“Thanks, Knighthawk,” I mumbled as Loophole shrank to get out of the grip of the crabs.
I reached for her, and—like before—she shrank me as soon as I touched her tiny form. I was ready for it this time, and lunged for her as soon as I was tiny. I crashed into her again, grabbing at the pouch around her neck. I felt the thin metal rectangle through the leather inside. The motivator!
“Persistent little idiot, aren’t you?” she growled at me as the two of us, still tiny, grappled across the floor.
I grunted, managing to roll us up beside the crack-chasm in the ground. Then she head-butted me—and it stung. The room shook and I gasped, letting go—of both her and the pouch.
She rose, standing before me, the crack in the ground behind her. “I know his plan,” she said. “Epic of all Epics. Sounds like a great deal to me. I let him gather the pieces, then I make off with them. Go up and pay a visit to old Calamity myself.”
I looked up at her, dazed, my nose bleeding.
“I…,” I said, gasping.
“Yes?”
I panted. “I…suppose this…would be an awkward time to ask for an autograph.”
“What?”
I threw the dust into her face, then—as she cursed—I slammed my shoulder into her, grabbing the pouch while simultaneously knocking her backward. The cord snapped, leaving the pouch in my fingers. She fell into the chasm-crack, and I rocked there, on the edge, almost following her in.
She dropped to the bottom, where she hit with a soft thump. “You idiot!” she called up. “You realize that at this size”—she stopped, sniffling for a second—“at this size, a fall isn’t harmful at all. You could fall off a building, and—and— Oh, hell—”
I jumped away from the crack. A very faint sneeze came from behind.
Followed by a gut-wrenching splat. I winced, peeking at the mess of pulped flesh and broken bones that Loophole had become by growing too quickly inside far too small a space. Parts of her burbled out the top of the crack, like rising dough that had outgrown its bowl.
I swallowed, nauseous, then stumbled to my feet and pulled the motivator from the pouch. A bit of dust and one sneeze later, both it and I were back to regular size—though my Gottschalk was nowhere to be found.
I grabbed my handgun instead. “Mizzy, I’ve got the motivator,” I said over the line. “Where are you?”
I stumbled through the caverns underneath Ildithia, passing walls blasted open with the tensors, leaving scattered piles of sand. The glowsticks gave the tunnels a radioactive cast. I stopped, steadying myself during another tremor, then continued toward the nook where Mizzy had dragged Cody. Was that them ahead?
No. I pulled up short. Light poured through a rent in the air, like cut flesh where the skin had curled to the sides. Through it I saw another cavern, this one lit by a lively orange light. Inside, Firefight struggled against Loophole.
I gaped, watching the woman I’d just killed shrink and run from him while causing a set of falling rock chips to become boulders. Firefight zipped backward, his flames heating the rocks to a reddish orange.
I looked down the passage and glimpsed other rents in the air. Megan had been pushing herself, it seemed. I gulped and continued toward Mizzy. A flash of light to my left illuminated figures struggling in the shadows—a section of the cavern network beyond where Mizzy had placed her glowsticks.
Prof suddenly appeared a little ways down the cavern, forming like light coalescing. He was using Obliteration’s powers to teleport. Sparks! Even as he appeared, a section of the roof collapsed. Not an illusion this time, an actual rockfall, which Prof was forced to catch with a forcefield above his head. He bellowed with rage, holding up the fallen rocks, then sent a few lances of light off into the distance.
They’d both been forced, it seemed, to grasp for dangerous resources. Prof using his hidden teleportation device; Megan reaching further and further into other realities. How far had she gone? What if I lost her, as I’d lost Prof?
Steady, I thought at myself. She’d been certain she could handle it. I had to trust her. I ducked my head and scrambled down a side tunnel, eventually spotting bloodstains on the stones. I rounded another corner, then stumbled to a halt as I almost tripped over Mizzy and Cody.
He lay on the ground with eyes closed, his face pale. Mizzy had needed to pull off most of the tensor suit to get at his wounds; it was piled in a heap nearby, the harmsway portion detached, but with wires extended to his arm. Mizzy yelped when she saw me, then snatched the motivator from my limp fingers. She plugged it back into the vest.
