by Drew Hayes
The crack that appeared along Ivan’s glass was telling—largely because Tori knew how much emphasis he put on self-control. For him to slip already didn’t signal she was in for a cheerful story.
Making his way back to the table, Ivan set his cracked glass down. “I never knew my parents. None of us did. Some were bought. Some were stolen. Most were unwanted. That’s what I’ve pieced together through the years, anyway. Back then, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, with one exception: combat. From my earliest memories, we were fighting. We fought for meals, fought for clothes, fought one another even for the simple right to use a toilet. The cultists would use magic to keep us healed afterward, but they always let the pain linger. They considered it to be an excellent teaching aide.”
Lifting his hand, Ivan made a fist. Such a simple gesture, yet Tori could feel the power contained within, even across the table. “Much as I hate them, I think they might have been right on that front, a fact that makes me despise them all the more.”
“I’m sorry, Ivan.”
He smiled at her, though there was no joy in the gesture. “Thank you, but I fear the tale has only just begun. That was my early life, you see. Nonstop scrapping, until they began to educate us on how to fight properly. Trainers were brought in, men and women I now suspect were killed as soon as they finished imparting their lessons. Creating monsters was all the cultists cared about, that and their dogma. I doubt they would have taught us to read, write, or speak if not for the weekly ceremonies chanting from the holy scrolls. That was life, until the year we turned ten.”
The story petered out momentarily as Ivan looked into his drink, making no move to touch it. “I had a pair of friends back then. Thick as thieves—pardon the phrasing. I was a little better than them at fighting, a touch of natural talent and a growth spurt giving me a slight edge. Vlad was the smartest of us all; he had a clever streak too wide for his own good. More than a few fights he won were through trickery and deception, though he got good at an old-fashioned low-blow, too. Our third member doesn’t have a name, for reasons that will become clear. He was... soft. Kind. Not made for that world. Although, in hindsight, I wonder if perhaps it was more impressive that after ten years living like that, he still managed to hold on to some spark of gentleness.”
In one gulp, Ivan downed his second drink, however he made no motions to fix a third. Whatever he’d been gathering courage for, it seemed they’d arrived.
“At age ten, we finally realized what we were doing there. That was when we had our first Trial of the Worthy. That day was the first time our numbers were halved.”
Tori had thought she was bracing for where this would go, but her appetite faded suddenly as realization set in. “They killed half the kids?”
“No. We killed each other.” Ivan made a point to meet her eyes; there could be no miscommunication on this front. “They put us in rings of magical, closing fire. Ones that could burn you for hours without leaving so much as a sear. Neither could leave until one was dead. Supposedly, the assignments were done randomly, but to this day, I never believed that. Pitting me against one of my only friends seems too cruel, even for fate. Only humans sink that low.”
Ivan didn’t need to say more. The outcome was obvious by the fact that Ivan was here, rather than killed at age ten. Still, he pushed on. Perhaps he wasn’t able to stop upon reaching this point; it certainly didn’t appear to be a topic he had much practice dealing with.
“He begged me not to hurt him. I didn’t want to. I held out for so long, but burning alive without rest or relief... he cried as I choked him. Never tried to fight back, though. Just kept staring at me, staring as he went limp, staring as the flames faded, staring as they dragged his body away. I can still feel him, decades later. His gaze, his tears on my hands, the softness of his neck. To this day, I don’t know why Kristoph didn’t try to take my head the moment we met.” Ivan took a long, steadying breath, his hands pressed against one another. “After that, after I killed one of the two people in the world I loved, they named me. Because I had earned one, in their eyes. I had taken the first step toward their great prophecy, become a contender for their highest honor. That was the day I got the name Ivan. If Vlad’s moniker didn’t give it away, we were named for warriors, kings, and conquerors.”
Breaking his hands apart, Ivan forced them onto the table. “I wanted to tell you that the first kill with your own hands is always going to leave a scar. You feel like you should be unfazed, but what happened to you today threw all of us for a loop when it was our turn.”
