by Tim Akers
“What?” Chesa asked. “What’s the matter?”
“Door’s hot. Very hot,” I said. She wrinkled her brow, then walked to the door. Chesa held a hand in front of the door, then hovered her palm just over the handle.
“No, there’s no heat radiating off it. Must be—” she touched the handle and screamed. “What the hell!”
“They must have quarantined us, somehow. They think this is our fault!” I said. I went to the door to my domain. Same result, same pain, same burning flesh. Between us, Chesa and I seared our skin on each of the doors, one at a time.
“Damn it all! What are they going to do when Matthew comes out? Or Tembo?”
“Other doors, I imagine. Especially if they think we’re compromised.” Chesa stood in front of the portal to her domain, tears streaming down her face. “They’ve cut us off.”
We were interrupted by the sound of ripping wood. I whirled to look at Matthew’s door, but the iron sun wasn’t moving.
“What was that?” I asked. Chesa was stock still. She snatched her bow from beside the hearth, and I grabbed my sword and shield, strapping in fast.
“Not sure. But it doesn’t sound good.”
The noise came again. I spun around to face the direction it had come from. At the end of the hall there were a handful of unused doors, without symbol or banner. The farthest one was riddled through with dark veins. I got closer, and realized they were blackened roots, spreading through the wood like cancer. As I watched, the roots twitched, forcing a splinter of wood from the door. A small pile of shattered planks lay at the foot of the portal.
“Esther!” I shouted. “There’s...we have...something’s happening!”
As though prompted by my voice, the roots thrashed about like a beached octopus. The door disintegrated, and a figure stepped through, stooped over like a crooked staff.
Eric Cavanaugh straightened his shoulders. He was taller, his beard fuller and more wild. Squirming roots trailed down his cheeks from bloodshot eyes, and his hair was woven through with thatch. He wore very traditional wizard robes and carried a staff of tangling vines. He looked around the room with glee.
“There you are, my darling,” he said, raising a hand. The dagger, recently embedded in Matthew’s chest and still sticky with his blood, flew across the room and landed in Eric’s palm with a meaty smack. “Like a hound to the hare, it has brought me here.”
His eyes finally focused on me and Chesa. He smiled. Dirt and blood lined his teeth.
“Hello, Johnny. Hello, Chesa. I’m afraid there’s been a change of plans.”
Chapter THIRTY-TWO
I PREFER THE TERM
TIME LORD
“What the hell, man?” I asked. “I thought we were friends!”
“I’ve found something better than friends, John. So much better.” Eric raised the gnarled head of his staff and pointed it in my direction. “I’ve found true power.”
A bolt of dark, sizzling energy shot out of the staff, narrowly missing my head and cracking into the table. Where the bolt struck, twisting roots grew out of nowhere, digging through the wood of the table like lightning. They expanded in the blink of an eye, tearing the table in half. The tendrils that survived the eruption quickly withered into dust.
“What do you think, John? How would you describe that?” Eric asked. “Whispering willows of fetid destruction, tearing the table into haphazard splinters?”
“I don’t—”
“Adjectives, John! Use some adjectives!” he snapped. “Or are you too good to be circumlocutory?”
“Now you’re just being an asshole,” Chesa said.
She had backed as close to the spellbound door as she could and was fumbling through her quiver for an arrow. I’d never seen her this unsettled, not since we had come to the unreal world. She pulled an arrow, but when she looked up to shoot, her eyes went wide.
“John, look out!” she yelled.
I turned back just in time to see Eric swing his staff at my head. I raised my shield, catching the head of the staff, which had transformed into a squirming ball of roots and sprouting branches. This new growth dragged across the steel face of the shield, catching and pulling, twisting my arm down. Off balance, I could do nothing when Eric stepped forward and punched me in the throat. I dropped onto my butt, gagging. Behind me, I heard the distinct clatter of arrows on stone, as Chesa dropped her quiver.
“Chesa, dear. We had a deal,” Eric said. “I’m disappointed in you. Running off with that elf, when I’m the one who brought you here.”
