Page 92 of The Malevolent Seven

Okay, so we couldn’t defeat the Pandorals when they came through the gates, and we couldn’t destroy the mages whowerethe gates– what options did that leave us?

I stared at the brother nearest me, wondering who he’d been before he had turned himself into a conduit into another realm. Had he been the favourite of his other siblings, or had they mostly resented some flaw in his character? Was he the ‘funny’ one? The ‘sensitive’ one? Did he like beer and fornication on his days off from plotting the overthrow of the entire Mortal realm?

I stepped closer now. There was no discernible expression on his pale, veiny, slack-jawed face. Was he in ecstasy now? Was incomparable bliss suffusing every part of his being? Or had he been deceived by the Pandorals, expecting some sort of godlike beings to appear before him, only to now suffer the eternal torment of knowing he’d helped unleash a plague on the world of his birth?

‘Cade?’ Galass asked. ‘I don’t think we have long left.’

Again with the obvious.

When I turned to her, I could see she was having trouble standing. Her gaze was unfocused and her skin was nearly as pale as that of the brothers. All the while, the walls around us were continuing to swirl and shift, almost as if they were oozing. What must this barrage of abominations have felt like to someone attuned to the very essence of life?

‘If there’s anything you need from me,’ she said, slurring her words like a drunk, ‘you’d better have me do it now.’

I wanted to reassure her somehow. Teenagers shouldn’t have to bear witness to the end of humanity. But I couldn’t because the warping spells all around us were slowly killing me too, and what little strength I had to offer, I would use for this final task of my life.

We can’t defeat the enemy and we can’t blow up the bridges bringing them here. Our spells are useless and our strength inconsequential. Power, therefore, can’t be the answer.

I found myself absently fumbling with the pipe I’d found in town, finding odd comfort in the smoothness of the bowl, the way it was so utterly mundane. Almost as a joke, I held it up to the mouth of the brother nearest me. ‘Care for a smoke?’ I asked.

He chose not to humour me with a reply.

Then I found myself staring at my own shaking hand, and at the stem of the pipe I’d poked inside the brother’s mouth.

Oh, hell,I thought.That really wasn’t the answer I’d been hoping for. . .

‘We can’t bring down the gate from our side,’ I announced. ‘We have to do it from theirs!’

‘How?’ Galass asked.

‘How about we just reach inside and rip their fucking lungs out?’ Corrigan suggested. He extended his arm, but I grabbed hold of it.

‘Don’t,’ I said, and showed him the pipe.

I’m not sure I’d ever seen Corrigan Blight look quite so shocked– not that I blamed him. The stem of the pipe which had entered the brother’s mouth had turned from ebony wood into some kind of glittering stone.

‘The matter translated as it entered the Pandoral realm,’ Alice said. ‘I doubt flesh can long survive such a change.’

‘But it wasn’t instant,’ Aradeus said, stepping in front of me. ‘If I reach inside the brother’s mouth quickly enough, I might have time to cast a spell before the effect takes hold—’

‘And do what?’ Alice asked. ‘There are seven of them. Even if your spell killed one, the others would still be alive.’

‘Then we all do it,’ Galass said, with the desperate enthusiasm only seventeen-year-olds on the verge of dying a miserable and pointless death can muster. ‘Seven of them, seven of us. We each stick a hand inside one of their mouths and—’

I cut her off. ‘We don’t all have the same kind of magic. Some spells can be cast quickly, others take longer– and we’re running out of time. How much do you reckon we have left? A minute? A few seconds? It won’t work. The only way this could have worked would have been if we’d come here prepared with a way to—’

I found myself staring at the walls rippling fluidly: the same effect that was killing us, because human beings weren’t meant to be turned into malleable things.

‘Shame,’ I said, turning to the angelic, ‘that thing you did with the baron, altering his form so the curse couldn’t take hold of it. . . can you do that to us as well?’

Her golden eyes narrowed. ‘It is forbidden, as well you know, Justiciar. I broke that law to grant peace to a tormented soul.’

‘Probably a little late to be getting uppity about morality. Besides, I’m not asking you tochangeus, but the opposite.I’m asking you to use your angelic transfiguration to keep us the same.’

‘What are you talking about?’

I was about to shoot her a look that said that for an avatar of the all-knowing Celestines, she was a little slow on the uptake, but then I recalled that not everybody spends their lives trying to conceive devious ways to use magic to catastrophically destroy other people’s existences.

Corrigan, on the other hand, got it right away. ‘Yes– yes, bloodyyes! The angelic uses her power to keep our bodies from translating on the other side so that we can cast our spells, blast the brothers from the inside out and sever their connection to the Pandoral realm!’

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