gone forever. As for the Beyond, it’s not something that can be destroyed, not truly, merely . . . disrupted, disordered for a time. That is what you accomplished. No more than a ripple in the fabric of something that joins this world with . . . something else.”
He fell silent, a shadow passing over his bruised features. “Don’t misunderstand me. What was merely a ripple in the Beyond caused great pain to those souls obliged to endure it. Some slipped away into the blessed release of the void; others were rent to pieces, left as little more than maddened fragments tormented by memories of what they had been. That was my fate, brother. That was what you did to me, and it was far worse than any torture you or that little bitch outside could ever contrive. I know now it lasted for years, but it felt like eternity. Time is malleable in the Beyond, stretched or contracted seemingly at the whim of chance. Imagine screaming forever, Vaelin. Then imagine something finding you, collecting all the pieces left of you and putting them back together. Not whole, not anymore. But made the Messenger once again.”
The Ally’s last words came back to Vaelin then, his stricken, terrified eyes as he stared at the black stone. In the years since, Vaelin had often reflected how so much discord and slaughter could have been caused by so nondescript a thing. It was finely carved but lacked decoration of any kind; no ancient, unreadable script marked its surface, nor any pictogram that might give a clue to the power it held. It had sat in its chamber beneath the great arena of Volar for centuries, kept hidden by the persecuted servants of the suppressed Volarian gods who imagined it divine. It had all begun with this simple, unadorned plinth of black stone, just one touch of the Ally’s hand in the far-gone days when he had still been contained within his own body. Then, Vaelin knew, he had been hungry for the gifts it held, but had whimpered like a child at the prospect of laying hands on it once more.
When I touched it, he had said, eyes moist and wide as they pleaded for mercy he must have known would never come. When I received my gift, I looked into that world . . . and something looked back, something vast, and hungry.
The Ally had been an ancient soul of sufficient malice, resolve and intellect to bend the entire Volarian Empire to his will and use it to bring the world to the brink of calamity, and yet when presented with the black stone beneath the arena, he had been rendered pathetic by his terror.
“What something?” he said.
The Messenger stared back in silence for some time, his face now rendered strangely serene, apparently lacking animus. However, when he spoke again, Vaelin recognised the familiar note of malice. “You don’t know,” he said, leaning forward. “You don’t know what you did when you made the Ally touch that stone. You don’t know what you awoke. But you will, brother. It saw you, it saw everything, and it grew hungrier than ever.”
“What is it?”
A faint shrug and a raised eyebrow as the Messenger leaned back. “I only know what it can do. Not what it truly is. But its intent.” A smile played across his lips. “That I know very well. It’s been setting the pieces on the board for a very long time, and the first moves have already been made, such as placing me in this shell.”
“What for?”
The Messenger lapsed into silence. Vaelin once again felt the itch in his hands. He could just get up and open the door, let Ellese have her way with this thing. Hearing its screams echo along the corridor as he walked away would have been shamefully satisfying, but it was clear there was still more to learn.
“General Gian spoke of the Stahlhast,” he said, opting for a different approach. “What are they?”
“Merely a tool,” the Messenger replied. “As am I. I was placed in this shell in order to win the general’s confidence. It wasn’t easy; he was a clever man who had long learned the value of suspicion. But eventually I gained his trust so that I might whisper the right suggestions in his ear. I first proposed our visit here over a year ago, when the Stahlhast overran the hill country south-west of the Steppe. But it was only when they destroyed the