“What will happen when I open it,” said Redmane.

  He stood before the last Seal, which pulsated and flared violently at the presence of its rightful owner, as if it were eager to burst from confinement and consume him by way of thanks.

  Redmane had his gaze fixed on Vos, and the younger god returned his unwavering stare. For a moment he said nothing, and Redmane wondered what was on his mind, how carefully he was choosing his next words. The immense carcass of the Dragon sprawled behind them, its head and neck split perfectly down the middle, its black scales glittering in the angry light of the Seal.

  “If you lose control of yourself, do not fear. This place will contain you,” said Vos.

  Redmane supposed he would have to be content with his answer. He wasn’t likely to get a better one.

  And if he was correct, and the worst should happen, confinement would mean a better fate for the world.

  So long as his allies prevailed in the battle taking place just above their heads.

  The thought made his gaze return to Vos.

  “Should the worst happen, help the people defeat the Numantians.”

  Vos nodded slowly.

  Redmane nodded back, a silent gesture of thanks, and turned to look up at the brightly flaring Seal.

  A brief swell of trepidation ran down his spine as he lifted his hand to reach for it.

  For good or ill, the end of the struggle was here.

  The shielding faded at the presence of his hand as he raised it, and the instant his finger contacted the roiling mass of power, the world flared to white.

  And Redmane came apart.

  More specifically, parts of him emerged of their own volition.

  The Manticore walked out of him.

  Then the Sphinx, the Gryphon, the Kirin.

  The Dragon, so recently vanquished and now resurrected, loomed over them all in the place of the Seal which was its namesake.

  They took their places around him, five points with what remained of Redmane in the center, and the guardians of the seals changed form before his eyes.

  They became human again.

  The Manticore became a tall, blond haired man with broad shoulders and an intense gaze.

  The Sphinx became a slender, robed figure with a thrusting sword at his belt and a peaceful smile on his face.

  The Gryphon became a young warrior wearing a black bear pelt for a mantle, with a sword at his belt and a shield on his back.

  The Kirin became a stout, light haired youth with a burly frame, casually holding a poleaxe in one hand, its haft resting across his shoulder.

  The Dragon became a tall man, equal in stature to Belskaya but with dark hair and a brooding disposition. He had a pair of sickles belted at his waist.

  Redmane knew who they were without having to ask.

  He realized why.

  They were parts of him. He’d eaten them.

  Braga the Stout-Hearted. Danesti the Wise. Vasarab, the Knight of the Harvest. Holt the Brash. And Belskaya the Golden, their leader.

  The five Seals were the Five Heroes themselves. Or at least they were remnants of them, vestiges bound together with his very flesh.

  Redmane opened his mouth to greet them, but nothing came out. He blinked, looked down at himself, and realized why he’d felt so strange a moment ago.

  He was truly coming apart.

  His body was translucent, and from the waist down it dissolved into strands of formless energy, their colors shifting between a bright crimson and the same sort of roiling, pulsing light as the contents of the Seals themselves.

  “We are undone,” said Belskaya.

  “Perhaps all is not lost,” said Danesti. His kind smile did not waver as he approached Redmane’s incorporeal body. “Let us see what this one contains. What has transpired in our slumber.”

  Danesti reached out and touched Redmane’s chest with the tip of his finger, and he burst into ten thousand motes of light.

  Jarel Craith vaulted from one rooftop to the next, closing in on the duo of traitorous Imbued like a bird of prey.

  They had no chance of escape. They did not even perceive their rapidly approaching death, so absorbed were they in killing their own kind. The both of them had their backs to him, and were raining death upon a passing formation of legionnaires with bow and blunderbuss.

  As much as he’d have liked to excoriate them over a period of several days, a swift execution would have to suffice. There was much to do.

  He vaulted again, the last leap necessary to close in for the kill. And as he descended, the stouter of the two men turned and noticed him at the last possible instant, his eyes going wide with shock.

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  “Valtr!” he called out.

  The tall one turned his head. Too late.

  Lawbringer drew an arc of silver and crimson through the air.

  But the squat one, Vengarl, had shoved Valtr out of the way, so instead of being slashed in two the cut merely removed his leg below the knee.

  Valtr dropped his bow and rolled, teeth gritted as he clutched his bleeding stump.

  The killing stroke came next.

  But a blast of Gnosis interrupted him. It struck Jarel’s side, causing negligible damage but knocking him off balance for a moment, as he hadn’t been attentive with his defenses.

  He turned to find two more traitors facing him.

  —

  Radovid Kaschak

  Class: Warrior

  Archetypes: Swordsman, Vanguard

  Faction: House Redmane

  Level: 135

  Irina Kaschak

  Class: Magister

  Archetype: Master Channeler

  Faction: House Redmane

  Level: 135

  —

  Twins, fair haired and blue eyed. The brother clad in steel with a great blade in his hands, the sister robed and cloaked in blue, holding her glowing staff aloft. The both of them staring at Jarel Craith with as much malice as he felt for them.

  What lies had Redmane whispered to corrupt these Imbued, he wondered.

  Perhaps he would leave one alive to find out, at length.

  The swordsman leveled his weapon at Jarel and charged, and Lawbringer negligently batted that heavy blade aside as if it were a child’s toy. His answering strike was equally casual, but still it struck with such force and speed that it rang against Radovid’s weapon like a hammer on an anvil, and sent the warrior staggering backward.

  Jarel Craith regarded them with a humorless look.

  “I can slay four of you as swiftly as two,” he said.

  “How about six?"

