Page 29 of The Malevolent Seven

‘We call him “Crap” for short,’ Corrigan continued. ‘Mostly because “Chaos Reaping” is such a stupid name.’

The cosmist stood a little taller as he faced us– although he didn’t have a faceper se. The face-shaped abyss, however, was pointed in our general direction when he said, ‘Corrigan Blight, we have arrived at this place, at this time, to join our strength to yours.’

‘You mean you want in on the Blastlands job,’ I said, then turned to Corrigan. ‘What the fuck is so enticing about this gig, anyway?’

‘You don’t know?’ the floranist asked in a voice rendered distinctly unpleasant to the ears by the bark-like coating that lined the inside of her throat. When she laughed, even her companions looked embarrassed.

The luminist, perhaps excited to findsomethinghe could do competently, declared, ‘Baron Tristmorta, the client, is in possession of’– he paused theatrically here, since that’s how they doeverything– ‘the Apparatus!’

I didn’t even try to hide my shock and disbelief as I looked up at Corrigan. He gave me a terse nod, along with a faint smirk that said,‘I tried to tell you back at camp, but you were being a prick and acting like you were too good for this job, so now you look like a clueless idiot in front of these even bigger idiots.’

The Apparatus.

‘I seethat’scaught your attention,’ the luminist said as he launched into a diatribe about the storied legacy and fearsome capabilities of his quartet of wonderists, periodically forgetting that they were now a trio. I was barely paying attention.

The fuckingApparatus.

Scholars of the arcane, steeped in crumbling theological texts and their own convoluted theories of magic, refer to it as ‘The Empyrean Physio-Thaumaturgical Device of Attunal Transmutation’. Nobody knows what it looks like, where it comes from or how it works, but if those rarefied accounts passed down through the centuries are true, the Apparatus is the only known instrument in existence that can alter a mage’s attunement.

What’s that, you say?‘Hardly sounds impressive enough to risk dying for, Cade.’

Pretend, for a moment, that you’re a wonderist trying to make a living, only you’re attuned to one of the lame Totemic planes and mostly all you can do is make frogs into your temporary familiars. Try to imagine what it’s like to be born with a connection to something as wondrous as magic, only to discover yours is kind of pathetic. It’s like there’s this hunger inside you that other people don’t feel. You’re never satisfied, always itching for something you can never have but those around you don’t miss.

Or if that doesn’t spark your interest, imagine you’d once been attuned to a plane of glorious, wondrous power, only that connection got burned out of you after you’d been cast out and now the only spells you can get have to be purchased from scummy Infernal diabolics at the cost of your own soul. Wouldn’t you do just about anything to restore your prior attunement?

Well, get hold of the Empyrian Physio-Thauma—Fuck it; among wonderists we just call it the Apparatus. Anyway, gain possession of this thing and you could give yourself whichever attunement you wanted. It’s a one-way ticket to becoming the kind of mage who doesn’t have to look over their shoulder every day, or inside the empty chasm of their own soul every night. A miracle in a box, or whatever the Apparatus was contained in. The kind of miracle worth risking everything to acquire. A miracle that might be able to rid Galass of her blood magic and maybe give her an attunement that wouldn’t ruin her life and the lives of everyone around her.

The cosmist had taken over from the paunchy luminist and was now addressing Corrigan in equally grandiose terms, only with a deeper voice. ‘We came here to form a coven of seven with you, Corrigan Blight, and instead you’ve murdered one of our own. Your good fortune is that none of us were particularly fond of Elania, but I would choose your next words very ca—’

‘Fuck off,’ Corrigan said.

It’s hard for a figure made up almost entirely of empty space to look confused, but this guy managed it. ‘What?’

‘I didn’t come here to hire any of you amateurs. In fact’– Corrigan gestured to the swarm of rats, who appeared to be waiting patiently for someone to tell them when to renew their attack– ‘I’d rather fight alongside any one of these trash-eaters than your entire squad of morons any day of the week. So kindly hit the road before my boy Cade here destroys the lot of you and saves the rats the trouble.’

If you’ve never heard a cosmist laugh at you, I can tell you it’s an unpleasant experience. It’s as if an entire universe were chortling at your insignificance. The cosmist spread his arms wide. ‘I have borne the assault of a hundred trebuchets, swallowed entire battalions of soldiers. No thunderer’s lightning and no blood mage’s exsanguination can touch me. So go ahead, Corrigan, let you and your comrades bring forth whatever onslaught you can muster before I—’

‘Cade?’ Corrigan said, interrupting the cosmist’s speech.

‘Yeah?’

‘Fuck this guy up for me, would you?’

I considered his request for a moment. Not a long moment, mind, just enough to let everyone know I was seriously considering my options. ‘Yeah, sure.’

Okay, look, I haven’t presented myself or my companions as the most noble exemplars of humanity thus far, but in case you’d somehow missed the point, let me make it clear right up front: we’re not indiscriminate murderers. Actually, I guess that’s not entirely true, since Corrigan didn’t give Elania Scourge the opportunity to surrender– or even let her know we weren’t on the same side– before he blasted her from existence. But even that was done for a reason, so let’s call it a mitigating factor in our favour, shall we?

Scourge and her little quartet of wonderist arseholes had somehow found out about our job up north, even though Corrigan had picked it up barely an hour after I’d refused Tenebris the first time. I’d assumed he’d brought us here to recruit them, but as he clearly hadn’t, that suggested my diabolic agent had been using human shills to pitch this same job to half the wonderists on the continent. Butwhy? Since when are the Lords Devilish so interested in some trivial uprising in a part of the world so poisoned from a centuries-old mages’ war that almost no one can live there?

Meanwhile, we still had to deal with these three morons who’d apparently decided to muscle in on our gig. That’s bad form. That’s impolite. That’s not how we do things in this business.

Also, it was highly likely that beneath the mound of dirt that had all those rats so riled up was the guy we’dactuallycome to recruit. So, you know, these weren’t nice guys we were dealing with here.

Things were now going to play out in an entirely predictable fashion: the remaining trio demanding to join us, knowing we could never trust them and they could never trust us. Corrigan would refuse, of course, so then we’d move on to the threats and entirely wasteful displays of power, until, finally, we start blasting spells at each other, destroying the countryside and probably making it unliveable for the locals. See? Bad manners all around.

But that’s not even the worst of it. Corrigan was exhausted from powering our sloop for the past week, Galass hadn’t learned to use her magic yet, which meant she was as likely to accidentally exsanguinate us as the other guys, and Mister Bones was just a jackal: a mutt with sharp teeth, and at no point would he be turning into a handsome were-jackal, or whatever the fuck it is you were hoping for. Sorry.

Which left me.

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