“Knighthawk,” I said over the line, “you really need to secure those motivators better.”
“It’s a prototype,” he grumbled. “I built it to have quick access so I could tweak motivators as needed. How was I to know Jonathan would yank the things out?”
Mizzy glanced at me as the harmsway glowed softly. “Sparks, David! You look like you fell off a cliff or something.”
I wiped my nose, which was still bleeding. My face was starting to swell from the beating I’d taken. I slumped down next to Mizzy, exhausted. “How’s the fight going?”
“Your girlfriend is kinda amazing,” Mizzy said grudgingly. “Abraham keeps getting locked up in forcefields, but she gets him out. Together they’re keeping Prof busy.”
“Does she seem…”
“Crazy?” Mizzy said. “Can’t tell.” She looked to Cody, whose wounds were—blessedly—closing. “He’ll be out for a while yet. Hope the other two can last. I’m out of boom-packs too, I’m afraid. So maybe—”
Someone exploded into existence next to us. A sudden burst of light, silent, but stunning if you watched it. I shouted, falling backward, and reached for the handgun strapped to my leg. It wasn’t Prof. Unfortunately, that left only one other option.
Obliteration turned, his trench coat sweeping the side of the cavern. He looked from Mizzy to Cody to me, studying us with bespectacled eyes. “I’ve been summoned,” he said.
“Um, yeah,” I said, hands trembling as I held my gun on him. “Prof. He has a motivator built from your flesh.”
“To destroy the city?” Obliteration asked, head cocked. “She made a bomb beyond those she gave me?”
“Those she gave you?” I asked. “So…you do have more?”
“Of course,” Obliteration said calmly. “You are fallen, David Charleston.” He shook his head, then disappeared, leaving behind an image made of ceramic that broke apart and faded.
I relaxed. Then Obliteration appeared beside me, hand on my gun. It was suddenly hot, and I shouted, fingers singeing as I dropped the weapon. Obliteration kicked it aside, kneeling next to me.
“ ‘And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come,’ ” he whispered. He flinched as, distantly, Prof must have teleported. Then he grinned, closing his eyes. Sparks. He seemed to like the feeling. “The hour has come for you to die and for this city to be destroyed. I regret that I cannot give you more time.” He placed his hand against my forehead, and I felt warmth coming from his skin.
“I’m going to kill Calamity,” I blurted out.
Obliteration opened his eyes. The heat dampened. “What did you say?”
“Calamity,” I said. “He’s an Epic, and he’s behind all of this. I can kill him. If you want to bring about Armageddon, wouldn’t that be the perfect way? Destroy this terrible…um, angel? Creature? Spirit?”
That sounded religious, right?
“He is far away, little man,” Obliteration said, contemplative. “You will never reach him.”
“You can teleport there though, right?”
“Impossible. Calamity is too distant for me to form a proper picture of its location in my mind, and I cannot go to a place I haven’t seen or cannot visualize.”
How did you get in here, then? Sparks. Had he been watching us somehow? That didn’t matter. Hand still trembling, I reached into my pocket and unhooked my mobile. I brought it out and tur
ned to him, displaying Regalia’s image of Calamity. “What if you have a picture?”
Obliteration whispered softly, eyes wide. “ ‘And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition….’ ” He blinked, looking at me. “Again you surprise me. If you defeat your former master, and impress me in so doing, I will grant your desires.”
He exploded into a flash again—and this time he didn’t immediately return. I groaned, leaning against the wall, shaking my burned hand.
“Calamity! What is up with that man?” Mizzy asked, sliding her sidearm into its holster. It took her three tries, her hand was trembling so much. “I thought we were dead.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I half expected him to murder me for the audacity of claiming I wanted to kill Calamity. I figured it was even odds that he worshipped the thing instead of hating it.” I peeked around the corner, looking down a tunnel that shone with rents and rips into other dimensions.
