The Fall to Power (21 page)

And brought it forth from the stone.

Chapter
Eight:

The time was now. The day was at hand. The stars were all but in alignment and the tower of the Beacon thronged with the assembled Clansmen and Lords of the Land. Kurnos was there, with his Hounds. Ceceline, with her Seeresses. Memphias, with his Khrdas. Bavard, with his Lieutenants.

              And before them all, the God-King himself.

             
Invictus.

             
“Are you ready for this, my King?”

             
He turned to look at Ceceline who had appeared at his side, her cool hands grasping the mighty muscles of his arm, the stiffening breeze flapping her midnight hair. He didn’t answer for a moment, instead, turning back to look at the Dragon Claw Cradle, within its grasp the startling green emerald. Within moments, the combined light of several stars would cause that gemstone to glow, shining out across the ocean and proclaiming his might to one and all.

             
It still didn’t feel right, his sixth sense screaming at him with its unease. But events had unfolded and things had come to fruition. He’d even had a hand in it himself; the intricate detailing carved into the indestructible Claw was testament to that. He knew that despite his unease he would see things to the end.

             
Come what may.

             
“I am ready,” he declared.

             
She nodded, smiling, her ice-blue eyes unreadable, before turning to walk back down the stairs to the base of the altar-pyramid.

             
“Farewell, my King. Enjoy your moment of triumph.”

***

That infernal itching. Bavard shook his head, like a horse trying to rid itself of a particularly bothersome fly. An itching, a scratching that seemed be plaguing his head, yet not the skin, for no matter how much he scratched at it, it didn’t soothe it. The itching seemed to be coming from inside his mind.

             
He turned, looking at his lieutenants, noting that they, too, appeared out of sorts; they shuffled, uneasily, from foot to foot, rubbing their eyes and heads. It felt as though they were standing in a cloud of gnats, pricking at them, infecting them.

             
Rubbing his eyes, Bavard looked out, taking in the rest of the platform that sat atop the tower, noting with interest that almost everyone seemed plagued by the same affliction. Almost, but not quite. He frowned as he saw Kurnos, the Huntsman, Memphias the Assassin and, finally, Ceceline the Seeress as she strode, slowly, purposefully down the altar steps.

             
None of them seemed affected by the tingling power that he felt engulfing the tower.

             
His frown deepened, for as the Seeress strode from the base of the altar, her Coven of Witches ran low and fast behind her, dragging with them smouldering torches with which they marked out symbols on the ground. A barrier. Alarm bells rang in Bavard’s mind as he recalled the Battle of Pen-Tulador, so many months ago; the Circle of Transportation, a magic pentagram on the floor that separated the physical world from that of the sorcerous.

             
The symbols were different, subtly, yet the sensation of power was still there; the sorceresses were ringing the King, encapsulating him in some kind of eldritch circle, keeping things from reaching him.

             
Or penning him in.

             
In an effort to warn his King, Bavard made to stride forwards, but the itching intensified, a ringing in his ears sending him to one knee. He looked up, meeting the cold gaze of the Seeress and she smiled at him, bidding him to relax. To enjoy the show.

             
Your time of servitude to this master is over, Bavard. It is time for you to embrace the bloodlust within. For we are about to unleash you on battlefields far beyond this world.

             
“No…”

             
With that gasp of denial, Bavard reached up in vain to the King who had saved him, so very long ago, even as the heavens began to explode.

***

Invictus gazed up, open-mouthed now, to the dark skies above. The stars, almost impossible to discern as separate, even to his incredible eyes. Forked tongues of coloured lightning licked out across the heavens, scorching the retinas with incredible, myriad colours. The strong and undeniable taste of tin flooded his mouth, as though he’d bitten his tongue, and a deep and stark sense of foreboding began to creep over him.

             
For this was no mere alignment of heavenly bodies; there was sorcery afoot. Dark, ancient and intensely familiar.

             
He turned from the glimmering emerald, to leave the altar, unwilling, now the time had come, to be manipulated, but the very edges of the soaring platform erupted in black eldritch fire, the flickering flames reaching high up into the sky. The smoke reached his nostrils, the scent of brimstone, sulphur, pain and suffering. And hunger. Oh, such a deep and ravenous hunger for life.

             
He snorted, remembering the very same black flames being unleashed against him in the Temple of the Ancestors, a century ago, and made to walk through the roaring wall. He staggered backwards, his outstretched hand smoking, the skin crisping at the touch of the flames. The pain excruciating.

             
With a roar, he raised his hands, calling forth his dark powers to summon a windstorm, to blow the flames clean out, but the power was denied, his request going unanswered. His powers, woefully absent.

             
He span around, confused and alarmed now, as a low, insistent whispering began to rise up from everywhere and nowhere, in his mind and through his ears. He hadn’t imagined it, after all, all those years ago.

             
Panic not, loyal servant. For this truly is your moment of triumph. Thanks to your masterful construction of this altar, the alignment of the stars shall soon open a portal between worlds. A gateway we have been awaiting for so very, very long.

             
“How is this a triumph?” he roared into the air. “To be manipulated and trapped? Who are you?”

