by Mike Truk
“But… how?” Mithasa’s poise was completely shattered. “This isn’t possible. Nobody can restore rock. She should be -”
I put my king troll power into my words. “Mithasa. Bring her back. Now.”
The medusa nodded mutely and smoothed her palms down her thighs. Then her eyes changed. I felt that hot fire wash over me again, even as I looked away.
Yashara’s stone form began to soften. Great patches of stone grew dark, expanding to reveal the black of her armor, the dark green of her skin. Her whole frame began to tremble, then with a terrifying roar, she came fully alive, lunging forward to swing at a foe who was long gone.
Yashara’s reflexes were peerless. She caught herself, stopping her charge with savage control, then turned to stare at us with wide, confused eyes.
Eyes which immediately began to change.
Her pupils became vertical, like those of a cat; the architecture of her face began to warp, bone horns pushing through the ridges of her brow.
“Seraphina!” I bellowed. “Now!”
The young acolyte of the Hanged God pushed her way to the fore, holding up her cube. “The Hanged God sees you,” she said, voice shaking. “And steps between you and your demon. Feel the weight of his regard. And if at this moment you wish freedom from your captor, step free of your bondage and resume control of your fate.”
Yashara froze, her expression curdling with fury - fury, I realized, that stemmed from her complete incomprehension as to what was happening to her.
I stepped forwards, hands spread out wide. “Yashara? You’re all right. We just healed you. Cast the demon out. It’s done its part. You don’t need it anymore. Get rid of it.”
Her features twisted into a feral snarl, and I realized that it was the demon within her fighting to hold on, resisting any attempt on her part to banish it from her body.
Eddwick had reacted instantly. His demon had been expelled in the moment. Why wasn’t Yashara’s doing the same?
“You don’t need it,” I said. “We don’t need it. Don’t listen to its lies.”
The beautiful half-orc flexed her hands, muscles rippling across the back of her forearms. She stared at me with alien, cat-slit eyes.
“Yashara?” I raised my tone in warning. “Cast it out. Now!”
“It says…” Yashara’s voice was a rasp. “It says I’ll die if I do. I’ll fall apart. What is it talking about?”
Shit.
Tamara stepped forward, raising a hand which immediately burned with white fire, and stared carefully at Yashara. “Your matrix is shattered. It’s being held together by the demon. I fear it speaks the truth.”
Her words were like a hammer blow to my heart. I’d thought - but surely -
“Hold on,” said Tamara, reaching up carefully, slowly, to touch Yashara’s shoulder. “We can fix this. I can fix this. Be patient. Control the demon.”
Yashara’s lips writhed back from her enlarged fangs. “It wants blood. It wants destruction.”
Tamara shot me a fearful glance. “Kellik?”
“Sleep,” I said, counting on Seraphina’s influence to still make Yashara susceptible to my command. “Sleep, Yashara. You’re safe. Rest now.”
Yashara’s eyelids grew heavy, her shoulders slumped, and she sagged forward, falling into Pony’s arms.
Only Pony could have caught all seven feet of her toned, muscled form.
“Take her to my bedroom,” I said. “Yashara? Can you heal her matrix?”
“I don’t know,” she said soberly. “But I’m going to try.”
“Mithasa, return to your chamber, do no harm to anyone, and await further commands,” I said, putting my power into my words. The medusa grimaced, revealing her slender fangs, and turned to leave.
“But know that you have my thanks,” I said. “As soon as Yashara is healed, you’ll be free to go with my blessings.”
Mithasa paused, eyed me consideringly over her shoulder, then left the room.
“Fuck,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “All right, Pony. Lead on. Tamara?”
I followed them out the door, down the hall, and to my bedroom, where the troll laid out the warrior queen gently upon the covers.
Cerys ordered everyone out, closing the door behind her after she left. I sat in the corner and watched as Tamara lit a candleflame, sat by the bed, and began to whisper her prayers. The flame of the candle extended toward her palm, following it across Yashara’s still body.
