Forged

by Benedict Jacka

  Cinder hesitated.

  Rachel’s smile deepened. “It’s just that sometimes the important promises are the ones you make to yourself.”

  “Cinder!” I shouted.

  Green-black light formed at Rachel’s hands. Cinder’s black flame sprang to meet it, just a heartbeat behind. There was a flash and a roar. I caught a glimpse of Cinder staggering, then Rachel was darting towards me, light steps flying across the stone.

  My spell completed and a gateway appeared in the wall to my right. I leapt through.

  I held my grip on the spell, making sure the gate would stay open a few seconds longer than usual. I needn’t have bothered. Rachel jumped through with blinding speed. “Ah-ah!” she called. “No running!”

  I backed away. We were in a room that looked much like the one we’d left, except that instead of being dark it was clearly lit in grey and blue.

  Rachel didn’t seem to notice. She moved forward, graceful and balanced, still smiling. “Here we are again,” she told me. “Do you remember?”

  “Oh, I remember,” I told her.

  “I knew you’d come back,” Rachel said, as if telling me a secret. “But you shouldn’t have done that with Richard. He’s supposed to be mine.”

  “You wanted to keep Richard for yourself, you shouldn’t have given him Anne.”

  Rachel nodded. “You’re right. You are right. I should have made sure, shouldn’t I? If she’d died in that attack, it would have been fine. Richard would have been angry, but he’d have come around. But I can fix that. If I just—”

  “I really don’t care.”

  Rachel frowned. “I’m not finished.”

  “Rachel, how many times have we done this?” I said. “It’s been six years now and we keep running into each other. Sometimes you’re more crazy, sometimes you’re less crazy, but it never makes much difference, does it? Nothing ever changes.”

  “Well, of course it doesn’t.” Rachel sounded as if she were explaining the obvious. “You’re you.”

  I’d been backing away as Rachel approached. She could have closed the distance in a lunge, but instead she paced me, watching me closely. Strangely, I hadn’t got any closer to the edge of the room.

  “But I have changed,” I said. “It’s been painful, but I’ve learned. You, though? You’re frozen in time. You’re still the same broken angry teenager standing over Shireen’s dying body.”

  Rachel’s smile faded. “Don’t say her name.”

  “Why not?” I nodded to one side. “She’s right there.”

  “Rachel!” Shireen came striding out from the archway, tension and alarm in her movements. “What are you doing?”

  “Not now,” Rachel said absently, not looking at Shireen.

  “No!” Shireen said. “You have to get out!”

  “Oh, and don’t forget your jinn,” I said, gesturing to the other side of the room. “Looks like the gang’s all here.”

  A slender, almost-human shape was standing in the shadows, unnaturally still. It watched us both, unmoving. Rachel shot it an uninterested look. “They’re always here.”

  “Has it occurred to you,” I told Rachel, “that you’ve managed to kill or drive away every single person who’s ever cared about you? First there was Shireen. She was your best friend and you murdered her in cold blood. Then there was Richard. He might have put Anne above you, but he still would have kept you on. At least until you managed to ruin years of his work by freeing her. Oh, I was the one who manipulated you into it, but it was still your choice, and Richard knows it. He’ll never trust you again.”

  Rachel’s expression had become fixed. All traces of a smile were gone. “Shut up.”

  “And finally there’s Cinder. God only knows why, but he’s stayed loyal to you for years. Even today, you still could have taken his offer and walked away. Or you could have done, until you tried to kill him yet again.”

  “Rachel!” Shireen burst out. “You have to—”

  “Shut up,” Rachel hissed. “All of you.” She stared at me, eyes icy with hate. “Richard should never have taken you in. He could never see what you were. I’m going to—”

  “Look at your hands, Rachel,” I said quietly.

  Rachel blinked and glanced down, then stared. Faint wisps of light were rising from her fingers.

  “You didn’t know that I could open gates to Elsewhere now, did you? I told you I’d changed.” I paused. “Something else I noticed. Ever since our reunion, the times we’ve met via Elsewhere, you’ve never gone into Elsewhere. You’ll walk right up to the edge, you’ll look over the line, but you’ll never cross it.”

