Chapter eighteen: Showdown
Name: Mansuur
Home: Ravenscar Hold
Caste: Mystic
Lifestyle: Ascetic
Character: Visionary
Tragic Flaw: Egotistical
Talents: Advanced Charm, Basic Discipline
Skills: Basic Fighting
Knowledge: Basic Administration, Basic Lore
Powers: Advanced Witchcraft
Chapter eighteen
Aseena had a burly man holding on to each of her arms. She doubted that she could do much about it - they were ready for her to try, and while they might be thick, they weren't complete idiots. She tried to fight back as best she could, kicking and squirming and tearing at her captors' grips, but it hadn't gotten her anywhere so far and she doubted that it would.
Jalon, by contrast, was trying diplomacy. He wasn't having any more luck.
"Just let her go," he told Mansuur. "What harm can it do? It will all be over soon, isn't that right? He Who Comes will, well, come, the whole city will fall, all will be death and damnation. You can let her have a few more hours of freedom before it all ends. It would be a tiny kindness that cost you nothing. Come now, what do you say?"
Mansuur just scowled. He didn't seem to be having a good day. He wasn't so much limping as staggering, as if every motion caused him considerable pain. His face was a little too tight, as well; he wore the expression of a man who was very carefully not moaning and whimpering for every step.
"Kindness is not one of my virtues," he snarled. "I would have thought you would have noticed by now. No, I am keeping her right here, and the only reason why I don't kill her outright is that it will be so much more well-deserved for her to die at the hands of He Who Comes. Now shut your mouth."
They were in Ravenscar Hold, that much Aseena had been able to make out while she was dragged from the wagon that had brought them here. The great mansion was brimming with activity - everywhere there were ecstatic-looking Nobles and harried-looking Servants bustling around, preparing for... whatever it was that that was going to happen.
"You two, lock her in a room," Mansuur said. "He Who Comes will know where to find her. Bring him to the sanctum."
"What? No!" Aseena renewed her struggles, managing to shove a knee into the back of one of her captors, making him stumble and let go of her. Before she could use her newly free hand, though, three other cultists threw themselves at her, wrestling her to the ground and pinning her arms behind her back. Aseena gave off a wordless scream of helpless anger and fear. She had thought that whatever was in store for them, they would face it together, but it seemed even that small comfort was denied her.
"UniGod damn you, Mansuur!" she growled. "You're not going to get away with this! Once Dara find out that we're gone, this is the first place she'll look! She'll pull the mansion down over your head!"
"I invite her to try!" Mansuur said. "Her I don't want to leave to He Who Comes - I want to take my revenge on her personally! And this time, she won't have you as a trick up her sleeve."
"No." Aseena raised her head, smirking savagely at him. "Won't it be interesting to see what trick she'll have up her sleeve this time, that she'll use to kick your ass all over again?"
For a moment, she thought that Mansuur would change his mind and just kill her on the spot - the look on his brutish face was pure murder. But then he snarled and turned away.
"Get on with it," he said and walked off, the people dragging Jalon trailing after him.
"Jalon, I love you!" she shouted desperately after them, and she thought she heard him answer. But Mansuur's goons dragged her off with growls and curses, and she couldn't hear the words.
***
Jalon found himself dragged into a large chamber deep within the mansion. It was full of people - dozens of them, most of them in fancy clothes and with important airs to them. Jalon guessed that they were Mansuur's inner circle - the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Unhallowed Sixty-Six. The walls were covered in frescoes of death and destruction, and in the middle of the floor, on a broad dais, a cauldron bubbled, filled with what Jalon's nose told him was almost definitely blood. Mansuur's followers dragged him towards it.
Once at the cauldron, they stopped. While the fumes were threatening to make Jalon gag, they tore off his clothes until he stood naked, shivering in the cold. He couldn't think - his mind was full of a million horrible thoughts about what they might be planning to do with him.
"Oh, don't look like you're about to start crying," Mansuur growled. "This is what you were born for. This is the destiny of your family - and mine."
"What?" Jalon said hoarsely. "To get myself killed so that you can summon your stupid demon prince?"
"Who said anything about killing you?" Mansuur said. "On the contrary, you will live forever. And the rest of us will live on in you." He raised his hands with a grimace of pain. "All hail the sacred vessel! All hail the flesh that will house the undying spirit of He Who Comes!"
"HE WHO COMES! HE WHO COMES! HE WHO COMES!" the people throughout the chamber chanted, their voices echoing between the Witch Stone walls. The brutes who had dragged him here forced Jalon towards the cauldron.
