A Practical Guide to Evil IV by ErraticErrata

Author:ErraticErrata [ErraticErrata, ]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 44: Catherine’s Plan

“From the example of the claimant Desolate we can learn this: no scheme is so perfect that it is invulnerable to the utter idiocy of an opponent.”

– Extract from an untitled historical commentary on the War of Thirteen Tyrants and One, by the Imperial Concubine Alaya of the Green Stretch

There was only the void to keep track of now, at least. Wings burst out of my back and with a swift beat had me spinning sideways: I caught Masego by the collar, though he kept wriggling uncomfortably. If this had been freefall back in Creation, the howl of the wind would have forced me to raise my voice. No such troubles plagued our descent into nothingness, a silver lining on a situation I knew to be bad but vaguely suspected was much, much worse.

“Can you get us out of here?” I asked, wings beating behind me to keep us aloft.

Diabolist was nothing more than a shade on my back, kept there by the fact I willed it so. Whatever weight she’d had earlier, it was gone now.

“There is no here,” Hierophant replied. “We are in between places that exist, within the contained entity that was the central chamber.”

“And can you get us out of that?” I hissed.

“It is an egg, Catherine,” he said. “We are within. If you want to leave…”

Crack the shell, I thought. Easier said than done: if that’d been on the table since the beginning, there would have been much less planning needed. Could’ve burst straight into the Skein’s lair, seized the wheels and assassinated Malicia. Of course, we had eventually burst into that lair. It hadn’t gone what one might call ‘well’, or to be honest anywhere near that neighbourhood. After the elven Revenant I’d thought that Neshamah’s guardians were dangerous yet not beyond our ability to handle. I’d just been roughly disabused of that notion. Even Masego picking up his second aspect had barely managed to get the situation under control long enough for the rat to screw us over again.

“Where do I hit?” I asked Hierophant.

The heart of our working relationship, laid bare.

“Anywhere,” he laughed.

I blew out a cold breath and allowed Winter to slither through my veins. Our exertions fighting the Skein had not tired it. It felt, if anything, even more eager than before. I was beginning to grasp the secret at the heart of the fae, slowly but surely: their power delighted in use, rewarded it. I’d inherited that without the tight constraints of a role in the colourful but uncompromising tapestry that had once governed the entire realm of faerie. Before the King of Winter hoodwinked me into killing and freeing him with the same sentence, anyway. Who knew what the face of Arcadia was, now that its ever-feuding courts had become one? I felt Akua’s not-eyed follow the shape of the power I was shaping, but she did not take part. She had not spoken a word since my last summons, I only now noticed.

“Diabolist?” I said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.