He walked through the jungle in the image of a man, towards where the Nergal called him, like the darkest of sirensongs. He had encountered several of the mycelial sirens on his sojourn. They tried to infect him, hungry for the life beating within. But having killed the goddess of love, he was immune to their seductions. His heart was dead. Or rather, it was locked deep, deep in a vault within himself: the black pearl, the unbreakable stone of Koronzon Hammyr, of who he had once been.

  He did not have to go far before he reached the point. Just a mile ahead lay the entrance to the Shadow Market, veiled and guarded. The old Koronzon Hammyr would have attacked without hesitation or plan, would have strewn the concealed gateway with blood, and fought his way down into the chasmal depths below. But he was not that man anymore. He had been given the gift of hideous insight. And subtlety. So, he crouched low in the darkness, and waited. He smelled his enemy. Their auras were… unique. Sumyrians, he thought. But of a different kind to the one who had appeared in the flame and rescued Telos Daggeron. These were dark Sumyrians, the energies of the would moving about them in riptides of despair. They would be fearsome opponents, even for one such as him. Powerful as he was, he was outnumbered.

  But not for long.

  He had only detected them within the last hour. Somehow, they had been shielding the mind-link from him. But now they were so close the telepathic connection could not be suppressed. He sensed them all around him, eleven in all. They moved in many forms. One swooped like a bat and perched on a nearby tree. One scuttled like an alligator along the floor of the jungle. One walked as a man, though crablike chitin covered his body. Another was a serpent. Another, a horrifying bird. He did not move, but allowed them to take up their positions. He sensed their urgency, their anticipation. They had come with an objective, as well as to see him in the flesh. He would give them what they wanted. He had learned the value of loyal soldiers. Grygory, he thought. I wonder where you are now. Probably drunk in some tavern far from Ob-Koron. He had left him in the dragonport of Gorgosa. Strange, but he almost missed the man.

  “Daimoniac,” the eleven intoned as one. “Greetings.”

  “Why did you conceal your approach,” The Warden said.

  “We might ask the same of you—a part remains concealed. You are chosen. Yet, we have doubts as to your course.”

  “You think I am reckless.”

  “There is in you some seed of destruction antithetical to the nature of Daimons…” Did The Warden imagine it, or did the bird alone speak? The Daimons were one entity in many ways, and yet, like The Warden himself, it seemed even the most deeply amalgamated retained some vestige of individuality.

  “You have risked yourself needlessly, time and again.” This came from the serpent, who stared at The Warden with voluptuous eyes.

  “You proclaim yourself the new King, the God King, but Kings understand the concentrations of power.”

  “Silence!” The Warden snarled, and the jungle fluttered and shrieked and rippled, hidden things scurrying into even more hidden places. The Daimons in their animal forms remained, of course, but a spectral quiet fell upon them, as though they had become phantasmal statues. “I will listen to no more of your patronisation. I have been reckless, but my recklessness has benefited us greatly. We have acquired the power of two gods. And now, The Nergal is within our reach.”

  “You understand not the danger ahead of you.”

  “This is the dwelling of Abaddon.”

  “The Black Sumyrian.”

  “The one who has forsaken the gods.”

  “He will not part with his prize, not for any price.”

  “I understand full well,” The Warden snarled. “Have you not shared all your knowledge, all your memories? And have I not drank of Beltanus and Lileth’s blood? I know all. And powerful though I am, I am not so foolish as to march into the Shadow Market and demand an audience. The way to achieve our end is guile. We are shapeshifters, after all. And so, I will change myself, and become the form of my intent.”

  The Daimons looked at one another, and he felt their surprise emanating from them like waves lapping at a shore, waves he could interpret, the way a sailor could know the prevailing conditions of the sea by the slightest toedip.

  “What shall you become?”

  The Warden smiled.

  He had not needed to consider long what form he should take. The answer had arisen instantly from the darkness of remembrance.

  He saw before him the foresrt of Yestermere once more. The Ghost of Northeld, the theront who had worked him so much ill in the war, lay at his feet, arm broken, nearly dead. One more blow from The Warden’s mace and Jubal would be slain. Then he’d felt the thief’s knife. He’d turned in surprise. The thief, too, looked surprised. He had not expected to go through with it, but in defence of his ally, he had done so. The Warden could respect that courage.

  But this was not what was important. What was important was what had come after.

  The Tunnel Spider.