I wanted to ask why she was doing it this way, a manner she’d not used since becoming an Exemplar, but bit my tongue. I watched, daring to hope, stomach tied up in knots, alternating between marveling at my success in bringing Yashara back, and fighting despair over the fate I might have consigned her to.
I couldn’t bear to think what Yashara might be like if she were forced to keep the demon, could recall only too well how this entity had warped Eddwick past recognition. And with so powerful a spirit and body as Yashara’s to mold?
I shuddered to imagine.
So instead I quieted my thoughts, and remained still, observing, praying, as Tamara worked to save Yashara’s soul.
***
I managed to last two hours before my despair drove me forth. My thoughts were tormenting me, crowding in from all sides. Unable to pace, not wanting to distract Tamara, I excused myself, slipped into the hallway, and found myself hurrying outside, down the driveway, and into the street.
My thoughts were chaotic, fragmented. Had I consigned Yashara to a fate worse than death? How would I defeat Aurora and protect the city? Would I ever see Iris again? And what was I, that I should have changed in such manner, become a monster in the flesh as well as in spirit, three yards tall and capable of crushing demons with my own hands?
Halfway down the avenue I felt my panic beginning to take over me. With a cry I leaped, clasped a support strut under a balcony, and hauled myself up. Leaped again, gained the roof, and set off at a run.
Self-loathing, terror, anger, and despair assailed me. The people of Port Gloom loathed my attempts to help them. I’d even failed in that regard. It was all too easy to reach down into my core and find that roiling mass of dark power, that nucleus of rage and strength.
I embraced it, not knowing how or what I did, and found myself growing, surging faster, my legs longer.
Once more I slipped into my king troll form, and with a roar I leaped at the edge of the roof and flew out over the street, to land halfway up the face of the building across the street. Claws dug deep into the stone, and with terrible speed I flew up the wall, lurched up onto a balcony, leaped, and clambered roughly onto the roof, dislodging tiles as I went.
Shouts from below.
With a wordless cry, I ran forth, clambering over the roof, leaping over alleyways and gaps. Running, seeking to escape myself, seeking to leave my bloodlusts behind. Leave the kneeling crowds, the subjugated masses, and my own dark satisfaction in the sight.
The rooftops became a blur. My new form could leap six, eight, ten yards without difficulty. Each time I landed I cratered amongst the rooftiles, revealing the rafters below, with my leg sometimes punching right through into the attics below.
But I felt nothing. No pain, no exhaustion, nothing but an ever-burning drive to keep moving.
Far sooner than I’d expected, I reached the northern bank of the Snake Head and the line of warehouses that beetled up against the ports. A decaying strip of mercantile interests and moldering buildings. A final jump over the Riverwalk itself, a soaring ten yards, brought me crashing down atop a warehouse, where I lurched forward, out of view from the street below.
And there I surprised a gathering, a dozen ragged individuals who stood in a loose knot, engaged in some manner of transaction; cases set to one side, guards with their hands on their weapons, the principals standing face to face and in the midst of negotiating.
As one they turned to stare at me in shock and horror, and then the nature of my form washed over them.
They fell to their knees, unable to resist my majesty, the purity of my being. Down they went, guards and principals, till I stood over their bowing forms and found myself hating their weakness.
Hating that nobody could stand up to me. Not the demons, not Eddwick, not my companions, not the common man, not even Pony, a war troll.
And staring at those bowing forms, their brows pressed to the moldering warehouse rooftop, I felt a vertiginous sense of solitude. I realized for the first time just how absolute power could set you apart from the world.
I stood on one side of the line, and across from me, the world. I could love them, hate them, kill them, break them, mold them - but never need fear them.
I recalled my father’s mocking contempt as I’d tried to hew his head from his shoulders. How he’d not felt a flicker of fear, how his neck had healed right behind the passage of my blade.
