There came a noise as though the forest of Memory had come alive, the trees uprooting themselves and marching to battle, whispering to one another of bloodshed to come. Then the shadows of the great jungle began to flicker and warp, to wink with starlike teeth. From the darkness came forms of dread and nightmare, neither animal nor human being nor theront nor god, but some hideous amalgam of all.

  There were ten at least. Ylia stood rooted to the spot. The Basilisk in her hand glowed red hot from firing, a coal of killing intent. Had she really done it? Had she really killed The Warden? She felt little guilt, given all that he had done, and given how monstrous he was. And yet, it was a line crossed.

  The Daimons were coming. The horrors rushed toward her, heedless that their lord had fallen. She stood rooted to the spot, paralysed by the numb shock of what she had done. You did it. You actually did it.

  Scything limbs came towards her. Her face betrayed only the slightest reaction to their presence. She knew she had to move, to dodge, to fight, but her limbs were lead. Sheer shock had reduced her to a lifeless statue.

  And then Telos descended. His armour glinted like the scales of some dragon of steel. Darkbite flashed and the scything limbs were severed from their crustaceous body. The Daimon, which had two faces, and the wings of a bat, and a multitude of scrabbling legs, howled in agony. Yet even as it fell back, it was regrowing what it had lost. Its blood was black, and thicker than liquid slag. Congealing. Morphing. Forming new appendages.

  Darkbite flashed again. Telos moved with a speed that betrayed the eye. The Daimon was rent asunder, split vertically. Two faces of gore revealing themselves as offal slopped onto the jungle floor, wet and quivering. Had Ylia been possessed of her senses she might have thrown up, but she was distant, out of body. In many ways, she was still inside the dark Shell-place she had retreated when her father died. No human feeling could reach her in this chasm.

  The two yawning halves of the Daimons should have fallen down and died. But that was not the nature of the Daimon. They allied themselves. The slabs of gore grew teeth. Additional legs sprouted and found purchase. Now there were two Daimons, smaller than the first, resembling a cross between a spider, a frog, and a crab. They and came again.

  But Telos was a sea wind, as Xheng had once said. Mercurial. Ever-changing. He was lighter than air as he dodged and somersaulted, landing atop the armoured flank of one of the Daimons. He raised Darkbite and brought it down and Daimon collapsed.

  But the second was lurching toward Telos. Telos was quick—quick as thought—but it was his equal.

  Ylia did not think. She was beyond thought.

  She raised the Basilisk again and pulled the trigger.

  Obliterating light washed them all and the trees were swept back. The beam reduced the still-living half of the Daimon, scuttling sideways like a crab towards Telos, to mere particles. Black motes circled and danced in the air, then fell earthward like a dire pollen. She hoped nothing would spring from the ground in its wake.

  “Thank you.” Telos said, staring at Ylia.

  She smiled weakly. “No worries.”

  She and Telos turned to see how the others were faring.

  They were overrun already. Hideous forms, shifting even as though fought, rampaged through their nonexistent ranks. Heploss lay disembowelled, parts of his dissolving as he screamed. Jacinth landed a heroic blow on the head of the monster that’d done it, only to then be cut in half by a sword-like limb. It happened in less than a second.

  Julya was shouting, telling her men to focus on one Daimon.

  Jubal roared, his bellows filling up the whole jungle and make the black pit ring. The hammer of the god flashed in his hands and violent firelight ruptured from within a Daimon. It shrieked as cracks appeared in its flesh, like magmatic fissures in earth, and then erupted in a plume of flame. Jubal did not pause to admire his victory but wheeled, swinging his hammer again, sending another Daimon reeling back, its face burning as though it had been cast into a furnace.

  And then there was Qala. In the midst of its all, she floated. The magic coursing through her was not only visible to the eye, but a second sun. It streamed towards her from all directions, threads of effervescent that gathered, coalesced, brightened, as though she were drawing from the entire strength of the earth itself.

  And then she would raise her hands, and flashes of light in the shape of spears and arrows and other, stranger shapes would dart forth, striking the Daimons and wounding them. They hated the touch of that light, recoiling and spitting. The names of the gods were curse words on their lips.

  In the midst of the chaos, Ylia saw the naked god who had once been Urgal. Daimons were moving toward him.

  “Telos!” she said, pointing at the fallen god.

  Telos didn’t need further prompting. He knew her meaning.