Jalon struggled uselessly. He wanted very much to wake up in his bed at Tenchurch Abbey, with Aseena sleeping peacefully next to him, and find that all of this had just been a horrible dream.
But strong hands were holding him, and forcing him over the edge of the cauldron. Scorching hot liquid turned his skin into living agony. He opened his mouth to scream, and boiling blood poured in. After that, there was only darkness and agony and somewhere, deep in the hellish black, something opened its eyes for the first time.
***
"HE WHO COMES! HE WHO COMES! HE WHO COMES!" the Chosen chanted. The cauldron was boiling, the body within it only a dark lump somewhere in its depths.
In the distance, the warning bells were sounding again. The demons were coming. This time they would keep coming until they overran the Demesne's defenses - the mental emissions of He Who Comes would drive them into a frenzy, forcing them to run straight into the swords of the Soldiers and the Demesne's own repellent aura, tearing themselves to pieces trying to get to him.
Mansuur allowed himself to relax a little. His body was still wracked with pain. The healer had closed his wounds for him, but it would have taken hours to dig the Witch Stone pebbles out without killing him - hours he hadn't had. Every time he moved, they sent bolts of agony through his flesh.
No matter. Soon, it would be time to abandon this feeble mortal form. He would ascend and live forever as part of He Who Comes.
"Friends!" he called. "My fellow Chosen! The time has come!"
There were cries of excitement and whimpers of fear alike from the crowd. Mansuur's hand-picked assistants - the ones he had found among the Chosen who had some kind of competence - began gathering up groups of the others, taking them to the cauldron one by one. There, they slit open the captive's throat, spilling some of his or her blood into the cauldron before throwing the dying body to the side and moving the next one into position.
Most of the Chosen waited their turn, fearfully or with passionate glee. Some had their courage desert them, and ran for the doors. Mansuur had anticipated that, though - the doors opened, and a flood of gargoyles poured in, snatching up the fleeing Chosen and dragging them to the cauldron as their turn came.
The ritual took a long while. There were not many of the true Chosen, all things considered, of the descendents of the Unhallowed Sixty-Six whose parents had taught them about their heritage and who had had the will to grasp it - perhaps a hundred, all in all. Still, each sacrifice had to be done just right, so that the Chosen's soul would pour out with the blood and become one with He Who Comes. It seemed like a long while that Mansuur had to keep standing, controlling the gargoyles and waiting for it to be done, for his own turn to come.
Finally, there was no one left but his own assistants. They were waiting proudly by the cauldron for him, as if expecting some sort of special ritual, but Mansuur had no patience for that. They were nothing special, after all, just slightly less worthless than the others - useful mainly as a sort of metaphysical filler, as something that would dilute his own essence until it could fill all of He Who Comes. He had his gargoyles kill them quickly and unceremoniously, and spilled some of their blood into the cauldron.
He walked through the carnage with weary steps, heading for the dais where his gargoyles were waiting with their sharp blades. It was time, now. Time to abandon humanity for something more. Time to achieve his destiny.
The mansion began to tremble. Cracks appeared in the walls and floor, and small parts of the wall shattered in miniature explosions, sending dust and rocks across the floor. Mansuur could feel the upset of Witch Stone all throughout Ravenscar Hold.
He could think of only one person who had the power to shake the whole mansion, and reason to come here tonight. Dara was here.
"Not yet..." Mansuur hissed. Too soon, too soon! It would take time for He Who Comes to arise - not much time, maybe half an hour, but if Dara made it to this room before then, she could shatter the cauldron and kill the thing in there before it had a chance to be born.
He wouldn't let that happen, of course. He would go out and kill her, and with great pleasure. But if He Who Comes arose while he was gone...
Then he would have missed his chance. The composite soul of He Who Comes would not include Masuur of Ravenscar Hold, caste of Mystics. Masuur of Ravenscar Hold, caste of Mystics, would just be one more human casualty as He Who Comes destroyed the Demesne.
He looked helplessly at the bubbling surface of the cauldron. His destiny. His birthright. He could enter it right now, but if he did, there would be no one to keep Dara back except for his guards, those hapless fools who believed that they would have part in the ascension even though any Unhallowed Sixty-Six blood in their veins was so polluted with unworthier strains as to be all but worthless. He didn't trust them to do so much as slow Dara down. She would come here, and find him helpless as an unhatched chick in its egg...
He had always known that the rise of the conquering demon King was inevitable. It was written into the very fabric of the Demesne - four hundred years of history led to this moment, and it would not be denied. But now, for the first time, a horrible thought occurred to Mansuur - the prophesies said that the ascension would happen. Nowhere did it say that Mansuur of Ravenscar Hold, caste of Mystics, would be part of it.