  Even in his godlike state, he shuddered to remember that attack. The hideous speed of the thing. The way its mandibles had closed on his arm, and he had felt the grisly puncture of its fangs, the pulse as venom flooded his veins. The creature had come almost as close to slaying him as the goddess.

  But the spider was no longer to be feared, it was to be worn as a cloak, a mantle. He would become the thing that’d almost destroyed him, and use its form—apt for burrowing into the ground—to achieve his final, transcendent victory.

  This was the shape he required for the task at hand. He was set upon it.

  “Behold,” he whispered.

  He shed his human rags, and from the viscus labyrinth of his muscles, which even now were changing themselves, hardening into something black, skeletal, invincible, there emerged new limbs. He crouched, hunched. The pain was exquisite; he enjoyed every second as his skull shattered and remoulded itself. He felt his teeth travelling in his gums, becoming part of a new jaw, which swelled gourd-like, bubbling with freshly concocted venom. His whole body was swelling too, engorging to the dimensions of a hideous spider.

  Unlike the true Tunnel Spider, he was hairless, a thing of midnight carved from pure darkness. His eyes were sixteen hideous gemstones. His legs were obsidian scimitars. His body, a glass sphere of noxious prognostication. He rent vision with the scarring speed of his movement.

  Without waiting for the approval or condemnation of the Daimons, he began to dig. The ground was wet and sopping and root-wormed, which made the work hard at first. But then he found more solid ground, and his razor-sharp limbs sliced easily through earth and stone, and made ingress. He feared not the darkness, for his eyes saw as if it were day even in the blackest night.

  Down, he went. Burrowing. When he had experienced visions of Daimonic Ascension, it had always been flight, soaring high over the world. Or else running through some golden field on legs supple and sprightly as a stag’s. But this was another facet of that darkling dream, the ability to tunnel below the earth, to explore the deepest wonders of Erethia, wonders hidden from man and god.

  Down. And down. The ground thickened, hardened, but was still no match for his scything limbs. With each stroke, he peeled away layers of time. There were Daimonic remains here, bones that stirred at his passing, sensing the call of their new master. The rivers of Daimonsblood running beneath the earth, that humans would crave to harvest, quickened as he approached, as though a new heartbeat thundered beneath the dark continent.

  A mile down, he went. Then another.

  At seven miles down, he felt the bubbling heat of liquid rock as some magmatic estuary bled. Only magic held these titanic elements at bay. This, then, was the place.

  He followed his heightened senses until he detected a large, open chamber. He burrowed through stone. Dust fell—but that was the only indication of his arrival. He scuttled onto the ceiling, and waited, still as granite, shrouded in thick darkness that the firelight of braziers could not reach.

  This was a throne room of some kind, judging by the layout. There was a huge iron-wrought gate in one wall. A dais rose near the gate, upon which stood a throne carved from sparkling white stone the like of which he had never seen. On the other side of the room was a small door. The fires of magmatic flows lit the doorway as thogh to were a portal to a dimension of hell.

  A figure stood on the throne. He was immensely tall, wearing a black raiment of diamonds darker than the Void. He had a crown on his head of twisted barbs. His face was pale awfulness, too slender to be human, with gleaming intelligence behind the eyes that spoke of eons passed. Though more than god and Daimon combined, the Warden feared this figure, knew him to be uniquely dangerous.

  Before the throne stood another figure, also unnaturally tall. Indeed, she was taller even than the King, maybe eight feet, and clad in a shimmering robe of emerald that seemed more illusion of light that solid cloth. She had a staff in her hand. A crow perched on her shoulder. Her hair was black raven tresses.

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  She was as unalike Lileth as it was possible to be, and yet, The Warden recognised their shared ancestry. This was a Rynu’nakar, a Nilldoranian, a fully fledged god.

  “I have offered you the undreamt wealth of Nilldoran. Surely you cannot decline?” This was a woman’s voice, full of crackling power. There was a harshness to it that reminded him of the crow calling starkly into a storm. A bleak prophetess. Through the memories of Lileth and Beltanus, he knew her to be Nereth.

  “My answer is the same.” The man’s voice rumbled deep as an earthquake. He knew the King’s identity through the memories of Daimonkind. Abaddon.

  “You will bequeath the Nergal to me, Abaddon,” Nereth snarled. “I have tried the way of bargaining and peace, but I am not afraid of war. By the authority—”

  “You forget your place, Nereth. Here, we do not recognise your kind, nor your authority. You will make no demands of me, for I am king.”

  “King of a broken race and a bastard people.”