  They ran, Telos’s sword flashing left and right. Unlike Jubal, whose god-forged weapon was bane to the Daimons, his sword was only of Qi’shathian steel. It would not break easily, but equally, the Daimons could endure many blows from it.

  Ylia’s weapon was another story. She fired a third blast from her Basilisk. Another Daimon was reduced to ash, eradicated. The cannon became a burning coal in her hand, too hot to touch. She growled and let go; it hung from the chain around her neck. Her palm was blackened, flesh peeling. She unslung her bow. She doubted it would do much against Daimons, but it was better than nothing.

  They ducked beneath a hulking Daimon that’d shaped itself into some kind of colossal insect on high, stilt-like legs. Its mouth was a long proboscis that hovered up the gore-slick remains of Julya’s team. They were all dead, now. All but one and Julya herself.

  They reached the fallen god just as a Daimon was about to strike. Telos leapt forward and intercepted the pincer-limb with a cut of Darkbite, severing chitin, sending the horrid leg spinning through the air, painting spirals of blood. The thing turned on him and he only just dodged its hideous jaws, which extended like a goblin shark’s.

  Ylia fired an arrow—it struck the Daimon but seemed to do nothing. She wished she possessed some kind of magical arrow.

  The second Daimon had turned to her. Telos was occupied with the first. It made a skittering noise and charged towards her. As it moved it oscillated between forms, monkey, bird, spider, settling on a beetle, with two huge mandibles that made the air sing as they snapped open and close. It was going to cut her in half. Despite its hideous bulk and armoured body, it moved as rapidly as a feral dog. She staggered back, fitting another arrow to her bow, and loosed.

  She knew it was hopeless. The arrow would do no more than thud dully into its armour.

  But as the arrow travelled it seemed to catch fire. Golden flames ignited, making the arrow into a comet of incandescent brilliance. It struck the Daimon with meteoric force and its mandibles were shattered, its head caved in. An explosion ruptured its insides and it fell down, twitching. Not dead, but incapacitated for the moment while it regenerated.

  Ylia turned and saw Qala, smiling. The sorceress was ablaze, a star. Her hair was almost all white now. The amount of magic she was channeling was likely to kill her. But Ylia could not deny her gratitude in that moment.

  Telos finished his Daimon off with a downward cut. The pieces of the thing were still quivering, trying to fight him, but it could not seem to reassemble itself.

  Ylia noted that even Telos, with his god-enhanced stamina, was sweating.

  She and he knelt by the fallen god.

  “Talon, now would be a really good time to wake up!” Telos cried.

  Talon?

  But as soon as Telos said the word, she realised he was right. What other god could this be? Certainly not Koronzon, the Lord of Death. It was difficult to think he had ever been turned into a cat. But Talon had always been associated with wolves and felidae. He was the Lord of Battle, the Shaper of Nations. His muscularity was indicative of his role as the sword-arm of the gods.

  And Nereth neutralised him, Ylia thought. But what kind of magic could turn a god into a cat?

  The same kind of magic, she realised, that could allow Daimons to change their shape. Who knew what horrors of technology and magic the gods kept in their vaults? If the gun she was using had been forbidden from use, as Danyil had intimated, what greater terrors awaited?

  She shuddered.

  “Talon!” Telos said again, gently touching the god’s face.

  Best not slap him, Ylia thought. If Urgal’s moods are anything to go by…

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  But Talon did not wake. He lay motionless, save for the rise and fall of his grotesquely muscled chest. How many times had Urgal lain on Ylia’s lap? How many times had he licked her hand, begged for food scraps, risen to defend her? Theirs had been a friendship that in many ways transcended human friendship in terms of intimacy. She had dressed and undressed before him. She had de-wormed him. Had he been aware, the whole time. Or had his consciousness been buried?

  She laughed, then. Laughed loud and long and clear. The sound was pure music.

  The god’s eyes fluttered.

  Ylia’s breath caught.

  Talon opened his eyes.

  “Just in time,” Telos said, grinning. “My Lord Talon, your—”

  Talon ignored Telos, sitting upright, staring at Ylia.

  “You…” he whispered, and his massive hand—larger than a dinner-plate—came to the side of her face, managing a tenderness that seemed impossible for one so built for war. “You looked after me… All that time.”

  Jubal screamed. Ylia turned and saw a Daimon had run him through with a scimitar-like limb, forged from black bone. The theront gargled blood and collapsed, the hammer falling from his grip.

