Chapter 484: The Last Engraving (End of Vol)

The warband came down the ridge. They had ridden into a valley where a god had died and a world had almost ended, and they had come back for me. The thought made me smile in my heart.

Thurrim found me. I could hear his swearing, and I wondered why they would think anyone could still be alive in a place like this, but his swearing meant he had found my body.

Then there were hands. A great many hands. Somebody tried to lift my head and somebody else told them not to, and Ogg’s voice came through the ringing on my one working side saying something about not moving me, and a smaller hand took the stump of my right arm and held on to it, and I think that was Tam.

Someone wanted to pull the stranger’s arm out of my chest when I spoke.

"Don’t," I whispered, once I had gathered enough strength to talk. "Don’t bother."

Ogg leaned over me, his eyes wide with astonishment. I could see in them that he had not expected me to be alive. Nothing should have survived my injuries. It was both funny and charming to watch the resolve grow in his face when he saw that I could still talk.

"I can work," he said. "With your power, I can make you better."

"You can’t." It took me three breaths to say two words. "Ogg. There’s no flesh left in me for you to correct. There’s nothing to pull on. I’ve been dying for about four hours now, so I would like to spend what’s left of it properly."

He did not argue. I saw that he wanted to, and he listened to me. That is why I liked him.

"Ruggah," I called out weakly.

The Beastkin knelt where I could see him, and for a moment I almost thought a lion was standing beside me. Half his mane was burned off and there was a long cut down his jaw and he still had Battle’s reins in one fist.

"We came back," he bowed.

"I noticed. Now that was stupid."

He chuckled as he looked around. "Yes. But someone had already tried to kill us. If we were going to die, we would rather do it beside you, and I can see that you have already taken care of that problem."

I paused for a moment and nodded. "Thank you. Usually in these moments... I am alone."

∞

"Your weapons," I said. "All of you. Put them where I can see them."

Nobody asked why, and they did not waste a second of what I had left. They laid them out in the dust beside me. Ruggah’s glaive. Ogg’s gauntlet. Thurrim’s hammer with the haft burnt black. Ines’s bow, which she had to prise out of her own hand. Tam’s long knife. Coin’s pendant, which she unhooked from her throat and set down last, and which I had never seen off her in four hundred miles. And three shadow blades from the Shades that drew my attention.

Dorrik’s work, every one of them carrying something of the Unending Flame, and that was where my last act in this world began.

I got the pen into my left hand. It took a while. There were four fingers missing and I had to use my teeth to close what was left of the others around it.

"Elric," Ines said. "What are you doing?"

"Taking a copy."

∞

You see, a Script describes reality as I know it. Magic goes into the world and makes it obey, and now that my Inscription was at the Sovereign Tier, I could touch a part of the laws guiding reality itself.

If you can describe a cut, you can describe a sword.

So with my pen I began to write in the dust beside me. What I made for each of those nine weapons in turn was not a weapon, and it never will be. It was a description, with a Law held inside it.

Digging deep enough, I could see the way Dorrik’s flame had been folded into the metal, the balance, the intent, and the eleven places on Ruggah’s glaive where the god had changed his mind while forging it, when he was trying to make a godly weapon that a much weaker being could still wield.

Each of those weapons was a different description that I would have wanted to spend years studying. I had no time, so I had to settle for something close to it.

I wrote the description for the glaive in the dust, and when it was finished and correct, I reached through the crack in the seal with the last of what I had and put it inside the pocket I had built.

Then I began writing the second, and the third, carefully slotting their descriptions in beside the compass, one after another. Each one that went into my soul tore at me, and I was already dead, so I could take it, and when it was over I could barely see.

"It’s done," I whispered.

"What is done?" Ruggah said.

"Nothing you need to worry about. Go north. Keep going north. I shall find you again, and I shall hold all your weapons before then."

"What..." Ruggah began, and then went silent, and I knew what he was seeing, because all of their weapons had collapsed and vanished. I knew because I could feel them inside my soul.

∞

I had given them those weapons so they could follow me on my journey, and now I was taking them back, because I was going in a different direction. It would only be for a while. I would be back before they knew it... before they knew me.

The warband did not complain, even though they did not fully understand. Such faith could only be rewarded in the future.

I did not know why, but I asked for the Death Stone.

Tam fetched it. He had to use both hands, and he went grey like a man about to die just from touching it. He may not have been able to understand what he was holding, but his soul could surely feel it.

He placed it on my chest, and I was surprised to find that it was warm, or perhaps I was the one who was cold. It pulsed, slow and uneven, out of time with my heart, and my heart was slowing to meet it.

"Elric," Tam said. "Your hands."

"Mm."

"They’re going white."

"That’s all right," I sighed. "Step back."

They stepped back, and they watched me die. I think Thurrim started to sing, but I could not really tell whether he finished, as I was not there for the end of it.

∞

Dying is not interesting, at least not for me. I have done it more times than I have bothered to count, and the dying itself is the least important part, like the corridor outside a room.

What comes after is the engine. It took the dregs of my soul and turned them towards a doorway. Usually there were two doorways here. Now there were three.

I could have made it four. I could have set my last Temporal Anchor there and risen again where I had just died, and that was not the plan. I could not waste the last free Anchor, not if I could get more first... and that meant going to the future, to meet a certain Demon, and to make sure she never rose.

And I think, this time, I had all the tools I needed.