Original Work Wolf In The Fold (Schooled in Magic 28)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“Impossible,” Emily managed.

It was Cat. She knew him well, knew his body, knew his scent … the illusion was so perfect she feared it was Cat. It was hard to think clearly as he held her wrists behind her back, his grip so tight she couldn’t break it. Cat was strong, one of the strongest men she’d met, and his doppelganger was just as strong. Emily gritted her teeth and tried to cast a spell, feeling the tower’s wards growing stronger. She couldn’t get the spellware to take shape. Even the simplest spell was absorbed into the wards.

The attack on Kuching wasn’t intended to get access to the nexus point, she thought numbly. It was to get access to Cat! If he was replaced …

Her mind raced. The Hierarchy had sent her chasing the books stolen from Whitehall … she wondered, suddenly, if one of the books that had never been recovered had belonged to Master Wolfe. The Hierarchy had aided an uprising in Valadon and the rise of a Supremacist regime in Celeste, using both as cover for its own machinations. They’d harvested men, machinery and raw power from Valadon and Celeste, while leaving the rebels and supremacists to stand or fall on their own. The sheer scale of the plan awed and terrified her. They had been one step ahead of her all along.

She forced herself to look at Master Wolfe. “What have you done with Cat?”

“He’s a prisoner,” Master Wolfe told her. “I couldn’t take the risk of breaking the link between him and his apprentice, or you. But he’s very safe and secure …”

Emily hoped he was telling the truth. She didn’t have any sort of intimate mental link with Cat. Penny certainly didn’t, though she was his apprentice … could a mimic pick up an apprenticeship bond? Emily didn’t know. It had never occurred to her to try. The spells she’d devised to destroy necromancers might be based on mimics, but they were carefully designed to ensure they couldn’t go rogue. She had just wanted to kill her targets, not replace them.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she managed. She channelled as much compulsion into her tone as she could. “You can let us go now.”

Master Wolfe snorted. “Did you really think that would work?”

Emily said nothing. It had been worth a try, although she’d suspected it was doomed to failure before she even began. Master Wolfe would be extremely sensitive to magic and would be extremely self-aware, the kind of person who couldn’t be compelled easily. An arrogant braggart with little self-awareness could be turned into a puppet very easily, unable to escape because the idea he was under someone else’s control was unthinkable; a person who thought before acting, who wondered why he felt compelled to act, was a far harder target. She closed her eyes as Cat shoved her forward … no, not Cat. The monster wearing his face.


The tower shivered around her. Emily could feel it now, the growing power … the godly presence, just waiting to be born. Master Wolfe had to be insane to even consider it and yet … she could feel the power growing and growing, slowly burning itself into the fabric of space-time. If he could get his mind into the presence, into the godly structure … if he gained infinitive magic, he would be a god. His power would be so great he could make things happen by thought along … she could perform wonders with her power and if his became so much greater … what could he do? What couldn’t he do? The presence was so strong it felt inevitable, as if it was reaching back in time to bend the universe to its will. She tried to think as she was pushed through the outer rooms, crammed with machinery she knew to be fake … it felt like a movie set, one designed to cover something vital, to provide a perfect cover story for anyone who saw the wrong thing and got curious. It was …

She reached out gingerly. Cat’s hands felt real, but … there was a faint haze covering them, a faint hint he wasn’t a living breathing person. She cursed under her breath. Mimics had one weakness and that was that they required vast amounts of magic and life force to function, ensuring they had to kill their victim and risked being overwritten, for a while, by the victim’s personality. If this one didn’t need to kill, didn’t need to lose itself in the stolen personality … it had done wonders playing Cat, she thought sourly, but it wasn’t perfect. It couldn’t be.

It didn’t get turned to stone, she thought, grimly. Neither the fake Cat nor Serigala had been petrified by the Gorgon. Why not? Was the mimic immune to such spells? Or … had the Gorgon been working for the Hierarchy? Or … she ground her teeth in frustration. Too many possibilities, too little time. If I can hack the spellware …

Master Wolfe led the way into the entrance hall. Caleb and Frieda and Penny lay on the ground, their hands bound behind their backs. Emily felt her heart sink. They’d had no reason to expect treachery from Cat, no reason to think he wasn’t who he claimed to be … he could have stunned them instantly, if he’d wished, or simply used the local wards to suppress resistance and hold them still until he had them bound and helpless. Caleb’s eyes met hers and they shared a look of horror, before his eyes flickered to Master Wolfe. Emily’s heart sank. Caleb didn’t know Master Wolfe and Serigala had been the same person. He might not realise just how badly they were screwed.

Her eyes lingered on Frieda. There was a nasty bruise on her forehead, and her eyes burned with helpless rage, but otherwise she looked fine. Emily hoped she hadn’t been hit that hard … all her earlier thoughts came back to haunt her. Worse … for all she knew, one or all of her friends had been replaced by a mimic. Cat had been copied so perfectly … she feared, for a moment, they’d all been copied, that they might be actors playing a role until the time came to take off their masks and reveal the truth. Paranoia gnawed at her mind … was Frieda a fake? Or Penny? Emily didn’t know her that well, ensuring it would be harder to expose the fake. Or Caleb? They’d shared a bed, he’d been inside her … her blood turned to ice at the thought of a mimic being inside her, a creature posing as her partner … rape through deception, with the added twist the rapist might not know what he was or what he was doing. She felt sick. The thought refused to go away. Had they been apart long enough for him to be replaced? Of course …

“It is almost time,” Master Wolfe said. He spoke with quiet power. “You will all bear witness to my apotheosis.”

Penny glared. “Who are you and what have you done to my master?”

“I am Master Wolfe, and your master is one of us now,” Master Wolfe said. “You will see shortly.”

You will add our biological and technological distinctiveness to your own, Emily thought, numbly. It might have been amusing, once upon a time. It was a nightmare now. How far can you go?

She swallowed, hard. If a mimic didn’t need to kill to copy, how many people had been copied … and didn’t know it? Someone could have been attacked, copied, and then released with a gaping hole in their memories. There were plenty of ways to erase someone’s memory, plenty of ways to convince them there was no gap … plenty of ways to use subliminal prompts to push them to devise their own false memories, memories that would feel real even though they were completely fake. The paranoia grew stronger. Frieda had been hit in the head, a blow that might jar some of her memories … was it cover for a replacement? Or simply having her mind copied? Or …

The paranoia gnawed at her mind. Had she been copied?