             
If the very air could pulsate with laughter, that is what it was doing now. Mocking him.

             
All through your life, our servant, you have yearned for control. Yearned to be master of your own destiny. We have been with you, yes, but all the choices you made you made yourself. Do not deceive yourself into believing you have been led. You find yourself here by your own volition.

             
The King snarled.

             
“My own volition? My mind is wracked by dreams, by faces of the past that I do not know. How can I have made my own choices if every corner I take then hides my own past from my sight? How can a man learn from his mistakes if he is trapped in a bubble of his own making and not allowed the benefit of hindsight?”

             
A pause, a moment of silence amidst the storm, then the whispers replied.

             
Very well. Behold; your hindsight.

             
With a shudder, Invictus fell to the floor, mouth agape, drool trailing in tendrils to the stone blocks as he shuddered in violent spasm. For in his mind, the floodgates were opened, the dam of time destroyed, the grey and hazy barrier that barred his past from his mind’s eye, burnt away like the vapours of alcohol before a match.

             
With a keening wail of horror at his deeds over the years, at the devastation he was about to unleash on his unsuspecting homeworld of a former life, he remembered.

             
Graeme Stone remembered
everything
.

***

Ceceline closed her eyes, rocking backwards on her feet as the blast of wind flapped the gossamer fabric about her figure, the shockwave still intense, despite the protection of the pentagram, as the torrent of power lanced down from the sky, engulfing the top of the altar in its bright, burning glow.

             
A bridge, a gateway between galaxies.

             
Tears glistened in her eyes as she pondered the climax of so many years’ work. Her efforts, her manipulations, her temptations; keeping the secrets from her King, showing him only what he wanted to see and leaving out what he didn’t, all of it had resulted in this incredible night.

             
Her masters would be pleased, for soon, so soon, the gateway would be open and, when it was large enough, the unseen armies of her lords would march through the open portal to unleash their destruction on an unwary, unsuspecting world.

             
The pillar of light vanished, leaving a scorched imprint on the eye, but it mattered not; the deed was done, the connection established. For the alignment went further, far further than the mere stars above – the alignment of celestial bodies stretched onward, ever onward, crossing the great gulf of the void, leaving this small, depleted husk of a galaxy and reaching all the way out to that of Stone’s birth; the teeming, spiral cloud of dust and planets that bustled with life, fresh, rich and ripe for the taking.

             
Oh, how Ceceline’s mind had almost exploded, so many years ago when the whispers had shown her the scale of their vision.

             
She frowned for an instant, then laughed, incredulously, as a figure high atop of the stairs struggled to right itself before standing, still and unsteady, looking down on them with dumbstruck eyes.

             
“He still lives?”

             
The Huntsman was beside her, his tone belligerent, as ever.

             
“You said the energies of the alignment would kill him!”

             
She grunted in dismissal at his outburst.

             
“Obviously we underestimate the handiwork of our masters, my bellicose friend. However, don’t be concerned; their blessing has left him now. He is quite… drained.”

             
“And his glaives?”

             
The Seeress nodded, a slight inclination of her head, towards the Pen that lay sprawled on the coast behind them. Kurnos grinned, feral and savage, his eyes a raging furnace that spoke of hunger for a sport never before chased.

             
“My Hounds!” he roared into the lightning-lashed sky. “Take your once-king, for tonight, the apex-predator has become the prey!”

             
With shrieks of bloodthirsty glee, the Hounds of Kurnos charged forwards to the foot of the stairs, gibbering and wailing as they fought past each other for the honour of being the first to stab their former ruler, all the while shaking their heads and foaming as they suffered from the itching, transforming influence of the energies steadily growing atop the tower.

             
Stone had just started descending the stairs, slow, unsteady, like a person who had just awoken from a long sleep and was unsure whether they still dreamt or not, when the first of Kurnos’ hunting dogs met him, leaping, teeth bared as they bit hard on his arms with slavering jaws. The shock of the sudden pain jarred him to his senses and he roared in rage, spinning about until the dogs flew from his limbs, leaving scores across his leather-tough skin, their pitiful whines receding into the distance as they plummeted, a hundred feet, from the sides of the steps.

             
With a snap of his neck, Stone turned his gaze on the charging men who flew, gibbering, towards him up the steps, axes, swords, spear and nets all raised high. With a battle-cry, he leapt down to meet them.

             
Though no longer fuelled by the dark and unnatural power that had, until recently, flowed through him, Stone was still a veritable god amongst men, even without his supernatural powers. Towering high above his foes, Stone’s iron-hard limbs thrust out, his reactions swift, his strength unmatched, the martial prowess of a century of growth laying waste to all who met him in a whirlwind orgy of carnage. Swords bent and buckled against his skin, nets were torn like parchment and scream after scream echoed through the night as Stone grasped a hunter by his ankles, swinging him about the steps, each sweep hurling a dozen berserker barbarians from the altar to smash, with a crunch, on the blocks below.

             
Far beneath the slaughter, at the bottom of the steps, Ceceline watched with growing amusement as the Huntsman’s troops were decimated in short order, to the swirling backdrop of a growing magical maelstrom.

             
“Seems we’ve underestimated him indeed!”