“Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.”

  – J. R. R. Tolkien

  “Upon the Deep he marked out an orbit.

  Where darkness and light merge

  Is his farthest limit.”

  —The Book of Job, translated by Zecharia Sitchin

  Telos was halfway into the escape tunnel when the guards found him.

  He had spent the last three months of his incarceration carefully chiselling away a loose cluster of stones in the wall of his cell. Most of the prison’s outer walls had solid granite blocks at their core, but this one, erected as a hasty extension of the prison, was mere quicklime and sandstone rubble.

  The day Telos made this discovery, he had felt like the first man aboard a sinking ship to find the skiffs. His elation bordered on madness. He felt small remorse for his fellow comrades in chains who would not escape their dismal fates. But it had also awakened in him that most treacherous of emotions.

  Hope.

  Telos hated and loved Hope with equal fervour. Were Hope an incarnate woman, he was forced to concede he would likely end up murdering her for her many infidelities. Then again, it was Hope that gave him the will to carry on when life’s vicissitudes had been as relentless as storms over the Winedark Sea.

  The guards wore dome-shaped helmets which eliminated their necks and made them look more like golems than men. They had wandered in lackadaisically, discussing a game of chance in which someone had won cosmically big and someone else had lost cosmically bad (as was always the case). They’d evidently expected nothing but the dreary routine of prison life and their daily rounds: overfull latrines, miserable cells, and even more miserable occupants. When they saw Telos, halfway to freedom, their faces had contorted into masks of confusion and surprise worthy of a village mummery.

  There was a pause in which neither party knew what to do. Then Telos redoubled his efforts to squeeze his accursedly feminine hips through the narrow hole. He was to the belly button when rough hands clamped down on his shoulders and dragged him from the aperture.

  One—Grygory, Telos remembered his name was, for he had attempted to learn their routines and win their favour many times—slammed him against the wall with enough force to knock out the little remaining air in his lungs. The second, Belt, who resembled his namesake Beltanus—the God of Creativity—to the same degree a lumpen brick resembles the snowcapped mountain-peak of Anpa, struck him across the face with a gauntleted hand. Telos tasted his own blood.

  “It’s hardly fair to hit a man with your gauntlet on,” Telos said.

  Belt hit him again and his skull smacked against rough stone. This time Telos could not shrug it off. He doubled over, head spinning.

  When he was eleven years old, three older, bigger boys had beaten him until he could scarcely utter his own name, all because he had stolen a measly three Relics from one of their satchels. He’d had no reason to steal money, coming as he did from a wealthy family, and that made the punishment so much worse. He’d vowed never to taste his own blood again that day.

  That vow had been broken many times.

  Such was the life of a thief.

  “We’ll take him to the Warden,” Grygory said, as if to prevent Belt from getting carried away. Grygory had always seemed the softer of the two—just doing a job. Belt, on the other hand, saw himself as some kind of agent of justice, enjoyed the work, especially the bloody parts. Telos had turned this to his advantage a couple of times, spreading rumours about inmates who needed to be taken care of, claiming they’d cast aspersions about Belt behind his back. Belt had acted accordingly, and those inmates now walked with limps and handled their food bowls with broken digits. Telos was in danger of suffering the same fate.

  “Very well,” Belt grunted.

  The Warden.

  Telos hated to admit it, but he feared the Warden. Everyone did. Even the killers and the alleged Daimomancers feared him, although Telos doubted any real Daimomancer would allow themselves to be holed up in a prison cell.

  “No… need…” Telos spluttered. His diaphragm seemed to have collapsed. “Honestly. I’ve really learned my lesson, lads.”

  Ignoring him, each guard threw one of Telos’s arms about their shoulders and bodily lifted him off the ground, only his toes dragging on the damp stone.

  They carried him out of his cell into a narrow corridor. Telos looked at the others cells as they swam past through the smeared lens of dizziness: each occupant was more gaunt and vacant than the last, many of them bearing the shining scars of the Black Flame that made their bodies into morbid artworks. Telos shuddered. He had avoided the Black Flame thus far, but he had a funny feeling his latest indiscretion was going to merit this ultimate punishment.