“I killed Rust Tooth during the Ridge City Riots.”
“No, Hephaestus killed Rust Tooth. Today, Tori killed someone. Even if you don’t know why that feels different, it’s okay that it does. What you’re experiencing is normal. How you proceed is up to you, but know that it does get better with time. For as horrible as that story I just told you was, my life went on. I’ve found people and moments that bring me sincere joy, something I could have never imagined inside that pit.”
Tori shoved her plate away; she’d had her fill. The words felt true, even if it was hard to believe them just yet. There was a lot to think on, but that would come piece by piece. In the meantime, she was eager to keep the discussion going, especially since there was a major point yet to be covered.
“Is that how you became Fornax?”
A dark chuckle slipped Ivan’s lips, close enough to Fornax’s mad giggle that she felt a sliver of nervousness before reassuring herself with his controlled expression. “That day was the start, both literally and metaphorically, of me becoming Fornax. Just the start, however. You see, every year, there was a Trial of Worthiness. Every year, our numbers shrank. Sometimes, we fought three times. Sometimes, a single match was enough. All in service of their prophecy—the coming of the being with many names. The God of Endings, the Onslaught of Death, the World-Razer, a bunch of awful shit like that.”
“No one ever told them less is more, huh?”
“Clearly,” Ivan agreed. “Not that it mattered. The name wasn’t the point. Getting it here was. According to myth, its body was too great to enter our realm, so only its soul and power could make the journey. To exist on our plane would require a host, a form with which to use all that terrible strength. That was the purpose of our raising. They wanted to breed a mighty body, strong and honed, to serve as their great monster’s vessel. When the last Trial of Worthiness ended, I was the one left standing. I was the last survivor.”
A flicker of a pause, like he was steeling himself. “I was chosen as the host of an entity whose sole purpose is to destroy this world.”
Chapter 37
Half-watching the television screen out of the corner of his eye, Rick clicked on some programs hidden in a folder buried deep in his computer. A nice, law-abiding kid shouldn’t have any of these sorts of programs—bootleg hacking software bought in internet back rooms and from a skeezy guy outside a computer repair shop. Rick didn’t fancy himself competent enough to get into anything truly secure, nor would he want to. As a boy with dreams of working at NASA, he understood there was a line between childish mischief and serious crime that it was important he not cross. Besides, he hadn’t gotten this sort of software because he wanted to hack the school, or break into a bank’s system.
No, this was a personal project, one he’d been working on for a few years now. A secret from his friends, and especially from his family. What would Beth say if he shared his findings? As though he could even call what he was looking at “findings” in the first place. It felt more like insane conspiracy theory than actual hypothesis—one that Rick would have dismissed, if every new bit of information he found didn’t support the suspicion.
It had all started with a simple school report on genealogy. Getting their mother’s information was easy—a long line of professors, laureates, and other highly documented careers made it possible to see the heights of their family tree. Dealing with their dad’s past was another matter, in that he d
idn’t seem to have one. It was no secret that their father had been abandoned as a child. He didn’t talk about the experience in depth, but it was one he shared with his own kids, if only to explain why they had no relatives on his side.
That was where it should have ended: an in-depth report covering one half of his family, and a sad story on the other. More than enough for a good grade. Except, Rick was his mother’s son, and once a project had his mind, he was loath to let it go so easily. So he’d kept digging. Hunting for foster records, old school photos, any sort of documentation from his father’s childhood. When that had come up dry, Rick had shifted gears to young adulthood, searching for any signs of Ivan Gerhardt prior to meeting their mom.
Nothing. Oh, there were documents saying he’d existed—rental receipts and leases—but it was only a paper trail. Rick had gone so far as to search a database of old photos of capes in action, hoping to spot Ivan in a background of the city where he’d supposedly lived. Even that, he could have brushed off... until he’d decided to test it.
