Elder Shadow (The Reminiscent Exile Book 5)

by Joe Ducie

  Eh, at least there was beer.

  And time to reflect.

  *~*~*~*

  It was almost a shame when reality came crashing back in, full of that dark purpose I’d imagined, what with all its problems and ghosts and demons—and Elder Gods, of course.

  The construct in my mind’s mind, the opulent quarters and the booze, was torn away as if caught in the path of a tornado, and I was left once more in the dull grey-metal brig, the true cell in the back of my mind, looking out with my doubled senses through my mind and my body.

  Oblivion was still in control.

  With the taste of imaginary beer still on my lips, I stood in the cell and leaned back against the wall. I missed being in control, but the time I’d spent in reflection—hours and days inside my own mind—had given me a sort of inner peace. Those yoga and meditation folk may have been on to something after all. Oh hell, I’d gone from sober to even considering living healthily. I truly was beginning to think I’d live to see my thirtieth birthday, and the prospect of a whole new decade of this shit was truly depressing.

  Such unexpected horrors. I needed a resolution for when I hit that milestone in the next two years. Perhaps no more Everlasting, no more wars and fighting. Two years to rid the Story Thread of seven gods that had existed when the universe was young, and not to mention their somewhat immortal and scary powerful parents. Lovely Saturnia and coffee-crema coloured Quirinus. Bah, a tall order, but I’d had tall before.

  Oblivion and I stood about where I’d expected we would be standing—on the bridge of the Peace Arsenal’s mothership, the one Dusk had contacted me from aboard the Blade of Spring, moments before I shoved that ship into his home in a hellfire storm.

  Lord Hallowed Dusk, oldest and cruellest, sat tall and grim on the throne-like chair, pretentious some could say, surrounded by scurrying Vale—dull eyed yet resolute, as if they had all been sleeping not too long ago. Thinking on how the Peace Arsenal had been unleashed, I suppose it wasn’t unlikely they had all awoken after a long hibernation, a slumber… what’s the word? Suspended animation. That sounded suitably sci-fi.

  Using the edge of my vision, I beheld the ruins of the citadel out of the forward viewing windows. The island still burned, what chunks of it remained whole, and that made me smile. The Peace Arsenal ship hovered above the ruins, and I could glimpse a few of those impressive statues of the Everlasting tumbling in dismayed gravity spirals. One of them was Emily’s—Astoria’s, that is—shrouded in dark. The rest was ruin, aflame, and breaking apart.

  So barely any time had passed out here in reality. Minutes, a half hour at most. Oblivion still had frost on my hands, my fingernails bruised and blue, from the swim through the vacuum of space. Good then. All my reflection and plotting in the depths of my mind hadn’t been time wasted. It had been time gained. I almost felt refreshed, though I’m sure that wouldn’t last for long.

  “I wish I could understand,” Dusk said, wearing Shadowman’s husk, my ragged soul, like a suit of armour upon that yellow-stoned throne. “Just how, after everything, the deaths of our sisters least of all, you keep underestimating Declan Hale. The Shadowless Arbiter, brother, has played us all for fools again.”

  Oblivion grunted and slashed his hand down through the air. “He had help from the future. How was I to anticipate a method to waylay and even overcome our possession was possible. Such a thing has never occurred in all our long history—”

  “It’s your role to anticipate,” Dusk snapped and slammed his fist into the arm of the throne. The ship shook around him, the black-uniformed and blue-skinned Vale stumbling across the bridge. “Are you Everlasting or man, Oblivion? Elder God or babe sucking at the teat, hmm?”

  Oblivion had been sore with me, cross and angry, but the bubbling rage I felt from him in that moment eclipsed even the tempered ire I had sensed when I’d reclaimed my body, or when I’d piloted the Blade of Spring into the citadel. My most recent of victories, if one were keeping score, and at times I feared one were not. But here was sibling rivalry on a scale that defied the perception of us mere mortals. An anger that had festered for aeons, and grown rancid in that time. Oblivion, if he could, would have annihilated Dusk from existence.

  And the glint in Dusk’s eyes, the smirk on his lips, told me that the oldest of the Elder Gods knew it, too. He had Oblivion’s number, had it from the start—however many billions of years ago that start had been.

  ‘He plays you like a guitar,’ I said, having been given sight and sound again, my senses once more intact. ‘Plucks at your strings.’

  You will be silent or you will be silenced, he growled and, hoo-boy, did he mean it.

  I was no fool—well, arguable, I know—but I knew when to hold the few cards I had close to my chest. I shut my clap. Dealer on an ace, me sitting on a shitty fifteen. Face card all but guaranteed to screw me over either way.

  “Word of this will spread,” Dusk said. “Our brothers and sisters will be furious. We are a joke, incapable of stopping a swarm of humans from destroying our fortress. Not even that, in the end, but one human. The one who has shamed us most. King Declan Hale. The old enemies, those banished to the darkest corners of existence, will see this as weakness, will turn their gaze back toward the Everlasting. The Creation War renewed, Oblivion. Mark my words, this is only the beginning. The wheel turns and grinds us into the mud.”

  He wasn’t talking about the threat from beyond the Void this time—but something else, someone else, a whole bunch of someone elses, perhaps. Broken quill, just how many strongholds of power and ancient menace could the damn Story Thread hold?

  I knew the answer to that, of course, as did every Knight Infernal. The Story Thread could hold as many as could be imagined, and even a handful that couldn’t be imagined. Dusk was considering the latter, I was sure.

  “Our enemies are few, scattered, and wouldn’t dare,” Oblivion said, though he sounded less than certain.