He growled. No! He had not come this far to let that bunch of worthless fools that he had used as his pawns get the reward while he was denied his part in it! He would go out, kill Dara, and be back in time to add his blood to the cauldron.
"You! Stay there!" he snarled at the cauldron before running off as quickly as his tortured body would carry him.
***
There was a throng of people at the gates of Ravenscar Hold. They were a more varied lot than Mansuur's usual crowd - there was a lot of finely dressed Nobles, but there were also a large number of liveried Servants and extravagantly garbed Artists. Hangers-on, Dara immediately guessed. Not part of the inner circle. The inner circle was off doing... whatever it was that Mansuur was doing that was supposed to bring all this to a climax.
"Soldiers of the Demesne!" Rinabaar bellowed. "Let us through, or we will use whatever force is necessary to force our way in!"
The crowd shouted their defiance, waving cudgels and knives.
"Non-lethal force if possible," Rinabaar told his troops. There were about a dozen of them, his usual lawkeepers as well as some people from the western wall who he had apparently bonded with during the battles there. Dara supposed that fighting desperate battles against demonic hordes made for some very quickly-forming camaraderie. "Lethal force if necessary. Forward!"
The Soldiers charged, while Dara hung back. She had her own fight to deal with. She muttered words beneath her breath, bending the Witch Stone of Ravenscar Hold to her will. Mansuur had turned her home against her. She would take great pleasure in doing the same to him.
She could feel the resistance to her witchcraft - feel a powerful will that could only be Mansuur opposing her, marshaling as many gargoyles as he could reach and gathering them to be his army. Dara didn't mind. She already had a firm grip of half a hundred gargoyles of her own, and she would take considerable satisfaction in making them wring Mansuur's neck. He thought he was stronger than her, did he? Let's see how much stronger he was when she was the one with the element of surprise!
The battle by the gate was over quickly. The defenders might have believed that they were destined for greatness, but that belief faltered quickly in the face of the Soldiers' discipline and sharp steel. The cultists died, or fled, or dropped their weapons and begged for mercy. Rinabaar's men rounded up the prisoners and left them under the care of two mildly wounded Soldiers before continuing their advance into the mansion.
Dara walked within a protective circle of Soldiers, focused on her own efforts. She could feel Mansuur's power building, focusing around her. She had to exert constant effort to keep the walls from closing around them in a crushing, stony grip. As they moved, gargoyles turned up alongside them, guided by Dara's power. They were horrific things, shaped into the likeness of mutilated bodies and horrific mutations. They felt slimy in Dara's mental grip, unclean, but she held on to them and directed them forward.
There were pockets of more human resistance along the way. Mansuur's faithful flunkies kept laying ambushes and launching sudden attacks, appearing out of side corridors and rooms while flailing around with knives and clubs. Rinabaar and his Soldiers, with help from Dara's gargoyles, fought them back every time, but each fight slowed them down. Dara didn't need anyone to tell her that the clock was ticking. The roar of bells around the city told her that clearly enough.
Finally, they arrived in a large hall. One end of it was filled with gargoyles - all the ones that Dara hadn't been able to take control of herself. Mansuur was standing in front of them, arms crossed, a scowl on his face.
"Get over here and die," he growled. "I'm on a schedule."
Dara look at Rinabaar.
"You boys had better stay out of this," she said. "It's going to be messy, and you won't be able to help."
"Will you be all right?" Rinabaar said.
"I don't know that I won't be all right," Dara said. "I think that's about as much as I can offer right now. Go. Find Jalon. Find Aseena."
I love you, she wanted to add, but of course she didn't, not really. It took more than a long-running harmonious professional relationship followed by one really great evening together to create something as solid as love. What she had was a warm, fluttering spark in her chest - an ember that might or might not become a steadily burning fire in time. And time was something they didn't have.
"Be careful," she said instead.
"You too," Rinabaar said. He gave some quick orders to his troops, and they retreated in good order down the corridor they had come through.
Dara stepped out into the hall. Her gargoyles fanned out behind her. Their heavy steps sounded very loud in the silence.
"So here we are again," she said. "Here's the plan - I kill you really, really dead, and this all goes away. Sounds good?"
"Is that what you think?" Mansuur made a disgusted face. "Killing me won't stop a thing."
Well, that's a shame, Dara thought. She had had high hopes for that one. She supposed she'd just have to play this one by ear.
"Are you seriously trying to tell me that you're not important?" she said. "You'd gladly die for the cause, because it's much bigger than you, yadi yadi yadda?"