Just a drive for ice cream. That was the pitch, a simple request. An excuse to get them driving around an old neighborhood of Ivan’s, one where he’d supposedly lived for years. Jamming the GPS was easy enough—like most parents, Ivan didn’t exactly have a stellar grip on technology. Such a simple test, and yet, once his guidance was gone, Ivan had immediately become lost. Despite having an address, and being in an area he should know by heart. Shops might change, but street signs weren’t so malleable.
That was the day Rick’s silly side project had gone from a flight of fancy to a sincere suspicion. He’d begun to dig deeper, even taking a few real risks, yet it all circled back to the same result. On paper, Ivan Gerhardt was and always had been a perfectly normal, almost boringly mundane, sort of man. In reality… Rick wasn’t even sure that was his father’s real name.
His working theory was a witness protection program, that Ivan had seen something he wasn’t meant to and gone on the run. Occasionally, when Rick really thought about it, his mind would drift to the scent of the ocean, though why that was he couldn’t begin to guess. Today, however, he was less concerned with Ivan himself and more so with Tori, the nice coworker of their father’s they’d once met who’d been all over the news. She’d also had a surprising lack of personal information leak out, despite being plastered on every channel. Given that she was one of the few people outside of family and existing friends he’d seen Ivan show interest in, Rick suspected that she might be part of the same witness program.
Getting into Vendallia’s real systems were well beyond what Rick could manage, back-end programs or not. Luckily, he’d long ago learned to chase the human element rather than a purely technological one. People often didn’t think to clear out the file logs on their scanners, which hosted a treasure trove of useful information.
Wielding his programs and a few passwords lifted from his father’s office, Rick made his way onto the server, clicking on the scan log files. For the most part, it was boring stuff. Evidently, they must use something more secure for financial or proprietary information. All he was finding were low-tier HR forms, including several well-deserved complaints of an employee microwaving fish. Then he caught it: Ivan’s name finally present on a document. Rick enlarged the image, leaning in to peruse the small lettering.
He read it twice more before finally leaning back and clicking a print button. As the pages appeared, he turned toward the screen once more, looking at Tori in a new light. Who the hell was this woman? And why was their father, a man who’d spent his whole life claiming to have no known blood relations, filing an HR declaration form listing Tori Rivas as his niece?
Rick still didn’t have much to go on regarding the mystery of his father, but this was the first major clue in years. Whatever Ivan’s secret was, Tori Rivas could be the key to unlocking it.
“Last time we talked about this, you said your powers came from eating a god.” Tori didn’t mean it as an accusation—she had confidence the two tales would line up eventually. It was more her trying to put the story together in her head, connecting dots that were still too far apart.
“It’s the best word I have for what happened,” Ivan replied. “I was eighteen during the final Trial of Worthiness. So were the few who remained. My last fight was a lot like my first one, in that I was against an old friend. Thankfully, Vlad and I hadn’t been the same since I killed our third, and tricky as he could be, I was the better fighter. When it was over, when I’d killed the last person I grew up with, the cultists came.”
There was a detached tone to Ivan’s voice; he was powering through, getting the facts out without slowing to deal with all the inherent emotions that came with such a topic. Tori made no requests for details. She understood the need to run through some discussion points far too well.
“We went to a chamber I’d never seen before. I was stripped, covered in arcane symbols and oils, then placed in a warded circle when the ceremony began. After they started chanting, I fell away from the physical world, into the place where minds and souls dwell. How long I was there, I truly have no idea, but the next thing I felt was it breaking through.”
Ivan shook his head, glancing at the empty glass with a dash of desire, followed by self-imposed restraint. “That monster was everything they’d wanted. Massively powerful, with an appetite for chaos that can never be sated. It exists only to destroy. Which is what it tried to do. Devour me, my soul, my essence, and then take over my body to use as a vessel.”
“Clearly didn’t know what a stubborn bastard you are,” Tori interjected.
