Broken Quill

by Joe Ducie

  “Farewell, old friends,” I muttered and thought the sentiment quite melodramatic.

  I heaved the box of scotch bottles out of the window and watched it sail to the ground. The bottles fled the box as it arced through the air, and as the first struck the asphalt below and shattered, a cacophony of similar sharp resonance rained down upon the alleyway.

  The scotch formed a tiny puddle and drained into the gutter, spoiled and ruined, and by god, I still wanted to go down and salvage some of the liquor. A shadow fell across the alleyway. With a sigh that was some parts regret to a few parts content, I gazed back out toward the horizon.

  At some point in the last fifteen seconds, a monolithic tower—at least a half-mile tall—had snapped into existence down on Diablo Beach.

  I blinked, licked my lips, and rubbed at my good eye just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

  Nope.

  Definitely a tower—a spire, really, of some shiny black stone. Crenellations and turrets circled the wide, flat foundations and spiraled up to twin pillars separated by a flat plateau. Crimson sparks, red lightning, forked between the pillars, and clouds overhead seemed to swirl as if being pulled down a drain.

  The tower blocked the setting sun, cutting bright beams of light to either side of the impressive structure—light that seemed to warp and absorb into the stone of the tower.

  “Now, that shouldn’t be...” I muttered and decided it might have been prudent to save one bottle of scotch. I could go cold turkey tomorrow after whatever dread legions and Everlasting mischief burst forth from the otherworldly tower.

  I had no doubt I was looking at something out of Forget, forcing its way into the real world—the True Earth—against every law I’d ever been taught. This broke more than just the laws of the Knights, as well. Universal concepts once held infallible had been shattered. The dragon’s insane laugh echoed through my mind...

  “Spill enough blood, and the walls of reality begin to crack. What, perchance, may slip through then, hmm? You’ll see soon.”

  I had a strange feeling Emissary had put the Creation Knife to dire use.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  No More Laughter

  Putting all my many and varied imagined fears to rest, Annie let herself into the shop as I ran down the spiral staircase, sober as a bird and still seeing impossible towers of somewhat expected evil.

  “Did you see it?” I asked, panting hard.

  She frowned, bemused. “See what? And where’s my kebab?”

  I grabbed her hand and pulled her up the stairs, to the window where I’d disposed of my scotch. The sun had sunk even lower now, bordering the horizon, and painted the sky a bruised-purple azure. But the half a mile of raw black tower could still be quite clearly seen.

  Annie gazed out of the window, down at the alley strewn with shattered scotch bottles, and offered me her most disapproving frown. “Did you do that?’

  “Did I...? Annie, you’re not seeing the bigger picture here—look!” I gestured down to the coast. “See anything strange? A black spire of purely concentrated evil that I doubt even our proton packs will be able to pierce?”

  “Ghostbusters is a great movie,” she said, staring out at the horizon. Her eyes scanned the coast, flickering right past the tower and jumping back. “There’s... Well, something doesn’t look right. Like, the shadows are off, or something. Can’t quite place—”

  She honestly can’t see it... Why?

  I moved behind her and grasped the sides of her head, pointing her face directly at the tower.

  “Declan, what are you—”

  “Look,” I said. “Just look.”

  Annie looked. Annie saw. Annie screamed.

  “Yeah, that’s better,” I muttered, removing my hands from her ears.

  “How could I not see that?” she whispered furiously. “My god, what is it?”

  I moved back around to her side and gazed into her eyes, just to confirm something I already suspected. Sure enough, her jade-green eyes were a healthy shade of purple.

  “How come you could see it?” Annie asked. “Even now... my eyes want to slip to either side of it as if it isn’t there. I’m having trouble focusing on it. Christ, Declan, what is it?”

  I shrugged. “If I had to guess, we’re looking at the beginning of Scion’s so-called ascension. We’re looking at the first Everlasting beachhead.” A few days ago, I’d predicted that the Knights abandoning True Earth could spark something as severe as World War Three, but that would almost be welcome in place of what had appeared down on Diablo Beach. “As for why I could see it—I might be barred from my power, but I am Willful—I am of Forget and Ascension City. I am a Knight! You’ve traveled across universes, Annie, so you see creation differently now. But you’re still new to this—which is why I had to point the tower out to you. But now you see...”