Fuck, she thought, numbly. She’d been a prisoner of the regime. She’d slept in their cell. Had Boswell arranged for her to be copied? He’d been quietly pulling the strings all along. Why couldn’t he? She couldn’t think of any reason. For all she knew, she was already a part of Master Wolfe’s multiplicity. There was just no way to know. If he knows everything I know …

“Brace yourselves,” Master Wolfe said. “You will bear witness.”

He turned and left the room. Emily gritted her teeth, struggling against the Cat-mimic. It didn’t budge. She risked a glance at his face and shuddered, inwardly, at how dull and dead it looked … if she hadn’t known what it was, she would still have realised something was wrong. The fake wasn’t pretending any longer. She told herself to be wary, to remember that the mimic was as close to intelligent as any spell could become … that it could be listening to them even now, ready to catch them if they tried to escape. Master Wolfe hadn’t left them alone. He’d left a perfect guard dog watching them.

“Master,” Penny said. “What …?”

“He’s a mimic,” Emily said. Master Wolfe might have been lying about Cat still being alive. He knew more than anyone else about mimics and how they functioned … he might have assumed the bond would transfer over, or perhaps come up with another excuse for the bond’s failure. “He isn’t Cat. Not any longer.”

Caleb struggled against his bonds. “Emily, I …”

“I know.” Emily pressed her lips together, exaggerating the motion as much as possible. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

The hands holding her wrists didn’t budge. Emily’s skin crawled as she channelled her mind, trying to hack the spellware. The charms were incredibly complex and yet … she thought she could slip at least something into the network. Master Wolfe knew about chat parchments … she couldn’t reach the parchments in her pocket, which meant … she cursed under her breath. They’d been played for suckers, all along. The army had been and gone, retreated under the delusion it had won … she’d thought the victory was a little too easy. She understood what had been happening now. The ritual had been carving out space for the future god-like entity, channelling power to kick-start the creation of something powerful beyond all imagination … she could see it now, power infused into their blood and carried to the shell, through multiple dimensions, and then drained into the god. Master Wolfe’s mad scheme might even work …

I can’t let it happen, she told herself. I can’t …

Frieda moaned. Emily looked up at the Cat-mimic. “She needs help,” Emily said, quietly. She wasn’t sure what to do. Head injuries were always tricky. “Please let me help her.”

The mimic made no response. Its face was so cold now it was no longer possible to believe it belonged to her friend. It was identical and yet completely different, a mirror image as horrifying as looking into the face of an alternate – and evil – version of herself. Cat had been warm and friendly, for all his flaws; the mimic was just a thing, a construct of soul magic and raw power. It was … a spell. In the end, it had never been anything more.

Soul magic, Emily thought. If that’s how it works …

She closed her eyes, drawing on lessons that had been given reluctantly at Whitehall and slightly more willingly at Void’s Tower. Soul magic was deadly dangerous, for all the reasons she’d been taught and many others, and she knew – now – that the dangers had, if anything, been understated. Someone could have their whole sense of self screwed up beyond all hope of recovery, if they were attacked by a corrupt soul mage; someone could be controlled, their personality hollowed out and replaced by something else, or twisted into a monster that had no sense of right or wrong. She had been told she didn’t have to take the oaths, something she’d put down to Void’s influence, but that hadn’t stopped her tutors hammering home the warnings … or promising to kill her if she stepped over the line. She didn’t blame them. Soul magic might be less spectacular than lightning bolts or toad transformations, but it was still incredibly dangerous.

And the mimic could get into my mind, if I let it, she thought. This could go horrifically wrong.

Memories brushed against her mind as she reached out gingerly. They were odd … flickering images of Whitehall seen through a glass darkly, a very familiar face looking down at her … it took her a second to realise she was looking at her own face. She was naked … she flushed, helplessly, as it dawned on her she was seeing the stolen memories, then again when it occurred to her the mimic had seen her naked. Master Wolfe might have seen her naked … she cringed, mentally, as the thought refused to die. She didn’t want to think about it. The world didn’t care what she thought.

She pushed onwards, the sluggish memories bubbling around her. There was no trace of the vibrancy she was used to, none of the colours she knew from other times she’d touched someone’s kind … just a cold grey nightmare, the memories nothing more than briefing notes to the mimic. She sensed a personality moving through the darkened memories, a hunter on the search for prey; she leaned back, trying to hide within the shadows. The presence didn’t seem to be hunting for her specifically, but …

More images darted through her mind. Girls … her lips quirked, despite herself, as she realised just how many girls he'd known. It felt wrong to even look at those memories, the impressions somehow managing to be dull and tasteless even though they were as intimate as one could possibly imagine; she rolled her eyes as she saw a girl perform an act she’d always refused … she shook her head mentally, trying to draw back. It was worse than reading a blue book written by a teenage virgin. The memories were real, yet they were so drained of life they were boring beyond words. She’d read some textbooks written by men who somehow managed to extract the excitement and leave behind nothing, but dull words. Cat’s memories felt just as lifeless.

She pushed onwards, searching for the core of the mimic. It was a presence that felt like a mask, a façade … the smile on the face of the hunter. It was exactly what it was, but it was also dead and cold and … she leaned forward, trying to slip her own codes into the soul magic. Cat hadn’t known she could do that, few did. She suspected it was proof she hadn’t been copied. Or Caleb. He knew what she could do.

Hurry, she told herself. The memories bubbled around her. She couldn’t tell if it was intended to distract her or not … frankly, it hardly mattered. She was running out of time. The first set of commands went in without a hitch, the second … she cursed as they fell into nothingness. There were limits to how far she could hack the spellware. Perhaps if I reach the core memories, I can …

Her awareness fell back into her own body. She staggered, nearly falling. The mimic held her upright, its grip so tight she was losing feeling in her hands. She could feel nothing but deadness in its grip now, the human façade – once so perfect – lost in a sea of magic. If her commands hadn’t bedded in properly … they were doomed. The wards made it hard, almost impossible, to cast a spell.

