The statue was stoic. Al’Matra screamed somewhere behind it.
“I don’t know what ye want!” Gorm shouted at the impassive stone. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry I doubted all this destiny and prophecy nons—er, stuff! It’s new to me! But I believe in ye now! You’re the Seventh Hero and the Dark Prince! You’re the one of legend! And if you’re gonna come to save anyone, now’s the time, ’cause there won’t be much to save soon!”
If the statue was concerned with a Dwarf’s faith in it, it gave no indication.
Gorm’s mind raced, grasping at straws. “Do I need to say your name? Sten? Sten king?” He didn’t know any Stennish names, though as far as Troll names went… A flash of memory in his mind showed him Thane’s body bursting in a cloud of dust, decomposing in the same violent way the soul-bound minions of Detarr Ur’Mayan had many years ago. “Thane? Is it ye?”
Something wet spattered over Gorm as a shadow briefly eclipsed the clouds above. He glanced at the blood and ichor dribbling over his hands just as Al’Matra crashed into the cobbles behind him. He glanced back, anticipating another barrage of green fire, but Kaitha lay motionless in an expanding pool of crimson.
“Come on!” Gorm cried. “Thane or Dark Prince or whoever ye are! I believed! I showed up! You’re supposed to save the world. Do your destiny stuff! Work your prophecy! Just do it fast!”
The statue was still. The black tentacles whipping around it were not. Thin tendrils of shadow and malice caught Gorm about the leg and the arm. He hacked at a couple with his axe, but the fluid limbs wrestled his weapon away and threw it to the ground. More and more rubbery limbs wrapped around the Dark Prince, crushing Gorm against the stone, pressing the air from his lungs. A tentacle wrapped around his face and—
And he saw himself taking up his axe and driving back the darkness. Felt Mannon grow limp as he clove its last head from its vile body. Heard the cheers of his name from a beloved populace. They would call him Pyrebeard, demon slayer, the greatest hero of the guild’s long and storied history. He could be made grandmaster of the guild. Perhaps the throne was in reach. An end to the pain crushing his lungs and a gift of everything Arth had to offer. All he had to do was accept the pact, to make the bargain, and he could be the savior of the world.
Gorm ripped the tentacle from his mouth with the last strength he could muster. “Al’Thadan!” he screamed. Two more tendrils of thorns wrapped around his face and slammed his head against the stone, and there was only darkness.
Chapter 34
It can’t all be darkness. Not according to Nove’s seventh and final principle of universal irony.
Many assumed the philosopher-scientist would be bitter and angry late in his life. After the academies banned testing on his first five principles, he penned a sixth that effectively postulated that his life’s work could never be verified. This well-documented failure ensured that Nove’s principles would never become Nove’s laws. To the people of his time, it was apparent that Nove would never join the ranks of Essenpi’s greatest minds.
That is the sort of failure that drives many almost-great people to villainy, or at least curmudgeonly hermitry. Yet Nove’s contemporaries and students found him to be cheerful, even jovial. In the forward of his ultimate work, Nove noted that many people’s surprise at his contentment was what prompted him to study and document one final principle.
Nove’s seventh principle of universal irony notes that there must be some good in the universe, because irony could not exist otherwise. Irony relies on the expectations of sentient beings. If everything was always the worst it could be, there would be no sentient beings at all, nor any expectation that there ever would be anything good to disrupt, and thus no irony. The universe is often cold and cruel, but if it was always horrible—if the worst always came to pass—nobody would have reason to expect anything else. Nobody would be around to expect anything.
In the vast emptiness of space, chemical processes began that would lead, over inconceivable eons, to creatures discussing justice and altruism and the greater good. Despite the worst instincts of humanity, civilizations rose and endured. Beauty and art, kindness and intelligence, love and life itself; none of these things should exist in an uncaring, entropic universe. And yet, against all reasonable expectations, they do—even if only for brief, brilliant moments.
For Nove, hope wasn’t a wish. It was a mathematical fact.
You have to consider the best possible scenario.
Several notable things happened as the darkness closed in over Gorm.
In Sculpin Down, the shrine of Mordo Ogg split from the top of its stone skull to the base of its throne, sending a cloud of hot steam rolling into the empty square in front of it.
