“I’m going to kill you, you know. I could do it even if you were fresh and uninjured. I could do it even if you had help.” He gave her a searching look. “I’m not like those others you dispatched. Do you understand that? Do you know who I am?”
She nodded. “You are the one.”
She said it without rancor, but it conveyed a good deal more than its tone revealed. She summoned the magic and watched the runes glow dimly beneath her fingers. Too little, she thought. I haven’t magic enough left to do this. I won’t be able to stop him.
“I am the one,” he agreed. He continued to study her, as if seeing something he hadn’t recognized before. “Why not consider the advantages of what accepting that means.”
“Join with you, you mean?”
He shrugged. “Why not? If you live, you would have much to contribute. Others have done so; you would not be the first.”
She had blood soaking through her clothing, and her face was streaked with sweat and dirt. She was aware of how vulnerable she looked to him. Had there been any reason at all to do so, she would have given the matter thought. But there was no reason, of course.
“I would sooner rut with wild dogs,” she answered.
He laughed softly. “No need for that. No need for anything more from you. I asked out of false hope that reason would transcend pride. I should have known. It never does with your kind.”
“Better pride transcending reason than contempt for the sanctity of life transcending a sense of right and wrong.”
She was fighting for time now, for a chance to gain a small advantage, for anything that would work in her favor. She would keep him talking for as long as she could.
He came forward a few more steps and stopped again. “You are all alike, you Knights of the Word. Passionate in your beliefs, dedicated to your causes, blind to everything but your righteous commitment to a faith in something that has doomed you from the beginning. Humans can’t sustain what is needed for such faith, woman, even if you can. Humans lack the iron necessary to see it through. They are so fallible and so easily subverted. You’ve seen it for yourself, time and again. We are where we are, you and I, standing on this empty plain, because of that.”
“Some of us might see it differently. Humans are not perfect; I wouldn’t argue otherwise. But their faith is what sets them apart from creatures like you. They believe in the impossible, in what they cannot see and touch. They think that if you don’t seek to be better than what you are, you live to no purpose. What is the point of life if not to improve it for yourself and others?”
He laughed anew. “Life’s sole purpose is in staying alive for as long as you can. Power facilitates that end. I saw that centuries ago when I shed my human skin to become my demon self. I gained control over magic that you can only dream about. I gained power over my life and the lives of others. Faith in anything other than that is a waste. What can you hope for but disappointment?”
“You can hope for a world in which living things flourish, not one in which they are systematically destroyed. You can hope for a world where power for its own sake is disdained. You can hope for a common ground that fosters compassion and understanding provides space for all living things.”
“A very pretty image.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“What I understand is that a world of living things is overrated.”
She sensed a change in his stance, in the expression on his face. She held herself steady, using her magic to buttress her failing strength, a little here, a little there.
“You struggle so hard in the service of the Word,” the old man said quietly. “But in the end, you die anyway.”
She had summoned what magic she could to defend herself, but it wasn’t enough. The old man’s bright fire exploded into her with pile-driver force, knocking her off her feet and sending her sprawling. She felt all the strength leave her, felt pain rip through her body. Smoke rose from her clothing in wispy trailers. She lay helpless on the ground, the black staff clutched against her body.
Help me, Johnny, she prayed.
“Such a waste,” the old man said, shaking his head as he approached across the flats.
Sudden movement caught her eye. Feeders, thousands of them, were oozing from the ground like the ghosts of the dead come back to life. They emerged like strange, twisted trees, their black shapes liquid and sinuous, their eyes bright with hunger. They were there to feed on her.
The old man saw them, too, and he smiled approvingly, until a sudden explosion of fire generated by a magic that was not hers caught him squarely in the back and threw him to the ground.