“Emily?” Caleb sounded grim. “What happened?”

“Tired,” Emily lied. Caleb would pick up on it, so would Frieda, but they were both smart enough to keep their mouths shut. Penny was staring at the Cat-mimic in horror. Emily felt nothing but pity. Penny had been Cat’s apprentice. The idea of her lessons coming from a replacement was terrifying. The fact the mimic had gotten away with it was worse. “There’s much to do.”

She heard thunder outside and shuddered. The storm was back, lightning crashing through the air and striking the tower. She could feel waves of magic falling into the multidimensional structure and being absorbed, saved within the batteries she’d helped design. Master Wolfe had used her innovations, hers and Adam’s, to complete his plans … she felt the weight of the magiwriter on her wrist, surprised it hadn’t been taken from her. Had he missed it? Or did he think she couldn’t use it?

“It is time.”

Emily jumped. The mimic sounded nothing like Cat now, the voice stripped of all personality and emotion. Penny looked sick … Emily exchanged glances with her as a pair of iron giants entered the chamber, metal hands reaching out to yank the prisoners to their feet. Emily gritted her teeth as the mimic pushed her towards the door, its grip never slacking. It wasn’t fool enough to let go of her hands. Cat’s memories would have told it all it needed to know about how dangerous she could be. But between the wards and its grip she couldn’t fight or cast spells …

Frieda staggered, leaning against Caleb. “Emily, I …”

“Keep calm and focus,” Emily told her. There was no way she could stay upright with her hands bound, nor could Caleb help her. A wave of pure hopelessness ran through her. They were trapped and if her gambit failed … they were doomed. “Just … try to focus.”

“My head hurts,” Frieda said. “I can’t think!”

Emily winced. They were running out of time …

 

Just a quick promo post – there are images and suchlike on the page …


The Zero Blessing Comic Kickstarter – UP NOW

 

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The passageways twisted in and out of reality.

Emily could feel it, a nightmarish structure built within the warp and weft of space-time, a place where all the normal laws were rewritten to make the impossible possible and the fantastic commonplace. She’d seen pocket dimensions where time didn’t flow, where someone could step weeks or months into the future without being aware of the passage of time outside the bubble, but Master Wolfe’s pocket dimension was an order of magnitude more complex than any of them. It was a private universe trapped within an atom, an entire complex so compressed it was impossible to find, a construction that would have awed her if she hadn’t been so terrified. The sheer scale of the plan chilled her to the bone, the power slopping around through the pocket dimension a grim reminder of what was coming. There was enough power, gathered from Celeste and Valadon and maybe other places, to do almost anything. Master Wolfe was standing on the brink of apophasis or nemesis and there was very little she could do.

She glanced at the mimic holding her, trying to determine if any of her tricks had worked. Cat’s face was as blank and soulless as ever, no longer even remotely convincing … a parody of the person she’d once loved, a person who had been as alive as anyone she’d ever met. It tore at her t know Cat was a prisoner somewhere, that the man who’d risked his life to save hers was trapped … that she hadn’t even known until it was far too late. A sound pulsed through the passageways as they widened suddenly, revealing a single giant piece of metal and crystal placed in the exact centre of a towering chamber. The sound beat and beat like the beat of a drum … a heartbeat, she realised numbly, the heartbeat of something waiting to be born. Master Wolfe wasn’t so much ascending to godhood as he was donning a godly outfit, one that could take him all the way into the higher dimensions. Emily could feel the body all around her, a shimmering presence echoing back and forth along the timeline … it was coming into existence, it existed, it had always existed. It was declaring itself to be true, in a manner that left no room for doubt. It was declaring itself to the entire universe.

You can’t declare something to be true and make it so, she told herself. Can you?

You can do anything with enough magic, her thoughts pointed out. Master Wolfe has power to burn.

Frieda groaned as the iron giants pushed her into the chamber. “Emily?”

“Stay still,” Emily advised. She met Caleb’s eyes briefly. There was so much raw power in the chamber that doing the wrong thing could blow them all to hell … she wondered, numbly, if there was any other choice. Master Wolfe wanted to push the limits as far as they could go … all the way to godhood. What would he do, if he became a god? Emily didn’t want to know. No one could be trusted with that sort of power. She liked to think she could handle it, but … she knew better. “We need to think.”

She looked around the chamber, cursing under her breath. The entire complex was glowing with an eerie bright light, one that passed through her eyes and burned into her brain. It was hard to see anything, hard to think clearly … she gritted her teeth, trying to parse out the spellware worked into the chamber. It was incredibly complex, far more than any merely human mind could put together … she couldn’t tell if it was because Master Wolfe hadn’t been human for nearly a thousand years or if he’d used some kind of magiwriter. Emily had been able to work one more effectively than Adam, for all that it had been his invention, and there was no reason Master Wolfe couldn’t do the same. She didn’t have time to untangle it … she sucked in her breath as she realised, finally, where the power flowing from the nexus point was going. It was linked directly to the complex, rather than the dummy device …

And to the godform, Emily told herself. She couldn’t think of any better term. It’ll be ready to go shortly.

Master Wolfe stepped out of the light. His body looked frayed, as if the spellware was already transferring itself to the godform. Emily hoped to hell nothing went wrong during the transferral process, Mimics had never been designed to remain in the same form indefinitely and Master Wolfe was a multiplicity, hundreds of minds swallowed and absorbed into a single collective whole. The old tales about the souls of long-gone sorcerers being trapped in artefacts suddenly felt very real, the madness they inflicted on anyone unwary enough to hold them a reflection of their own madness. Being trapped in an inanimate object for hundreds of years would be bad enough, she was sure, but if they weren’t copied over perfectly God alone knew what would be missing. Anyone fool enough to try it would be incredibly self-centred.

Caleb caught her eye, asking an unspoken question. What’ll we do?

Emily shivered. She had no answer. The chamber was draining them, the iron giants were right behind them … she didn’t have the slightest idea where to begin dismantling the spellware even if Master Wolfe had been inclined to sit down and let her try. It was hard to tell where he stopped and the chamber started, let alone which part of him was transferring itself to the godform. She had to admire the sheer bloody-mindedness of a man who wanted to become a god. He’d already avoided the mistake that killed most necromancers – the lucky ones – and prepared himself to channel such vast powers. Her heart sank. How much of the nightmare taking shape in front of them was her fault?