“You joke, but you’re not far off from the truth.” A smile was forming on Ivan’s face. Dark, twisted, and cruel, yet a smile all the same. “The cultists made a mistake, you see. Only the body was meant to be tempered and prepared, not our minds. By placing us in that crucible, they forged our wills—forcing us to face constant death sharpened our desire to live. Their monster was expecting a soft-headed morsel ripe for the plucking. Instead, he met a man who had fought with every drop of blood in his veins to make it that far, with no intent of letting his hard-won life slip away. The thing about the realm of minds is that willpower is what matters most. You can’t take muscles or magic in there, only your strength of self.”
Now that she had the missing piece, Tori could see how the story components fit together, though she said nothing yet. Ivan clearly still had more to get through.
“That devouring of the soul thing is a two-way street. Magic tends to balance like that. In order to cross over, the monster also had to become vulnerable. Turns out, he didn’t want this body quite as much as I did. It was still one of the hardest fights of my entire life, mind you—one I’m not sure I could ever win again. But I did manage to triumph, wolfing down that massive intruder, making his power my own.”
Ivan’s smile sharpened further at the corners. “You should have seen the looks on those cultists’ faces, for the brief instant they still had heads.”
“Payback?”
“For a childhood spent living as a caged animal, forced to fight the only people I cared about? No. Not even close.” His expression hardened, eyes looking back into the past. “Not even the next few years felt like enough revenge, and I spent those keeping a promise to wipe out the Order of the Final Dawn.”
“Here I thought a man seeking revenge was supposed to dig two graves,” Tori said.
“Oh, I dug a lot more than two. Or rather, I would have, if there was ever enough left to bury, and I cared.” Ivan took a moment to compose himself, idly nibbling on a chip from the corner of Tori’s massive buffet. “I gave the Order of the Final Dawn exactly what they’d wished for: a destroyer. A god of death. They just didn’t realize it would be coming for them instead of the world.”
“About that...” Tori trailed off, trying to think of the best way to broach this topic. Knowing now what she did about Ivan’s power, there was a fairly salient concern to address. “Are we to the point that explains
what happened with you and Apollo? Because that’s one I’d really like to have a better handle on.”
Something flashed on Ivan’s face... shame? He turned away quickly, leaving Tori with only a glimpse to work from. His voice, however, remained steady and constant. “That came much later. The thing about devils is they always leave an escape clause in their contracts. I have the raw, destructive magical power of the god, but little knowledge on how to use it. In all these years, even with tutoring, I’ve only managed a few consistent spells. Some aspects come easier; the host body is meant to be nigh indestructible, and I have a natural aptitude for drawing out the physical magic. But I’m nowhere near as dangerous as what this body could do in the intended owner’s hands. Hence why the option to ask for a little help is always there. A bit more influence, in exchange for greater power. One way for the devil to worm its way back in.”
Turning her half-eaten turkey leg around on the plate, Tori considered the situation. “I’m kind of surprised you took that option. Doesn’t seem like you’d want anyone else having control over you.”
“For a very long time, I didn’t. Until there was a fight that had to be won. That’s another long story, though, one I doubt either of us has the energy for. You don’t need to worry about it, anyway. If I ever do truly lose myself, Lodestar will stop me.”
“Are you sure she can? I get that she’s the strongest out there right now, but you just said the full-power version of you is a big step up. That might be too much even for Lodestar.”
“It isn’t,” Ivan replied. “Understand something, Tori. I know it might seem silly, the amount of deference I show to her power, but it is wholly warranted. As one of the few people to see Lodestar’s true abilities, I know how strong she really is. But as one who loves science, you can simply turn to the data for proof. I am not especially unique. If one has access to multiverse tech, it’s possible to look out into the mirrors of our worlds and see how many things turn out consistently. Some events appear locked, going the same route nearly every time. Others are malleable, with shifting outcomes. One thing that is constant, in essentially every world: when the world is at risk, Lodestar wins. Even if it costs her the ultimate price, she wins.”