"What? No. Don't be an idiot." Mansuur shook his head. "I'm the most important person in the history of the Demesne. I am the only one who truly deserves the glorious destiny that was promised to the Unhallowed Sixty-Six. For me to die now, after being the one who made all of this possible, would be a monstrous, horrific injustice. I'm simply pointing out that you won't actually be able to stop He Who Comes from rising by killing me."
"Well, isn't that interesting?" Dara said. "You're not planning on dying in some grand gesture of nihilism after all, are you? This ascension of yours is something else. Mind telling me what?"
"Would it make you feel better to die with your curiosity satisfied?" Mansuur said.
"Well." Dara shrugged. "I never could stand an unanswered question."
"Then I will take great pleasure in making you die in ignorance!" Mansuur snapped. He threw his hands forward, and the gargoyle horde poured forth.
There was a thought here, Dara knew, a flash of inspiration waiting for her to grasp it. It had something to do with Jalon being the heir of all four Unhallowed Sixty-Six bloodlines that Aseena had explored, and a question flickered in her mind - All of them? All Sixty-Six? - thought she couldn't say why it seemed so important. There was no time to explore her sudden intuition, to coax reason and sense from it. Instead, she sent her own gargoyle army forward.
The gargoyle forces collided in the middle of the hall, two unstoppable avalanches of Witch Stone meeting in a cacophony of breaking rock and a cloud of sparks and stone shards. Dara chanted the strongest words she knew, forcing her army forward, slamming at Mansuur's gargoyles with heavy stone limbs that sent them reeling with cracks spreading across their bodies.
Mansuur fought back. His gargoyles weren't pouring forward - they arranged themselves into a rough rectangle, protecting each others' flanks, and meeting the onslaught of Dara's forces with a steady, measured advance of their own. The ones that fell were quickly replaced by others stepping forward from the back ranks, and the line held.
Dara fought with every scrap of power and cunning she had. Not content to simply command her gargoyles into action, she split the floor beneath Mansuur's feet, loosened great rocks from the ceiling to rain down on him. Where her gargoyles fell, broken apart by Mansuur's attacks, she brought the pieces back together and sent their resurrected forms back into the fray. She couldn't afford to lose, not this time.
But she did.
Mansuur wasn't just a witch. In his own way, he was a warrior - he knew how to fight, and how to organise a group of fighters into a cohesive force. Dara's brutish assault met with a calculated strategy that wore it down, sapped away her forces, her time, her strength, her concentration. And in the end, he had been right - he really was stronger than her. Not much, but a little. Enough for it to count.
Her army broke apart, shattering into small groups that kept fighting as they were overwhelmed by better-organised, numerically superior attackers. A crude gargoyle rose from the floor next to Dara, and before she had time to take control over it, it had slammed its fist into the side of her chest, sending her tumbling to the floor with a hot, roaring pain erupting through her abdomen. She looked up from the floor to see Mansuur striding over to her, flanked by two burly gargoyles.
"Now do you see?" he snarled. "I am your better. You could never defeat me."
Dara started to laugh, but it turned into a whimpering cough as her mistreated rib objected. She took a few quick, shallow breath and tried to steady herself. All right. Note to self. Don't do that again.
She raised her eyes to Mansuur.
"Yes," she gasped. "You're right. I can't defeat you with witchcraft this time either. So I'm just going to have to defeat you with my superior attention to detail again."
"Meaning what?" Mansuur said.
"Meaning," Dara said, "that the way you move show that you're in pain. And while it's very faint, I can feel the Witch Stone shards inside of you, right where I left them."
Mansuur reacted quickly. His gargoyles lumbered forward, intent on crushing her. At the same time, he tried to take a firm grip on the shards lodged within his flesh, to keep Dara from making them move.
It was a fool's errand, of course. No matter how tightly he held on to them, he couldn't stop her from moving them just a little, maybe half an inch - and sharp pieces of stone moving half an inch through your sensitive tissues made it very hard to concentrate. Mansuur screamed, and his grip on the gargoyles weakened, letting Dara pick up the reins.
Two huge stone fists slammed forth, striking opposite sides of Mansuur's skull. Dara felt a hot spray on her face as blood and worse things splattered her.
Then it was quiet. All the gargoyles had stopped moving.
Dara began walking, wincing at every step. She felt dizzy, like she was going into shock. But whatever Mansuur had most wanted to protect must be through here. And that was where she had to go.
She stepped into the corridor, and then her legs folded, and she fell, down onto the pale Witch Stone floor.
***
And that had been then. And now it was now.
"Dara," the thing that looked like Jalon said again.
Dara moistened her suddenly parched lips.