  Abaddon hissed. “I have slain whelps for less insolence.” Then he sat back, unleashing a peal of mirthless laughter. “You are one to talk of bastards. How many bitches did your father make to bray before you slid out of some whore’s belly? How many half-brothers and half-sisters, born out of union, litter the halls of Nyshala?”

  “Speak to me like that again, and I shall raze this place.” Nereth’s words might have sent a chill down The Warden’s spine, had he possessed one, but as it was he remained still in the darkness, cleaving to the roof of the grand chamber.

  “Do not threaten us,” Abaddon snarled. “We do not fear your boasts, nor your weapons. We have slain your kind before and will do so again. Slink back to the Godshome, and lick your wounds in the Void.”

  Nereth gave a curse. Then she turned on her heel and strode out through the lesser doorway. He doubted she went to lick her wounds.

  I must be quick, he thought. Retribution is coming to this place. He smiled inwardly. Once upon time, he would have been the one to bring the black fire. But now that role would be played by another, and he would claim his prize invisible, unseen.

  King Abaddon sat back on his throne, clearly contemplating what had been said, and whether he had been wise. The Warden left him, scuttling silently across the ceiling, and then along the face of the rock. There, he found an opening where a mighty pillar held up the ceiling, and a piece of the abacus had crumbled away. He squeezed through it.

  A shower of dust fell and the King’s eyes snapped towards him. The Warden froze. He willed himself to be shadow—and it was so. The King’s eyes narrowed. The Warden waited. Patience had been the hardest lesson of all to learn, but he had learned it well. What were a few more moments in the grand designs of his Ascension?

  The King sighed and looked away. The Warden slipped through the gap, and came into another chamber.

  A bridge spanned a river of violent fire. Nereth strode across it, muttering to herself. Her staff tapped upon the stone walkway, causing it to ring. He followed her, invisible and soundless.

  On the other side, there were more openings. The impenetrable substrata of the Shadow Market was a veritable feast of tunnels and crumbled openings and paths made by the gnarled vicissitudes of rock. It was easy for him to go where he wished and remain hidden.

  Below him, the Shadow Market unfurled.

  The noise struck him first: the yammering of ten-thousand souls in the dungeons of the mad. How could so many dwell here, when it was such a great secret? He realised that the implication was that once one found this place, one never left. That made Benjamyn Hart unique. He had tasted the delights of the Market and yet turned back. He knew this through the memories of his brother, Lucan. To find you only in parting, dear brother… His crime, of slaying Koron’s mother, was forgiven—redeemed in death.

  The Warden did not dare dwell on it longer, less he lose his spiderous form, and weep as a man again.

  The chambers below him were impossibly vast—made for giants. The people below were a rapid throng. Black Sumyrians, like their King, both patrolled the causeways, and also stood as vendors. Here, there were god-forged machines of darkest origin. They spewed vapour and promise into an atmosphere already curdled with desire. There were eggs of disgusting size and fleshy texture that gurgled as they were fed some creamy milk-like susbtance. There were creatures of varieties he had never seen on Erethia, that were unknown even to the Daimons, black market imports from the Godshome.

  And then, stranger still, were the men and women who shopped here. There were Sumyrians, and theronts, and humans, but all of them had been changed in some way. It was not in their outer appearance, but in their inner being The Warden detected the change. They had become inhabited by the demons of their obsession; they had allowed their desires to rule them. They moved with the furtiveness of insects. They traded anything and everything for their prizes. Mostly, they traded children. This was the dark and hideous secret of the Shadow Market. The Black Sumyrians desired children, for a purpose The Warden could guess at, but feared to name.

  You begin to see the truth, his Daimon whispered. The voice, that’d once been so frightening and alien, now was a comfort.

  What truth?

  The Sumyrians are sterile, like the mule. Their mixed parentage renders them unable to have children. Thus, they must increase their ranks through other means.

  Somewhere, too quiet for natural ears to detect, there were screams, and the shriek of ghastly machines that drank Daimonsblood, and wrought change upon flesh.

  This revelation was interesting, but it pointed to a bigger revelation.

  Telos… Telos had been revived by the gods. Changed. Given new strength. He had been made into their champion. Why? If the gods could sire immortal, magically attuned children like the Sumyrians, it made no sense to raise up a mortal. Unless…

  The realisation slid into place like a dreadful bolt in an iron maiden.

  The gods are sterile!

  The Daimon within him laughed, delighted.