Master Wolfe spoke, and the world shivered. Emily could feel things scratching on the edge of reality as his words echoed through the chamber, hunting for a way into the human world. His words shook the foundations of reality itself, statements of raw power so pronounced that she couldn’t make out the words even as they pounded her skull. Her earlier thoughts came back to haunt her. You could declare anything you liked and, with enough magic, you could make it stick. Emily knew how to turn someone, or even herself, into a toad; she knew how to lock the transformation so the victim remained an animal for the rest of their life. Master Wolfe was transforming himself on a far greater scale. He was lying to the universe with enough power to make his lies true.

“Enough,” she said. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say, but she owed it to herself to try. “This isn’t going to work.”

Master Wolfe swayed slightly as he looked at her, his form blurring slightly. “You will assist me,” he said, quietly. “I have checked every last fragment of the spellware. I have calculated every last vector, every last channel for raw power. You and yours will be absorbed into my multiplicity and taken onwards, adding your knowledge and power to my own. It will work.”

His eyes met hers. “I will touch the roots of magic itself and become magic. I will become a god.”

Emily shivered, then glanced at Caleb. Frieda wasn’t in a good state and Penny didn’t know her well enough to pick up on the silent message, but … she hoped to hell Caleb realised what she was trying to tell him. Brace yourself. She shuddered as she realised what Master Wolfe had meant, as his form blurred again. They were all about to be eaten by the mimic … she had wondered why he’d brought them to the chamber, but she knew now. Everything she knew was about to become his, from the truth of her origins to specialised knowledge she’d kept to herself, for fear of what would happen if it become common knowledge. Master Wolfe was about to learn about Earth, and by extension every other world in the multiverse. What would he do with the knowledge? Emily knew she wouldn’t live to see it.

“Are you not curious, Lady Emily?” Master Wolfe sounded unconcerned as the power spiked around him. “Do you not wish to touch the roots of magic itself?”

Emily pressed her bare skin against the mimic holding her. The soul magic was starting to sparkle … there was something of Cat inside the spellware, a personality that had been copied and turned into a perfect disguise. If she had enough time …

“There was a magician, years ago, who thought he could open a door into the higher planes,” Emily said. Void had told her the story, as a cautionary tale. She wondered, in hindsight, if it had been one of Master Wolfe’s experiments. “He unleashed things into our world. He was merely the first to die.”

“I am far more capable than any normal magician,” Master Wolfe told her. “Are you not curious?”

“Yes.” Emily was honest enough to admit she was curious. The locals accepted magic as normal and right, a part of their world that was as fundamental as gravity. She never had. There was no magic on Earth, at least as far as she knew, and the question of why there was magic here had always puzzled her. “But I’m also concerned about what’ll happen if you open this door.”

She worked fast, talking to distract him. “Do you know what you’ll unleash? Do you know what you’ll become?”

Master Wolfe smiled beneficently. “Every last variable has been checked.”

“How can you be sure?” Emily braced herself. If the soul magic didn’t come apart properly … there wouldn’t be a second chance. “You have no conception of the higher dimensions as anything other than words, no understanding of what they’re really like … no awareness of what you’re missing. You don’t know what you don’t know. There could be something above you, beyond you, that you haven’t factored into your calculations because you don’t know it exists. How do you know what you’re missing?”

She leaned forward. It had taken her years to adjust to the idea of magic being real. She could easily imagine an army from Earth storming the Nameless World, pitting machine guns and jet fighters and tanks against what they’d take to be a medieval fighting force, only to be turned into toads with a wave of a sorcerer’s hand. They couldn’t have accounted for such a possibility if they didn’t know magic existed, they certainly couldn’t take precautions against it … how could they? They wouldn’t believe in it until they saw it and even then, they wouldn’t understand it. It would scare them …

“Please,” she said. “Stop this.”

“Enough,” Master Wolfe said. His form blurred again – she thought she saw a multitude of faces in the haze – as he reached for her. “You will become one with me.”

Emily threw caution to the winds and triggered the spells she’d woven into the mimic. Cat’s personality came to the fore, letting go of Emily’s wrists as he came back to himself … she pushed him back, hastily raising a shield as Master Wolfe stopped. The iron giants turned to face them … Cat drew his pistol and shot the first with a runic bullet. It staggered and fell to the ground.

“Move,” Emily shouted. The other iron giants were moving with terrifying speed. “Get out the way!”

Caleb shoved Frieda to the ground, stumbling as he lost balance … Emily yanked her virgin blade from her sleeve and hurried forward, cutting their bonds. Penny rolled over, her eyes going wide as she saw Cat … no, not the real Cat. The deception was uncanny. Emily knew the mimic was nothing more than a piece of incredibly complex spellware and yet it was hard to force herself to believe it. The iron giants kept coming as Master Wolfe stepped back, resting a hand against his device. The real device. Emily could feel it waking up, the pocket dimension’s gradients altering themselves to allow the birth of a god. She reached for her magic and cast a force punch, hurling it at the nearest iron giant. The blast of magic faded away before it could reach the target, drained into the growing nightmare. She cursed under her breath. They were running out of time …

Penny punched an iron giant, ramming her fist through its protective wards and slapping the outer armour. Emily blinked – how the hell did she think that would be effective? – and then saw the rune Penny had cut into her palm, the blood fuelling the spell. The iron giant shuddered and then crashed towards the device, metal fists pumping the air as it charged. Master Wolfe made a throat-slashing gesture and the iron giant came apart, the sheer power he’d unleashed too much for its protections to handle. Emily was surprised he hadn’t tried to kill them all. He couldn’t be that desperate to add her to his multiplicity, could he?

I know things he can’t imagine, she thought, numbly. Caleb is no slouch himself and Frieda knows things I never told anyone else. He’ll want them too.

Cat – the mimic – snapped orders at Penny. “Get that door sealed!”

Penny glanced at him. “You’re not my master!”

“Now,” Cat snapped. Few masters tolerated open defiance from their apprentices under any circumstances and fewer still in the middle of a battle. “Do it!”