  “Grygory...” Telos began.

  “Don’t try to weasel,” the guard said. “I know your game, thief. Pretty words, a pretty smile. You may think they’ll get you out of this, but you’re wrong. The Warden hates runners most of all.”

  Telos had never properly met the Warden. He did of course patrol the prison upon occasion. He inspected cells. He observed the prisoners at their manual labour, ensuring that the Daimonic remains dredged from the sludge of the hill were not stolen or misplaced. Ob-koron was the largest prison in Yarruk, and had been raised by the self-righteous King Anu on a site of Daimonic remains for the sole purpose of acquiring cheap manual labour. It was considered an inspired decision by all those who did not have to actually work in the pits.

  The times Telos had seen the Warden had had exchanged nothing more than a glance, felt the Warden’s withering gaze which soon moved on to other prey. As a thief, he was likely been beneath the Warden’s notice, for Ob-koron contained Yarruk’s most idiosyncratically depraved souls, from child-killers to necrophiliacs to practitioners of the Daimonic Arts.

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  But now, Telos sensed he was about to become a person of great interest—never a good thing for one whose modus operandi was discretion.

  The hallways felt eternal, absent as they were of any aesthetic touches. Telos knew he should be memorising the layout of the prison, but fear and brain-fog rendered the attempt null. He had a vague sense that they were on the southern side of the prison, the one that stared out over the River Nere and the Forest of Yestermere, but he could not be certain.

  The guards reached a solid oak door and knocked in precise rhythm. A key turned from the other side, the door opened, and Telos was dragged into a candlelight chamber that sported only the smallest window, more an oculus than a meaningful portal, but it was the first one he had seen in the entire complex. On a short iron pole affixed to the stone wall by the window perched a dragonling. The squat, leathery-winged messenger-lizard had scales of green and red, and looked as disgruntled at being disturbed as his master. The room was spacious, about the size of six cells. At the far end was a captain’s desk engraved with gold filigree. A thick wad of parchment lay upon it along with a candle, quill, and inkpot. Behind it sat the Warden, the dome of his bald head glistening bright orange as it reflected the flamelight.

  He wore full platemail armour, as though ready at any time for battle. A mace hung at his hip. Both were forged from Qi’shathian steel that glinted blackly. About his neck was a pendant wrought like an hourglass, the symbol of Koronzon, the God of Time and the Void, after which the prison had been aptly named. Telos found this odd, because he’d heard rumours the Warden was a godless man. It was rare for someone without a blessing from one of the Six to be appointed to such a lofty station, but it had happened before where the person in question was considered exceptional.

  “I am sorry to bother you, Warden,” Grygory said. “This one tried to escape. He’s dug a hole in the eastern wall. I think he meant to climb down inside it and reach the drainage below. He was halfway through when we found him.”

  The Warden looked up from his papers and regarded Telos. If the news he had almost escaped concerned the Warden, there was not one flicker to show it.

  “Very good. Have a team of men brick up the hole. Check all the other cells in that wing. Leave him with me.”

  Telos suddenly wished for Belt and Grygory to stay, though he knew that was irrational—what would they do to defend him from their master?

  The door shut behind Telos and a key turned. There was no other exit besides the window, which a rat might struggle to fit through. In the shadows behind Telos he sensed movement: two guards, concealed in dark robes and armour, ready to spring if he made the slightest aggressive move.

  “Sit,” the Warden said, indicating a chair that faced the desk.

  Telos did not argue. He walked slowly and deliberately toward the chair and sat down. Padded with feathered cushioning, it was the most comfortable seat he had enjoyed since the day of his imprisonment. He suspected it would be his last comfort for a good long while.

  Solitary confinement, he prayed. Flogging. Night labour. Anything but—

  The Warden’s eyes bored into his. Telos would guess his age anywhere from forty-five upwards. His face was ultimately unremarkable. A large nose. High cheeks. No trace of a beard, not even a shadow of stubble. Thick lips pursed as if in thought. The features were distinct enough to be recalled but they did not impress anything on Telos. But the eyes, the eyes were a different story: gemstones wrought by a lapidary of the highest skill but ailing sanity. If the eyes were indeed portals to the soul, as old poets said, then Telos wondered what kind of soul produced such starkly glimmering orbs as were set in the Warden’s otherwise pedestrian face.

