Faerie Apocalypse

by Franks, Jason;

  The Warrior Queen was unimpressed. “This was the poorest soldier in my army,” she said. “This one took pleasure in killing that was unbecoming of a warrior.”

  “What is becoming and what is not is purely a matter of taste,” said the mortal.

  The Warrior Queen spat. “You think this paragon of good taste can protect you from me?” she said. “Naked and unarmed?”

  “No,” he replied, “But she will be neither.” He looked into the forest and said: “Armourer.”

  The metalled, steel-threaded being that had once been the Queen of the Ore-lands came forth. The plating secured to her living flesh was now soot-blackened and dull. Her pierced and pale-skinned features were smudged and the teeth visible through her peeled-open cheeks were jagged and rusty. She did not smile.

  “Armourer,” the mortal said. “Gird my warrior for combat.”

  With deft hands the Armourer bound the scarred warrior in garments of black leather. With sure fingers she tied every truss, secured every strap, fastened every black-lacquered buckle, sealed every clasp.

  The Armourer drew a pair of shadowsteel swords from her own scabbards and spun them over to present them. When the scarred warrior drew the swords from the Armourer’s forge-calloused hands, the shadowsteel blades slid through her fingers as if they had been sheathed in velvet.

  When its work was done, the Armourer went to stand behind its master.

  The Warrior Queen laughed. “Is this how you think a warrior prepares for battle, pig-fucker?”

  “Perhaps that was overdramatic,” he replied, “But this is still Fairyland. For the time being.”

  Malo backed towards the tower. He threw down the faux-AK47 and let fall his gun-belt. Malo drew a sickle made from a sliver of blackglass and a twisted length of bone from behind him. He let it hang from his fingers, the knob of bone at the bottom of the haft loose in the palm of his hand. “This fight is yours,” he said.

  The Warrior Queen regarded him sternly. Then her expression softened. “Aye, you’ve the right of it,” she said. “If you behave yourself, you may yet dine on this pig-fucker’s bones.”

  Malo growled, but stayed his ground.

  The Warrior Queen fell into a fighting crouch. “Have you nothing to say for yourself, traitor?” she asked the scarred warrior.

  “No.” The scarred warrior raised her weapons and assumed an identical posture.

  “Then your blades must speak for you.”

  The warriors spun together and apart; the bell-tones of steel on steel sounding for longer than the two warriors were in motion. They gathered themselves and whirled together again.

  The scarred warrior was stronger and faster, and her weapons were of better quality that those wielded by the Warrior Queen. The Warrior Queen, however, was more skilled.

  After the third engagement, both combatants had been cut. The scarred warrior’s blood was as black as her skin and her garments. The Warrior Queen’s blood was red.

  After the fifth engagement, it was apparent that the Warrior Queen was growing stronger. The scarred warrior came away from their sixth engagement lacking most of her left ear.

  “Your lust for my death works against you,” said the Warrior Queen. “It makes you predictable. It makes you weak.”

  “If I’m so pitifully weak, why did you dispatch me on such an important mission?” asked the scarred warrior. “Why pit the likes of me against this terrible scourge of a mortal?”

  “I selected the three warriors I valued the least,” said the Warrior Queen. “Three fools, who could not be like the rest of my army.”

  “Why would you send us, if you knew we would fail?” said the scarred warrior.

  “I wanted to see what would happen to you,” replied the Warrior Queen. “I wanted to see if this pig-fucker could actually fight, or if his only weapons were luck and trickery and horror.”

  “Those, indeed, are his weapons,” said the scarred warrior. “I am all three of them.”

  “You’re a sow who has fallen for a pig-fucker,” said the Warrior Queen.

  Combat drew the warriors together again. When their motion halted, the scarred warrior bore a cut that ran from her left brow across her forehead and curved over her right temple. She tore away the flap of scalp, wiped away the strands of severed hair clinging to her brow, and reset her grip on her swords. Her skull glistened white where it lay bare. The Warrior Queen was just as fast and as strong as she was now.

  “You’ll die beneath my next stroke,” said the Warrior Queen. It was true. She now held every advantage, for she was yet the Queen of the Warriors, and such was her due.

  “No,” said the scarred warrior. “I don’t think so.”

  The Warrior Queen opened her mouth to speak, but instead of words, a shard of black glass emerged from between her teeth.

  Malo put his second hand on the haft of the sickle and tore the blade sideways from the Warrior Queen’s head. The glass blade sliced through her cheek, snapped off part of her jawbone, and then broke. The Warrior Queen fell dead at his feet.

  The scarred warrior went to Malo with her arms wide. He took her embrace, put his own arms around her; the broken end of his sickle coming to rest against the nape of her neck. She crossed the guards of her swords between his shoulder-blades. Malo touched her face where the skin and meat had been torn away. They kissed like carnivores, hungry and savage.