“Do it,” Emily echoed. She could hear more iron giants marching towards them … she glanced at Master Wolfe, standing by the device, and shivered as she saw the smile on his face. The pocket dimension was expanding, putting miles between them and the device … she cursed as she realised he was still connected to the godform, still transferring himself into the entity. He’d have to split his attention if he wanted to fight … not that that would pose any problem for a mimic. It was just a matter of duplicating itself and then reintegrating later. “Hurry!”

Cat caught her arm, magic dancing around his fingertips as he hurled a curse at an iron giant. “What am I?”

Emily hesitated, unsure what to say. The mimic couldn’t be allowed to have an identity crisis, not now. She had no idea if they did under normal circumstances, as the deception became increasingly threadbare, but here … Cat was far from stupid and the more he questioned the gap in his memories the more he would wonder who he truly was. What would he do, if he realised he was a copy and the real Cat was somewhere else? What would he do …?

“My friend,” she said, finally. It wasn’t like Cat to ask questions in the middle of a fight. The first sign of looming trouble or … Cat would have blown his top if Penny had questioned orders so openly. Most masters appreciated private questioning, but rarely – if ever – in public. “You’re my friend.”

Master Wolfe snorted, the magic shimmering around him. Emily could see the magiwriter blurring into the spellware … he’d taken the concept and run with it, practically burning the device into his very soul. Emily cursed as she realised what he'd done. He’d given himself far greater scope for magical manipulation, taking ideas she’d introduced to Old Whitehall and developing them within a pocket dimension. The organic wards she’d sown needed months, if not years, to take root properly, let alone allow the development of a base for more advanced, practically intelligent, wards. Master Wolfe had done the development in a pocket dimension where time moved faster than normal, a neat solution she wished she’d devised herself. It might have taken years inside the dimension, but to him bare seconds would have passed.

“Cover me,” she ordered. Frieda was fighting too, but her movements were unsteady. There was no time to check her wound, to check she hadn’t suffered brain damage … not there was much anyone could do, if she had. “I need to think …”

Caleb joined her, magic sparkling as he launched probes into the spellware. “I can’t get a lock on anything important,” he snapped. A dull thud echoed through the chamber as the reinforcements battered the doors. “They’re too complex for a lone mind!”

“Of course they are,” Master Wolfe said. He appeared to be hundreds of miles away, the distance between them and the device expanding to infinity. “You need to be one of many to handle such spellware, to understand the true nature of magic itself.”

Emily focused her mind. The spellware seemed simple, almost crude, but every time she looked closer she saw more and more complex pieces of magic, tiny atoms that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye and yet collectively built up something far greater. She couldn’t help thinking of it as a body, something seemingly simple … that was exactly what the godform was, she reminded herself, a body for Master Wolfe to wear as he ascended into godhood. It was too complex for anything less than a ritual to take it apart and no collective of magicians, no matter how powerful, could make such a ritual work. It required coordination on an impossible level. She loved Caleb, and Frieda, and yet there was no way they could work together so closely …

She gritted her teeth. It was a risk, and she would be staring madness in the face, but they were running out of time. The godform was growing stronger, impressing itself into the local dimension and bending reality itself to be born.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, her mind whispered, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

“Take your magiwriter off,” she ordered Caleb. They weren’t going to lose. They couldn’t. Everything was at stake. “Here goes nothing.”

Emily closed her eyes, and bilocated.

 

Chapter Thirty-Nine

It was different, this time,

Emily felt her awareness stretch as she split in two, her mind spinning as she realised she was in two places at once. Bilocation was always dangerous because the two tried to become one – normally, the two selves were separated by several miles to keep them from reintegrating – and there was no time to gather herself, to focus her mind to ensure the two bodies could co-exist without trying to merge back together. Her awareness spun from body to body, as if she was in one place one moment and the other the next; she gritted her teeth, directing one of her to move to the far side of the chamber while the other remained where she was. There was no time to worry about her sanity, or anything. She had to work and work fast.

Hack the spellware, she told herself. The sheer staggering complexity threatened to overwhelm her. She understood how Master Wolfe had done it – he was a multiplicity, capable of doing a hundred separate things at once – but she couldn’t duplicate his trick for herself. And hurry!

She took Caleb’s magiwriter and shoved it towards her other self. She took the magiwriter from herself. Her perspective shifted violently, her thoughts blurring together … she was looking at herself, looking at the world from two different angles. It was insane … her mind yammered as reality bent around her, threatening to pull the two selves back together. They were touching and they weren’t touching and … she bit her lip hard, feeling as if she were trying to tear herself in two. She was, technically. She’d heard horror stories about people who had permanently split themselves in two, both convinced they were the original and both technically correct.

“I can’t think,” the Cat-mimic said. “Emily …”

“Remain focused,” Emily snapped at him. They might just have an edge … Cat had inserted chat parchments into the wards, parchments Master Wolfe might not have bothered to remove. He’d known Cat was on his side all along. If they could use them … “Get the wards up, target them on the iron giants!”

Penny let out a curse as the door crashed open, the first iron giant lumbering into the chamber and reaching for her. Cat swore too and reached for the wards, the magic shimmering around him as he blasted the first iron giant. It staggered, trying to fight an irresistible force; it held for a handful of seconds and then went flying, knocking down a bunch of others as it was hurled down the corridor. The sheer weight of the wards was just enough to tear through their defences as if they were made of paper. Cat’s face flickered as he stepped forward, the mimic trying to reassert itself. Penny looked pale as she glanced from Cat to the door and back again. Emily understood, all too well. Cat wasn't Cat, and the entity wearing his face could switch sides – again – at any moment.

Emily raised her eyes and looked at Master Wolfe. He was floating in the centre of the chamber, raw magic surrounding him as the magiwriter he’d designed and built himself rewrote reality to allow for the creation of a godform. The presence was growing with every passing second … Emily swallowed, hard, as she realised he was literally building himself up from scratch. It was just like the wards she’d designed … she met his eyes, just for a second, and saw bright intelligence staring back. His mind was expanding too, behind a protective barrier that kept him safe … she could feel his awareness growing stronger, his mind increasingly reshaping the world around him. It was just a matter of time … her only edge was that he’d adjusted the flow of time within the chamber, ensuring that he might not be aware of what she was doing until it was too late. Or perhaps it was the other way round. She’d read stories about people who could stop time, from the thoughtful and philosophical to the erotic and the horrible. If he managed to find a way to move outside the flow of time, they were dead. There was no way to stop an enemy who could freeze time itself.

