Their world was ending, all the heroes were dead, the leaders confused, and their enemies were head and shoulders above them. But there was no one else; they were the dregs, the last worst hopes.
Nehring Ardgour has summoned Skoll and Hati from hell. They have torn through the proud and ancient country of Engevelen and the angelic Methueyn Knights that protect it. Armies have died, cities have fallen. None of the great remain. No brilliant inventors, no powerful knights, no master wizards.
No heroes.
But it gets worse. Farrah Harbinger has looked into the future and foretells the coming of an enemy worse than all the others, a creature of destruction and entropy like no other. A being who will grind all hopes and memory of civilization into dust: the One, True Devil.
Who can stop it? Who is left to even try?
Surely not Val, an arrogant young wizard who no one takes seriously, or Mick, an old man who can’t even remember his name. Certainly not Dav, who cannot seem to tell left from right or up from down, or Aveline, a squire filled with more questions than courage. No one would pick them to save the world, and yet there is no one else left.
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Q. There are three unique groups of transcendental beings in Last Worst Hope: the demons Skoll and Hati, Nimrheal, and the being known only as the One True Devil. Which of them is the worst?
A. These … beings … are very different from each other. Which is the worst might depend on perspective.
Q. Okay. We at least know they are the bad guys, the adversaries.
A. Yes, they are. Very bad indeed.
Q. Let’s break them down then, starting with Skoll and Hati. What are they?
A. Skoll and Hati are two beings that come from another universe. They were brought to the world of Dynamicist by Nehring Ardgour as part of his experiments to leave this reality. They appear as large men, have the power of speech, and are immensely powerful—far more so than most Methueyn Knights. Wizards describe seeing their connection to extradimensional power as a singularity in the empyreal sky.
Q. But for all that, they seem very simple.
A. They are. Skoll and Hati are beings of aggression, dominance, and hate. They have never been observed building or creating anything. As their armor is damaged, it is not repaired or replaced. They steal the weapons of the Methueyn Knights. They—literally—ram buildings.
Q. Do they have any distinguishing behaviors?
A. Both demons appear to hate wizards. They also seem to hate the holy orders of knights. In every case, Skoll and Hati seem to gravitate towards confronting the most powerful being in an area.
Q. What do they want?
A. They wish to dominate. Beyond that, they have never said. We can only go by what Skoll and Hati do and by the perceptions of the characters. Sir Aveline sums it up in her first close up observation of Skoll:
“Fuck. It makes Bro look like a child. The demon was enormous, but it looked like a huge, furious man. It was as if everything hostile, arrogant, malign, and unreasonable that could grow in a man was filled to bursting in this titanic figure. This was the wild drunk, the malicious bully, the wife beater, the evil bastard that waits in the dark alley, but exaggerated and made into something beyond pity or disgust. Ave could feel, with every step, its power. She felt it was ego, rage and selfishness made manifest. The demon was everything bad in man, looked like a man, but was something more and worse.”
Q. Let’s move on to Nimrheal. Describe him.
A. Nimrheal is an “It,” and is never well defined. Unlike the terrible solidity of Skoll and Hati, “Nimrheal boils into existence.” Here are a few passages describing Nimrheal:
“Rolling thunder shook the ground, raised a haze of dust and rattled teeth. Screams and howls erupted close behind. A roiling, boiling, disruption cut the air, a scream without words, a rage against reason.”
And:
“The dark, malformed cloud seethed ten yards away, pausing on the threshold of her end, evaluating her. A moment of stillness, and a long, clawed hand reached upwards once more to hell.”
Q. How else does Nimrheal differ from Skoll and Hati?
A. Skoll and Hati are immensely powerful, but are simple forces of hatred and destruction. They are also new to the world. Nimrheal, on the other hand, has always been there. As far back as history goes, Nimrheal has been around.
Q. What is Nimrheal’s goal?
A. No one knows what Nimrheal wants—only what it does.
Q. And that is?
A. It kills inventors. Or poets, writers, anyone sufficiently creative.
Q. What is most frightening about Nimrheal?
A. Nimrheal has never been successfully fought off without killing someone. When it comes, it is guaranteed that someone will die.
Q. This brings us to the third type of transcendental being: the One True Devil. What is that?
A. Farrah Harbinger describes it on several occasions, but she never says what it looks like:
“This new threat is one that we cannot fight as we currently are. It is an enemy that will turn all our might, and all our devices, to . . . nothing … an enemy we cannot hope to defeat, not as we are.”
Q. Does she compare the One True Devil to any of the others?
A. Yes. Apparently, it is the most powerful of the transcendental beings.
“This war has paved the way for the new demon I warned you about. It is of an infinitely more powerful nature, a being of inexorable entropy and inescapable fate: the one, true devil. Skoll and Hati may destroy our cities, but this new devil will transform our world into Hell.”
Q. So coming back to which is the worst … which is the worst of the demons?
A. Skoll and Hati are a physical enemy of the present. Nimrheal, in destroying inventions and creativity, is an enemy of the future. And the One True Devil appears to be an enemy of both the past and the future.
“What happens when we forget, when the one true devil treads through the dust of our living?”
“A far worse demon comes, a demon of entropy that waits for us at the end of Engevelen’s time.”