“Abraham just went down!” Knighthawk said in my ear. “Repeat, Abraham is down. Jonathan sheared his arm off—rtich attached—with a forcefield.”
“Sparks!” I said. “Megan?”
“Hard to see,” Knighthawk said. “I’ve only got two crab cameras left. I think you’re losing this fight, guys.”
“We were losing it before we started,” I said, turning and crawling to the tensor suit. “Mizzy, some help.”
She looked at the suit, then at me, eyes widening. She scrambled over, then helped me start putting it on. “Cody should be stable now; that harmsway is something.”
“Unhook it and attach it back to the tensor suit,” I said. “Knighthawk, how much can your drones lift?”
“About a hundred pounds each,” he said. “I work them in tandem for heavier things. Why?”
“Bring some down, grab Cody, pull him out. Is Abraham still alive?”
“Don’t know,” Knighthawk said. “His mobile is still on him though, so I can show you his location.”
I looked at Mizzy and she nodded, plugging the wires from the harmsway into the vest of the tensor suit, which I was now wearing. “I’ll find him,” she said, “and stabilize him until you can get back with this.”
“Get the drones hooked to Cody first.”
“Assuming I can get drones in to you,” Knighthawk said. “Jonathan’s military has the place surrounded up above. They don’t seem too eager to come down and join the fight.”
“And get between two High Epics?” I said. “They’ll stay back unless directly ordered. They know what happened to the soldiers at Sharp Tower. I’m surprised he was able to get even Loophole to come down here, after that.”
“Yeah,” Mizzy said. She looked overwhelmed, hand still trembling. I didn’t feel much better myself, though with a jolt I felt the harmsway engage. My pains faded.
“Get out of here, Mizzy,” I said. “You’ve done what you can. Try to get Abraham and Cody to safety; I’ll bring the harmsway for Abraham as soon as I can. If I don’t make it, set up with Knighthawk.”
She nodded. “Good luck, David. I’m, um, glad I didn’t shoot you in Babilar.”
I smiled, yanking on first the right tensor glove, then the left.
“You going to be able to make it work?” Mizzy asked. “Without practice?”
The lights on the gloves lit up a deep green. I felt their hum course through me, a distant melody that had once been precious to me, yet one I’d somehow forgotten. I released it, reducing the stone wall nearby to a wave of dust.
“Feels like coming home,” I said.
In fact, I felt almost good enough to face a High Epic.
I sprinted through the tunnel, passing shimmering rips on either side—windows to other worlds. Several were to Firefight’s realm, but others—fainter, misty and less distinct—looked farther away. There were worlds where unfamiliar figures fought in these tunnels, or where the place was completely dark, and even worlds where there were no tunnels here, just rock.
The tensors hummed on my hands, eager. It was as if…as if the powers themselves knew I was trying to save Prof. They sang me a battle hymn. As I reached the chamber where I’d seen Prof earlier, I let out a burst of vibrating energy, dispelling the rock of a ledge before me, creating a set of dust-covered steps that I strode down.
Prof glowed green in the center of the chamber, the sleeves of his coat rolled back to expose forearms covered with dark hair. He turned on me, then laughed. “David Charleston,” he said, his voice booming in the chamber. “Steelslayer! Come to finally take responsibility for what you began in Newcago? Have you come to pay?”
The floor here was pocked with tensor holes, and those alternated with piles of rubble and dust that had collapsed from the ceiling. Sparks. This place was a few breaths and a modest bass beat away from a cave-in.
I stepped up before him, hoping I could make the suit’s forcefields work. Where was Megan? She’d be reborn if she’d died, so that didn’t worry me as much as the existence of all these tears in reality.
One of them hovered nearby. Darkness visible only because of the shimmering at its sides.
Megan stepped out of it.
I jumped. Sparks, it was her, but a…strange version of her. Blurry.
Because it’s not just one of her, I realized. I wasn’t looking at one Megan, but hundreds. Overlapping one another, each similar but somehow individual. A freckle in a different place, hair that parted another way. Eyes too pale here or too dark there.
She smiled at me. A thousand smiles.