Hurry, she told herself. Get into the spellware network.

She reached out with her mind, drawing on the spellware she’d left behind in the nexus point. It pulsed around her like a living thing, growing with every passing second. Master Wolfe might have stabbed himself in the back, she realised numbly, because he’d messed with the flow of time inside the makeshift nexus point too. The spells she’d slipped into the network should have taken longer to flourish, and perhaps they had from their point of view, but they were ready now. She drew on the power, trying to channel it directly into the magiwriter. Both magiwriters. Her other self had one too.

Her mind throbbed with pain as she plunged into the magiwriter, pushing Adam’s device to the limits. Master Wolfe had put together a complex network that had practically created itself and now she had to hack it, on the fly, before anything else could go wrong. Vast amounts of power flowed down the link, her head spinning again as she felt madness howling at the back of her mind. The power was a flaming river, a force she had to direct even though trying could easily drive her mad. She needed it … the magic battered her mind, enough raw power to fill the cracks in her spellware. She hoped … it wasn’t something she could be sure of, not without actually trying it. Her mind spun again and again. She was in two places at once.

She felt another stab of pain as her awareness bounced back and forth. She knew herself perfectly, knew what each of her selves would be doing … was doing. The cracks in the spellware were beyond any lone mind, but together … they could exploit them. She reached forward, the towering presence brushing against her as she tried to slip weaknesses into the spellware … weaknesses that seemed reluctant to take root. She had to admire Master Wolfe’s sense of self. It was too strong, strong enough to ensure his mental survival even as he drained endless power from the nexus point. Her lips twisted in dark amusement. The spellware lacked the weaknesses of the human mind, because it had been programmed not to share them. It didn’t stop to wonder if it was being asked to do the impossible, or to see if there were limits to how far it could go. Master Wolfe had practically hypnotised himself into thinking the impossible was possible and, in doing so, he’d made it possible.

Clever, she admitted, sourly. She’d never thought of trying something like it for herself. The risks of tampering with her mind were too great. It was impossible to tell the difference between something genuinely true and something you’d been compelled to believe, no matter how irrational, if you inserted the compulsion into your own mind. Perhaps that was the point. Master Wolfe had compelled himself to believe in his mad scheme. It might just work.

The world shivered around her. She had the impression of mighty wings battering the air, ripples of distortion spreading out of the godform. Time was running out and yet she couldn’t afford to work fast, not when she needed to get into the network without setting off any alarms … she linked her mind to her other self and channelled power from the nexus point, aiming it right at the godform. It was a tidal wave of raw power, enough naked force to wash away almost anything. She could blast a necromancer effortlessly, obliterate Void’s Tower or Whitehall itself … she wasn’t surprised, not really, to see the wave of irresistible magic, be absorbed into the godform. Flashes of alarm ran through the network, distracting the controlling mind. She hoped it would be enough …

Her awareness slipped under the wave of raw power – she had a sudden mental impression of a fireman blasting a water hose at a burning fire – and into the network. It was immense, endless row upon row of spellware twisting and growing beyond her comprehension … she could hear, or feel, the beating of a mighty heart as she plunged further and further. Master Wolfe’s thoughts moved with terrifying speed, so fast and flickering she couldn’t grasp hole of any of them … he was caught between being the mimic multiplicity and transferring himself into the godform. He couldn’t stop the process now, not when he was halfway there. He needed every scrap of attention to transcend and he couldn’t spare anything for her … not now. Her lips twisted as she worked with frantic speed. He had enough power to swat her like an ant and yet he couldn’t bring any to bear on her.

A hand fell on her shoulder. She jerked out of the trance, her head spinning … unsure which of her two selves she’d been decanted into. Cat was looking down at her, his face stripped of all life … Emily swore as she realised the mimic had taken over. Cat’s form was coming apart, slowly dissolving into a haze of multicoloured light … Penny screamed in rage and aimed a killing curse into the twisted nexus of magic, the raw power making Emily’s skin prickle and curl. The mimic was trying to eat her … she was lucky there were two of her. A single person would have been lulled into submission, unable to focus their mind enough to cast a spell to break free. Emily reached out and slammed her mind into the mimic, tracing the threads of power back to the chat parchments. The wards were breaking, although she couldn’t see why … there didn’t seem to be anything hammering on them. Perhaps they were just unable to cope with the constantly shifting changes in reality. The tower itself might be coming apart at the seams.

Cat’s hand brushed against her face, the touch making her skin crawl. His hand no longer felt human. Emily gathered herself and pushed back, trying to put Cat’s personality back in control … it didn’t work. The mimic had been pushed to breaking point, the last traces of Cat’s mind lost in the haze … she had an impression of Cat pleading for his life, a final trick to compel her to let down her guard. It couldn’t be real. Cat would sooner have died then grovel in front of her … in front of anyone. She still felt guilty as she overrode the mimic’s spellware and hurled it at the godform. She didn’t think it could do any real damage, if it could even reach its target, but it might divert Master Wolfe’s attention for a few vital seconds.

“They’re coming,” Penny shouted. Frieda was right next to her, face pale. “We can’t stop them …”

Emily drew on the wards, feeling the links start to fracture as the wards themselves collapsed, and twisted space around the iron giants. Their protections were stronger than she’d expected, tough enough to stop bullets or missiles, but she was crushing them with so much power they might as well be made of paper. The walls of the universe itself were compressing them into tony chunks of metal. She felt the spellware give, the last traces of the iron giants die, an instant before the wards themselves collapsed. The tower was starting to fragment too. It wasn’t designed to survive without the wards.

