing through the veil of darkness. The longer I stared at him, the more convinced I was that I wasn’t looking at him so much asthroughhim. It was as if his entire body were a window through which you could stare out into space itself.

But okay, fine: his coat was orange. With stripes.

I’d never met an actual cosmist before. The esoteric demesne from which they derive their abilities– specifically, the almost liquid coating of nether-space that covers their flesh and renders them largely immune to things like crossbow bolts or fireballs or what have you– behaves like a portable abyss. A hug from a cosmist is, in effect, a one-way trip to a reality from which you’ll never re-emerge. If this sounds like an incredibly dangerous violation of physical laws that risks causing mayhem and destruction on a universal scale, well, you’re right.

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