"He Who Comes," she said.
Home: Ravenscar Hold
Caste: Mystic
Lifestyle: Ascetic
Character: Visionary
Tragic Flaw: Egotistical
Talents: Advanced Charm, Basic Discipline
Skills: Basic Fighting
Knowledge: Basic Administration, Basic Lore
Powers: Advanced Witchcraft
Chapter eighteen
Aseena had a burly man holding on to each of her arms. She doubted that she could do much about it - they were ready for her to try, and while they might be thick, they weren't complete idiots. She tried to fight back as best she could, kicking and squirming and tearing at her captors' grips, but it hadn't gotten her anywhere so far and she doubted that it would.
Jalon, by contrast, was trying diplomacy. He wasn't having any more luck.
"Just let her go," he told Mansuur. "What harm can it do? It will all be over soon, isn't that right? He Who Comes will, well, come, the whole city will fall, all will be death and damnation. You can let her have a few more hours of freedom before it all ends. It would be a tiny kindness that cost you nothing. Come now, what do you say?"
Mansuur just scowled. He didn't seem to be having a good day. He wasn't so much limping as staggering, as if every motion caused him considerable pain. His face was a little too tight, as well; he wore the expression of a man who was very carefully not moaning and whimpering for every step.
"Kindness is not one of my virtues," he snarled. "I would have thought you would have noticed by now. No, I am keeping her right here, and the only reason why I don't kill her outright is that it will be so much more well-deserved for her to die at the hands of He Who Comes. Now shut your mouth."
They were in Ravenscar Hold, that much Aseena had been able to make out while she was dragged from the wagon that had brought them here. The great mansion was brimming with activity - everywhere there were ecstatic-looking Nobles and harried-looking Servants bustling around, preparing for... whatever it was that that was going to happen.
"You two, lock her in a room," Mansuur said. "He Who Comes will know where to find her. Bring him to the sanctum."
"What? No!" Aseena renewed her struggles, managing to shove a knee into the back of one of her captors, making him stumble and let go of her. Before she could use her newly free hand, though, three other cultists threw themselves at her, wrestling her to the ground and pinning her arms behind her back. Aseena gave off a wordless scream of helpless anger and fear. She had thought that whatever was in store for them, they would face it together, but it seemed even that small comfort was denied her.
"UniGod damn you, Mansuur!" she growled. "You're not going to get away with this! Once Dara find out that we're gone, this is the first place she'll look! She'll pull the mansion down over your head!"
"I invite her to try!" Mansuur said. "Her I don't want to leave to He Who Comes - I want to take my revenge on her personally! And this time, she won't have you as a trick up her sleeve."
"No." Aseena raised her head, smirking savagely at him. "Won't it be interesting to see what trick she'll have up her sleeve this time, that she'll use to kick your ass all over again?"
For a moment, she thought that Mansuur would change his mind and just kill her on the spot - the look on his brutish face was pure murder. But then he snarled and turned away.
"Get on with it," he said and walked off, the people dragging Jalon trailing after him.
"Jalon, I love you!" she shouted desperately after them, and she thought she heard him answer. But Mansuur's goons dragged her off with growls and curses, and she couldn't hear the words.
***
Jalon found himself dragged into a large chamber deep within the mansion. It was full of people - dozens of them, most of them in fancy clothes and with important airs to them. Jalon guessed that they were Mansuur's inner circle - the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Unhallowed Sixty-Six. The walls were covered in frescoes of death and destruction, and in the middle of the floor, on a broad dais, a cauldron bubbled, filled with what Jalon's nose told him was almost definitely blood. Mansuur's followers dragged him towards it.
Once at the cauldron, they stopped. While the fumes were threatening to make Jalon gag, they tore off his clothes until he stood naked, shivering in the cold. He couldn't think - his mind was full of a million horrible thoughts about what they might be planning to do with him.
"Oh, don't look like you're about to start crying," Mansuur growled. "This is what you were born for. This is the destiny of your family - and mine."
"What?" Jalon said hoarsely. "To get myself killed so that you can summon your stupid demon prince?"
"Who said anything about killing you?" Mansuur said. "On the contrary, you will live forever. And the rest of us will live on in you." He raised his hands with a grimace of pain. "All hail the sacred vessel! All hail the flesh that will house the undying spirit of He Who Comes!"
"HE WHO COMES! HE WHO COMES! HE WHO COMES!" the people throughout the chamber chanted, their voices echoing between the Witch Stone walls. The brutes who had dragged him here forced Jalon towards the cauldron.
