by Tim Akers
The shield whirred to life. Panels clattered out, circling me in a ring of steel, slicing through the thorny tendrils that scratched at my back. A dome of steel irised over my head, and pillars shot into the ground at my feet. Darkness enveloped me.
I was in a coffin-sized sanctuary. Panels of magical steel surrounded me, sealing me in place. Dim light glowed from runes across the interior of the shield. Dead vines lay at my feet, their edges cut clean by the shield as it enclosed me. I could hear brambles scratching on the surface outside, but I was completely protected. The webwork of leather straps hung from the interior of my shelter, leading to my hand.
“What...the...hell?” I whispered. “That’s a whole lot of shield.”
Sallygate in ten seconds, a voice intoned. The runes began to flash. Five seconds. Four. Three...
“Is there a pause button? No?” I braced and lifted my sword. “Okay then. Pull!”
The shield exploded. Panels flew straight out, blowing the growing bramble wall into bits. I was left with a tangle of straps dangling from my fingers that stretched into the darkness. I wrapped the straps around my fist and pulled. From the shadows flew the dozen panels of my shield, reeling back to my hand. The heater reformed against my knuckles.
“Okay, that’s a pretty cool trick,” I said. “Now...what happened to Eric?”
There was no sign of either Eric. A bundle of vines lay next to the altar, about the size of a dead human body. I ran to it, pushing it frantically aside, looking for my friend. There was a narrow cleft in the ground, slithering with snake-like roots, and a brief glimpse of Eric’s limp hand as he disappeared into the depths.
“Eric! Eric are you in there?” There was no answer from the ground. I looked around desperately and saw a shadow of dark robes disappear down one of the tunnels. He was getting away. I had to choose. Chase Dark Eric or try to save my friend.
I drove my sword into the ground, cutting roots and shoving them aside, always careful to not cut Eric, just in case he was nearby. Suddenly the root-floor gave way, and I was faced by a yawning gap. Without a second’s thought, I pulled my shield tight to my body and jumped.
I had a little time to regret that jump. The walls of the cleft closed on me, and the roots tried to work their way into my armor. It was a little like being swallowed by a...throat full of snakes? The metaphor collapses. The point is, it was unpleasant.
I fell for a long time. I kept my sword and shield pressed close to my chest. Last thing I wanted to do at the end of this fall was lose my weapons.
The tunnel ended abruptly, dumping me out into a much smaller room. The walls were close and constantly moving, roots swarming over thicker branches, appearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye. I shook off the squirming streamers of roots that had pulled free during my passage and looked up. The cleft sealed shut.
The only light here was coming from the tunnel in front of me. It was the steady glow of electric lighting, not the flicker of torches or even the purplish fuzz of the mushrooms earlier. No, these were light bulbs. I walked down the tunnel. The ground under my feet slowly turned from wood to stone, and then to carpet. I stepped into Eric’s room.
It was a simple space, austere not out of some spartan design sense, but because Eric never bothered to decorate. I had been here dozens of times, to play D&D, or video games, for sleepovers and late-night bitch sessions. This place was a combination of his childhood room and the place I had last seen two weeks ago. The toys he had long ago packed away so we would stop making fun of him were arranged along the wall. The only difference was that the window looked out onto a wall of roots, and there was no door.
There were two of him again. The one I had seen slip away into the cleft was limping, a trickle of blood running down his leg. He was muttering to himself. The other Eric, the real Eric, lay on his bed. There was no need to bind him. He was long dead. The roots running from his open chest reached to the walls and were stained rust-red from drinking his life. His eyes were open, staring dully at the ceiling.
“Goddamn it,” I muttered. Other Eric, as false as his magic, whirled around. When he saw me, he smiled. “How many of you are there?”
“I was really hoping you’d go chasing after my golem. But I thought you might figure out that it was just a trick. For the best, honestly. He is nearly tapped. And as you can see, I’ve gotten everything out of my progenitor that I can.” He turned to face me, and that wicked staff materialized out of thin air. “But you’re about ripe.”
