Tim Akers - The Horns of Ruin

The maddest part was around the Library Desolate. These were people who had voluntarily submitted to imprisonment, in order to serve the god they loved. And now they were free, and their god wasn't dead after all. Only he was clearly mad, and that madness was rippling through the community like a virus. Meanwhile, the citizens of Ash, who had grown up being taught that Amon was the darkest villain mankind had ever spawned, were just coming to grips with seeing the Scholar rise from the lake like an eclipsed moon. That his rising had killed hundreds of people, ruined the shoreline, and was now the subject of an arcane war that, simply, none of us could understand wasn't helping the public mood. Crowds had gathered at the Library, to be met by the newly freed Amonites. A thin band of whiteshirts stood between them, not sure who they were supposed to be holding back. My approach disrupted things even more.

"Paladin! Paladin of Morgan! Save us!" some of them shouted, from all three groups. Save them from the madness of their god, or the crowd, or their duty? I wasn't sure. And I was in no position to do any of it, anyway.

Others among them remembered the lies of Nathaniel, of the trials that had just been conducted, the judgments that had been handed down. Some of these same citizens might have stood in the shadow of the Strength, cheering while it burned.

My mind was in turmoil. I pushed my way to the whiteshirts, the hands of the crowd on me equal parts acclamation and condemnation. It was a gauntlet. By the time I reached the Alexian lines, I was twitching with restrained violence. Someone had to take control.

"Your god has betrayed you," I said to the frightened line of soldiers. "Amon did not kill Morgan. It was Alexander."

Okay, that probably wasn't the best thing to say, given the situation. Probably not a situation on earth where that would have been the right thing to say. But I was never a leader of men. More like a leader of the charge, and that's what this was. A rush to enlightenment, storming the walls of an ancient betrayal.

"What the hell are you talking about?" one of them shouted. We were all shouting, just to be heard over the crowd. Crowd. Riot, more like.

"Look up, look at your god." I pointed at the distant figure of Alexander, hovering among novas of power. "Tell me what you see!"

They peered up, squinting at the light. Finally one of them raised a set of binoculars to his eyes.

"He's wearing a mask," the man reported. They looked back at me.

"The articulated mask of the Betrayer," I said. "The fight is too dire, his brother is returned. He has to play all his cards, bring all of his aspects into play."

"To hell with you, lady. I swore to Alexander on my name, and with Alexander I'll stay," one of them said.

I nodded. "Fairly said, but consider: I am the last of the scions of Morgan. What reason would I have to stand with my god's betrayer?"

"Your god is dead. What reason do you have to stand with him?"

"She's a lady of conviction, fellows," said another in the crowd, and I turned to him. Owen, face smeared with ash, a bandage across his forehead. "You broke my skull, Eva."

"The cost of trusting me," I said.

"Yeah. But that up there? That's not the god I swore my name to."

"Then help me stop him."

He laughed and shrugged. "Of course. What else would I do with my time? But what are we supposed to do here?"

I looked around at the seething mobs on both sides of us. Even among the whiteshirts there were those who would knife me before they would follow me. Best to just defuse and get out. I went to the nearest Amonite.

"Who leads you?" I asked.

"Amon, risen again, Scholar and Saint!" he shrieked. I took his collar in my fist and slapped him once.

"Among these people here, who leads you?"

The Scholar looked at me numbly, so I dropped him and went to the next.

"Who leads you?"

"That is my calling," said someone deep in the crowd. He fought his way forward. An old man, face lined with ash and tears of joy. He looked calm, though. Not at all mad. "What do you need, sister of our brother?"

"You're never going to get out this way. These people will kill you. Go back inside, and wait. Let the Alexians guard you."

"Did that work for you, Morganite?"

"Well-"

"Then do not ask the same of us. We have been falsely bound for too long. The Library is being gathered and removed."

"Agreed. But if you come out this way, there's just going to be a lot of burned books and dead Scholars." I strained my neck to see around the crowds, then looked back at the old man. "There has to be another way out. The lake?"

"The lake," he said, considering. Eventually he nodded. "I think something can be done with the lake."

"Great. Everyone inside."

And they went. Peacefully, quietly, calmly. The whiteshirts followed them in and sealed the door. I stayed outside. When I turned to go, Owen was waiting.

"I said, you broke my skull."

"I'm sorry. Honestly I am. But now isn't the time for this."

He sighed, tore the icon of Alexander from his breast, and tossed it to the ground. Then he unhitched his shotgun.

"What is now the time for?"

"Follow me," I said, then left. He followed.

We found our way back to the Spear of the Brothers. Its remnants, at least. Just as I had feared, the central tower had turned to chalky powder and collapsed. There were bodies. I found a door, then a stairwell, then more doors. I got out from under that sky of madness and felt a little better. Even Owen seemed to be relieved to be out of the gaze of his former god.

The architecture had been shuffled, levels misaligned, doors hanging open and corridors flooded. I didn't think I would find my way back to Cassandra. Turned out not to be half as difficult as I was expecting.

Some kind of feedback had found its way to the chamber with the pressurized dome, where I'd left Cassandra and that cranky old Amonite Malcolm. The dome itself was cracked like an egg, steaming with frost and an aura of flickering light. The rest of the floor was leveled. Cassandra and Malcolm stood by the ruin of the dome, looking up at it. Cassandra was… changed.

She turned to me when Owen and I slid down a bit of wrecked floor and into the chamber. She wore little armor: pauldrons and a halfbreast, gauntlets, armor for her hips and pelvis. Boots. She wore nothing else. Her nakedness reminded me uncomfortably of Amon, hovering above the city. The armor was metal, but charred. And the bloody handprint on her chest leaked through the metal, for all the world looking like it had soaked through the armor from her skin. When she turned to me, I saw that she was blindfolded. Smears of ash showed on her cheeks.

"You…" I started.

"I have accepted what you turned away, Eva," she said. Her voice was unchanged, only sad. "I am the Champion of Amon."

I shuddered at the sound of her voice. Malcolm looked between us, then at Owen, then shrugged.

"What happened here?" Owen asked.

"Place blew up," Malcolm said. "She started babbling, then she stopped, then the place blew up. She shielded me. When the smoke cleared, she looked like that. So." He clapped his hands and turned to me. "What's happening outside?"

"It's complicated," I answered.

"I figured." He looked back at the dome, then fished something out of his robe and threw it to the ground. The remnants of his soulchains. "Complicated is good, sometimes."

"In this case, complicated will end up destroying the city," I said. "Those two are going to keep at it until one of them is dead. And they're too evenly matched for it to be a clean fight. The city won't survive."

"None of us will, in the grand sense," Malcolm said quietly. "Alexander was barely holding on to the power. And that was with the people behind him. He's played his hand now, revealed himself as the Betrayer. Tell me." He turned to us. "Do you think the city will worship Alexander the Betrayer?"