Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

And yet Dill's attack had failed to damage the fallen warrior. Both his fist and the arconite's teeth remained unmarked.

Rachel stared at that huge blackened skull and said, “ Force its mouth open.”

Dill obeyed. This time he gripped his opponent's chin and wrenched its jaw open. A gap of several feet appeared between the columns of teeth.

Rachel and Mina approached, then stopped to exchange a glance. The assassin shrugged, and then climbed inside first.

The darkness was almost complete. Rachel stood at the inner curve of the arconite's maw, trying to see something, anything, in that miserable gloom. Almost no illumination penetrated through the gap behind her, but for a faint sliver of moonlight. The air smelled subterranean, yet as rotten as the bloodiest Mesmerist earth. She heard Mina climb through to join her and then felt the thaumaturge's cool glass-scaled hand in her own.

“There should be a crawl space at the back of the mouth,” Mina said. “Somewhere on the left. It ought to lead into the soul room in the skull.”

Hand in hand they edged forward. The bony floor gave a sudden lurch, and then settled once more. The air smelled of oil and scorched meat. Their footsteps echoed back from the unseen walls. Rachel realized she was gripping Mina's hand more tightly, perhaps dangerously so, given its fragility. She relaxed her grip.

After some searching they found the narrow passageway. A dank, metallic odour came from within. Rachel knelt and ran her hands over the bone lip around the opening. It was large enough for her to crawl inside. But just as she stooped to enter it, the arconite spoke.

“These are the words of Menoa's Prime,” it said in a thunderous yet clear and inflectionless voice. “The Lord of the Maze commands you, Hasp, to kill the two women within his arconite.”

Rachel stopped. “Shit,” she said.

Mina pushed her onwards. “Hurry.”

“How drunk was Hasp?”

“Not drunk enough.”

Even within the confines of this strange bone warren, Rachel heard Hasp howl. His cries rang out into the night as the parasite in his skull usurped his will. Unable to resist that command, the Lord of the First Citadel would now be coming for them.

Rachel scrambled on through darkness, feeling the way with her hands. After a moment she spied a faint light issuing from around a corner ahead. The arconite's soul room? She hurried on, with Mina close behind.

The layout of the chamber was identical to the one they'd found inside Dill. A glass sphere sat amidst arcane machinery under a multifaceted crystal ceiling. Illumination came from within the sphere, where there floated the soul of an angel.

Rachel swallowed her revulsion. Unlike Dill, this thing appeared to be ancient, its flesh corrupted to the point of utter desiccation, its wings mere broken shards of bone. Some scraps of armour still clung to its fibrous muscles, but did little to cover its nakedness. It did not seem to be aware of them, but rather floated in the center of its globe and stared inwards as if dreaming.

Another terrible cry came from outside the chamber, much closer now.

“Whatever you think you can do to damage this thing,” Rachel said, “do it now. Hasp will be here in seconds.”

Mina placed her hands against the sphere, then recoiled abruptly. “Gods,” she whispered. “Oh, god, oh, god.”

“What is it?”

The thaumaturge simply shook her head. “Guard the entrance to the chamber,” she said. “Try to hold Hasp back. Kill him if you have to.”

If I can. As drunk and vulnerable as the god now was, Rachel doubted she'd be able to delay him by more than a few moments. Just buying them that short amount of time could cost her her own life.

She returned to the passageway as Mina began whispering in a low singsong voice. The thaumaturge's soothing tones filled the chamber. Another terrible howl came from outside the skull. Hasp was getting close.

Rachel drew the simple blade she had taken from a dead soldier in Coreollis. She crouched at the entrance to the chamber, listening carefully, and waited.

And waited.

After another long moment she heard a low wail issue from the night outside. It sounded more melancholy than the previous cries, but still Hasp did not appear. Rachel crawled through the passageway back into the cavern of the arconite's maw. She could just make out the gap between its jaws as a smudge of grey in the black-ness. She waited again for ten rapid heartbeats, then strode over and peered outside.

The Lord of the First Citadel met her gaze with red and miserable eyes. Rachel's instincts readied her for battle, before she fully comprehended the scene, and her heart steadied. Hasp was trapped, unable to attack her. Dill had caught the god in the bone cage of his down turned fingers.

Rachel gazed up at the immense Maze-forged automaton that had once been her friend. He had shifted position, maneuvering himself so that his knees pinned down Menoa's great warrior more firmly, pushing its useless wings to one side. He still held the other arconite by its neck, but had driven his free hand down into the earth to form the prison that had snared Hasp.

Hasp slumped to his knees. He picked up a whisky bottle from the ground and poured two inches of the foul liquor down his throat. Then he crawled forward and tried to squeeze his shoulders between the bars of his impromptu cage. His cassock had parted, revealing his chest, and his glass breastplate smouldered like a furnace in the night. He tore at the ground beyond Dill's fingers with bloody red gauntlets.

“Hold him there, Dill,” Rachel called out, turning away. “Thank the gods you still have your wits. Just hold him fast!”

She returned to the soul room to find Mina pressing up against the glass sphere. The thaumaturge had her eyes closed and was whispering urgently to the ghost inside. She didn't even turn around as Rachel approached.

“Hasp is indisposed,” Rachel announced.

Mina held up a hand, continuing to whisper for a moment longer, then she took a deep breath and turned away from the sphere. “I can't get through to it,” she said. “This angel's soul has been too badly corrupted. It shares Menoa's chaotic vision.”

“Can we break the sphere?”

The thaumaturge shook her head. “These materials were forged in the Maze, so their strength isn't limited by the physical properties of this world. Their power is derived from those fragments of Iril that Menoa bound to each angel's soul. Matter thus became a con-sequence of will, and Menoa has simultaneously reinforced and subjugated this angel's will.” She thought for a long moment. “This sphere isn't glass. It isn't even real. The angel's soul is little more than a vessel to hold the power Menoa placed there. To damage an arconite, you'd have to convince the arconite that it can be damaged. And that isn't going to happen, not with Menoa's tentacles lodged in the thing's mind.”

“But Dill isn't like that. He has free will.”

The thaumaturge snorted. “Don't go telling Dill he could be damaged. If he stops believing he's invincible, then we're really in trouble.”

“But, in theory, we could free Dill's soul from its own prison?”

A dangerous smile came to Mina's lips. “Now why would you want to do a thing like that, Rachel Hael?”

Rachel said nothing.

“When we were in Hell,” Mina went on, “Hasp allowed Dill to absorb power from another piece of the shattered god. Menoa used that fragment to transform Dill into his thirteenth arconite. Dill is far more vulnerable than this warrior, but he's stronger, too. The very fact that we're now standing in this skull is evidence of our friend's superiority.”

“Because he believes in himself?”