“I’ve got Abraham,” Mizzy said. “He’s alive, but it would be reaaaal nice if you kept the harmsway safe, David. If you want Abraham back to one piece, at least. Pulling out now.”
“Roger,” I said, looking at Prof. His clothing was dusty, ripped. He’d bled—and healed—from multiple cuts on his face. One hadn’t healed, a place where Cody had hit him with the powers somehow.
Beleaguered though he was, Prof didn’t seem afraid. He stood tall, confident. Four glowing lances of light appeared around him.
“The price, David,” Prof said softly.
He released the lances, driving them toward me. I was able to vaporize them with the tensors, which shattered the forcefields to tiny specks. They sprayed across me before twinkling away. Not content to get pushed around, I charged Prof, trying to summon forcefields of my own.
All I got were a few shimmers of green, ripples like light reflecting off a pond. Crud.
Prof sent a second set of spikes, but—like Cody—I was familiar enough with the tensors to stop these as well. I leaped over a pit in the ground, then slammed my hand on the floor, opening up a gap with a blasting humm.
Prof dropped a mere inch before landing on a disc of green light. He shook his head, then flung his hand toward me, sending a gout of tensor energy that dropped the ground out from beneath me, as I’d done to him.
I frantically tried to create a forcefield to land on, but only got another shimmer of light. Then an instant later the hole wasn’t as deep—and I hit bottom three feet down.
Megan stood beside the hole. “There are many worlds where he did not dig deep enough with that blast,” she said, her voice overlapped by a hundred whispers.
Prof growled, charging me and summoning spears of light, one after another. I hopped out of the hole, falling in beside Megan, destroying the spikes where I could.
Each time I did so, Prof winced.
“So, how do we fight him?” Megan asked in overlapping voices. “All I’ve been able to do is distract him. Is the plan still to make him confront his fears somehow?”
“Not sure, honestly,” I said, thrusting my hands in front of me and straining. Finally I produced a forcefield wall. It was kind of like using the tensors in reverse. Instead of releasing a hum, I let it build up inside me until it coalesced.
“How much can you alter?” I asked, looking at Megan.
“Little things,” she said. “Reasonable things. My powers haven’t
changed, I just know them. David, I can see worlds…so many worlds.” She blinked, an action that seemed to trail infinite shadows of eyelids. “But they’re all ones that are nearby. It’s amazing, yet frustrating. It’s like I can count as many numbers as I want, but only if they happen to be between zero and one. Infinity, yet still bounded.”
Prof shattered our forcefield, then raised his hands, causing the ceiling to shake. I summoned the tensor powers as I anticipated his move—indeed, he tried to bring the ceiling down on us by vaporizing a ring of rock, dropping a large stone in the center.
I vaporized the chunk right above us. We were showered with dust, and the way it fell on Megan proved she was here and real, not a shadow as a piece of me had feared.
Prof winced again.
I’m using his power. And it hurts.
“All right, I have a plan,” I said to Megan.
“Which is?”
“To run,” I said, turning and dashing out of the main chamber into a side tunnel.
Megan cursed, following. We ran side by side and I engaged the tensors, vaporizing ribbons of stone along our path. I wasn’t sure what I could do to change him or make him return to us. All of my plans had failed so far; the best thing I could do at the moment was keep the suit working and keep him in pain.
Behind us, Prof roared. He teleported in front of us, but I simply grabbed Megan by the hand and turned the other direction while disintegrating the forcefield Prof tried to use to trip us up. We ran into a tunnel without any light, but glowsticks appeared a second later, summoned by Megan from a realm where Mizzy had lit this place.
When Prof teleported in front of us again, red-faced and snarling, I turned us back the other way, unrelentingly using the suit’s powers on random stones we passed. Each use of the tensors was driving him further into a fury.
I’ve been here before, I thought, feeling the echoes of another event. Another fight. Driving an Epic to anger…
Prof appeared again, and this time Megan reacted first, yanking me to the side as spears of light—faster than I could track—struck like blades around us. Sparks! I barely stopped them. Maybe this wasn’t such a good plan.
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