Jalon struggled uselessly. He wanted very much to wake up in his bed at Tenchurch Abbey, with Aseena sleeping peacefully next to him, and find that all of this had just been a horrible dream.
But strong hands were holding him, and forcing him over the edge of the cauldron. Scorching hot liquid turned his skin into living agony. He opened his mouth to scream, and boiling blood poured in. After that, there was only darkness and agony and somewhere, deep in the hellish black, something opened its eyes for the first time.
***
"HE WHO COMES! HE WHO COMES! HE WHO COMES!" the Chosen chanted. The cauldron was boiling, the body within it only a dark lump somewhere in its depths.
In the distance, the warning bells were sounding again. The demons were coming. This time they would keep coming until they overran the Demesne's defenses - the mental emissions of He Who Comes would drive them into a frenzy, forcing them to run straight into the swords of the Soldiers and the Demesne's own repellent aura, tearing themselves to pieces trying to get to him.
Mansuur allowed himself to relax a little. His body was still wracked with pain. The healer had closed his wounds for him, but it would have taken hours to dig the Witch Stone pebbles out without killing him - hours he hadn't had. Every time he moved, they sent bolts of agony through his flesh.
No matter. Soon, it would be time to abandon this feeble mortal form. He would ascend and live forever as part of He Who Comes.
"Friends!" he called. "My fellow Chosen! The time has come!"
There were cries of excitement and whimpers of fear alike from the crowd. Mansuur's hand-picked assistants - the ones he had found among the Chosen who had some kind of competence - began gathering up groups of the others, taking them to the cauldron one by one. There, they slit open the captive's throat, spilling some of his or her blood into the cauldron before throwing the dying body to the side and moving the next one into position.
Most of the Chosen waited their turn, fearfully or with passionate glee. Some had their courage desert them, and ran for the doors. Mansuur had anticipated that, though - the doors opened, and a flood of gargoyles poured in, snatching up the fleeing Chosen and dragging them to the cauldron as their turn came.
The ritual took a long while. There were not many of the true Chosen, all things considered, of the descendents of the Unhallowed Sixty-Six whose parents had taught them about their heritage and who had had the will to grasp it - perhaps a hundred, all in all. Still, each sacrifice had to be done just right, so that the Chosen's soul would pour out with the blood and become one with He Who Comes. It seemed like a long while that Mansuur had to keep standing, controlling the gargoyles and waiting for it to be done, for his own turn to come.
Finally, there was no one left but his own assistants. They were waiting proudly by the cauldron for him, as if expecting some sort of special ritual, but Mansuur had no patience for that. They were nothing special, after all, just slightly less worthless than the others - useful mainly as a sort of metaphysical filler, as something that would dilute his own essence until it could fill all of He Who Comes. He had his gargoyles kill them quickly and unceremoniously, and spilled some of their blood into the cauldron.
He walked through the carnage with weary steps, heading for the dais where his gargoyles were waiting with their sharp blades. It was time, now. Time to abandon humanity for something more. Time to achieve his destiny.
The mansion began to tremble. Cracks appeared in the walls and floor, and small parts of the wall shattered in miniature explosions, sending dust and rocks across the floor. Mansuur could feel the upset of Witch Stone all throughout Ravenscar Hold.
He could think of only one person who had the power to shake the whole mansion, and reason to come here tonight. Dara was here.
"Not yet..." Mansuur hissed. Too soon, too soon! It would take time for He Who Comes to arise - not much time, maybe half an hour, but if Dara made it to this room before then, she could shatter the cauldron and kill the thing in there before it had a chance to be born.
He wouldn't let that happen, of course. He would go out and kill her, and with great pleasure. But if He Who Comes arose while he was gone...
Then he would have missed his chance. The composite soul of He Who Comes would not include Masuur of Ravenscar Hold, caste of Mystics. Masuur of Ravenscar Hold, caste of Mystics, would just be one more human casualty as He Who Comes destroyed the Demesne.
He looked helplessly at the bubbling surface of the cauldron. His destiny. His birthright. He could enter it right now, but if he did, there would be no one to keep Dara back except for his guards, those hapless fools who believed that they would have part in the ascension even though any Unhallowed Sixty-Six blood in their veins was so polluted with unworthier strains as to be all but worthless. He didn't trust them to do so much as slow Dara down. She would come here, and find him helpless as an unhatched chick in its egg...
He had always known that the rise of the conquering demon King was inevitable. It was written into the very fabric of the Demesne - four hundred years of history led to this moment, and it would not be denied. But now, for the first time, a horrible thought occurred to Mansuur - the prophesies said that the ascension would happen. Nowhere did it say that Mansuur of Ravenscar Hold, caste of Mystics, would be part of it.