  The mortal looked away, embarrassed.

  The lovers paused to gaze into each other’s eyes, to lick the blood and darkness from each other’s teeth, and then they kissed again.

  The mortal turned once more to the forest. “Shadowphage,” he said.

  The Shadowphage unwound itself from the darkness; its pale skin coalescing before its black silk garments did. “Master.”

  The mortal looked down at the two corpses that lay sprawled upon the ground. “I have a meal for you,” he said.

  The shadowphage scowled. “I do not take carrion.”

  “You will this time.”

  The shadowphage paled until it glowed. “Must I, truly?”

  The mortal nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I would not have the Warrior Queen’s shadow free to roam, nor the—” The mortal paused.

  The black thing’s corpse had vanished. Not a shred of black leather or a splash of inky blood remained to show where it had lain.

  The mortal couldn’t help but smile. The black thing had already stolen its freedom. He felt oddly proud of it. He was sure that was not the last thing it would steal.

  “I would not have the Warrior Queen’s shadow free to roam,” he told the shadowphage.

  “Yes, master.” The shadowphage chose two small knives from those that hung at its belt and bent to its task without relish.

  The mortal turned back to the lovers and cleared his throat loudly. With obvious reluctance they broke their kiss and gave him their attention.

  “I thought you were going to stay out of it,” the mortal said to Malo.

  “If you had perished,” said Malo, “who would have opened the tower for me?”

  “No one.”

  Malo grunted. “Open it, then.”

  “I already have.”

  An opening had appeared at the base of the tower, where the roots met the trunk of the tree. While they watched, it grew to be a dozen feet high. There was movement inside: slick, fleshy tendrils coiled and writhed. Claws clacked, teeth ground and gnashed. The abominations that lived in the tower were massing at the now open portal; crowding together, wanting to see what was outside…and to welcome whoever was coming in.

  “They will come forth if you call them,” the mortal said. “They will make way if you ascend the tower. They are your father’s creatures and they recognize you as his flesh.”

  “I’m not his,” rasped Malo. “I’m my own.”

  “No,” sa
id the scarred warrior. “You are mine.”

  “And you belong to Malo,” the mortal told her. “And all the Realms of the Land belong to both of you, together.”

  “You’d give it away?” said the scarred warrior. “After all you have done to make it your own?”

  “I never wanted to own it; I just wanted to tear it down,” replied the mortal. “Rebuilding it will be your task.”

  “We’re not worthy of this,” said the scarred warrior.

  “I know,” the mortal replied. “But that’s why it must be yours. I couldn’t have won this without your bravery and skill at arms.” He turned to Malo. “And I could not even have attempted it without your power. Without the work of your father, and your response to it.”

  “I did nothing,” said Malo. It no longer seemed to matter what language they spoke, if ever it had.

  “You struck the final blow,” said the mortal. “But that’s not all. Your presence here eroded the…meaning…of this Faerie Land. Without that, I could never have quickened my own dreams here.”

  “I still do not understand why you would do this,” said the scarred warrior; the newly appointed Empress of the Shaedowlands. “Why indulge such effort? Why risk so much?”

  “Mortals have been dreaming this place for centuries,” he replied. “The same recycled stories, ever more bereft of meaning. Lovers, poets, madmen. Magicians. Far too many have squandered their dreams in these Realms.”

  Malo, the Emperor of the Shaedowlands, grunted in assent.

  “And so you took it upon yourself to ruin it.”

  “Not just me,” said the mortal. He turned to Malo. “I think your father the magus had a similar ambition. He wanted to change the story from something worn into something monstrous. But he failed.”

  “Such evil has been here as long as your kind have dreamed us,” said the scarred warrior. “The Land is well used to it. How did you succeed, where the magus failed?”

  “This Land cannot be reshaped by spellcraft,” said the mortal. “Only dreams can make the changes true.” He blushed, and laughed at himself. “A Disney moral for a Disney fairy-tale, I guess.”

  “To dream a world anew? That is the work of a god,” said the scarred warrior.

  The mortal shook his head. “Whatever I have become, I am something far more tawdry than that. I am an unmaker. It is not for me to rule here.”

  “Come,” said the Empress, turning to her Emperor. “Let us consummate our marriage in your father’s tower.”

  The Emperor of the Shaedowlands swept the Empress up in his arms and carried her to the threshold. He stood, looking into the darkness. Then he turned about and looked out at the half-lit Realms. The Land of green trees and blue waters and golden light, now limned in blacks and greys and purples. The mortal who had rendered it thus stood facing them in silhouette—though his embarrassment was plain enough.

  “It’s a beautiful world,” said Malo. “Won’t you stay a while longer?”

  “No,” replied the mortal. A pair of black wings had unfurled behind him, and now they began to beat. “It’s time for me to go, and dream of somewhere new.”