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“At the faire. My Fetch did his job. I swear, when you broke him out of my little circle in the mall, I thought the gig was up. Which reminds me.” He gave a short bow. “I have to thank you for bringing him back. He might still be alive, but for you.”
“Goddamn it!” I howled, and threw myself at Dark Eric, or whatever he was. I had been so close, so close. I had almost saved him. Part of me expected to journey down that cleft to find the real Eric waiting to be saved. But not this. Never this.
Dark Eric’s staff was a whirling spiral of roots, a cloud of blocking, grasping, entangling tendrils. I slashed through them, lopping off woody limbs, striking with all my fury and my grief. Eric fell back, the staff growing shorter and shorter, but he didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t even seem to care.
“You can’t bring him back, no matter how hard you fight, John. Why destroy what little there is that remains?”
“Because you killed him! And you’re not him!” Hack. Crash. The sound of breaking furniture as I pushed the monster against Eric’s desk. “You’re just some cheap copy!”
“Oh, but I am.” He diligently blocked my next attack, and then drew more rooty staff out of thin air. I got the feeling he was just trying to buy time, but I didn’t care. I was too consumed by anger and the sorrow over poor, dead Eric. “How else would I know about Chesa? And what you wore under your graduation robes? And why you really missed PE in September of your junior year?”
“I don’t know how this shit works, freak, and I don’t really care,” I said. Tears were streaming down my face. “You’re not him. You can’t be.”
“I’m better than him. I’m what he dreamed of being. And he was close enough to the unreal that those dreams took on a life of their own. My life.” He raised the staff in both hands to meet a heavy downward chop from my blade, a strike strong enough to cut through the wood and nick the tip of his nose. He stumbled back, angry. “Okay, enough of this nonsense. What’s dead is dead. I need blood to live. Yours, his, it doesn’t matter.”
Throwing down the staff, he raised both hands and gave me the most horrific smile.
“Besides, wasn’t it about time you started putting down some roots?”
His fingers burst open, and branches came out of his flesh. They shot across the room so fast I could barely see them move. I still got my shield up, but even with its magic I couldn’t hope to block them all. They crawled over the rim of the shield and lapped around, spiraling up my arms until they reached my chest. Every hack of my sword severed a dozen vines, but for every one I cut, three more grew back. I screamed, but several creepers wrapped around my head, cutting off my voice. They started to peel my armor away. Several of them reached my skin, and started burrowing in.
Footsteps scratched against the floor behind me. Eric’s eyes glanced up, and his face fell.
“You’ve got to stop running away like this,” Matthew said. He stepped into the room and raised one hand, then snatched off his glove. “Lights, people!”
The room lit up like heaven itself. Dark Eric hissed and cowered away. The roots choking the life out of me went limp, and I started tearing them away in big handfuls. Bethany wasn’t far behind. She jumped into the tiny room like a rocket, phasing in and out of reality as she danced over Eric’s dead body, barely touching the bed before she landed behind Dark Eric. He whirled to face her, but she was already drawing blood. When he tried to punch her, she was gone. When he turned again, there w
ere already blades in his back. Even in the tight confines of this nightmare version of Eric’s bedroom, Bethany moved like smoke and struck like lightning.
Tembo appeared next. He burned bright, throwing darts of flame that crawled down the length of Dark Eric’s rooty limbs, sizzling when they reached flesh. The monster howled, stumbling until his back was against the far wall.
“Enough of this!” Dark Eric screamed. “Time to prune the old growth!”
The room creaked and groaned. The walls splintered, cracks forming down their length, until roots started to peek through. The phantom of Eric’s old room crumbled around us, revealing a squirming wall of living wood. The tree clenched tight, closing the tunnel behind us. Eric watched with glee in his eyes.
“You will feed us, one way or another!” he shouted. “There’s no escape!”