In the museum of Andarun, the Spear of Issan suddenly buckled and kicked like a fish on a boat. Its struggles were brief; the ancient weapon exploded before a bannerman could investigate, embedding splinters in the glass of its display case.
In the ruined Temple of Al’Matra, the statue of Niln now looked like it was laughing with joy, his eyes upward and his hands extended toward the sky.
Any of these phenomena would have normally caused a small uproar, but save for an old priest weeping at the ruptured shrine of death, they went almost entirely unnoticed. The citizens of Andarun gazed at the center of the cyclone above the city, where an azure light hung in the air like a shooting star pausing to check its directions. A moment later, the errant glow dropped and struck Pinnacle Plaza with an incandescent explosion that threw every shadow on the mountain into stark relief and blinded citizens up and down the tiers.
Mannon shrank back from the light, from the pedestal at its epicenter. When the dazzling glare burned away, a Sten stood in the place of an ancient sculpture. He was tall and barrel-chested. Swirling tattoos and beads of sweat covered his slate skin, and his long, blue-gray beard blew in the wind. In one hand he held a blade of singing steel; the other was clenched in a tight fist. His broad shoulders rose and fell in ragged breaths as he stared in horror where his beloved lay broken and bleeding on the cobbles.
Thane, the Seventh Hero, the Dark Prince, Champion of Al’Thadan and hope of the Sten, turned to face the ancient foe with burning eyes.
“You!” the many faces of Mannon snarled in unison, his dark mass slopping away from the statue and the light that still emanated from Thane’s blade.
The Sten raised his sword by way of response, and the Felfather shrank back like a cornered rat. The wind sang through the ruined buildings, and the stone of the mountain itself seemed to thrum in harmony with the blowing storm.
“It doesn’t matter!” Mannon drew himself up again, like a swelling wave of darkness and glowing green ichor. His many faces gibbered and snarled as they consumed one another. “Prophecy or not, you cannot defeat me in the heart of my realm! Not against my full power! Not alone!”
Thane considered Mannon, whose malleable shape was marred by countless rends and tears that oozed luminous, chartreuse fluid. His middle was split so wide that he could no longer stand, and instead his remaining large tentacles dragged his bulk after him. Even as the Felfather reared up, corpulent globs of ooze dripped from his bulk and spattered on the cobblestones.
“You don’t look like you possess your full power.” The Sten nodded at Mannon’s wounds, then paused. He cocked his head to the side, listening.
“What are you—?” Mannon began, but then his faces froze in horror.
The wind still howled and the stone still thrummed with latent power, but the song in the air was more than just a harmonic coincidence of natural sounds. Behind the Seventh Hero, the All Mother’s voice lifted to join a chorus echoing from somewhere behind Mannon. The demon’s faces wailed, but their discordant voices were swept away in the rising melody.
Thane smiled. Blue light was spreading over him now, tracing the spiral patterns of his tattoos and the curved edge of his blade. His whisper thundered over the mountain. “And I am not alone.”
Gorm Ingerson felt the music before he heard it.
At times in his life, usually when he thought himself near its end, Gorm had become conscious of the pounding of his own heart, or the flow of air in and out of his lungs. This song was the same sound; the music had always been there—always been a part of everything—but now in the darkness it welled up in his bones and hummed in his throat and rang in his ears, sending tears streaming down his cheeks.
He opened his eyes and saw a glowmoth flapping through infinite darkness. Its shimmering blue wings flashed in the light of its bioluminescent belly as it danced before Gorm’s face. When it saw him staring at it, it fluttered a short distance away and came to rest on an old Dwarf dressed in simple robes. He held a candle that sparked to life as more glowmoths lit up around him. The old man reminded Gorm of the shrines set on the deep roads beneath the Ironbreaker Mountains, each bearing an icon of the god of light in dark places.
“Fulgen?” Gorm asked.
Fulgen smiled at Gorm, and opened his mouth as if to answer. He took a short breath, as if unused to speaking and unsure what to say. And then, without warning, the Silent Underglow roared.
The sound washed over Gorm, burning like fire and blinding like light, and part of him wanted it to stop but the other part of him was roaring, or rather singing, adding his voice to the song that had always been there, that would always be there.