I was all alone. I could reach out my hand and grasp the soul of the city if I desired it - but then what? Better the lot of the common man, or ruin it? What did it matter? In time everyone would die. And then again. Generation after generation. Their own lives infinitely precious to themselves, but meaningless in the big scheme of things. An endless line of scheming thieves, scheming nobles, greedy councilors, stout housewives, opportunistic youths, despairing maidens, brazen guards, canny merchants - each stepping into the boots of their forebears while somehow still thinking themselves unique, thinking themselves special.
I stared down at the bent backs. The way the humans trembled. Their fear was palpable, their confusion.
Would it mean anything if I killed them? One by one? Threw their bodies into the Snake Head? Somebody would grieve for them, but in time that grief would be eroded away by new concerns.
I flexed my claws.
One of the guards raised their head and sat back on their heels.
I reeled back as if harpooned.
The guard was Iris. She wore his studded leather armor, bore his blade buckled at her hip, reached up to remove the conical helm he’d worn upon his head to shake free her black hair.
Iris.
Had she been there when I’d arrived?
No. I’d seen a dozen ragged men, made hard by life on Port Gloom’s streets, intent on each other, on the negotiations.
Iris hadn’t been here.
But now she regarded me with a fond, enigmatic smile, slight and utterly self-possessed, without fear of my king troll form, resisting the overwhelming urge that caused everyone else to bow.
“Kellik,” she said, and tilted her head to one side. “Hello.”
“Iris?” My voice was strange in my ears, more rasp than anything else, monstrous and echoing with power. The sound of it caused everyone else to flinch. “Where… how?”
Her smile grew regretful. “It’s complicated.”
My heart expanded in my chest, then, as if suddenly released from stasis, began to pound, pound madly within my chest. Tears filled my eyes, and I wanted to move to her, to gather her into my arms.
But perhaps I was going mad? Perhaps this was an illusion, a vision borne from desperation?
“Go,” I snarled at the others. “Leave this place and never return.”
The remaining humans leaped to their feet and ran from the rooftop, pushing and shoving as they reached a doorway set into a shack erected upon the warehouse’s flat roof. For a frenetic few seconds, they tore at each other like beasts, then boiled through into the darkness and clattered down the steps beyond to disappear.
Iris remained still, watching me, hands on her lap.
Stunned, I staggered up and crashed to my knees before her. Drank in the sight of her heart-shaped face, her rare beauty.
“Iris,” I breathed.
“Hello, Kellik.” And she reached out to trace the contours of my king troll face, her expression showing nothing less than love, fondness, affection.
Caring despite the cruel horns she touched, the distorted features.
The bloodlust faded away. The hatred and fury. The desire to crush the city under my heel, the indifference to its people. It melted away like ice set before the sun, and then with a sob, overcome by my own emotions, by the horror I felt for my own fate, I bowed down and pressed my face to her lap, and there let loose the sobs that had been building within me for far longer than I knew.
I felt her hands on my shoulders, how she bent over me and held me tight. I wept, terrified, feeling as if I stood on the edge of a precipice. The wind whipping about me, ready to pluck me from my perch and send me spiraling down into oblivion.
Oblivion marked by solitude, indifference, blood, and tyranny.
When I finally sat back on my knees, I realized I’d changed back to my human form. Felt puny, slender, weak. My limbs pale and without the true strength that lurked in my heart.
I wiped at the tears that stained my cheeks, and searched Iris’s face. “Are you coming back to me?”
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
“But you will?”
“I might.” She sounded apologetic.
“Where are you staying? Can I come to visit you?”
“Only if you die,” she said, “and then we’d cross paths for the briefest second. I’m staying…” And she frowned, gazing out over the city. “Everywhere.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. I died, Kellik. A true death. But the Hanged God failed to snare me in his net. I slipped free, as I knew I would. And now I swim amongst the constellations that are the souls of this city. Each life a star, each star a home. The pattern of my soul impresses itself upon the living, and I ride within them for a spell.”
I tried to understand. “You… you’re impressing your matrix upon… random strangers?”
Her smile was fond, and she reached up to touch my cheek. “Hundreds at a time, Kellik. Sometimes I expand to thousands, but then I grow dangerously thin. Now, I am squeezed to just one, and thus can manifest like this. But when I relax, I shall, like the tide, roll back out, and diffuse amongst the many.”