Q. So what is the One True Devil?
A. This is the central mystery of the story.
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The horn called a single note, which cut off almost before fully forming.
“Run!” shouted the major.
“Run!” shouted Havard.
The call echoed up and down the line, but to Mick it did not look like the soldiers were running fast at all. It almost never does, when you’re watching someone impatiently, and absolutely never does when they might die if they’re too slow. He wondered how he knew this.
The image of Sir Valence playing fetch with Fenris blazed like the sun in Mick’s eyes.
Last chances.
Mick did not shout “Run!” but suddenly, unaccountably, he found himself over the line with a pike in his hands, running toward the struggling rangers. He did not remember grabbing the pike or leaping over the wall. He did not remember if landing from the six-foot height had hurt his ancient knees. Mick did not remember his earlier self-doubt, never worried if he would get to the rangers in time, never speculated that he might not be needed, or if his effort was a fool’s errand, the futile histrionics of a mad, old fool from a house of fools, never wondered if he might do more harm than good or fretted that a wall of monsters might come out of the trees and dwarf any effort a hundred of him could muster. He never considered in any way the question of leaping the wall or not. There was no thought or speech involved at all.
He simply ran.
“Mick, get back here!” bellowed Havard. “For knight’s sake, stop!”
But Mick was gone.
The ground sped by quickly as the rangers grew closer and closer. Two huge, strange shapes broke out of the trees, aiming straight for the soldiers. He tightened his grip on the pike, lowered his head, and charged.
The rangers abruptly stopped and formed a semi-circle. One of them limped on as the rest rotated their spears and planted them, gleaming tips pointing up and back toward the trees. An instant later, the skolves hit them, hard, pushing recklessly into the rangers’ spears, swiping at them with their rusty swords. For a moment, the spears held them there, but could not turn them back. Mick could see the skolves shake from side to side, paws, swords and bodies trying to dislodge the spears from the rangers’ hands and get inside their arcuate line.
As Mick rushed toward the battle, one of the spears broke. The rightmost skolve lunged forward with a roar and was immediately hit on its horse-length head by an overhand sword stroke delivered by one of the rangers. The creature reeled back and fell.
Mick broke left for several long strides, then sharply right into the flank of the skolve still held at spear length. “Last chance!” he roared as he lunged and thrust his pike straight into the chest of the beast, taking it off its feet so suddenly that its sword flew out of its huge paw, tracing a spinning arc through the sky before disappearing into the grass. Ferociously, the old man twisted the bladed end of the pike, which had penetrated a foot-and-a-half into the creature’s chest cavity, and step-pulled it out. Dark red blood sloshed out of the ragged wound, but the beast was done. It could only collapse and curl weakly around itself.
The other skolve was struggling under spear thrusts from four of the rangers. With an incomprehensible roar, Mick leaped forward and rammed his spear into the skolve’s head, just missing its eye. It skittered along skull until it caught at the base of where its cheekbone would be. Mick pushed harder, forcing the skolve’s head roughly to the earth, and the haft broke, making him stumble forward with seven feet of wood in his hands. He stepped between the rangers, shifted his grip, and speared the skolve again in the snout with the broken end of the pike haft. It tried to scramble up but collapsed, bleeding from dozens of wounds, but the soldiers kept slashing at it. No one was certain when it would be safe to stop stabbing. Another ranger was rolling around on the ground, hands to his leg, blood seeping between fingers.
“Pick him up,” said one of the rangers at last, a man with a rough goatee.
Mick shouldered his way in, whipped off his belt, slapped the man’s hands away from his leg, and wrapped it tight twice around, just above a large gash oozing red. “I’ll take him,” he wheezed, picking the soldier up and slinging him over his shoulder.
“Run!” a female ranger screamed. “There’s more coming!” Her voice dropped. “All of them.”
Mick did not bother looking back, knew that there was no looking back once over the wall once the chance was taken. There were, however, consequences.
A vast, high-pitched wail passed overhead. A sheet of arrows. Mick knew the sound from somewhere in the distant past. A storm punctuated by the pounding of arrows as they struck their targets. Mick did not look back.
“Look out!” cried the man he was carrying, and an instant later something heavy struck the back of Mick’s leg. He stumbled and went down. The soldier flopped off his shoulders with a scream. “Ahhh. Fuck me,” the man groaned. “Why?” he cried piteously as he rolled weakly, one arm over his face.
Mick staggered back up, hopped, found that his legs still worked, saw nothing was sticking out of himself, shoveled the ranger back up into his arms, and started running again.
“Grandpa,” the ranger whispered. “Grandpa … don’t drop me again.”
Lee’s interests are eclectic. He is an Ironman Triathlete, hiker, traveler, and an enthusiastic sport rock climber. Lee also continues to work as a geophysicist on Carbon Capture and Sequestration projects, and is a writer for BIG-Media.ca.
The dream of understanding and being understood has never left his mind, and Lee continues that in his works of fiction through metaphor. His works include The Dynamicist Trilogy, Last Worst Hopes and Bed of Rose and Thorns.
Author Website: https://www.leehunt.org/
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Sounds like a seriously awesome book! Thanks for sharing & for the giveaway!