Melancholia laughed. Her laugh echoed. “You actually believe you can stop me? The two of you? I killed three hundred of the world’s most powerful sorcerers in the blink of an uncaring eye. What makes you think, even for a moment, that I won’t snuff out your weak, flickering flames just as quickly?”

“Because,” Skulduggery said, “to do that, you need a moment or two of concentration. And we don’t plan on giving you that.”

Melancholia laughed again. “You seem to know a lot about my powers, skeleton.”

“Well, I should. I was the Death Bringer before you were even born.”

“I’m not sure I get the joke.”

“No joke,” Skulduggery said. “I was Lord Vile.”

Valkyrie could see Craven’s frown from where she stood. “What are you talking about? We saw you and Vile in the same room!”

“That wasn’t Vile,” Valkyrie told them. “That was Vile’s armour.”

“I’m the real thing,” Skulduggery said. “So I know exactly what I’m talking about, Melancholia, because my powers were just like yours – except I came by mine naturally.”

“You’re lying.”

“You can reach out with your mind, can’t you? You can sense the life around you, and you can reach for it. It’s like a bubble that keeps expanding and then, when you release, the bubble withdraws and drags all that life back to you, leaving the bodies to fall behind.”

“It’s a death bubble,” Valkyrie said.

“Don’t call it that,” said Skulduggery.

She frowned at him. “Well, what do you call it?”

Skulduggery hesitated.

“See?” Valkyrie said. “Death bubble.”

“Shut up,” Melancholia said. She narrowed her red eyes at Skulduggery. “You were Vile? But you’re an Elemental.”

“As it turned out, I was what some people call magically ambidextrous. It’s rare. It’s exceedingly rare, in fact, and I didn’t even know it myself until after it happened. But during the war I got… lost. I was consumed by the endless battles and bloodshed, the terrible things I saw and the terrible things I did. I waded in blood and I emerged as… something different. Someone different. I put on the armour and found I had a real flair for Necromancy.