Mark Chadbourn - Destroyer of Worlds

'Sister of Dragons.' The voice rang clearly in the zone of silence, but it sounded unused to human words, each syllable ending with a hint of an animalistic growl.

Laura forced herself not to faint; hidden within the voice were hints of blood and torn, decomposing flesh, of graveyards and inhuman savagery. 'What do you want me to do?' she asked haltingly.

'The time has come for another to die,' the voice growled.

After the presence in the grove had issued its order, Laura muttered a feeble response, but her thoughts screamed in the echoing halls of her head. Before she knew it she was running back through the garden in blind terror, throwing herself at the wall, kicking and scrambling over and losing herself in the sweaty throng, desperate for human contact, devastated by what she had given up, appalled by what she would do next.

Whistling a jaunty tune, the Libertarian wiped the blood from his fingers on the clothes of the young man who had offered him a hand of friendship and the promise of shelter, and then slowly climbed the steps in the tallest tower of the Court of Endless Horizons.

Through his lidless eyes, the world always looked blood-red. He wore sunglasses as an affectation, one of the many he had adopted for the theatrical style he had chosen to present to the world, but they had increasingly become a necessity to prevent the unpleasant psychological side effects engendered by the constantly swimming colour. At times it was almost hallucinogenic, plundering half-memories from the never-touched depths of his mind, twisting them into what-might-have-beens, conjuring distorted faces of old friends, long-slaughtered, old emotions, long-crushed. He could not be the person he was if he was reminded of the person he had been. That was why he had created such a ludicrous public persona, pieced together from silent movies, vaudeville and comic books. He had never been theatrical in his old life, and now he was somebody else, somebody so completely different that he could believe in it implicitly.

But still the fragmentary locked-off recollections haunted him.

When they became too intense, he killed, for that was the ultimate denial of his past-life; enemies, random strangers, even those who dwelled in the daily sphere of his existence; he couldn't really call them friends for there was no room for warm emotions in his sleek, secure, granite world.

And he loved who he was with a manic desperation. There were no circumstances in which he would choose to go back. In the restrictions of his life, he was free, as were all who believed in what he believed. There was not the tyranny of choice, the sickening insecurity of hope, all the striving and failing, the never-being-content. The world under the Void was the best possible world under the circumstances of existence. Everyone had the peace to live out their brief lives as best they could, slotting into a familiar mundane rhythm that asked nothing of them; and so they too were free. And when death finally came, it made them freer still. He couldn't understand how the person he once was had never recognised the stark, comforting simplicity of that life.

Throwing open the door at the top of the tower, he stepped out into the baking midday heat. A small balcony ran around the tower providing him with a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vista of the entire city. The noise and the stink rose up from below in a sickening wave, but he found it rather comforting. Distress was part of the Void's way of letting people know they were alive. How could they possibly appreciate the tiny jewels they were allowed to discover if they were not surrounded by a field of ordure?

Yet for all the reassuring things he told himself, he felt increasingly uneasy, and he hated his old self for ruining the clean lines of his existence. As the time neared the point of transformation when he — and the Void — would finally be secure for ever, there were too many potential vagaries, shifting nodes of possibilities and blank spots in his memory. Events were reaching a point of flux. It was a desperate time, and as he always told himself, desperate times bred desperate men.

He'd waited long enough, a touch on the rudder here, another there, subtle manipulations and nuance to guide his sheep to the place he needed them to be. Now it was time for grandiose actions, hardness, brutality and blood. He could not risk any further deviation from the true line. It was time to be bold.

Gripping the rail, he peered into the dizzying drop, hawked up a glob of phlegm and spat before looking out across the gleaming city. His heart beat harder with anticipation.

And then it came, at first feeling like a brief shadow across the eye, growing more intense by the second. The high sun, brilliant white, dimmed as though a cloud was passing before it. The temperature dropped a degree, and a wind rushed across the rooftops.

Down below, the din reduced a level, and as the city darkened, it faded to an eerie silence, stark and unsettling. How long had it been since this vile place was quiet? he wondered. In every street, heads turned up to examine the dimming sun. People hung from windows, craning their necks to search for clouds or flocks of birds. There were none.

Darker and darker still, until finally a deep, abiding gloom settled across the entire city. No sun was visible, no moon or stars. Fearful cries rose up as the inhabitants tried to make sense of the night coming down at noon. Frantically, torches and lamps were lit, but the quality of the dark was strange and intense, and their illumination only reached a fraction of its usual distance.

Then the shadows moved, and all across the great city, people began to die. Screams rose up. Panic swept through the streets as vast crowds stampeded for safety, crushing underfoot all who fell, desperately forcing their way into buildings to barricade the doors, killing anyone who impeded them.

The Libertarian smiled and nodded.

There was terror and there was blood and there was a night that would never end.

In the alleys and winding streets of the Court of Endless Horizons, the dark was impenetrable. Ruth and Tom were en route from a false lead of a distressed Fragile Creature hiding in the grand marble interior of the Hall of Records when the gloom descended on the city. As the temperature plunged and the sun disappeared from view, Tom dragged Ruth into one of the deserted side alleys that, from the vile stench, had clearly been used as a toilet. His quick thinking saved them both from the frenzied crush that thundered down the street. People crashed through windows or had the life squeezed from them against the walls or underfoot.

Ruth covered her ears to block out the agonised screams and dying calls of the victims, which somehow stood out from the panicked roar of the crowd.

Although Tom stood next to her, she couldn't see him until she brought up her spear — the Blue Fire limning the head was just enough to illuminate the Rhymer's worried features.

'What have they done?' she said.

'The Enemy decided killing the Caretaker and blowing up huge chunks of the city wasn't enough. They've made it their place now.'

Faint lights appeared in the main street, but they were so dim it took Ruth and Tom a moment to realise that their illumination was being smothered almost as much as the sun's rays. Figures felt their way hesitantly along the now-deserted street, searching for the path back to the place where they laid their heads. As the thin lights passed, Ruth occasionally glimpsed the outlines of those who had fallen.

'We should get back to Church,' Ruth began. 'Regroup, decide what we're going to do now-'

Tom silenced her with a sharp squeeze on her arm. 'Do you hear something?'