“You’re not...you’re not going to stop me,” Chesa said, but her voice was quiet. She was on her knees, scrabbling through the pick-up-sticks of her dropped arrows. Finally, she got one nocked and raised her bow. “You’re not going to take this from me.”
“That’s enough, girl,” Eric said dismissively. He swept his staff in her direction, and a net of roots flew across the room. They wrapped Chesa tightly around the waist, pinning her arms to her hips. She went down hard. He turned to me. “Women. Am I right?”
“You’re a lot of things, Eric,” I croaked. “Right isn’t one of them.”
He laughed, then kicked me in the face. All his fat had burned away into muscle. My head snapped back, and shadows spun through my vision. His voice reached me through the steady hum of my skull.
“This isn’t personal, John. For me at least. And I really like your new friends. They seem nice, especially the mage fellow. Pity he had to resist.” Eric stepped over me, kicking my sword away in the process. I made a half-hearted grab for the hilt just as it slipped out of reach. Eric shook his head. “You won’t need that again. We aren’t playing at knights and castles anymore. Typical of you, to get distracted by the pointless shiny trinkets, when there are so much better things right under your nose. There’s real power waiting to be tapped in the Imaginarium!”
“Imaginarium?” I whispered through my ruined lips. “What the hell is that?”
“This!” he said, spreading his arms. “A world of magic, and spells, and dragons! A whole world of incredible potential, all of it waiting to be bent to my will. The will of the world’s first Anachromancer!”
“You’re just making up words, aren’t you?” I gasped. “Gods, does this have something to do with your damned books?”
“You would know if you’d finished any of them, John,” Eric answered. “Oh, you said you did, but it was clear enough. No matter!” He swept his arms wide. “I will make real the tale of the Anachromancer! I will carve my name onto reality itself! The world will know OOF—”
I had kept him talking long enough to recover, and now launched myself off the ground and into his belly, shoulder-first. Eric folded like a sack of potatoes. I stood up, rubbing my neck and wincing.
“Look, I know I’m not one to judge, but you really do talk a lot,” I said. I limped over to my sword and snatched it up. Eric was rolling around on the ground, staring at me as he gasped for breath. I took the time to kick his weird rooty staff under the broken table. Then I bent and started sawing through Chesa’s bonds. She was staring at Eric with some combination of burning hatred and honest fear. “Now let’s stop screwing around. You and I have been friends for a long, long time. Friends tell each other the truth, and the truth is, you’ve really screwed up on this. People have died. Hell, I almost died. So whatever it is you think you’re doing here, you need to stop. I’m sure we can straighten things out with Esther. Okay?”
The last of Chesa’s bonds fell free. She stood up and retrieved her bow, then stood to the side. She wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“It’s going to be alright, Ches. You didn’t know what he was planning,” I said.
“That’s the problem,” she answered. “I should have. But I wanted this too much.” Finally, she lifted her face, giving me the barest glance before returning her stare to Eric’s crumpled form. “I was blind to what he was doing.”
“Well. We all make mistakes,” I said. “Gods know I have.”
“Shut up, John. This isn’t about you.”
After several moments of wheezing and huffing, Eric regained his breath. He closed his eyes and seemed to collapse a little on himself. I knew a beaten man when I saw it. I extended my hand.
“Come on. Let’s go talk to Esther. I’ll put a good word in for you.”
“You always did care too much about chivalry, Sir John,” he said.
Then he pulled a gun out of his robes and shot me in the chest. I barely registered Chesa’s scream through the deafening echo of the report.
Let me tell you, no one was more surprised by this than I was. I had a fraction of a second to stare down the barrel of the stubby little gun (an H&K MP5, some gamer-lizard part of my brain screamed) before there was a sound like fabric ripping and a series of heavy impacts in my chest. I spun away, flopping like a ragdoll to the ground. Chesa screamed and dove behind the ruined table. Sparks danced through the air as bullets ricocheted off the stone walls.
