Epilogue

The limpet jumped off the remains of the wall and placed her hands at the base of her back before stretching up and back. “Oh, that feels so much better,” she said.

“A bit of healing can go a long way,” I said. “There are actually a few spells that touch the schools you prefer that can heal. Necromantic healing is a little... shall we say volatile, but it can’t be argued that it is exceptionally effective at keeping one alive in the middle of a life or unlife situation. Oh hohohoho!”

The limpet blinked, then she snorted. “Oh, life or unlife. Instead of death. I get it.”

I shook my weary head and stood to my full height, hands idly straightening out the lapels of my jacket. “You should never explain wordplay,” I said. “If the listener fails to grasp it, that’s their own prerogative. But unlike any other kind of magic known to living, unliving and divine, wordplay is the only sort where true understanding actually breaks the magic apart. Not that a connoisseur cannot still appreciate it.”

“Wait, wordplay is an actual kind of magic?” the limpet asked. ‘I thought you just said that kind of stuff because you were... uh, you.”

“I am, in fact, me,” I agreed. “And being me, I couldn’t just let any old magic rest without uncovering all of its secrets. I have ruined the magic and charm of puns for myself. It is a fate I dearly wish never breaks your bones. Get it, breaking a wishbone?”

The limpet’s look of utter disgust was pleasure itself.

I chortled and took a moment to look around us at what was left of Silvershire. It had been a nice place once, but things changed, people, and time, moved on. Perhaps it was time for us to do the same. “North,” I said.

“North?” the limpet repeated.

Alex looked up from where he was picking away at a spot of detritus on his apron. “North?”

I nodded. “Indeed. North. I believe it’s the land called the Flaming Steppes?”

The limpet bounced a few times, settling her stuff and readying herself to move. “Yes sir. The Flaming Steppes. Home to one of the most savage and dangerous sects, and where the beast and bug men roam and fight the undead day and night. It’s a pretty rough place.”

“We’ll see what we can do to travel it in relative safety then,” I said. I doubted there would be much that could threaten me there, but a lack of humility and caution had ended more than one experiment early.

“So, master, are we off on our next great adventure then?”

“A great adventure? No, I don’t think so. I’d rather say that we’re off to find the next great particularity, and then we’ll see what makes it so special.”

“That sounds nice,” Alex said as he trooped up next to us, his backpack bulging and clanking with all sorts of things a proper butler needed. “Will Daddy be leading the way?”

“Naturally,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to be the second person to find something strange.”

“Then we’ll be perfectly fine,” Alex said.

Grinning a skeleton’s toothy grin, I tapped the tip of my Oxfords to the ground, then set off. “So, limpet, what do you say to a skeleton who’s too warm?”

“Uh?”

“You’re running a femur, my chap!”

The limpet groaned. “Master, no!”

“Oh hohohoho! Tibia honest, I’ve bone waiting to use that one. Don’t worry limpet, I have a skele-ton more!”

“Did you just say bone instead of been?” the limpet asked with obvious confusion. “You can’t do that.”

“By the time we’re done, you’ll be breathless. I certainly have been for a while.”

“Master, please stop!”

***

The halls of the Queen’s chamber were always so strange. Strange, and alien, and yet not. They had the gold and precious stones that the humans favoured so, and yet next to these was compacted earth and the familiar warmth of bare stone.

She didn’t know if she liked the strange mix. Perhaps, were it not the Queen’s chamber, she would have appreciated it more.

“Kneel.”

She knelt. One sister to the left, a few more to the right. She hardly noticed them at the best of times, not if they weren’t competing for a mate, or fighting over a meal. But now they were there with her, and perhaps that meant that any ire the queen had would be shared.

That would be a nice change of pace.

The God Queen tilted her head back, mandibles covered in golden bangles and bracelets of priceless pearls opening wide to deposit a wriggling creature into the void beyond.

It wasn’t the god queen, the mother, who spoke, but a human man in long robes, his visage obscured by cowl and hood. “Children of the divine Queen of all that crawls and chitters, her Lady of the Blade and Sinew, and Lord over the Flaming Steppes, you have been called to serve at the behest of your divine mother.”

She shifted a little, the long blades with which her arms ended skidding ever so slightly against the jade in-laid floor. Her nearest sister twitched, a many-faceted eye looking at her for just a moment.

“An enemy of the Empire of Man, of the Empire which rules over these lands at the sufferance of your godly Queen, has begun to make his way towards us. It is your duty, daughters of the great Mother-of-Many-Eggs, to turn this evil away.”

The man raised a hand, and magic suffices the air, making her antenna twitch as a spell formed into the image of a man. No, two men.

Her eyes refocused. A man and a very attractive woman in a strange white and black outfit? Both of their outfits were a little bizarre, but she had hardly spent that much time among the humans.

One of them was definitely dead already. An undead.

She had fought those before, of course.

“This one is named Godkiller. The Herald of the end times. The Archon of Forbidden Knowledge. The creature next to him is a companion of little import, but can be used to identify the enemy.”

The robed man took a deep breath, and then his head, and the hood encompassing it, slipped away and were both grabbed by her mother.

The Queen watched the robed body crash to the floor, and the spell he’d cast fizzle out. She crunched and chewed on the head, acids sizzling down her chins along with gobs of melting flesh. “Find Harold and kill him for me,” she said. “Else you will become a meal. Understood?”

She nodded. She understood, and as she had always done, she would serve her god and mother to the best of her ability. Or at least, she’d give it a try until she found the task too dull.

She did enjoy a good hunt though.

Perhaps it would be fun!

***

The End

(Of Volume One, you dolts)​