“Keep the network alive as long as possible,” Emily snapped at Caleb. She could feel local reality breaking down, even though they were a long way from the epicentre. It occurred to her to wonder if the space between them was as wide as she’d thought, now Master Wolfe was concentrating on his ascendency. He’d stretched local space as far as it would go and let, with chunks of normal reality reasserting themselves, it was difficult to believe that would remain unchanged. “And then …”

The tower shook. Emily saw a crack appear in the wall, things bubbling on the far side, before the crack was gone, so completely it had never existed at all. Pain stabbed deep into her soul as she realised there were two separate realities, one trying to impose itself on the other … her memories tried to fracture, to accept the new reality and forget the old. It was too much to handle … she was trying to lie to herself, reality was trying to lie to her, but if she chose to believe the lie it would become truth. The godform was growing stronger … it was already beyond any hope of defeat … no, that was another lie. A person couldn’t declare himself the winner and, by doing so, become the winner … Emily shook her head. You could do anything if you had enough magic, even rewrite reality so you won … so you had always won. Master Wolfe was doing just that, right in front of her. The magic was transcending, becoming something more. He’d wanted to touch the roots of magic.

Her awareness twisted, again. The magiwriters were ready, but …

She caught Caleb’s eye. “You have to take this into the godform,” she said, pressing her final piece of chat parchment into his palm. There was no way to soften the blow. Caleb knew she was asking him to take a huge risk, perhaps even given up his life. He also knew it wasn’t something she could do herself. She needed both of her selves outside, where their thoughts wouldn’t be split up so violently they literally would become two separate people. “I …”

“I understand.” Caleb leaned forward to kiss her lightly, their lips touching. He was one of the best charmsmasters she’d ever met, smart and insightful and … he knew they might never see each other again. “Don’t let him win.”

He turned and jumped into the godform. Emily’s perspective shifted, Caleb seeming to hang uselessly in front of her, his form unmoving and yet receding … he was moving, she told herself as she grasped the magiwriter with one hand, just moving so slowly he might as well not be moving at all. He was falling to infinity … she gritted her teeth and triggered the spell, her mind shivering as she felt the twist in space-time. Her thoughts were slow and sluggish and yet so fast she couldn’t get a grip … Master Wolfe’s trick of adjusting the temporal gradient might not have been intended as a defensive mechanism, but it worked very well. Cat might take years to cross a distance a child could traverse in a few seconds.

But it also works against him, Emily told herself. If we can get in through the backdoor …

She touched the magiwriter, her other self doing the same. Her awareness twisted as she reached through the chat parchment, sensing the temporal gradient and adjusting it. Caleb was on his way … no, he’d reached his destination … no, he’d always been there. Emily didn’t have any time to appreciate it as Caleb started to touch the godform itself, reaching out to hack it. The defences snapped back, giving Emily a chance to reach through them. Her earlier thoughts returned to haunt her. It was like stopping time, pausing a game so you could think … except this time it worked in her favour. She could see cracks in the defences, flaws in his countermeasures, and take countermeasures of her own before the countermeasures had fully mobilised. It was cheating on a colossal scale … her lips twisted. She was fighting a god. There was no such thing as a fair fight when your opponent held all the cards.

Her mind raced, reaching out to the walls of the pocket dimension. There was no way to tear the godform apart, no matter how much she hacked it … she inserted a string of backdoors that might or might not work, if push came to shove … but she could crush the entire pocket dimension, shoving it right out of reality. She’d killed Shadye with something similar and perhaps she could do it again … Master Wolfe could spend the rest of eternity as master of his private domain, his awareness so sharply circumscribed that he’d never be able to see the dimensional walls let alone breech them. It crossed her mind to wonder if she was about to die, if they were all about to die, as the tower itself crumbled, but …

She gritted her teeth and pushed. Master Wolfe’s magiwriter was spinning down now, its work completed; she swallowed, hard, as she realised they’d run out of time. Reality itself was cracking … she’d hoped to push him out of reality, but it was already too late. Caleb was too close … she reached out desperately, trying to yank him back … she felt his lifeline twist painfully, so painfully she thought for a horrible second he was dead. The chat parchment had been destroyed … she sucked in her breath, trying to draw on the nexus point to erase them all from existence.

It was too late. Master Wolfe opened his eyes.

Emily could feel it, power on a scale she’d never imagined; an awareness so great that to see something was to control it utterly, on a level beyond any human comprehension. His mentality had grown and grown, time and space bubbling around him … she could feel reality screaming in pain as he imposed himself, his sheer presence bending the universe to his will. The universe. The multiverse. Everything. The skittering presences were gone. Everything seemed to be holding its breath.

A new god had been born.

A mad god.

 

Chapter Forty

Emily snapped back to herself.

Reality was shivering, leaving her trapped in two places at once. The tower was cracking and crumbling, the pocket dimensions slowly collapsing into themselves. Her mind hurt …she looked across the chamber and saw herself looking back, her face so pale that she thought herself drained of blood. The world was vibrating, reality itself on the verge of coming apart completely … leaving nothing behind. The magiwriter wrapped around her wrist was dead, her magic drained … she could barely summon a spark. The only hint of anything left was the nexus point. It was still burning in her mind …

She staggered upright, unsure when she’d fallen. Images were flickering in and out of existence, hints of alternate timelines … shadows of worlds that could have been, if things had been different. She saw herself decked out like a princess, in a dress so fine Alassa would have burned with envy; she saw herself naked and broken, her body prematurely aged. She saw a version of herself wearing a slave collar, her free will gone for so long it would never return; she saw a red-eyed necromancer, power billowing out as she raised a hand to cast a spell. A military officer, a policewoman, a teacher, a … hundred other entities that might, in some reality, have been her. It wasn’t real. It felt real.

Other images came and went as she looked around. Void stood there, hands clasped behind his back; Lady Barb stood beside him, gazing up adoringly. Grandmaster Gordian met her eyes, just for a second, and then vanished too. King Randor held up a little boy and winked … he was gone too, before Emily could even think to question him. Strangers followed: a pale-faced empress on a throne of stone, a man wearing a uniform she didn’t recognise, a naval officer who seemed concerned with something beyond her ken. Emily gritted her teeth, feeling reality twisting as the new god fought to control itself. Master Wolfe had won and … she was out of tricks. She could feel him slowly rewriting himself, ready to impose himself on local reality. It was only a matter of time before she faced an opponent who was literally omnipotent.