“Damn it feels good to be a magesta,” Eric sang to himself. I heard him snap the safety back on the MP5, then stroll over to his staff and pick it up, humming the whole time. I lay on the ground in shock. “Sorry about that, man. But sacrifices have to be made.” He walked over to where Chesa was curled up in front of the hearth, crying hysterically. “There, there, Ches. I’d never shoot you. Too sweet an end. But once I get to the actuator, you’re going to wish you were bleeding out with your ex. Night, night.”
There was the dull thump of wood against skull, and Chesa’s crying stopped.
The door opened, the door closed, and I was still lying on the ground. I’ve been shot, I thought. He shot me. With a gun! I can’t believe he shot me! That asshole!
But then...Why doesn’t this hurt more? Why doesn’t this hurt at all?
I craned my neck forward and looked down at my chest. There were a half-dozen nickel sized slugs laying peacefully on my breastplate. I sat up, and they slid down into my lap. They were hot to the touch, and deformed, as though they had struck something solid, but there was no mark on my armor. In retrospect, I realized the impact on my chest hadn’t been that hard, not even as bad as a paintball. It was just the shock and the fear of getting shot that had put me on my butt.
“That doesn’t seem normal,” I said. I put my finger in the dent in my breastplate. Esther had said that bullets couldn’t hurt the denizens of the unreal, but they could hurt the heroes of Knights Watch. That was the whole point of Mundane Actual, to protect the team from mundane threats. “Huh. Well. Maybe I’m just a monster or something. I dunno.”
Just then Chesa let out a dull groan, and I remembered she had been hurt. I slid over to her. She was lying on her back, with a knot the size of Kansas growing in the middle of her forehead. I brushed her hair out of her face and pulled her upright, leaning her against the hearth. She let out a little moan.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Like I have twelve headaches in one head,” she whispered. “What happened to Eric?”
“Near as I can tell, he’s written himself into the story as the villain. Are you going to be okay?” I squeezed her shoulders, and she didn’t immediately throw me to the ground, so that headache must have been pretty bad. “I need to go after him.”
“I’m fine. Just...” she winced in pain, and her voice grew quiet. “Just get him. Make sure he gets what’s coming to him.”
That terrible ripping sound came again, followed by screams of panic and pain. Eric’s little gun, and a lot of people who probably weren’t unexpectedly bulletproof. I grabbed my sword and my shield, then ran out the door.
This part of Mundane Actual was all stone walls and flickering torches, designed to keep the elites safely contained from modern technology while they were out of their domains. But in the distance, I could hear klaxons blaring and the sharp report of gunfire. I got turned around pretty quickly among the twisting corridors. Whenever I thought I was getting closer to the exit, I would find myself at a dead end, or suddenly hearing the gunfire come from the direction I had just come. I began to wonder if there was some kind of glamor on these corridors, meant to keep the elites from accidentally stumbling into the mundane section of the complex.
That’s when one of the janitors skittered out of the shadows. He was looking around nervously, the squirming mass of his hand pale with fear, as he crept to a door and started to work the handle. When he locked eyes with me, he yelped and started pulling desperately on the door.
“Jerry!” I snapped. He refused to answer, so I ran at him. “Jerry, what are you doing!” I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. His squamous fingers came off the handle reluctantly, suckers popping like bubble wrap. He wouldn’t meet my eye.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, sir, but these chambers are temporarily unavailable due to...the profuse...infestation...of gunfire?” One of his eyes rolled awkwardly in my direction, to see if I was buying it. Scanning the impatient look on my face, he tried a different tact. “I’m looking for a mop?”
“How do I get out of here, Jerry? I’m starting to think there’s some serious head-screwing going on around here.” A staccato exchange of gunfire cut me short. It was really close, maybe behind one of these doors. “Those people need me!”
“The red zone is for gunpowder only,” Jerry said stiffly. He sounded like he was reciting a training video which, considering the nature of this place, was completely possible. “Magical creatures are to stay clear of the red zone during exchanges of gunfire, rocket fire, or in the presence of armed hostiles bearing torches and pitchforks. This is for their own good.”
