Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

The angel abandoned his wounded host. In a vapourous rush, his spirit moved into the flesh of the warrior who had just stabbed him. Thus possessing his own attacker, he now drove the spear deeper into his former body, and then turned to face the final opponent.

Basilis barked.

Rachel turned round.

Mina's eyes were open again, but now with a faraway stare. She looked pale and exhausted, her chest rising and falling rapidly under her thin robe. Fresh blood steamed on her hands. “It's done,” she said.

“What is?”

“I've summoned a forest.”

Rachel frowned. “We're already in a forest, Mina.”

The thaumaturge got to her feet and gazed around her as though for the first time. The air was alive with the clack and snap of spears, men grunting and growling, the cries of the dying. “Gods, look at Dill,” she said.

The angel's ghost darted between the enemy like a firefly, possessing one warrior after another, and then turning their weapons against their own comrades. Scores of Sombrecur had already fallen in his wake. Whenever one host body died, Dill simply shifted his soul into a fresh one. Unable to slay this phantasm, the Sombrecur were simply butchering each other.

“Too much bloodshed,” Mina said, and then she shouted over to him, “Dill! Don't-”

Another noise cut her off.

It seemed to Rachel to issue from the earth itself-a low creaking sound like the hull of a ship protesting in a heavy squall. The Sombrecur had noticed it, too, for they were eyeing the ground with frantic suspicion. A roar went up from the Riot Coast warriors, who had used this distraction to push through the Sombrecur ranks and reach more open ground. Only two of their number had fallen so far.

Rachel felt the earth shuddering under her feet. A powerful smell assaulted her nostrils, an odour of terrible decay. From out of the forest floor snaked thick white tendrils.

Roots?

All around, these extrusions broke free of the soil, wrapping around each other, around the boles of trees and the legs, spears, and torsos of the panicked Sombrecur. The tendrils quivered, growing rapidly, enmeshing the natural forest in a vast pale web. They engulfed the Sombrecur completely, binding them where they stood, but miraculously they left the Riot Coast fighters untouched.

Within moments every bole and branch had been ensnared by these white roots, their thin blanched fibres crisscrossing the canopy overhead or hanging like ropes. The Sombrecur cried out from their cocoons, but then the tendrils contracted with a series of spasmodic creaks till finally the scene became silent. To Rachel it seemed like one forest had been consumed by a second, parasitic one. She clutched her nose against the stench, for Mina's forest smelled of a plague pit.

“Now we have to run,” Mina cried. “Get out of here while the new trees are still pliable. Once they've hardened, we'll be stuck here.”

“Trees?” Rachel said. “What sort of forest is this?”

“The forest of bone,” Mina replied. “It's an aspect of Basilis. I had the idea when we first reached Herica and I saw its remains along the lakeshore. These forests take thousands of years to decay.”

“You knew we would be coming back here?”

Mina grabbed Rachel's hand and hurried her along through the strange white forest. Hasp and Dill, joined by the Riot Coast men, quickly followed behind. Mina glanced back at the god and then whispered to the assassin. “I'm afraid I asked Sabor to lie. Hasp needed to believe that he was going to die here, that this was to be his glorious end.”

“Why?”

“So that he'd rediscover his passion for life. Confronting the Sombrecur gave him the opportunity to fight as a free man… or god, I suppose.”

Rachel stopped suddenly, dragging Mina to a halt. “You dragged us into this deliberately ?” she growled. Then she lowered her voice. “You forced me to kill so that he could relive his past glories.”

“It already happened in our world's past,” Mina said. “In Riot Coast legend we were always present here. Even the last stanza of John Anchor's song mentions a ghost, a god, a witch, and a maiden.” She shrugged. “I don't know why they'd think you were a witch, but that's not the point… If we hadn't lived through these events, we'd have corrupted this timeline even more than it already has been. Don't you see? The further back in time we go, the more dangerous our actions become.”

“What else have you tampered with, Mina?” Rachel demanded, grabbing the sleeve of Mina's robe. “Exactly how far back does your meddling go?”

Mina pulled away from the assassin. “We need to get out of here!” she urged.

“Who roused the Sombrecur against Sabor in the first place?” Rachel persisted. “Mina, who sent them to their deaths? Was it Menoa?”

The thaumaturge hurried away through the tangled white roots.

“Was it Menoa?” Rachel repeated.

But Mina wouldn't answer her.

Carnival didn't require a mirror to gauge the extent of her restoration. She could feel the tight pressure of her wings against her back and shoulders, the powerful muscles flexing as she beat them. Her long hair, now dry and ragged, blew about her shoulders. Her heart thundered with anticipation. She turned her naked arms over and examined the tracery of scars there. Her skin tingled with the memory of old wounds. She felt renewed, angry.

Dangerous.

It was as if that single taste of the bastard god's blood had acted like a key to unlock her mind from its cage.

Here in Hell, all form was a matter of will. Carnival had won the freedom to exist as her own will dictated. Even her old leathers and lightweight boots had returned. The armour clung to her lithe figure in all its battered and rotten glory, and she welcomed the smell of decay.

Yet there was more.

Had she been quite this tall, quite this strong? The muscles on her arms and legs seemed much larger and better defined. Her leathers felt tight around her thighs and upper arms. Was this merely subconscious vanity, or a reaction to her present instinct to smash her way out of here?

Four white walls enclosed her. She had no other way out but brute force.

She slammed the heel of her boot against the outer wall, aware that even the stone itself was an amalgam of living sentient souls. The barrier would be as strong as it believed itself to be, and she suspected that Menoa would have convinced it thoroughly. Her kick made no difference to the smooth surface.

Carnival took a step back and examined the wall, realizing she could not defeat this barrier in her current physical form. So she concentrated hard, willing greater strength and endurance from somewhere. She felt her wings grow, her muscles expand unnaturally, her very bones become heavier and denser. Her armour creaked and split around her new, bulkier frame. Her skin darkened to become a dull ironlike patina.

All a matter of will.

The scarred angel threw another savage kick at the wall. It shuddered. A crack appeared in the stonework from floor to ceiling. She lashed out again with her foot, and chips of white stone crumbled before her eyes.

The wall moaned.

She punched a heavy fist right through it. Masonry fell away in great chunks, revealing a turbulent red sky and the vast expanse of the Maze beyond.

The prison cell was near the summit of the Ninth Citadel. From this new rent in its outer wall, Carnival gazed down. Canals had flooded the thoroughfares within King Menoa's strange living metropolis: crimson slough skirted canted angles of black stone, glutted entire quadrangles, stained the brickwork. And yet the scene looked busier than ever. Hundreds of creatures in bulky armour darted here and there, sloshing through the thick mire, pushing, carrying, or rolling strange machines before them. Those canals… there was something odd about them.