  We know not why or how—nor do they. But they have lost their ability to conceive naturally. Now you see how truly unworthy they are to inherit the earth…

  All was now beginning to make sense. He wracked his mind for the memories of Lileth and Beltanus to confirm this truth—and found all the evidence he needed.

  The gods faced a crisis, and differing factions within the gods had taken different routes to address the crisis. Beltanus, Talon, and Eresh saw the cultivation of humanity as the only way to save themselves—the Godseed protocol. Nereth and Lileth considered it blasphemy, and that it was human beings that’d caused the infertility.

  He saw Nereth, suddenly, through the eyes of Lileth and Beltanus both at once. She stood in a council chamber wrought of pure gold—the palace of Gladness—standing atop the great hill of Nilldoran’s capital, Nyshala. She stood before the other five members of the Council: mighty Koronzon, Beltanus, Lileth, Talon the War God, and Eresh, secretly veiled. She spoke with dire passion.

  “Coupling with humans has degraded us, corrupted us. Only by their eradication will our seed become strong again.”

  Koronzon had sighed.

  “I see no solution in this. Only more grievance. The secrets we desire cannot be found here. I shall venture into the Great Dark. I shall find the answer within the womb of Creation itself…”

  And so he had left them—and they had fallen to infighting, then outright betrayal.

  He had reached a fork in the path. Nereth hovered. One way led to the chamber in which The Nergal was housed, the other led upward. Clearly, she was considering going to The Nergal, taking it by force. But then, with a shake of her head, she took the upward road.

  And so we part, Nereth, The Warden thought.

  He took the downward path. There were innumerable guards, but their eyes were not trained on the ceiling, and he was mantled in purest shadow; he passed unnoticed above them, like a dream that disturbs one’s sleep, but is forgotten in morning. Some shivered as he passed them, but none saw. Perhaps they did not want to see.

  The sixteen-eyed horror now reached the central door, a piece of silver Godsteel set into the sheer rock, guarded by two men. He descended with silent grace, his mandible and sword-legs scything. They were Black Sumyrians, forsaken warrior-magi, but their necks parted all the same, and their blood washed the stone floor. The Warden drank it, famished with exertion. He also wished to dispose of the evidence of his passing.

  He took the form of a Sumyrian, morphing from the spider of black shadow into a tale, pale Sumyrian. He stole the armour of one of the guards and wore it. The other set, he hid in a nook. One of the guards had possed a key. He used it, and the door swung open. He stepped into the chamber.

  Nothing dwelt within the chamber—not even light—save for a single black sarcophagus. He took a deep breath, trembling. This was The Nergal, then. Or rather, whatever dwelt within.

  Whether it was wrought of metal or stone or some substance unknown to him, he did not know. It throbbed with a heartbeat as thunderous as that of a dragon. The seismic vibration of power located in the sarcophagus pulsed through the floor and walls and through his malleable bones. To merely dwell in the chamber was agony.

  Still, he moved slowly and cautiously, scoping the room for traps or unseen pitfalls. When he was satisfied the device was unprotected—perhaps because it was itself so dangerous—he approached the great coffin.

  Closer, even his eyes struggling with the dark, he saw winking lights and controls upon the side of the sarcophagus. They pusled as energy surged through them. There were hieroglyphics in the language of the gods that he now knew. The words sent a chill down his spine.

  “Within me is sealed the doom of Daimonkind.”

  There was a window of darkened glass cut into the top of the tomb. He hesitated. He wanted to see what lay within, yet he was afraid. The Daimons cried out in his mind. Be careful! Be careful! Even you shall perish!

  Slowly, he leaned over the hulking tomb, and peered within.

  Instantly he withdrew. Vomit surged up from his gullet and he spewed it over the floor. He thought he was done but the retching came again and he disgorged blood and meat and bile. He fell to his knees. He sobbed.

  Vile. Vile beyond comprehension. He had always hated the gods, but now he saw—clearer than ever before—the need for their extinction. Only monsters would make such a thing. Only the lords of hell itself.

  The horror had momentarily made him mortal again, made him vulnerable to such petty feelings as revulsion and disgust. He rallied himself and stood.

  Now you know, the Daimon whispered. Now you know what we could not reveal to you, for to even think it is bane to us, to even acknowledge its existence is to die again. But now you know.

  He knows… they chorused. The Daimoniac knows. And he shall avenge us!

  “I know not how,” The Warden whispered. “But I shall destroy this thing. No trace of it shall remain. And then…” The fires of madness lit his eyes. “Then I shall destroy the gods.”