He growled. No! He had not come this far to let that bunch of worthless fools that he had used as his pawns get the reward while he was denied his part in it! He would go out, kill Dara, and be back in time to add his blood to the cauldron.
"You! Stay there!" he snarled at the cauldron before running off as quickly as his tortured body would carry him.
***
There was a throng of people at the gates of Ravenscar Hold. They were a more varied lot than Mansuur's usual crowd - there was a lot of finely dressed Nobles, but there were also a large number of liveried Servants and extravagantly garbed Artists. Hangers-on, Dara immediately guessed. Not part of the inner circle. The inner circle was off doing... whatever it was that Mansuur was doing that was supposed to bring all this to a climax.
"Soldiers of the Demesne!" Rinabaar bellowed. "Let us through, or we will use whatever force is necessary to force our way in!"
The crowd shouted their defiance, waving cudgels and knives.
"Non-lethal force if possible," Rinabaar told his troops. There were about a dozen of them, his usual lawkeepers as well as some people from the western wall who he had apparently bonded with during the battles there. Dara supposed that fighting desperate battles against demonic hordes made for some very quickly-forming camaraderie. "Lethal force if necessary. Forward!"
The Soldiers charged, while Dara hung back. She had her own fight to deal with. She muttered words beneath her breath, bending the Witch Stone of Ravenscar Hold to her will. Mansuur had turned her home against her. She would take great pleasure in doing the same to him.
She could feel the resistance to her witchcraft - feel a powerful will that could only be Mansuur opposing her, marshaling as many gargoyles as he could reach and gathering them to be his army. Dara didn't mind. She already had a firm grip of half a hundred gargoyles of her own, and she would take considerable satisfaction in making them wring Mansuur's neck. He thought he was stronger than her, did he? Let's see how much stronger he was when she was the one with the element of surprise!
The battle by the gate was over quickly. The defenders might have believed that they were destined for greatness, but that belief faltered quickly in the face of the Soldiers' discipline and sharp steel. The cultists died, or fled, or dropped their weapons and begged for mercy. Rinabaar's men rounded up the prisoners and left them under the care of two mildly wounded Soldiers before continuing their advance into the mansion.
Dara walked within a protective circle of Soldiers, focused on her own efforts. She could feel Mansuur's power building, focusing around her. She had to exert constant effort to keep the walls from closing around them in a crushing, stony grip. As they moved, gargoyles turned up alongside them, guided by Dara's power. They were horrific things, shaped into the likeness of mutilated bodies and horrific mutations. They felt slimy in Dara's mental grip, unclean, but she held on to them and directed them forward.
There were pockets of more human resistance along the way. Mansuur's faithful flunkies kept laying ambushes and launching sudden attacks, appearing out of side corridors and rooms while flailing around with knives and clubs. Rinabaar and his Soldiers, with help from Dara's gargoyles, fought them back every time, but each fight slowed them down. Dara didn't need anyone to tell her that the clock was ticking. The roar of bells around the city told her that clearly enough.
Finally, they arrived in a large hall. One end of it was filled with gargoyles - all the ones that Dara hadn't been able to take control of herself. Mansuur was standing in front of them, arms crossed, a scowl on his face.
"Get over here and die," he growled. "I'm on a schedule."
Dara look at Rinabaar.
"You boys had better stay out of this," she said. "It's going to be messy, and you won't be able to help."
"Will you be all right?" Rinabaar said.
"I don't know that I won't be all right," Dara said. "I think that's about as much as I can offer right now. Go. Find Jalon. Find Aseena."
I love you, she wanted to add, but of course she didn't, not really. It took more than a long-running harmonious professional relationship followed by one really great evening together to create something as solid as love. What she had was a warm, fluttering spark in her chest - an ember that might or might not become a steadily burning fire in time. And time was something they didn't have.
"Be careful," she said instead.
"You too," Rinabaar said. He gave some quick orders to his troops, and they retreated in good order down the corridor they had come through.
Dara stepped out into the hall. Her gargoyles fanned out behind her. Their heavy steps sounded very loud in the silence.
"So here we are again," she said. "Here's the plan - I kill you really, really dead, and this all goes away. Sounds good?"
"Is that what you think?" Mansuur made a disgusted face. "Killing me won't stop a thing."
Well, that's a shame, Dara thought. She had had high hopes for that one. She supposed she'd just have to play this one by ear.
"Are you seriously trying to tell me that you're not important?" she said. "You'd gladly die for the cause, because it's much bigger than you, yadi yadi yadda?"