  “Telos,” the Warden said.

  Telos was surprised. The Warden had not consulted any notes and the guards had not spoken his name. Perhaps he had memorised the name of every inmate. That seemed likely from what he had gleaned about the Warden.

  “Yes…?”

  “Sentenced and imprisoned in the 552nd year of the Imperial Age. Caught trying to steal the Tablet of Mastery from the Royal Vaults.” The Warden regarded Telos coldly. “What use, pray tell, did a petty thief have with such a document?”

  “Money.”

  “Ah, so you wished to sell it on the black market?”

  “I am not sure what I intended,” Telos said. “Desperate men will do desperate things.”

  The Warden smiled at the evasion.

  “Tell me, why did you try to escape?”

  Telos stared at him.

  “I mean…” He gestured to his rags, the rat shit, and the blood on his face. “Is that not obvious?”

  The Warden’s eyes seemed to be drilling holes through Telos’s skull. He did not want to give the Warden the satisfaction of looking away, but equally, he knew well that one did not win a staring competition with a hungry lion.

  “There is no escaping this prison,” the Warden said. “This is Ob-koron. This is my prison. I do not allow prisoners to escape. No one has ever escaped, and no one ever will while I live. Do you know why, Telos?”

  Because your ego is almost as big as that domed head of yours, Telos thought.

  “Enlighten me.”

  The Warden heard the sardonic tone and smiled.

  “You have not yet tasted the Black Fire, have you?”

  Telos felt cold wash over him, as though the skiff he thought he was taking to freedom had itself capsized, plunging him into icy depths.

  “That seems... excessive.”

  “Far from it,” the Warden said, a nasty little grin revealing yellow, crooked teeth. It was the first evidence of imperfection in the Warden’s otherwise immaculately cultivated appearance. “You are exactly the prisoner for which this method was devised. You have spirit, still. Gumption. Your will remains strong. A strong will is commendable in a man of morals and virtue. But you are not a man of morals and virtue. You take what others have earned, take bread from the mouths of children. Such men do not deserve will. Their will must be broken.”

  Telos met the eyes of madness and knew that Grygory was right: there was no way out of this. The Warden could not be bargained with. He was a zealot. Instinctively, the thought caused Telos’s eyes to flick to the pendant about the Warden’s neck. The Warden saw the gesture.

  “You are wondering about this, aren’t you? And the rumours. As there will be nothing left of you once the flame burns all away, I don’t mind telling you a little secret: the rumours are true. I do not believe in Gods. Any intelligent man can see that the notion of beings coming down in sky-ships in some distant epoch is nonsense. The Daimons were not slain in mighty battle. They died from some other, natural cause. A meteorite, perhaps. The myths we have woven to explain the emergence of our society are just that: myths. There was no arrival and no departure. We have always lived in the Imperial Age, the Age of Mankind, we just did not know it. We, as mortals doomed to die, love to imagine what came before us, some high and unobtainable glory from which we have fallen—it is the only answer to the question of our misery and suffering—but the reality is there was only the savagery of nature, void of morality, of virtue, of thought.” The Warden smiled. “So you see, if there is one real God, one God who could possibly exist, it is Hateful Koronzon, for he alone embodies a truth. He is the reminder of what awaits us if men like you are allowed to rule.”

  Telos stared at the Warden.

  “Given that you are going to punish me,” Telos said. “And given that there is no changing your mind on the matter… May I say something honestly?”

  “Of course,” the Warden said. He sounded almost jovial, as though the conversation were taking place in a reputable House, and not under armed watch.

  “I think if Koronzon is still out there in the Void waiting, he’d laugh for the first time in his life at every word you just said.”

  The Warden smirked, though Telos saw with satisfaction it was forced.

  “Administer the Fire to him,” the Warden said. He made a signal to the hidden men.

  Mailed hands clasped Telos, and he was dragged to his fate.