  “You’re lying,” Rachel said. But all of a sudden, she looked uncertain.

  “He’s not!” Shireen said. “Rachel, please, you have to run!”

  Without looking, I knew that wisps of light were starting to rise from my own clothes and body. Not enough to be dangerous, not yet. “I spent a while wondering why you’d never set foot into Elsewhere,” I told Rachel. “I mean, Elsewhere’s a reflection of your inner self. So I thought it’d be interesting to see what happened if I brought you here. What do you think, Rachel? What would your Elsewhere be like?”

  Rachel looked at me for a long moment, then turned to run. And stopped. Behind Rachel, where the door had been, was a floor-to-ceiling mirror spanning the length of the room.

  “Oops,” I said softly. “Guess you’re staying.”

  Rachel tried to call up a gateway. I snuffed it out with an effort of will. She tried again with the same result.

  “What are you doing?” Shireen cried. “Let her go!”

  “Like she said,” I told her. “No running.”

  Rachel threw a disintegration ray at the mirror, the beam and its reflection meeting in a green flash. It should have turned the mirror to dust, but the glass absorbed the spell as though it were nothing. I could feel Elsewhere shifting, focusing around us. I couldn’t make out the shape of what was happening, but Rachel was the centre of it.

  Rachel turned on me, and green death lashed out. I bent the spell away, letting it fizzle out somewhere off to the side. There was no way Rachel could hurt me, not here. Gate magic might work, but it was my will against hers and—

  A chill went through me.

  In the mirror behind Rachel, I could see myself reflected, quite small at this distance. I could see Shireen’s reflection as she called out again for Rachel to run. I could see the jinn’s reflection, silent and unmoving in the shadows. And I could see Rachel’s reflection standing just behind her.

  Except that when Rachel had spun to face me, the reflection hadn’t moved.

  Rachel sent another disintegration ray at me; without looking I knocked it away. Her reflection was watching me from over Rachel’s shoulder.

  “Die already!” Rachel shouted at me. When I didn’t answer, she paused. She followed my gaze, turned with a frown. She looked at her reflection; the mirror Rachel looked at me. The real Rachel turned back. “And look at me when I’m killing you!”

  I stared back at Rachel, the chill inside me growing. She doesn’t see it.

  The mirror Rachel turned away, her gaze lingering, then began walking, heading for my reflection.

  Instinctively I backed away. My reflection moved sideways, matching me, but the mirror Rachel was advancing faster and faster. “What the hell is wrong with him?” I heard the real Rachel say.

  “It’s Elsewhere.” There was a frantic edge to Shireen’s voice. “Something’s here. Alex, get us out! Please!”

  Elsewhere is dangerous. Anne and Luna and I can use it because we’re careful and disciplined. Every crack inside your mind, every part of yourself that you can’t face, is a vulnerability. And by that measure, Rachel was about as bad a candidate for Elsewhere as you could get. So my plan had been to bring her here, then simply wait for her to self-
destruct.

  All of a sudden, it was occurring to me that bringing the most mentally damaged person I knew into a place shaped by thought might not have been a good idea.

  Rachel’s reflection lunged for mine. I flinched, half expecting to feel the impact, but didn’t. Rachel’s reflection slid around mine and yanked my knife from its sheath.

  My hand went instinctively for the same knife, and closed on empty air.

  Rachel tried again to disintegrate me. I was so distracted I barely managed to deflect it. I had no idea what was going on anymore. I’m used to knowing how to handle threats, but I didn’t know how to handle this.

  Dimly, I was aware of Rachel talking to Shireen. “Is he even paying attention?”

  “I told you, something’s here! You have to get out!”

  The mirror Rachel looked at me through the glass. Our eyes met and a secretive smile touched her lips; she held up my knife, the blade glinting in the light. Then she turned her gaze towards Rachel.