I knelt there in silence, trying to wrap my mind around this revelation. “Are you immortal?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I sense that I possess a finite energy now. That if I use it up, I will disappear. Burn away into nothingness. Magic, I believe, would consume that remaining energy rapidly. Even manifesting like this causes me to burn. But where would I go when my energy is all gone? I don’t know. So I hold on, not yet ready to relinquish my sense of self.” Her smile was bitter, sad. “My thoughts of you keep me together. My fear that I’ll lose you if I go too far. So I watch you, wait, and see what comes.”
“Don’t leave me,” I said, reaching out to take her hand. “I need you, Iris. I’m becoming something I don’t understand. My old sense of self, Kellik, is burning away before my true nature. The king troll in me. I fear I’ll become my father. I don’t want to be alone.”
“We’re all alone,” said Iris gently. “Yet at the same time, we are part of greater constellations. I see it now, and it is so beautiful, Kellik. The night sky is nothing compared to the vast stellar oceans that are souls in flux. The desire to merge your essence with another is futile. It cannot be done. We are doomed to burn alone until the Hanged God collects us in his net. But though we burn alone, we are part of a greater pattern, and it is that pattern that gives me comfort, a sense of place, of order, of being part of something greater.”
“And you and me?”
“We are a constellation composed of two stars.” She inched closer to me. “Nobody burns like you do, Kellik. Not the Exemplars, not the mages, not the demon-bound. In all the heavens, you are the brightest star, and it is by your light that I navigate this underworld.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t feel comforted. I wanted to crush her body to my own, to meld her spirit with mine in just the way she said was impossible. The best I could do was take her hands, interlace her fingers, and lean forward so my brow pressed against hers.
We remained thus for a spell, breathing together, and I sought to drink her in, to impress this moment upon my spirit as she did with her matrix, and thus never forget it.
“What should I do?” I asked at last.
“Whatever you wish,” she replied.
“But should I help people or not? Should I struggle to make the world a better place, or just indulge myself as my father did?”
“It doesn’t matter. The only thing of importance is that you be true to yourself.”
“I don’t know who I am.”
“That is what you must discover. Remember? That night in the basement? I wanted you to choke me?” She took my hand and placed it about her neck, and for a second I thought she wanted to fuck, for me to abuse her right here, right now.
But no.
Her smile was tinged by sadness, not desire. “I told you that the only imperative was for you to be true to yourself. There is no morality, Kellik. There is only the exercise of the will, and the strength to be yourself. If you wish to be a tyrant, then be one. If you wish to raise the weak and defenseless, then do so. They are both the same. Just be honest with yourself. It is only through honesty that you can make your life worth living.”
I stared at her perfect face, her guileless eyes, her bow of a mouth. My hand about her narrow neck. How easy it would be to squeeze. But did I want to?
“I don’t know what I want,” I whispered. “I thought I did. But I’ve changed so much. I’ve won. My father is gone, the Family destroyed. But all I seem to have done is create new problems.” I hesitated. “Iris. The hereshen that the Paruko hunted you for. She’s coming for Port Gloom. She’s leading an army of ten thousand. She’s Aurora, the White Sun Exemplar we killed in Port Lusander.”
Iris stilled, and her eyes went wide with emotion. “She is? That’s wonderful! I knew something special had occurred to her after I was done. Remember? Cerys stopped me from learning more, but -”
“It’s not wonderful,” I said harshly. “She’s leading ten thousand soldiers to destroy our city. How do I stop her, Iris?”
“I don’t know.” She said the words simply. “I’d have to study her. Recall that my experiment upon her corpse was powered by Netherys’s magic, her bond with her dark goddess. That corruption may have come through in some manner. I superimposed Aurora’s matrix over that of Pony and Tamara to heal them, and flooded it with dark power. Her connection to the White Sun mingled with the power of Mother Magrathaar. What the result has become I cannot guess, but I would very much like to find out.”