"What? No. Don't be an idiot." Mansuur shook his head. "I'm the most important person in the history of the Demesne. I am the only one who truly deserves the glorious destiny that was promised to the Unhallowed Sixty-Six. For me to die now, after being the one who made all of this possible, would be a monstrous, horrific injustice. I'm simply pointing out that you won't actually be able to stop He Who Comes from rising by killing me."
"Well, isn't that interesting?" Dara said. "You're not planning on dying in some grand gesture of nihilism after all, are you? This ascension of yours is something else. Mind telling me what?"
"Would it make you feel better to die with your curiosity satisfied?" Mansuur said.
"Well." Dara shrugged. "I never could stand an unanswered question."
"Then I will take great pleasure in making you die in ignorance!" Mansuur snapped. He threw his hands forward, and the gargoyle horde poured forth.
There was a thought here, Dara knew, a flash of inspiration waiting for her to grasp it. It had something to do with Jalon being the heir of all four Unhallowed Sixty-Six bloodlines that Aseena had explored, and a question flickered in her mind - All of them? All Sixty-Six? - thought she couldn't say why it seemed so important. There was no time to explore her sudden intuition, to coax reason and sense from it. Instead, she sent her own gargoyle army forward.
The gargoyle forces collided in the middle of the hall, two unstoppable avalanches of Witch Stone meeting in a cacophony of breaking rock and a cloud of sparks and stone shards. Dara chanted the strongest words she knew, forcing her army forward, slamming at Mansuur's gargoyles with heavy stone limbs that sent them reeling with cracks spreading across their bodies.
Mansuur fought back. His gargoyles weren't pouring forward - they arranged themselves into a rough rectangle, protecting each others' flanks, and meeting the onslaught of Dara's forces with a steady, measured advance of their own. The ones that fell were quickly replaced by others stepping forward from the back ranks, and the line held.
Dara fought with every scrap of power and cunning she had. Not content to simply command her gargoyles into action, she split the floor beneath Mansuur's feet, loosened great rocks from the ceiling to rain down on him. Where her gargoyles fell, broken apart by Mansuur's attacks, she brought the pieces back together and sent their resurrected forms back into the fray. She couldn't afford to lose, not this time.
But she did.
Mansuur wasn't just a witch. In his own way, he was a warrior - he knew how to fight, and how to organise a group of fighters into a cohesive force. Dara's brutish assault met with a calculated strategy that wore it down, sapped away her forces, her time, her strength, her concentration. And in the end, he had been right - he really was stronger than her. Not much, but a little. Enough for it to count.
Her army broke apart, shattering into small groups that kept fighting as they were overwhelmed by better-organised, numerically superior attackers. A crude gargoyle rose from the floor next to Dara, and before she had time to take control over it, it had slammed its fist into the side of her chest, sending her tumbling to the floor with a hot, roaring pain erupting through her abdomen. She looked up from the floor to see Mansuur striding over to her, flanked by two burly gargoyles.
"Now do you see?" he snarled. "I am your better. You could never defeat me."
Dara started to laugh, but it turned into a whimpering cough as her mistreated rib objected. She took a few quick, shallow breath and tried to steady herself. All right. Note to self. Don't do that again.
She raised her eyes to Mansuur.
"Yes," she gasped. "You're right. I can't defeat you with witchcraft this time either. So I'm just going to have to defeat you with my superior attention to detail again."
"Meaning what?" Mansuur said.
"Meaning," Dara said, "that the way you move show that you're in pain. And while it's very faint, I can feel the Witch Stone shards inside of you, right where I left them."
Mansuur reacted quickly. His gargoyles lumbered forward, intent on crushing her. At the same time, he tried to take a firm grip on the shards lodged within his flesh, to keep Dara from making them move.
It was a fool's errand, of course. No matter how tightly he held on to them, he couldn't stop her from moving them just a little, maybe half an inch - and sharp pieces of stone moving half an inch through your sensitive tissues made it very hard to concentrate. Mansuur screamed, and his grip on the gargoyles weakened, letting Dara pick up the reins.
Two huge stone fists slammed forth, striking opposite sides of Mansuur's skull. Dara felt a hot spray on her face as blood and worse things splattered her.
Then it was quiet. All the gargoyles had stopped moving.
Dara began walking, wincing at every step. She felt dizzy, like she was going into shock. But whatever Mansuur had most wanted to protect must be through here. And that was where she had to go.
She stepped into the corridor, and then her legs folded, and she fell, down onto the pale Witch Stone floor.
***
And that had been then. And now it was now.
"Dara," the thing that looked like Jalon said again.
Dara moistened her suddenly parched lips.
"He Who Comes," she said.