by wildbow
“You come with me, then. Menja, Stormtiger, I leave it to you to see to my Chosen. See if Othala is able to help.”
“On it,” Menja said. Thin trails of blood ran down from the points where glass splinters had pierced her skin, but the damage hadn’t gone any further. She stooped down and picked up Stormtiger in her arms.
Orders given, Hookwolf drew the majority of his flesh into a condensed point in his ‘core’, felt himself come alive as more metal spilled forth. Only his eyes remained where they were, set in recessed sockets, behind a screen of shifting blades. He was half-blind until the movement of the blades hit a rhythm, moving fast enough that they zipped over the surface of his eye at speeds faster than an eyeblink.
He let himself fall from the third floor window and hit the ground in a state that was more liquid than solid. Blades, spears, hooks and other twisted metal shapes all pooled on the pavement, absorbing the impact.
He pulled himself together, in his favored quadruped form. Looking up to the window, he created a tall spear from between his ‘shoulders’. Cricket leaped out and caught the pole, slid down until she could hop off and land beside him, skidding on the glass covered surface. She looked annoyed as she looked down at her shoes, raising one foot off the ground to investigate the underside. Glass had embedded in the soles.
He would have told her to ignore it, but he couldn’t speak. For that matter, neither could she.
Cricket pointed, and he led the way with her following directly behind him. As he walked, he wasn’t moving his limbs quite so much as it might appear at first glance. Instead, he extended one growth of metal as he retracted another, only generating the illusion. A hundred new parts growing each second to suggest shifting musculature, a cohesive form, when he was anything but. Only the core skeleton, the shafts of metal that formed the limbs from the shoulders or hips to his knees, actually moved without retracting or extending.
Glass rose from the ground to fit together into a window that floated in the air and he smashed through it with one of his forelimbs. Another barrier appeared, thicker, and he smashed that as well. The glass began to form into dozens, even hundreds of barriers. He quickly found one strike wasn’t enough to clear the way.
Through the mess of dozens of dirty and wet panes of glass, he saw her. Shatterbird. A sand nigger, going by memory and the color of her exposed skin. The upper half of her head was covered in a helmet of colored glass, and her body was covered with a flowing garment made of tiny glass shards, like scales.
He rose onto two feet, standing straight, and reconfigured his arms. With spears as big around as telephone poles, he punched through thirty or forty panes of glass all at once, then did the same with his opposite hand. It was slow progress, as the glass constantly reformed and pieced itself back together a few feet ahead of him, but he was closing in.
She abruptly dropped the barriers and changed tactics. The majority of the glass in the area formed into one shape, a cone of solid glass, pointing towards the center of the purple-red sky, two and a half stories tall.
Raising one hand, she shot it straight up into the sky above, until it was just a speck.
Hookwolf lunged for her, only to find that the residual glass that remained on the ground was denying him traction. His metal claws failed to find grip, failed to crack the glass, even with the heavy impacts and his impressive weight. Closing the distance proved slower than he’d hoped.
The massive spike of glass plummeted from the sky. He knew it was coming, had kept an eye out for it, and timed a leap to coincide with its descent.
No use. It veered unerringly for him, speared into him with enough force that it nearly sheared him in half. Cricket uttered a strangled scream as she got hit by the fallout of glass shards and scraps of metal.
“Stand,” Shatterbird said. Her voice held traces of a British accent, and her body language and the crisp enunciation made her sound imperious, upper class. “I know you survived.”
Hookwolf struggled to pull himself together. He used hooks to pull the metal back towards his core, where it could be reabsorbed, recycled. It didn’t take much of his reserve of internal energy to create and move the metal, but it took some, and he’d rather not run out.
It was a risk, he knew, but he needed a few moments to pull himself together and rebuild his body. He let his head and upper chest emerge from the core, taking form in the hollow metal ‘head’ of his canid form.
“What do you people want?” he asked.
