In the silent tomb, he beheld the horror of the gods’ work. There was a terrible majesty to it. Not beauty. Never could it be called beautiful. But the ingenuity of it was hair-raising, awe-inspiring, as well as nauseating to the deepest recesses of his being.

  He understood now why he had been able to find The Nergal, what had drawn him over thousands of miles and endless trials. All Daimons knew of its location...

  Because it was a Daimon.

  A Daimon manufactured, mutilated, turned-inside out, altered by the terrible magic of machines without conscience, manipulated into hexagram of undoing. The thing was foetal in appearance. It lay in a brine of toxic amniotic fluid, as though waiting to be born. It had a face that resembled a human being’s—if acid had been thrown over them. Occasionally, it stirred, as if with some tremor of cognition. As though it were dreaming.

  For some reason unknown to him, the words of the Book of Beltanus came to his lips:

  “And he shall mould from divine ore the Ending Bell,

  and sound it from the Deepest Emptiness,

  where stars, afraid to shine, wink out

  and all the agencies of gods and men are dust.

  The universe shall hear its knell,

  resounding through the Dark Expanse,

  and Hell itself shall open wide

  to free its horrors for the Final Dance.”

  He knew now: the Nergal was the Ending Bell. Moulded from the divine ore of Daimonhood, wrought in the horrific emptiness of the gods’ hearts. Rendering all agencies naught. Hell had opened. It was not the weapon itself, but the crime of having made the weapon in the first place that was the truly great sin.

  Still, he doubted not its potency. It had been used once and the effect had been beyond devastating. It had not merely eradicated the Daimons, but changed Erethia, rendering it inhospitable for six centuries. Were it to be used again…

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  He had to destroy it. But to break the sarcophagus was to risk setting its contents free. He knew that even he would not be able to resist the power of The Nergal. It would access his mind-link, his blood-stream, infecting it with its cursed polarity. It would consume him no matter how hard he tried to consume it. This was a virus, a virus wrought in living tissue, Daimonsblood used as the alchemical basis for monstrous creation.

  The use of Daimons as fuel for sky-ships and Engines, and in the rites of Daimomancers to evoke powers, was a desecration. But this was quite another thing. One that could not be forgiven even with the ending of the universe.

  Focus, now, the Daimon whispered. Your rage is our rage. But we must temper our anger… We are so close now. We must destroy it!

  The other Daimons of the mind-link chorused their approval as one.

  Yes, destroy it. But how? He considered his options. His first thought was of the magma flowing through these lower levels. If he cast the casket into the magma, surely it would burn to nothing. This far below ground, there would be less risk of the virus spreading to the surface.

  And yet, a part of him suspected this would not go to plan. The magma would melt the sarcophagus and free the Nergal. It would bond with its nearest available target: him. And he would become the carrier, who would bear the curse to the surface, unless he elected to die down here for the good of Daimonkind.

  No. He would not have that.

  What other options remained?

  He closed his eyes and sank deep into the mind-link. The blackness of his inner eye illuminated with the fine matrice of webbing, the dripping glories of thought, feeling, and memory—impossibly vast, impossible dense, and four-dimensional in that the heaviness of time weighted each and every strand. He followed them. Images flashed. He beheld the Daimon assaulting Beltanus’s craft as it ascended, making for the Void.

  The Void!

  Daimons could survive in the Void, but were he to cast the sarcophagus adrift on those ethers, it would never been seen again. The gravity of some feral star would pull it into its orb it, or burn it up. Or else it would drift out beyond the Greater Dark.

  The Void, then. That was the best solution. He opened his eyes and looked up. Seven miles of rock, magma, and bone lay between him and the surface. He grinned. The time for stealth was over. But nor would he fight his way out. He was a Daimon, a shape-shifter, a being of shadows and light and changing faces. He could be whatever he wanted to be. And now he summed a different power.

  His body dissolved. There was little pain in this now. Bones melted to slag and reshaped themselves as carapace. His mouth elongated and split open into four parts, revealing a lamprey maw of jagged teeth. His innards solidified, charged themselves with acidic potential. His limbs melded until he was one, serpentine form. Huge. Growing still bigger.

  Worm.

  He took the sarcophagus into his maw, sealing it within the flesh at the roof of his mouth. Then he rocketed upwards. Stone gave way beneath his gargantuan weight and power and the diamond-sharpness of his teeth. He bit and churned and swallowed as mountains of earth collapsed down toward him. His stomach spasmed and clamped and dissolved whatever came. He shat out the solidity of stone as virulent, white-hot slag that trailed behind him like the silver trail of a slug.

  He chewed and climbed, rising up through the core of the planet.

  The lodestone of The Nergal was heavy on his tongue.