No wonder the Doctor is so scared of the Toymaker, her battered mind whispered. How do you fight an enemy who can do anything, an enemy who is so experienced that there’s little hope of victory even if he plays by the rules?

Her mind staggered. Captain Picard would have delivered a speech. Captain Sisko a punch. Captain Janeway … she told herself not to be silly. She didn’t have a friendly scriptwriter and she was facing a mad god, an entity that might not listen to reason. There was a story … she bit her lip hard, feeling her magic slowly starting to regenerate. She needed to think, she needed to find a way out, but nothing came to mind. Her time was running out.

“Emily?” Frieda was lying on the ground, blood leaking from her eyes. “What’s happening?”

“I think we lost,” Emily said, quietly. She knelt beside Frieda and looked for the wound. There was no obvious damage. “Can you …?”

Reality flickered, again. A hundred different versions of Frieda danced in front of her eyes and vanished again. A magician, a servant, a housewife, a necromancer … Emily frowned as she saw an older necromancer standing beside the younger Frieda, arm resting on her shoulders. The scene was so profoundly wrong that she couldn’t quite force herself to understand what she was seeing. It was just … a dead body drifted in front of her, followed by an elderly woman so beaten down she’d aged decades in centuries. It took her a second to realise it was a Frieda who had never been to Mountaintop, let alone Whitehall; a Frieda who had never met her. It was …

“Can you see?” Emily had to concentrate to drive away the other realities. They were trying to make themselves real. “Are you hurting?”

“I see you,” Frieda managed. “I …”

Emily frowned. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to bleed when they looked beyond human reality, and for there to be no visible wounds, but … she sucked in her breath, checking Frieda’s eyes carefully. Frieda felt smaller somehow, as if she’d been reduced … Emily gritted her teeth and helped Frieda to her feet. The world shifted again, the presence slowly becoming reality. She needed a way out, she needed a place to hide … where could they go? There was nowhere … or was there?

“Penny,” Frieda managed. “Where is she?”

Emily looked around the chamber. Penny was lying on the ground, unconscious. Caleb lay next to her. Emily checked his pulse quickly – strong but erratic – and breathed a sigh of relief. She’d feared he might be dead. Penny was no better off … Emily felt a twinge of guilt, cursing herself for not having seen through the deception earlier. Cat had been taken prisoner and replaced and … she cursed herself again. She’d been outplayed right down the line and …

The world shifted, once again. Master Wolfe’s presence filled the air, pressing down on her. Frieda whimpered and stumbled, her legs threatening to give out. Emily shared a look with her other self, their minds too badly damaged to reintegrate … she wondered, numbly, if they had been separated permanently. They were the same person and yet their experiences made them different people … she didn’t know. There was no time to worry about it. An idea crossed her mind. It was crazy, beyond all rationality. And yet it was the only idea she had.

She forced herself to move, feeling her awareness twist once again as she separated herself from her other self. The link was slowly regenerating itself, as if all it had taken to reignite the link was the awareness she had split herself into two … she shoved the thought aside as light flared in the centre of the chamber, the godform taking a shape she could comprehend. A glove puppet, she realised numbly, manipulated by something so far above her resistance was futile. She bit her lip hard, scooped Frieda up and threw her over her shoulder, then ran for the door. The corridors outside were cracked, gashes in reality hammering at her mind … she had no doubt that falling through a crack would be lethal. Perhaps worse than lethal. The tower was cut off from the rest of the universe now, like Whitehall … she could feel it slowly cracking away, dissolving into nothingness. The nexus point was all that was keeping it intact. She reached out with her mind. If the spellware had been wiped out …

It was there. She picked up speed. They had no time left.

Her mind shifted. She was kneeling beside Caleb, not daring to look up as Master Wolfe materialised in the exact centre of the chamber, a glowing form of too-bright light that burned through her skin and sank deep into her brain. She could feel his thoughts becoming things, feel the madness tainting reality itself … the skittering things were back, if they’d ever left, feeding on the horrors the mad god was leaving in his wake. The power was too great for her to even look at, let alone steal. It was too much …

Caleb moaned, his eyes twitching beneath his closed eyes. He was having a nightmare … Emily almost envied him, even though she knew reality was waiting for him. He would awake into a world ruled by a mad god, a nightmare given shape and form and brought into being by an all-powerful monster. She could feel Master Wolfe getting closer, reality itself twisting around him … she couldn’t tell if he was showing off, by adjusting his position rather than walking, or if he no longer cared to walk. It didn’t matter. There was nowhere to run.

Half of me will be safe, Emily promised herself. She was terrified, but also calm and controlled. That’s all that matters.

She leaned forward and kissed Caleb lightly, silently apologising for dragging him into yet another nightmare, then forced herself to look up. The light was so bright it felt like hell … she could feel it rushing towards her, a new reality imposed on the old. She clutched his hand tightly, only to feel him dissolve under her … faces snapped in and out of existence around her, faces she knew, faces she feared. She opened her mouth to scream …

It was too late.

Her awareness snapped back. The nexus point was right in front of her, a moment where all times were one. She tried to throw herself back in time, to get back far enough to shut the mad scheme down before it was too late, but … it was already too late. The nexus point wasn’t in the human realm any longer … did the human realm even exist? She could feel the mad god howling as his power grew and grew, his mentality spreading towards her and rewriting reality in its wake. He thought he’d got her. He thought she was trapped in a nightmare. She had the edge as long as he thought he’d already won.

She sucked in her breath sharply, then threw open the nexus point. Her spellware was waiting for her … she picked up Frieda and carried her into the new chamber, then slammed the door behind them. Master Wolfe’s awareness washed over the nexus point a second later, his mind seeming to pick up every atom and examine it carefully before letting it go again and receding into the distance. Emily breathed a sigh of relief, feeling as if they’d escaped … briefly. She could hear the howling even inside the nexus point, feel reality – the universe, the multiverse, everything – cracking under the pressure of his mind.

Her heart sank. The world had become the plaything of a mad god …

And, as God was her witness, she had no idea how to fix the nightmare he’d unleashed.

End of Book Twenty-Seven

The Story Will Conclude In:

The Hour of the Wolf

Coming Soon