“Person. Singular. I am the only member of my group here,” Shatterbird informed him.
“Arrogant.”
“You can be arrogant when you’re strong enough. You should know, Hookwolf.”
“You here to make trouble?”
She shook her head, her helmet sparkling in the light cast by the setting sun. “I’m the Nine’s primary recruiter. I have an eye for people who can thrive among us, and I have brought more than five individuals on board. I thought long and hard before settling on you. I am not about to let you turn me down.”
So that was why she hadn’t hit the entire city with the blast, shattering the glass and maiming or killing hundreds. She hadn’t wanted to kill any prospective members, wanted to reserve her power for when it would be most dramatic.
“I’m fine where I am.”
“This isn’t a request.”
“Is that so? You going to make me?” He was nearly restored. He could fight now if he needed to.
“Yes. I know who you are, Hookwolf. I spent some time researching your history.”
“Not that interesting.”
“I beg to differ. You ally with the Aryan groups. Run one, but your motivations seem to be different. I have guesses as to why, but I’d rather you tell me.”
“Tell you? Why should I? I think we’re done here.”
Shatterbird raised one hand, then frowned, her lips pursing together. “Hm.”
Cricket climbed to her feet. She was bleeding badly where she had exposed skin, and chunks of glass were partially buried in her arms and legs. There was the quiet rasp of her laughter.
“Pride goeth before the fall,” Hookwolf said, striding towards his enemy. “Seems as though Cricket can use her subsonics to cancel you out.”
“Seems so,” Shatterbird answered, rapidly backing up to maintain some distance from Hookwolf.
“And here I was thinking you’d won the lottery with powers. Incredible range, fine control, devastating force, versatility… and all it takes is the right noise and it all falls apart?”
“Guess the men who bought my power should ask for a refund.”
“No. Not interested in being conned into a game of twenty questions to figure out what you’re talking about. Not giving you a chance to figure a way out.” He punched one of his massive spears at her, and she threw herself to the ground, rolling beneath the impaling weapon. As she stood, she drew a gun from the folds of her glittering dress. She fired between Hookwolf’s legs at Cricket, the noise of the shots ringing through the air.
Hookwolf didn’t even need to look. He laughed, “No. Afraid my lieutenant is a little too fast for you.”
“Look out,” Cricket’s said from behind him, the artificial sound of her voice detracting from the inflection and urgency.
A tide of glass slammed into him. Standing on only two limbs, his balance suffered, and he wasn’t able to keep from being pushed onto his side.
“Wasn’t aiming at her,” Shatterbird said. She fired several more shots, simultaneously releasing a shard of glass from her free hand. Hookwolf turned, saw Cricket clutching her throat. She’d dodged the bullets, but Shatterbird had controlled the flight of the glass shard she shot at Cricket much in the same way she’d controlled the descent of the massive spike of glass. It had struck its target. “Just needed to break her concentration.”
Cricket collapsed, large quantities of blood spilling through her fingers and around her hands, where they clutched her throat.
“Now it’s jus
t you and me,” Shatterbird said. She dusted herself off, not giving any concern to the sharp edges of the glass shards that made up her garment. “We talk.”
“I think I’ll kill you instead,” Hookwolf growled.
“What’s the rush? In fact, any moment we delay, you have a chance of reinforcements arriving. Your Stormtiger, your Othala, your Menja, they could all do a little something to assist you. It’s in your advantage for us to delay the fight.”
“Except I’m more than capable of putting you down myself.”
“Perhaps.”
He adjusted his form, dropping to four legs once more. The aesthetic suffered, but he created two needle-tipped limbs at his shoulders, poised like scorpion’s tails.
“Ah, that’s much better,” she said. “But you’re still too attached to conventional forms. Why have legs at all?”
“They’re enough.” He pounced. She leaped to one side, and almost glided to a position across the street. She was using the glass of her costume to levitate herself.
