The Warden watched as Telos lowered himself onto the ladder. Wind rushed past his ears in deafening cacophony. The dragon’s flanks rippled and pulsed with the muscular action of beating its colossal wings. The beast roared, perhaps in triumph, perhaps in frustration, he did not know.

  Within, he was calm. All was stillness. This was the moment he had been waiting for. His enemy was within grasp and now there truly was nowhere to run. The thought of an ending filled him with vigour, with life. His past flashed before his eyes and he knew, with that strange prescience that bordered on the forbidden realms of myth, that this was one of the defining moments of his life. All had led to this.

  He doubled his pace as he clambered up the ladder; he was now nearer the top than the bottom. His stomach roiled and turned with vertigo but he ignored it; flesh was weak, but will would carry him through.

  Telos had spun himself round, gripping the ladder-rungs with the crooks of his elbows so that he could look down at the Warden. The Warden could not help but smile.

  “So at the last you would prove to me you are not a coward,” the Warden said. Despite the noise, the Warden knew Telos heard him. “This time, there are no shadows to hide you, thief. You cannot strike me when my back is turned.”

  “You’re a tough bastard, Koron, I’ll give you that,” Telos replied. “But you only have one working arm. I am an acrobat by trade. You’re not going to win this fight. I have no wish to kill you, even after all you’ve done, but if you try to hurt me or my friends, I’ll be forced to send you down.”

  The Warden felt a dagger in his heart, twisting, twisting. How dare he use that name! How dare he patronise me! But matching his fury was a second fury not his own, this one elemental, like the tsunami waves that sweep away entire cities. It was the Daimon’s rage to hear the name of a god spoken aloud. He grinned, knowing he could harness that fury to make him stronger still.

  “This will be the end of one of us,” the Warden said. “No Fate, no gods will decide—but we men!”

  The Warden surged. The ladder rippled dangerously beneath him but somehow he clung to it as he ascended, gripping the rung beside Telos’s feet. Telos raised his boot and stamped downward for the Warden’s head.

  The Warden dodged. He let go of the security of the ladder and grasped Telos’s ankle with iron hard fingers.

  Telos kicked out his leg, trying to dislodge the boot and therefore his enemy. The Warden pulled and the boot came flying off Telos’s foot.

  But the Warden was ready and quickly gripped Telos’s bare ankle. Telos tried to kick him off again but this time his grip was like a vise.

  The Warden met Telos’s eyes and smiled.

  The Warden kicked away from the dragon’s flanks, taking both his feet off the ladder. Telos screamed as the additional weight of a man in full plate armour was suddenly added. He gripped the ladder with burning fingers. His shoulder joints distended.

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  “You madman!” Telos screamed. “You’ll die too!”

  The Warden’s smile widened.

  “Maybe I will. Maybe not. But I’m not letting you go this time, Telos. You’ve escaped one too many times. A thief’s luck must run out eventually.”

  Sweat poured down Telos’s forehead; he was blood red. The muscles in his shoulders, jaw, and forearm bulged as he strained to hold them both. Wind lashed at their faces.

  The Warden closed his eyes. He felt the airy nothing beneath, calling to him. They had now left behind Yarruk’s shores—it was only a small island in the grand scheme of the world. The Winedark Sea roiled and foamed beneath them, coloured faintly red, an ocean of blood, and toil, and bitter memories of war. Fitting, The Warden thought. That this is where we shall both meet our end.

  “No one escapes Ob-koron,” The Warden said. “You were dead the moment your feet touched the ground outside the walls!”

  The rope groaned, pulled to its maximum tautness. Telos slipped and he let out a scream, but he managed to cling on with the uppermost knuckles of his fingers. He was a strong climber but no one could keep this up for long.

  The others were rallying to help him. Jubal leant down over the dragon’s flanks, extending a hand. Ylia and Qala held the huge theront by the belt

  “Telos!” Jubal cried. “Telos, take my hand!”

  Telos looked down at the Warden again. Let me see your fear; let me see you are beaten! But what he saw on Telos’s face was neither defeat nor fear. There was a calmness there that chilled the Warden’s blood, as so few things could. It was the same look that he had seen on Telos’s face as he shone in the heart of the conflagration that should either have broken or killed him, the same divine immunity to the vicissitudes of life that threatened the transcendental. The Warden saw him, then. The other one. The one who’d stood beside Telos in the heart of the fire. His radiance was blinding, a desecration of reason. The Warden felt pain stab to the depths of his corneas as the light rendered him dizzy, confused. His heart thundered. The Daimon within him screamed.

  A god! A god! A cursed god! One is near! We sense them! Near! Kill them!

  Telos looked upward into the light, but it seemed he could not see what the Warden saw, for he spoke instead to Jubal.

  “This is how we change our Fate, Jubal. We choose! Look after the other two!”

  Telos let go.

  The Warden roared in triumph, yet the triumph felt hollow. Telos had not surrendered, but chosen his death.

  Jubal, Ylia, and the Qi’shathian screamed and their screams followed the two down as they plummeted. Beneath them, the Winedark Sea yawned, bloody and tumultuous.

  Telos had pivoted and now gripped the Warden. They were nose to nose, eye to eye. They hurtled downward from the dragon like a twin-tailed comet. But the world was falling away, vanishing, of no consequence.

  Telos was smiling. And light shone from his face.

  “You were right, Warden. You were right all along.” The Warden’s eyes widened in pure horror. “No Fate!” Telos cried, closing his eyes. “No gods!”

  They struck the ocean with enough force that the impact was heard on the eastern shores of Aurelia. The Warden felt every single bone in his body break and the air rush out of his lungs as crimson darkness enveloped him like the Kiss of the Flesh-shaper herself.