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The tip of a large stone juts through the covering of corpses. Red streaks of blood line the cracks and indentations of the ancient stone. The bodies around it are pale and
shrivelled. The stone has drunk from them. I recall the stone in the cave where I was imprisoned, when I sacrificed Drust, how it sucked his blood. These stones of magic are alive in some way. The Old Creatures filled them with a power we no longer understand.
A demon stands to attention behind the stone. He has a squat, leathery body and a green head, part human, part canine. A large, surly mouth. Four hairy arms and two long legs. Floppy ears. His white eyes are filled with fear and he holds himself rigidly, as if standing still against his will.
There’s a grey window of light a few metres from the stone and demon. In front of it, grinning lopsidedly in her warped, pus- and blood-drenched new form, is the monstrous Juni Swan.
“You took your time getting here,” she snarls.
“We stopped for a bite to eat,” Dervish quips. Sharmila is studying the demon. Beranabus is looking at Juni with a mixture of sadness and disgust. Kirilli is just gawping.
“What happened to you?” Beranabus asks quietly.
“Don’t you like my new body?” Juni croons, posing obscenely. “I preferred my old frame, but this is what I’m stuck with. The price of cheating death.”
“How did you survive?” Beranabus presses, the pity in his voice vanishing in an instant. “Dervish killed you. I felt your soul leave. Did Lord Loss have the Board with him? Is that how he pulled off this trick?”
Juni shakes her head smugly. “That’s for me to know and you to guess, old man.” She looks at the rest of us, sneering spitefully. “I told them you’d come. My master said you wouldn’t be so foolish, but I knew you would. You’re arrogant. You never let the threat of a trap put you off. I always knew your ridiculous self-belief would prove your undoing—and so it has.”
Beranabus stares at his ex-assistant, shaken by her hideous appearance and the mad hatred in her expression. “How did it come to this?” he croaks. “Life with me can’t have been worse than what you’re going through now.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Juni says. “You were far worse than Lord Loss. I serve him willingly, by my own choice, but I was a slave to you, with no say over what happened to me.”
“But—” Beranabus starts.
“No!” Juni barks. “You’re not worth arguing with.” She glares at the rest of us. “You can choose too. You don’t have to serve this fool or perish with him. Join me now and live. Stay loyal to him and die.”
Dervish laughs. “You’ve lost your marbles. Nadia Moore would have known that wasn’t an option. Even Juni Swan could have seen that it’s a no-brainer. But you’ve become something warped and inhuman. Do you honestly believe any of us would throw in our lot with a thing as twisted and insane as you?”
Juni’s lips tremble and the skin around her cheeks cracks in a series of tiny channels. “How dare you speak to me like that!”
“You were my love,” Dervish says. “I’ll speak to you any way I like.”
She starts to curse him, then restrains herself and giggles. “We’ll be lovers again, darling Dervish. I’ll keep you alive in a body even more wretched than this. I’ll lavish you with torment and pain. You’ll beg me to kill you, every single day for the rest of time, but I won’t.”
“Sounds nasty,” Dervish yawns.
“Um, I don’t know how these things normally work,” Kirilli speaks up, “but shouldn’t we be ripping her into a million pieces instead of trading insults?”
“Don’t knock the insults,” Dervish growls. “This is the best part of a fight. If you don’t get the digs in at the beginning, there’ll be no time later.”
“Who is this charlatan?” Juni huffs, glaring at Kirilli.
“A Disciple,” Beranabus says. “A friend and assistant, as you once were.”
“Assistant only,” Juni corrects him. “Never a friend.”
“You were Kernel’s friend,” Sharmila says softly. “You saved his life, even after you had turned traitor. Do you hate him too? Will you kill him along with the rest of us if you get the chance?”
“Without blinking,” Juni says coldly. “I warned him not to get in my way again. I might not kill him today—if he has any sense, he’ll slip away when the rest of you are dead—but I’ll catch up with him soon. It’s the end of mankind’s reign. Within a year we’ll cleanse Earth of its human fungus and take the world forward into a new demonic era. Your precious billions are living on borrowed time, Beranabus, but you reckless fools don’t even have that. Which is where Cadaver comes in…” She nods at the demon behind the lodestone.
“Cadaver?” Beranabus frowns.
“He stole the demon which was masquerading as Kernel’s brother,” Sharmila reminds him.
Cadaver whines and strains his neck. He’s not a willing participant in this. He’s a prisoner. When he opens his mouth and speaks, we learn who his captor is.
“Greetings, my brave, doomed friends.”