From her new vantage point she told him, “I did say I had my suspicions about your motivations. I think I’ve come to understand you. Jack encourages this, you know. Understanding our targets, be they recruits or victims. You learn a lot being with him. I believe you, Hookwolf, are a born warrior.”
He pounced once more, driving both foreclaws at her and following up with two quick jabs with his needle-tipped limbs. She dodged all three hits, then swept a carpet of glass beneath him as he pounced quickly after her. He landed and skidded on the surface like one might with a carpet of marbles, falling onto one side, and she threw a tidal wave of glass shards at him, driving him across the street to distance him once more.
He stopped to draw his head and upper body back into the core. The wave of glass had come too close to penetrating the head of his form and cutting his flesh. It was dangerously vulnerable.
A warrior at heart, she’d said. He’d thought, sometimes, that he was born at the wrong time. Had he been born in Rome’s heyday, the Crusades or any of the great wars, in eras where martial pride and strength were valued, he thought he might have been a great person, a soldier feared on the battlefield. He would have relished that life. Here, now? Even with powers, he wasn’t so notable. People with a tendency for violence and a thirst for blood just didn’t thrive.
“What I can’t figure out—” she paused to throw herself up to the top of a four-story building, then raised her voice to be heard on the ground, “Is what you’re doing with these ‘Chosen’ of yours.”
He couldn’t speak to answer her, and only climbed the building’s face. He was three-quarters of the way up when she leaped down, soaring toward the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Always keeping her distance.
A gale caught her, and her lateral movement stopped. As wind twisted around her, she was driven down into the street, hard.
Hookwolf would have laughed if he could. He looked at his headquarters and saw Stormtiger crouching by the front door, clutching a blood-soaked rag to his throat. Stormtiger wouldn’t interfere where it counted, but he would give Hookwolf the opportunity to confront his opponent. He adjusted his position and fell to the street next to Shatterbird. She held one leg while laying on her back. She’d fallen badly.
Stalking towards her, he heard she was still talking, “You call them Fenrir’s Chosen. I’m a scholar, believe it or not. I know Fenrir was one of the beasts that brings about Ragnarök, the death of the gods. Fenrir was the beast who slew Odin, Allfather, king of the gods. Fenrir was a wolf. Too coincidental for that to be an accident on your part.”
He stirred the blades that made up his form, pushing himself to be bigger, more dangerous as he closed the distance.
“A sword age, an axe age. A wind age, a wolf age. A world where none have mercy. I can believe this is your goal, your ultimate objective. Do you crave to reduce this city to darkness, blood and ash, so that only the strong will survive? Do you tell your followers that it is only the pure will rise to the top in the new world order?”
He set one clawed foot down on her. He could feel some blades on the underside of his foot bite into her flesh. She didn’t fight him or resist.
“Join us,” she said, her voice strained.
He formed a head and mouth. His voice echoed from within his metal skull, “You describe me as a warrior, why would I join petty killers?”
She shifted her position, huffing out sentences between gasps of pain. “Only a matter of scale. Need more like you in our number. Frontline combatants. Capable of carving murder through the ranks of the innocent. Through our enemies. We could be great warriors.”
“Not interested.”
“We could create your Ragnarök more than any number of Chosen.”
“They are my people. I won’t turn my back on them.”
“Then kill me.” A thin smile crossed her face, though her expression was drawn with pain. When she spoke, it was in more short sentences. “But know that your dream is over. Unless you come with us. Once nominated you’ll be tested. By others, whether willing or not. I have left notes. Urging them to kill your soldiers. To raze any place you might call home. To bestow fates worse than death.”
He raised his claw from her. She was bleeding from wounds in her stomach and pelvis.
He’d had a hard enough time killing this one. If the other seven arrived? No, he wouldn’t be able to stop them alone, and his lieutenants were not strong enough to hold them off.
“And you won’t rescind these orders and requests?”
