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tentacles rippling from its stomach were reduced to charred meat, writhing like headless vipers.
    ‘ Htarken… ’ it pleaded, but the feathered sorcerer did not appear.
    ‘So that is your name,’ the elf prince muttered.
    The daemon pulled away, its tattered wings beating furiously and spewing gouts of filth in its desperate attempt to escape. Slowly, Alkhor began to rise. Its body was still smouldering, shrinking as the dragon fire consumed it.
    Snorri swung and missed. He cursed the daemon’s cowardice, hurling vengeful insults as it fled.
    Malekith flew his dragon low and into the dwarf’s eye line.
    ‘Are you hurt, old friend?’
    Snorri looked rueful, but otherwise uninjured.
    ‘Only my pride. Killing that thing will salve it.’
    A feral smile turned the corners of Malekith’s mouth as he set his gaze on the fleeing daemon. Spurring his mount, he was about to pursue when he had to pull up sharply to avoid a burst of incandescent light exploding in front of him. Blinking back the after-flare, the elf saw a figure emerge from the sudden luminance. Clad in varicoloured robes, held aloft on feathered wings, Htarken barred Malekith’s path.
    The elf reacted as quick as thought but his thrown spear evaporated into mercury before it could impale the daemon. Its outstretched claw and swiftly spoken incantation was enough to destroy the weapon. Htarken returned its talon to the folds of its robes, yet made no motion to attack.
    All the while, Alkhor was escaping. Thinking quickly, Malekith turned to the lord of the eagle riders who had just arrived from on high.
    ‘Prince Aestar,’ he said, thrusting his sword in the plague daemon’s direction, ‘slay that thing!’
    Nodding grimly, Prince Aestar soared through the clouds after the daemon, his brothers close behind. Malekith was left to face Htarken.
    He would not be alone. A conclave of three Sapherian mage lords rose up beside the prince on pillared coruscations of gold.
    ‘You are finished, daemon.’ He gestured to the valley below where the hell-hosts were slowly dissipating, their mortal followers fleeing with the dissolution of their immortal allies. ‘Chaos has been defeated.’
    ‘ Has it? ’ Htarken spoke with a hundred different voices at once. Some were not even voices at all. They were the crackle of fire, the howling of the wind or the breaking of wood. They were cries of slaughter, pleas for mercy and the gibbering laughter of the insane. Birds, beasts, dwarfs and elves all collided in an unsettling union that put the prince’s teeth on edge.
    Malekith grimaced as the sound of Htarken’s ‘voice’ echoed in his mind. Like a cancer, it sought to take root and destroy him from within.
    ‘ Change, ’ said the daemon, with the prince reeling, ‘ is inevitable. Even with all your many gifts, the heritage of your bloodline, you cannot fight entropy. ’
    Malekith wondered why the mages had not yet banished this thing, and then he realised they were transfixed. Seized by a sudden palsy, they trembled as all the horrors of change were visited upon them. As the minds of the mages died, so too did the pillars of fire holding them up.
    Htarken had them now, bound to puppet strings. And they danced, they jerked and spasmed until they exploded into transmuted globs of flesh and flailing limbs. They were loremasters of the White Tower of Hoeth and the feathered sorcerer had vanquished them as if they were nothing more than apprentices.
    ‘ Fate is mine to manipulate, ’ said the daemon. ‘ I have seen yours, elf. Would you like to know it? ’
    Malekith was about to answer when a terrible pain seized his body. He convulsed, clutched at his skin.
    His dragon mewled in fear and confusion.
    ‘I am…’ Malekith tore off his helm, ripped at his gorget and cuirass, ‘on fire! Isha preserve me!’
    ‘ All endings are known to me. Every skein of destiny is mine to behold. I see past, present and future. Nothing is occluded. Your doom has c– ’
    Agony