“Well, this is not a red zone situation, Jer. In fact...hey, drop that!” While he had been talking, Jerry had extended a sinuous tentacle from the collar of his shirt and was feeling around at the door behind him, trying to keep it out of my sight. I slapped the tentacle away, then pushed him into the middle of the corridor and put myself between him and the door. “This is not some simple assault by torch-bearing hostiles! This is serious business!”
“You clearly do not remember the Cajun Inquisition,” Jerry said. “That was some serious business. This is one guy with a dirty stick. And a gun.” A muffled thump traveled through the corridor, shaking dust from the ceiling and causing us both to flinch. “And a variety of explosives,” he added.
“That one guy is my buddy Eric, and he has a lot more than a dirty stick! Jerry, listen carefully. Eric has gone crazy. He’s convinced himself that he’s a mage or something, but he also apparently can shoot people, and it’s a really bad situation. Really bad! And I need to get out there and help, or a bunch of people are going to die.”
“Yes, that sounds important,” he said. “So Jerry will let you get on with that. Okay, I need to get going bye.”
“Jerry! You have to help me get to the gunfire!”
“Jerry is more of a skulk-in-the-shadows kind of guy. You should try it sometime. It is much safer and does not require getting shot or anything.” He motioned to the door. “If you would like to join Jerry in the shadows, you are more than welcome. I have crickets.”
“I don’t...want...crickets. I want to help my friends. But I can’t, because I can’t get out of this godsforsaken place! And if you don’t help me, I swear, I’m going to become the most dangerous thing you deal with today!”
“That feels unlikely. I mean, all you have is a sword, and your friend Eric has a gun. It just doesn’t seem like an even exchange.”
“How many swords does it take to cut you in two, Jerry?” I asked, pressing my blade against his belly.
Jerry’s gaze traveled down the length of my sword. He swallowed, a complicated motion that seemed to involve everything from his ribs to the top of his skull.
“My math comes out to one sword,” he said.
“And do I have the requisite number of swords?”
“Yes.”
“So are you going to help me?” I asked.
He seemed to think for a long
minute. Then his face changed, the sulky fear replaced by cheer. He smiled, spreading his lips like an oil slick to reveal damp, yellow teeth. His skin pulled tight against a skull that had too many bumps and not enough muscles. It was by far the most horrible thing I had seen in my time in the Knight Watch.
My God, he’s trying to smile!
“Stop doing that,” I said.
“Jerry will help!” he said cheerfully, but the stiff rictus of his smile distorted the words so badly it sounded like a threat. “Jerry knows the way!”
“Just...just show me the door. And then you can scamper back to whatever hell you call home.”
The janitor raised his arm and pointed to the opposite wall. His hand extended with a grotesque schlup, tentacles squirming through the air until they touched the stone wall. They touched a series of stones, rapidly tapping out some kind of code. The corridor rumbled, and a gap slid open in the wall.
“See, was that so difficul—” I heard a splat and turned around to see that Jerry had retreated through his door. The last bits of his extended hand slipped through the opening, sucked in like spaghetti. The door slammed shut. I sighed. “The janitorial staff around here really needs to work on its customer service.”
I turned back to the slowly widening gap in the opposite wall. It was very dramatic, almost like a bit of stage scenery, all flashing lights and rolling smoke. A carpet of mist washed out of the gap to flood the corridor. With a rumble, the walls came to a stop.
That’s when I realized that the smoke was actual smoke, and the flashing lights were a combination of strobe alarms and muzzle flashes, and not special effects at all. The stink of cordite explosives burned my eyes. I hesitated. Now that I was faced with the actual fight, it didn’t seem like the kind of place a guy with a sword should be charging into, even with plate mail and an apparently magical immunity to bullets. Maybe that only worked in the containment zone. Maybe I would step through that gap and get filled with lead before I knew it. Maybe...