  “Hey,” Rachel called to the jinn. “How about you do something useful for once and—”

  The mirror Rachel lifted the knife out in front of her, clasped in a double-handed grip, blade down, and drove it into her own stomach.

  Rachel’s words cut off in a scream. She doubled over, clutching her belly, then looked up at me in pain and shock. There was blood on her fingers.

  The mirror Rachel drove the blade into her stomach again and again. Each time she wrenched the knife out, it left a bleeding wound, but she didn’t react. For all the pain she showed, she might have been stabbing a plank of wood. Her eyes were locked onto her counterpart. The real Rachel cried out and staggered as the knife went in.

  “Stop it!” Shireen screamed at me. “Stop it!”

  “I’m not doing anything,” I snapped.

  The mirror Rachel looked at her original, head tilted, and drove the dagger into her thigh. Rachel screamed again as her leg gave way beneath her. She collapsed to the stone floor.

  “Make it stop!” Shireen yelled at me. She looked around wildly, then her gaze turned towards her reflection. “Rachel!” she called. “The mirror! It’s the mirror!”

  Rachel twisted around from where she lay. Within the mirror, Rachel’s reflection looked back at her. Something seemed to alter in Elsewhere, the surroundings changing with a click, and Rachel’s eyes widened as she finally saw what I did.

  The two Rachels looked at each other through the mirror. The mirror Rachel smiled.

  Rachel’s face twisted in rage. She sent another disintegration ray into the mirror, then when that didn’t work, lashed it with a whip of sea-green energy. She followed that up with a water blast, then a spray of acid, then some sort of cutting effect I didn’t recognise. Spell after spell hit the mirror, each of them powerful enough to kill a man in an instant.

  The mirror soaked them all up. Rachel might as well have been hitting thin air.

  The light from the last spell faded to reveal Rachel’s reflection standing on the other side of the mirror, untouched. She was still smiling. She lifted up my knife, turning the blade to show the blood on it.

  The anger in Rachel’s eyes began to turn to fear.

  “Alex!” Shireen shouted. “Make it stop!”

  “I told you,” I said, not looking at her. I couldn’t take my eyes off Rachel. “It’s not me.”

  “Then open a gate! Take her out of Elsewhere! You can do that, I know you can!”

  The mirror Rachel looked down at Rachel, then opened her mouth very wide, her jaw gaping.

  “No,” Rachel muttered. She held up a hand, sea-green light glowing around it, but there was nothing to strike at. All of her deadly battle-magic was useless. The light around her hand winked out.

  The mirror Rachel reached into her open mouth with her free hand. She gripped her tongue between thumb and forefinger.

  “No,” Rachel said, her voice rising. “No!”

  The mirror Rachel raised my knife. Metal glinted as she pointed it down towards her mouth.

  “Shireen!” Rachel screamed.

  “Alex!” Shireen screamed desperately. “Please!”

  I hesitated, looking at Rachel. Just for a second I felt the urge to help.

  Then I thought about what had happened only last month, when Crystal had controlled my body and forced me to beat Anne until Anne had snapped. I remembered how I’d been left on the floor, crippled and helpless, just as Rachel was now, and how Rachel had laughed at my tears, her eyes bright with happiness.

  The urge to help died.

  The mirror Rachel brought the knife down, stabbing through her tongue and pinning it to the floor of her mouth.

  Rachel gave a horrible choking scream. The mirror Rachel dragged the knife out, blood welling up. Rachel clutched her face and threw her head from side to side in agony, red droplets spattering on the floor.

  “Rachel!” Shireen screamed and ran to Rachel’s side. She tried to pick Rachel up, cradle her in her arms, but Rachel thrashed wildly, hitting Shireen in the face and knocking her flat. Rachel managed to pull herself up onto one knee, looked up at the mirror to see that her reflection was still standing. The lower half of her reflection’s face was a mask of blood, but its eyes were still fixed on Rachel.

  It was holding my knife against its neck.