“For either of us,” I said. Then I stepped forward. Roots dragged on my shield and ankles, trying to hold me in place, but I cut my way forward. Eric’s body slumped off the bed, to catch in the grinding roots of the tree. I didn’t let that distract me. “This is how I know you aren’t Eric. He was a nice guy. And you’re just a son of a bitch!”
I swept my sword across the bed, slicing through the roots that led to Eric’s chest. Blood spurting from the severed tips.
“No!” Dark Eric howled, throwing himself forward. He gathered up the bundle of severed roots and pressed them back against the wound, whimpering as blood leaked slowly onto Eric’s teddy bear comforter. “You don’t know what you’ve done! You’ve killed him!”
“I’ve killed you both,” I said. I battered Dark Eric aside with the face of my shield, then drove my sword into Eric’s heart. Real Eric, my friend Eric, the root of all this trouble. And the only person in this room I could still save. Dark Eric, staring in horror, stumbled away from the bed, backing away until he reached the slithering wall of vines.
The roots crawling out of Eric’s chest turned black, then turned to ash. The withering hurried across vines that stretched across the bed, hitting the walls like a blight. Soon the whole room was turning to dust. The walls groaned as they collapsed. Eric’s bed tipped back, disappearing into a rising cloud of disintegrating ash. I looked up at Dark Eric.
“I don’t know which one you are, or if you were ever really my friend,” I said. “But this is over.”
“Nothing’s ever over,” Dark Eric said. “Not in the Imaginarium! Not for an Anachromancer! I’ll find you, John Rast. I’ll find y—”
The wall behind Dark Eric blistered and grew, suddenly enveloping Dark Eric’s twisted face. His scream of horror was cut off by the sound of creaking wood and breaking bones. The fissure closed, leaking dark sap.
Bethany appeared at my side, one dagger pointed toward the bleeding tear in the wall, her other hand free. She looked at the body on the bed, grimaced, then turned to me.
“We have to get out of here,” she said. She grabbed my arm and pulled me away. I snatched my arm back, but then she got frantic. “Seriously, there’s nothing here. He’s gone.”
“I can’t leave him here like this,” I said. “Not if there’s a chance.”
“There’s always a chance, or a prayer. Sometimes both,” Matthew said. He shoved through the collapsing room and put both hands on Eric’s chest, then took a deep breath. “This is going to be hairy. Hang on.”
Apparently, he meant that literally, because the next thing I knew, Bethany and Tembo had linked arms around me and pressed all three of us against Matthew’s back. Light burst all around us. As the tree collapsed around us, splinters of wood and root crashed down on our heads, roots pierced our skin. But through it all, wave after wave of light washed over us. Every time a shaft of wood punched into my arm, or knocked me in the head, there was a flash of brilliance, and the pain was gone.
Matthew huddled at the center of our tiny world, screaming and burning bright, healing through it all. Soon he stopped bothering with the little injuries. A limb collapsed on my skull, and I was sure I felt bones crack and brain compress, but just as suddenly I was fine. A barb of wood punched through my lungs and pierced my heart. The pain shot through me like a lightning bolt, but the bright thunder that followed wiped the wound away, though I could still feel it. Thorns tore at my arms, but each time they reached the bone, Matthew sent out a wave of healing that started the process over from the beginning. I died over and over again, the memory of pain lingering, though my flesh was repaired. It was torture. It was madness.
Tembo lent his strength, sending out glowing purple domes that turned aside the worst of the rubble. I threw my shield over our heads and focused what little magic I had absorbed into keeping us safe. It’s the least a warden could do. Literally the least. I’m pretty sure I did nothing. But I tried.
At the end of it, the dust settled. We were on a field of grass. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and a castle shone in the distance. Warily, I raised my head and looked around. Broken trees lay all around us, the remnants of a forest that had gone mad. But there was something familiar about the castle.
“This is Clarence’s domain,” I said.
“It is,” Tembo answered. “Which means the old swordmaster must still be safe. That monster must have snuck in somehow, while you and Chesa were here to train.”