  “Yes, I see.”

  As the sun finally dipped below the horizon, I grinned and grasped the hilt of my broken sword. “You see them, and they see you. What say we wander on down to the beach and meet the new neighbors?”

  *~*~*~*

  Whatever magic of fractured reality had brought the tower to True Earth and hidden it in plain sight, the people who drove along the coast road, even the people who walked along the beach paths, seemed to sense something out of place. They walked hurriedly away from the structure, shoulders hunched, staring at one another and up at the sky with deep mistrust.

  I kept hold of Annie’s hand as we walked from the red-stone path along the coast and into the sand dunes above Diablo Beach. Her skin in contact with mine seemed to make it easier for her to keep the tower in her mind and in her sight. It reared up above us now, piercing the sky, and a cool wind whistled around the crenellated stonework.

  The beach was deserted.

  The base of the tower was about a quarter mile across, not only resting on the beach but also stretching out into the water for a few hundred feet. Large waves of foamy-dark seawater crashed against the tower, and the wind whipped the spray along the beach, dousing Annie and me in cool, stinging droplets.

  A set of black stairs led up the base of the tower, and inside—nothing but darkness. I drew my sword and gave Annie an encouraging smile.

  “What’s the bet we head inside and those doors close ominously behind us?”

  “You’ve read too many creepy stories,” she said.

  “Sweet thing, I’ve lived them.”

  Alone, tired, and still craving kebabs, Annie and I came to a stop just before the steep set of steps leading up into the tower.

  “Want to run away?” I asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  “So do I. Come on, let’s see what we see.”

  The steps felt... insubstantial might be the right word. They didn’t feel real. Hard and strong, forged from the strength of ages but only half there. That didn’t make much sense, but I felt as if—at any moment—the stone beneath my shoes could simply fall away, disappear, or swallow me whole. Annie swayed, unsteady, on the solid foundations, so I guessed she sensed the same thing.

  I climbed the staircase and stood on the large, arched doorway of the tower. After a moment’s hesitation, I touched the stone frame, and a shock rippled up my arm. Not painful, not really, but similar to licking a battery—or a burst of static electricity. I could taste blood on the air. My fingers came away covered in rusty-red flakes from the stone.

  “Is that...”

  “Cemented in blood,” I muttered, feeling something besides trepidation and fatigue in my chest. Something... angry. “Live for love, Annie. Let’s be about our dark and dreary business.”

  We crossed the threshold, and all light failed. The darkness swept us up in cloaks of moonless midnight and, yes, the stone doors closed ominously at our backs.

  “We’re trapped inside with... whatever we find,” Annie said.

  “No,” I whispered. “Whatever we find is trapped inside with us.”

  *~*~*~*

  Torche
s of pale, almost pointless light flared to weak radiance on the walls every ten feet or so. The tower was unfurnished and felt like a skeleton stripped of organs and flesh—incomplete, cold, and altogether unhomely.

  Had the events of the last three days really been building to this? So far, I was not impressed with the supposed power of the Everlasting.

  The tower spiraled inexorably up. No windows, no slits in the stonework, provided a glimpse of the world just outside. For all that mattered now, the uneven yet sturdy steps leading up to the summit of the tower was our world. Time passed… I wasn’t sure how much, but minutes certainly bled into hours. A long night was passing unseen beyond these dark walls. The only sound was our hard breathing from the ascent and the clip of our heels on the stone. The silence was deafening—and deep, as if Annie and I were alone in this empty, cold tower. But the tower didn’t feel empty.

  The muscles in my legs were shaking from the exertion when we, at long last, reached the summit of the tower, under a sky strewn with stars familiar… and alien. Crackles of crimson lightning scored the space between the twin pillars that rose around the tower’s apex, resembling a crown. Two worlds were bleeding into one...