“I will. If you join. You give me your word, I leave. You will be tested. Your people left alone. When the test is done you’re… either dead or one of us.”
“What is it you want?”
“Make history. Names in books. Taught to schoolchildren for years. Centuries. Our goals…” she winced, pressed one hand to her stomach, “Coincide.”
He pondered for a few moments. Could they escape? No, you didn’t escape the Nine. He’d already considered fighting, but that option was out.
There was a possibility he could lay a trap for them. Or buy time for his people to escape.
“Fine.”
Another thin smile crossed her face. She used her power to raise herself to a standing position, her toes only barely touching the ground. “So loyal.”
“But I won’t forget what you’ve already done. If you survive, I will wait for the right time and place, and I will kill you. One day.”
“Already thinking like… one of us. Rest assured. I will survive.”
Glass drifted towards her to fill the injuries, cracking in the right spots so each fragment fit the wounds perfectly. The smallest particles of glass, a fine cloud of dust, flowed forth to fill the gaps.
Then she rose into the sky. Hookwolf signaled for Stormtiger to hold his fire.
He wasn’t going to accept this. They’d insulted him, hurt his people. They wanted to subvert his mission and twist it to their own ends? No.
His face twisted into a scowl as he looked over the glass-strewn street, and at Cricket’s prone form. He’d told Shatterbird he’d kill her sometime in the future, had hopefully led her to expect something further down the line.
No, he would go through the motions of their ‘test’, even join them for the short-term. But he’d kill them sooner than later. Before they left the city.
He looked at his people, saw Othala hurrying over to Cricket’s side to grant the young woman regenerating abilities. Rune was hurt, the right side of her face torn up, healed only enough to close the cuts and stop the worst of the bleeding. Probably Othala. Everyone else was injured to some degree, many gravely.
He’d need help from elsewhere.
Interlude 11f (Anniversary Bonus)
If each of the tens of trillions of universes were like pictures, then they were organized into a mosaic, constantly rearranging itself and shuffling. Taken in as a whole, it was a muddle. Depending on how it shuffled, sometimes patterns emerged. A p
redominant color, perhaps, or lots of scenes that were blurs of motion and activity.
But there was more to it. There were faint sounds, for one thing, and they weren’t just two-dimensional. Just the opposite—they were each a fully realized world, and each was continuous, like a slideshow or film reel that extended vast distances forward and backward from any of the scenes of focus. Things got even more complicated when each of the slideshow reels forked out and branched as they moved further away. The only thing stopping them were the terminus points. The first terminus wasn’t complicated. The now, the present. It moved inexorably, steadily forward, consuming the individual realities as they ceased to be the future and became the now.
The other terminus was somewhat more ominous. Every branch ended at some point, some sooner than others.
Dinah Alcott knew that those branches were ones where she had died. Right now, there were a lot of them, more coming into view with every passing second. Almost all of the images in the mosaic were either black or crimson. Either the lights were on and everything was covered in blood, or they were off, and she was effectively blind.
She concentrated, and the mosaic organized into two portions, one slightly larger than the other. In one half, that death-terminus came very soon. In the other, it was some distance off. She judged the size of the individual parts, and the number snapped into her head.
43.03485192746307955659 percent chance she would die in the next thirty minutes. The chance was steadily ticking upward with each passing second, with possible realities becoming impossible and fading from her view, or being replaced with other possibilities, effectively shifting over to the other side.
Anxiety crept up on her. She wanted her ‘candy’, to take the edge off, to help clarify her thoughts.
She knocked on the door to her room. She heard Coil say something on the other side and tested the knob. Finding it unlocked, she stepped through.
Coil sat at his desk, on the phone. She didn’t want to talk to him, but she wanted to die less.
“It’s unfortunate,” Coil was saying. “Step up recon, call in a secondary team to ensure twenty-four seven surveillance. We’ll want a replacement for our Leah the moment they start recruiting again. Yes. Good. Let me know.”