“Should we try to find him?” I asked.
“Not now. We’ll come back, when we’re recharged. No telling how Kyle will react to visitors. But the domain looks intact,” Tembo said. “Which means our way out is over there.”
“Then let’s get to it,” Bethany said. She helped Matthew up. The saint was barely able to stand. We hung him between us.
“What about Eric?” I asked.
“What about me?” Eric asked. His eyes fluttered open, and he sat up. He looked around curiously. “Man, the ren faire went all out on this set. Or is that just a big painting? It’s so hard to tell.” He blinked and looked at me. “Oh, hey, John. How you doing?”
“Good man,” I said, trying not to cry. “How are you?”
“Hung over. Tired. Pretty sure I missed all the good stuff. So, the usual.” He smacked his lips and smiled. “Hey, what was that about a dragon?”
“Long story. And you wouldn’t believe it anyway,” I said. “Come on. We need to get back to the faire.”
EPILOGUE
MAKE-BELIEVE HOMECOMING
We met in the ruins of my childhood home. My parents moved; too many changes, too much trouble to rebuild. And now that I was taking that big job in the city (I had to tell them something, right?) there was no reason for them to stay here. So they moved south. Somewhere with a beach and the occasional hurricane, you know, for variety. What remained of the property fell into my hands. And from there, it fell into ruin, and the unreal.
Esther taught me how to fold bits of the real world into my domain. To folks walking past, the old property was still there, an empty lot looking creepier and more abandoned by the day. But for me it was a portal into my domain. And today, it was the perfect site for a backyard grill-out.
“I’m still not clear what happened,” Eric said. He sat on a cooler by the grill, chatting with Chesa and trying to figure out the rest of the team. “You say you killed me, but I don’t feel dead.”
“Thank the saint,” I said, nodding to Matthew. He and the rest of the team were gathered under the old oak tree, the only thing still standing in my front yard. Clarence was with them, looking feeble. He had come out of his domain a week or two after the Eric incident, completely mortal once again. He was still wearing his medieval finery, but there was no sword at his belt. “Apparently something about the doppelganger’s magic kept you from really dying. Just the magic part of you.”
“Hm,” Eric said, as if I had just told a really fascinating story about a flat tire. “Well, I don’t know. I guess I never will.”
“What do you remember?” Chesa asked.
“The faire. Some fire. Figured I’d wake up in a hospital.” He looked around the vague
ly magical grounds of my property. There was something about the Unreal in everything you could see. The sun shone brighter, the grass glimmered, even the smoke from the grill was somehow infused with mystical power. He shrugged. “I guess this could be one of those waking dreams. The beer is certainly dream-level quality.”
That’s how it was with Eric now. He didn’t ask about the scars on his chest, or the dreams of a tree and a dragon. Bethany, Clarence, Matthew, Tembo, and Esther kept their distance from him. It’s hard to go back to treating someone like an innocent when their power-mad alter-ego breaks into your home and guns down a bunch of your friends. I couldn’t blame them.
It was different for me. Eric would always be Eric. Even after I killed him. It was hard to believe he had survived that.
The biggest change in the guy for me was the stories. I didn’t hear anything more about his books. I kind of missed all those adjectives.
“So what now?” Eric asked. “You and Chesa are heroes or something?”
“Something,” I said. “We’re still getting a feel for it ourselves.”
“Speaking of which, I need to get back to my domain. I think we all do,” Chesa said.
“One more burger,” I said. “It’ll be quick.”
“You need to stop treating this like a game, Rast,” Esther answered. She had strolled over from the main team. “The Unreal doesn’t exist for sunny summer afternoons.”
“Then why does it exist at all?”
“Myths exist because people need them,” Esther said. “And Knight Watch exists to keep the myths in their place. It’s not so you can have the perfect backyard barbecue.”
I flipped a burger. It spun in the air and landed perfectly on the grill, hissing as it hit the grate. I smiled.