  I was reminded, with little joy, that I’d died on top of a tower just like this not three months ago. Fate—or whatever had conspired to draw me here this night—seemed to have a wicked sense of humor. At this height, even the city of Perth looked small and distant—bands of street and house lights disappeared over the horizon far below.

  A high, pained chuckle echoed across the wide plateau.

  Emissary, in human form, leaned against the base of one of the pillars. Light bled from a vicious cut around his neck, deep and sure. Half a star iron sword was buried in his throat, and in his hand he gripped Myth, coated in purple ichor. On the face of that pillar, a tear in reality revealed a world of rolling green hills and old stone covered in ivy.

  “How’d you get this tower here?” I asked, already kind of knowing the answer. “And where is the Eye of Sauron?”

  Emissary shrugged, and his head lolled to the side, almost tumbling from his shoulders. He righted it with a shrug as I kneeled down on my haunches in front of him. “What did I tell you, those long days ago? Spill enough blood and the reality of a place will crack. This tower isn’t here in truth, more a patch of a distant star imposing its... its presence on this world, fuelled by the cracks I forced in reality on my... my quest.”

  “On your murder spree,” Annie growled.

  I gazed over his shoulder at the open portal. “If that’s true, then why’d you need Myth?”

  Emissary flashed a row of razor-sharp teeth. “You were the only one who could pull the knife from the stone, Declan. It was made for you, so very long ago, and the world you found it in... Well, just one of the locks on the Everlasting prisons.”

  “Sounds like these locks were made to be broken.”

  “You can’t keep something as powerful as the Everlasting imprisoned indefinitely,” he whispered. “That pressure alone could tear the Story Thread asunder. If you had not severed the Infernal Clock, Declan, Atlantis would have exploded and torn through Forget. The good with the bad, yes?”

  I gently plucked Myth from his feeble grasp and slipped the knife under my belt behind my back. “That’s mine.”

  “Too late...” He laughed.

  Annie snarled and gripped the jagged, broken blade piercing Emissary’s neck. “This is for Sam,” she said and dragged the blade along the creature’s throat. “This is for Sam!”

  Emissary’s laughter became wet, angry gurgles as Annie severed his head from his shoulders. The blade cut her palm, and fresh red blood dribbled down the broken sword. Emissary bucked, and his eyes rolled into the back of his skull as his head fell away from his body, hitting the stone floor of the plateau with a sickening thud.

  He was dead.

  But still writhing. His form jerked, his limbs flailed, and for the final time his jaw stretched as long as my arm. Long, sharp fangs burst from his gums, and his human tongue elongated into something black, bulging, and forked. The rest of his body tore through his fine suit and grew dark scales and the beginnings of a long tail...

  “He’s changing,” I said. “Quickly now, over the side.”

  Acting fast, and not really thinking about it, Annie and I rolled Emissary’s headless body over the edge of the tower before the transformation into his true form could be completed. We hurled several hundred pounds of scaly flesh in torn rags off the tower. Then I took a quick step back and picked up the creature’s severed head. A long, grey-green snout, tendrils of smoke flaring in his nostrils, seemed to grin at me as his eyes turned into yellow slits.

  I hurled the head across the precipice, and it flipped past the pillar and portal. As it arced over the open air, the transformation completed. The dragon’s head burst into pink flame, and we watched both parts of the body strike the water far below. The flame burned even in the ocean, searing the flesh from Emissary’s bones in seconds. A charred and blackened skeleton of a beast that should never have existed on True Earth sank below the wild waters of the Indian Ocean.

  “Is that it?” Annie breathed. She cradled her sliced palm against her jacket. “Is it over?”

  “I’d say so, Detective. Think how that’s going to look in your report tomor—Ah... Ah!”

  My arm burst into pink flame, along the wicked rune of Emissary’s brand, and I felt the dam in my mind, the restrictive collar on my Will, thrown open and the power came flooding back to me—fresh and invigorating.

  I clasped my hand over the brand and poured luminescent smoke against the wound. My talents were never geared toward healing, but applying Will was like plunging the burn into snow. I gasped from the relief and basked in my recovered power.