  Rachel stared back at her image, then slowly, she turned to face me. The bloody mess of her jaw matched the image behind her. Her eyes met mine, and for once there was no anger there, only fear. She tried to speak through her mangled tongue but the words were incomprehensible.

  I was still looking into Rachel’s eyes when her reflection cut her throat.

  A horrible wound opened up across Rachel’s neck, starting below one ear and going all the way around to the other, the skin slicing and tearing like a paper bag. Blood spurted from the arteries, and the trachea gaped open. Rachel convulsed and collapsed, making a wet gargling sound.

  “NO!” Shireen screamed. Again she ran to Rachel’s side and again she was knocked away. Rachel was thrashing wildly, blood spurting out to pool around her. Shireen looked around desperately and ran to me. “Help her!” she screamed. She beat at my chest with her fists. “Alex, you bastard! Do something!”

  I looked back at Shireen coldly and stood my ground.

  Rachel died slowly and horribly. She thrashed and clawed, but as the blood gushed out, her movements became slow and sluggish. At last her hands clutched at the stone a final time and then went still. Her head fell to one side and her eyes began to glaze. Her chest rose and fell more and more slowly until it stopped.

  The instant that it did, the wisps of light around Rachel brightened tenfold. Physical bodies of any kind don’t last long in Elsewhere. A living creature can hold together for a while—a dead one can’t. Rachel’s corpse dissolved from the outside in, the hair and fingers going first and the rest following, the body coming apart into flaring particles in an eerie imitation of the disintegration magic she’d used on so many other people. From start to finish it took less than ten seconds. A last few wisps of light trailed upwards, then faded.

  Rachel was gone.

  Shireen was left alone, staring at the empty patch on the floor. Even Rachel’s blood was gone. “You . . .” she began, and trailed off.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  Shireen shook her head.

  “I didn’t want it to end like this,” I said. “But I just couldn’t afford to let her keep trying to kill me every time I turned my back.”

  “Stop it,” Shireen said softly.

  “I gave her as many chances as—”

  “Stop it,” Shireen said. “Stop talking!” She turned on me. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  I looked at her silently.

  “When Rachel Harvested me, she took a piece of me,” Shireen said. “That was me!”
>
  I sighed. Suddenly I felt very old and very tired. “I know.”

  “I told you to redeem her! That was what I was waiting for, all these years! I helped you, because I thought you were going to help her! And you do this?”

  “She chose the other way. I’m sorry.”

  “She chose the other way? You think this was her? You sound like—”

  Shireen cut off. She lifted a hand, staring at it. For a moment I couldn’t see what was wrong, then I realised that I could make out the outlines of her chest through her fingers. Shireen was fading. She stared at her hand a moment longer, then her eyes rose slowly to me. “Oh, my God,” she said softly. “All this time, I never saw it.”

  “Saw what?”

  “Richard set us against each other,” Shireen said. “He wanted to see who’d be the last one. I thought it was over, but it wasn’t!” Her voice rose. “It was you! First you killed Tobruk, then you killed Rachel, now you’ve killed me! I thought it was Rachel that was Richard’s Chosen. But it was you!”

  My heart went cold. I couldn’t answer.

  “It was you!” Shireen laughed wildly. She was transparent now, the walls and floor clearly visible behind her. “All this time, I thought I was helping you save her, and you end up taking her place! Well, enjoy it, Alex! You’re the last one, so enjoy it! You finally get what you wanted! You finally get . . .”

  Shireen faded away. Her words lingered a little longer, echoing, before dying away.

  The jinn had watched the entire exchange from the edge of the room. Now it stepped back, fading into shadow. Its shape merged with the darkness and it too was gone.

  Wisps of light were rising from my skin, dangerously bright. I stared down at the space where Shireen had been, then with an effort tore my eyes away to make a gateway back to the physical world. But before I did I took one last look at the mirror.

  Rachel’s reflection was still standing there, still bearing the same horrific wounds, still holding my knife. She met my eyes through the mirror, lifted her free hand, and waved her bloodstained fingers with a secret smile.

  A thrill of terror went through me. I turned and fled.