  “Jubal!” Telos screamed. He ran, raising Darkbite, charging into the fray.

  Talon drew Ylia back to him. His eyes were infinities.

  “Of all humankind,” he rumbled. “I have never known a person so kind as you. When I was captured by the circus, I began to doubt my decision to advocate for humanity. But you, Ylia. Bright lady of the golden ale. You have made it all worth it.” He smiled, and it was a terrifying smile, albeit still dazzling. “Now, let me protect you.”

  Talon rose.

  He stood, naked, and yet somehow all the more imposing for it. His body was one chiselled piece of wargear, all rope-like cords, and horrific power condensed into immaculate flesh.

  He leapt.

  If Ylia had once admired Telos’ agility, she now saw her error. Talon’s leapt took him twenty feet into the air. He landed with a roar and the ground shook. The Daimon setting upon Telos wheeled, and fear lit up its alien features. Talon laughed as he inserted his hands into its ravening maw and pulled. It came apart like clay in the hands of a potter. He ripped it asunder and stamped upon the remains until they were naught but spasming jelly.

  He leapt again, soaring through the air. They had fought well, considering how outmatched they were. But now the god was among them, they had breathing space. Ylia got up and ran to Jubal’s side. The theront was badly hurt. There was a hole in his stomach that would not stop bleeding.

  She heard a thumping sound and saw Qala descend and then collapse. She slumped to the ground, her hair a cascade of pure white. She had aged perhaps ten years. She lay near lifeless in the dirt.

  Julya Daggeron joined their side. She was covered in blood, head to toe, and walked with a limp. Her men had given their lives, and she was the last.

  “We did it?” Jubal said. But the way he worded it was a question, a lingering doubt.

  “We did it, Jubal,” Telos said, without hesitation. “Talon is awake now. He’ll take care of the rest. You fought bravely. I’d almost say you’re better with that hammer than with the bow.”

  Jubal grinned, then grimaced.

  “It is much easier when your opponent does not see you.”

  Telos laughed. Ylia smiled, but it was a fake smile. Her heart hammered in her chest, and her mind was a-swirl with emotions. Jubal couldn’t die. He couldn’t. He was their rock.

  “TALON!”

  All their eyes were drawn to the Falls. Ylia’s heart, already knotted with worry, became a compression of serpents. Her mouth opened wide and something between a scream and an ululation of despair left her throat before she could prevent it.

  The Warden stood on the top of the waterfalls. He was in humanoid form, although taller than any man, a ten-foot giant, equal the height of Talon.

  The god was tearing apart the last of the Daimons, his body now finally clothed—in blood.

  If Talon was afraid of this apparition, he gave no sign. He looked mildly at The Warden, as though at another insect that’d infested his garden.

  “Who are you?” Talon sniffed. “You smell like a Daimon, but dare to walk in the shape of a man?” Talon began to approach the lip of the pit. Ylia knew, from watching him fight, he could clear the huge gap in a single bound. “Whatever shape you have chosen to wear, your kind are all the same. That is your very cancer—and cancers must be expunged.”

  “You think you so-called gods are so different?” The Warden sneered. “I have tasted several of your number, now. You are not so different from each other. Filled with the same arrogance, the same blindness.”

  Talon had stiffened at The Warden’s words. A shadow seemed to pass across his face.

  “Speak your crimes, that I may know the full extent of how you shall be punished for them.” His words were cold fury, a blade of ice.

  “I am glad you asked,” The Warden said, smirking. “Your half-brother, Beltanus, was the first I killed.” A dark flame seemed to light The Warden’s face. He leaned forward, knowing his next words would hurt the most. “And then I killed his wife… Or rather, his former wife. Your lover, I believe…”

  Talon had turned white. It was wrong, somehow, to see a god look so lost, so confused, so afraid. The emotions roiled and bubbled, then broke out in a piteous cry that sounded more like that of a child than some ancient being.

  “Lileth? LILETH? You—”

  Talon trembled.

  “Wait, Talon!” Telos cried.

  But grief and confusion had transmuted all-too-quickly to rage—blind, incoherent, monstrous rage. Talon leapt, hurtling towards The Warden like a spirit shot from the mouth of hell.

  He struck The Warden before The Warden could even react. His hands gripped him and pulled him apart.

  Too easily.

  There was nothing to him. He was merely a gossamer thin weave in the shape of a man, a thin membranous shell. And that was when Ylia realised the voice was coming from elsewhere.