  I was me again.

  “He’s truly dead,” Annie said. “That’s what they said back at the palace, wasn’t it? The brand would disappear once the beast was destroyed?”

  “I guess they got that one right.” I laughed. “Damn, but I feel good.”

  A bolt of crimson lightning burst from the portal on the nearby pillar and struck the stone at our feet, forcing us back a quick step. Within that lightning, a figure moved across the face of the portal, away in that old, green world of ancient stone.

  “Declan, look...” Annie whispered. “It’s—”

  “Get behind me,” I hissed, pooling smoky ethereal light into my palms. Like a man dying of thirst, I drank in the power—bathed in it—but even I didn’t think it would be enough to destroy what emerged from Emissary’s portal, forged using the Creation Knife, with such casual grace.

  Charlie Dusk, the boy in the toga and sandals from the Dream Worlds, the boy with the mango-stained face, stepped through the portal chomping on yet another large, juicy piece of fruit. He stared up at me and grinned.

  “Blessed Scion,” I said. “How lovely to see you again.”

  “Hello, Declan,” the boy said. “Miss Annie. You both broke your promise, and that made me so mad.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Please, Remember Me

  In less time than it took to blink, Scion clenched his fist, and Annie was hurled across the tower. A lashing of power picked her up off her feet, and I felt the edge of it on my arm like a blaze of flame. Her head slammed into the distant, sharp obsidian pillar and a sickening crunch echoed across the high plateau.

  As if from a great distance, my vision swimming and my stomach falling away, I watched her staring at me, her eyes blinking rapidly, and she smiled. A trickle of blood ran from under her hairline, down her face, as her eyes glazed over.

  Poor Annie, I thought, not quite seeing what I was seeing. My mind caught up with my heart, and I turned back to Scion. “You killed her.”

  “Her presence served no purpose,” the Everlasting said. “I abhor the purposeless, Declan.”

  Knight’s bite... I drew my broken sword.

  Scion frowned. “Do you not know what I am, c
hild? I am Everlasting. I am... Blessed, eternal. The Younger God.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a whole slew of dumbass titles, too. Thing is, chief, you’re sweating. This place takes a lot out of you, doesn’t it? You’re not all the way here, on True Earth, are you? Just a... heh... just a shadow.”

  Scion, what appeared to be a child, blurred and was, all at once, a few feet taller. His toga became a long, black suit of cloth armor, collarless, below the youthful face of an adolescent. He was handsome, his skin clear and his eyes as grey as the ocean in storm. “You swiftly run short of purpose, Declan.”

  I smirked, hiding my trepidation. “You couldn’t cross without the Creation Knife. You needed to tear a hole in reality. That’s why Oblivion was trapped in Atlantis. Why you were trapped in the Dream Worlds.” I snorted. “Where are the rest of you bastards and bastardettes imprisoned, hmm? You can’t Will-travel. You can’t use books or the Atlas Lexicon. You have to tear your way, kicking and screaming, across Forget. Oh how mighty and powerful the Everlasting!” I spat the last, and slashed my hand down through the air.

  Poor Annie.

  “I know you better than you know yourself, Declan,” Scion said. “You are a pale shadow of the man who ended the Tome Wars, even of the man who died severing the Infernal Clock, releasing me and my brethren. We were... imprisoned for so long. Ten millennia, forced only to watch, first with hate but then with joy as humanity forgot all you had accomplished. Pale shadows, the lot.”

  “You—”

  “You’re a man hidden behind a facade of faux wit, clinging desperately to the notion that your life still has meaning.” Scion shrugged and was a child again. Scion grinned and was a man. Endless, powerful—Everlasting. “You laugh against the night as your soul drowns in liquor and regret. If I were to let you live, you would drink yourself to death inside a year.”

  “Actually, I’ve been thinking about giving up the drink,” I said. “Exiled or not, my particular brand of asshattery has saved Forget more than once. Selfish to spend half the day in a drunken stupor when creatures like you think they can have free reign over the Story Thread. Time I got my head back in the game.”