  The voice came from behind him somewhere. He glanced, and saw another missile of Gnosis streaking through the air at him. This one he neatly sidestepped. Then he sidestepped the hidden assailant waiting for him in the spot he’d dodged to. Then he hopped back from the brute leaping at him from across the street, who landed with a thunderous impact against the building’s sturdy stone roof.

  Jarel faced them all now. Good. This would save him the trouble of hunting them all down.

  —

  Vella Vai

  Class: Justiciar

  Archetype: Chameleon

  Faction: House Redmane

  Level: 166

  Evelina Crol

  Class: Magister

  Archetype: Frostbrand

  Faction: Defenders of Volos

  Level: 133

  Krum of Asgoph

  Class: Warrior

  Archetype: Berserker

  Faction: House Redmane

  Level: 197

  —

  “You would be wise to lay down your arms and surrender,” said Jarel.

  The big one, Krum of Asgoph, thumped his fist against his barrel chest and flared his nostrils.

  “We have seen who you truly are, Numantian,” said Krum. “You and all your kind. Destroyers! Usurpers! Today you die!”

  Despite himself, Jarel Craith couldn’t help but smile thinly.

  He felt the reassuring weight of Lawbringer in his grasp. The extra long handle, made of dark hardwood polished to a smooth, fine finish. Its length meant to accommodate a wide, two handed grip. The feel of the blade itself, perfectly balanced and deceptively light for its size, forged of the finest grade Star-Steel, as were the guard and pommel.

  In his hand there was no finer killing tool. Its presence reassured him. Kept his mind firmly upon his purpose.

  Jarel’s grip on the sword tightened.

  There was no telling what Redmane had shown these people. But whatever charms, illusions or threats led them to their allegiance, there would be no turning back, no day before a magistrate. For their judge stood before them, the verdict reached and the sentence decided.

  For a moment he waited, to see who would step forth and volunteer to be the first.

  Several did.

  The big one, Krum, and the swordsman named Radovid charged at him from opposite sides.

  The two Magister women loosed Skills at the same time.

  The Hunter Vengarl shot him with his blunderbuss, and the Justiciar Vella’s hand flashed as she threw a volley of gleaming daggers.

  Death converged on Jarel Craith from six vectors, and when it arrived, he was no longer there.

  He translocated behind the Magister Irina and struck her head from her shoulders with one clean slash.

  Her twin brother’s eyes went wide with shock, and as he corrected course and charged at Jarel it was a simple thing to stab precisely through his open mouth and out the back of his head. Lawbringer came free with a quick backward tug, and the Warrior’s body fell like a sack of garbage.

  The one called Krum would be the next to meet his fate. He turned to meet the brawler leaping at Jarel as a booming roar tore from his throat. The angle of the slash drew itself in his mind’s eye, from left shoulder to right hip. He would come apart like a haunch of lamb on the butcher’s block.

  His eyebrow rose when Krum didn’t fall into two pieces.

  The brawler took the cut across the chest, but it didn’t go all the way through his body. Though he fell motionless to the floor regardless, the Praetor had to admit the man had impressive durability for his level.

  Jarel swept the blood from his blade with a quick slash in the air, set his eyes on the next of the condemned…

  And then his heart became a block of ice.

  Streaks of blue filled the air. Like stars in motion, except in broad daylight. They were all aimed in one direction, to the west and slightly south. And at the same time Jarel Craith felt a pull against his body, as if he were caught in the undertow of a river current.

  For an instant, his dearest wish was that it wasn’t what he thought it was. What it had to be.

  “Yea, this is the proper place to stand?”

  It was the Flora standing atop the tubular centerpiece of Taracon’s Gnosis-gathering mechanism. She waved to the others standing on the command-and-control platform as she asked, a smile on her face.

  Except that one didn’t ask the question, she was too far away. So she asked with voice of one of the Floras standing with them.

  The Artifex, Arnth Turan, seemed startled every time she did that. Evidently he didn’t know what to make of her. When he wasn’t looking at her strangely, he was staring at the floor like they had walked him to the gallows.

  She reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder, and he gave her a startled look.

  “All will be well, ser,” said Flora. “You have merely been caught up in momentous events!”

  The Artifex made a sincere attempt to smile.

  Mecia Porsena was more accustomed to her now, on the other hand, so she merely nodded. “Yes girl, you’ve done well. I only hope this doesn’t hurt. If I said, ‘this is a lot of power,’ it would be a comical understatement.”

  "Whatsoever pain there be, thou must endure it for the good of all,” said the old woman.

  Flora smiled wryly and nodded.

  She had endured much pain already.

  “I shall do whatever I must,” she said. “For my husband, and for our world.”

  The old woman and the younger one, the Numantian, had somehow known precisely where to find her. The first time Flora saw her, she had felt the strangest sense of recognition. As if her long-lost auntie had suddenly reappeared home from a journey so long no one could remember when she’d embarked upon it.

  She’d pressed her for the nature of their relation to each other, but the old woman wouldn’t give her a plain answer. Too much to explain, and not enough time.

  Flora resolved to ask again when this was all done, and not take no for an answer.

  She brought the mechanism online with her three pairs of hands, all according to the instructions Mecia had given her, while the old woman watched from behind them, her eyes fixed on the Flora standing at the center point of the mechanism. From the place where all the Gnosis of the world of Volos would be forcibly drawn.

  When all was properly calibrated, she stood back from the controls and looked at Mecia and the crone, the former of whom was also making preparations at a console.

  “All is prepared,” she said.

  Mecia Porsena’s eyes met hers, and she nodded.

  “Initiate Terminal Drain.”