  A second Warden descended. He had clung serpent-like to a tree, a black snake. Now he detached and shot across the divide. His fangs flashed and sank into the god’s neck. Talon grimaced, and a puff of air escaped his lungs. He staggered back, dangerously close to the Falls. His hands scrabbled with the serpent, but it was as though he were already losing his power.

  “No!” Telos roared.

  He sprinted towards the slope of rubble, dancing from stone to stone like some elegant cat. He was at the top of the Falls in seconds, Darkbite swinging.

  The serpent hissed and released its captive. Talon fell down, deathly pale, gasping for air.

  The serpent expanded, morphed, changed. And then The Warden was there, again. Misaligned, warped, but recognisable as the one who had burned her House, who had chased them out of Yarruk, who had altered their lives forever.

  He smiled at Telos. Telos stood there, panting, clutching his sword. It was one versus one, now.

  Or so Ylia thought.

  The Warden threw back his head and let out a dismal shriek.

  The shriek was not mere sound, it was physical. It travelled through the air like an ocean wave, striking each of them, knocking them back. It rushed into the shadows of Memory and hovered there, a felt presence.

  And then the shadows came alive.

  More Daimons. Not merely ten or so, now. But thirty, forty, fifty—more coming every moment. Some arrived as dismal horrors, crustaceous and spiderlike. Others wore the shapes of animals—felidaes and monkeys and parrots—but their eyes betrayed their true nature. Some looked only half-regenerated from their three millennia slumber, still showing bones, their blood leaking from incomplete flesh. Others were so gargantuan they trampled trees.

  “From the crypts of Uth, they come!” The Warden cried. “Met to view the last of you, Telos. To witness the final, crushing victory. Daimon over man. Me over you.”

  Ylia trembled. This was it then. She could perhaps kill one or two more with the Basilisk, but there was no way they could survive such an assault. The Warden had won. The Daimons were too many.

  The circle around them closed. She waited for the end. Julya bravely raised her sword—stubborn and stern until the end. Jubal grimaced, tried to stand, but collapsed. He was pale beneath his black fur, on the edge of slipping into oblivion. Qala would not rise. Not after expending so much magic.

  “I wish I could say something beautiful,” Ylia said. “But I have not the words.”

  Julya grimaced at her.

  “Neither have I. That was always my son’s province. But I will say it was an honour to fight and die with such brave souls as you.”

  Ylia smiled. Tears formed in her eyes.

  “Yes.”

  But then another sound came. It was a vibrating sound, a birdlike warble that rose shrilly. In any other context, it would have chilled Ylia. But here, it lifted her. They could not face more peril or death, and so any noise, however strange, must herald some positive change.

  The trees rustled. The Daimons emitted shrieks and growls of their own. A collective thought ran through them and they shuddered as one.

  And then silver darted from the woods. Arrows struck a Daimon and it yowled—the others, too, screeched in sympathy. Could that be a weakness, she thought. Is that why they have not rallied together until this moment? In sharing thought they share pain…

  More arrows sang and struck. Their tips were a type of metal she did not know, ebullient, white-hot like starfire. God-steel! She realised. It hurts the Daimons! But who…?

  They came. Yammering their strange battle cries, they emerged from the darkness as though made from it. They wore feathers, and body-paint, and their lithe forms seemed fashioned from pure gold. Women, all. Each had sheared off one breast. They carried bows and daggers and they hailed fire on the Daimons who recoiled from the touch of god-made weaponry.

  With astonishment, Ylia realised these were the women of the Forbidden Archipelago. The Furies. She had heard their legend time and time again but never thought to see them in the flesh. Yet here they were—hundreds of them—setting upon the Daimons with a fearlessness that defied comprehension.

  But strangest of all was the figure who led them. Not a woman, nor a god, but a theront, although in this moment he seemed more than that, a ruinous thing, a shadow of the past, a titan.

  He was somewhere between a frog and a man. His eyes were human yet set into a face of amphibian monstrosity. Though he wore no armour, he was mantled in a cloud of insects of monstrous size. They buzzed and hissed and swarmed, their bodies bloated and agued and bilious. Ylia knew, somehow, that they carried all the plagues of the earth within them. A black aura radiated from the theront as he stepped forward.

  “FOR THE DARK LADY” the theront cried. “FOR ERESH!”

  And then the Furies met the Daimons with all the wrath of a plague unleashed.