  “Think on it, you fool,” Dusk spat. “Two of the Everlasting have fallen, their mantles of power misspent, and now the Citadel, the first bastion of light in the vortex and turmoil following creation itself, has fallen. We are not just seen as weak, we have become weak—and this was all achieved by your vessel. By one man. What would the Endless Night and its army of Abstracts think of this? What of the Idol Frost remnants? The Serenaded Abyss? Bah!” He threw up his hands and spat at his feet. “Innumerable poetic horrors I could name, all far more cunning and desperate than Declan Hale, and they will see this as signal to attack. Our plans for nought but to unite our enemies against us!”

  Glimpses of the named horrors flashed through Oblivion’s—and therefore, mine—mind. I only caught glimmers, like camera flashes in the dark, but glimmers were enough. I saw terrors and repulsions I would never have conceived on my own, ancient and cruel, against everything living and thus must be fought. And I saw that Oblivion and the other Everlasting had stood against those horrors in the proto-era of creation, when all universes were new and everything was wild.

  So long ago.

  Nine heroes against the blight, before becoming blight themselves.

  The Everlasting hadn’t stood to protect humanity and the other sentient races who strode in the light, such as the Vale, but they had protected us by protecting themselves and what they viewed as their rightful ownership of the Story Thread. The Elder Gods and their armies had fought back the wildness of a directionless whirlpool, the screaming magic and substance of the Story Thread born into existence.

  And they had won—they had fought for thousands of years, faced behemoths and demons, things that could rightly be called monsters, the original nastiness, and they had either destroyed or driven these beasts so far into the depths of the Story Thread or into the Void that humanity had had its chance to exist.

  To flourish.

  ’Spread like a virus,’ Oblivion snapped.

  I ignored him.

  In their own way, for their own ends, the Everlasting had been the orig
inal Knights Infernal. The original protectors of the Story Thread.

  And in my own way, I had been nothing but a hindrance to what was, back in their day, a pretty decent and effective force for control and sanity in an insane time.

  You see now? Oblivion asked. He sounded tired. You see what you have don—

  ‘This changes nothing,’ I snarled. Double down, split the aces, put a chip on perfect pairs, never let them see you blink, god forbid ever letting them see you cry, sick as cancer, it’s never sweater weather. ‘A thousand good deeds, saving the universe and creation a million times over, the good you’ve done… is outweighed and overshadowed alone by what you did to Tal Levy.’ I came to a decision then, one I’d made a long time ago, really. One I’d enforced today, and the day Annie and I killed Dread Ashaya. ‘You are abhorrent to me. And I will end you all.’

  And this time, for the first time, I felt more than arrogance and disgust from Lord Oblivion of the Everlasting. As we stood aboard the Peace Arsenal flagship in orbit above the ruins of his home, as he thought on the deaths of his siblings, and all I had achieved, I felt him believe.

  Just for a moment, just for the smallest instant between heartbeats, I felt the cruellest creature I’d ever known believe me. Much like that fear I’d revelled in when the citadel had fallen, I embraced that emotion—and I let Oblivion know I knew.

  I laughed at him.

  “What next?” he asked, and he spoke both to me and Dusk, it seemed.

  He already had my answer.

  Dusk rolled Shadowman’s eyes. “Hale threatening our destruction, I take it?”

  “He is… adamant in his resolve, yes.”

  “I almost admire that,” Dusk mused. “Almost.” He glanced sharply at Oblivion. “Can he hear me? Is he listening?”

  “…Yes,” Oblivion said reluctantly. “I can seal him in darkness if you would prefer—”

  “No, I want him to hear this.” Dusk, looking like the cat that got the cream… despite his pale and ruined face, my shadow’s face, grinned.

  A heavy, pregnant pause hung in the air, almost as if the universe were holding its breath. An Everlasting looking so pleased with himself was never good—for anyone, least of all me, who they had begun to take somewhat seriously. I preferred it when I was constantly underestimated. That had come into question with Astoria’s death, and been wholly disavowed when we went two for two inside a year and ended Dread Ash.

  “Detective Annie Brie,” Dusk said slowly, lazily, meeting my eyes—passing Oblivion and meeting my eyes. “She looked nice, standing next to you aboard that ship-turned-missile. She knows where to find our dear nephew, doesn’t she, Declan?”

  Ah… shit.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  Whether he heard me or read the look on Oblivion’s face, Dusk’s grin deepened. “Oh, that struck home, didn’t it? A blow far harsher than the one you’ve just dealt us.”

  He waved to the giant pieces of ruin on fire out the front window, pieces of his home, as if they no longer mattered. Perhaps they didn’t, really. No less Everlasting for all my trouble. I’d won a set, not the game, and it was Dusk’s turn to serve.

  ‘You’ll never find her,’ I said, and didn’t believe it. ‘She’s too clever for you—and she’s protected. Annie drove the blade through Dread Ash’s heart, Dusk. She’s got a kill count when it comes to you Everlasting bastards. I’d leave her alone.’

  “Quite so,” Dusk said, confirming that he could in fact hear me. “Which is why, my lord Oblivion, it shall be you who makes her talk—while Declan Hale gets to watch.”

  Oblivion clenched his fists and I felt him find his even footing, his purpose, after the blow I’d struck against the citadel. He was no longer rattled, he was the Elder God again, unbowed and unbroken. I had seen what he’d done to Tal, I had seen his methods—indeed, he showed me some of them now, a highlight reel in my mind—promises of pain and torture for Annie Brie.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said, mirroring his words to me from before the assault on his home. ‘Oh… we’ll see.’

  These stupid bastards just kept giving me more reasons to fight.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE END OF EVERYTHING

  ‘I was doing just fine… then I thought of you. That same old hurt’

  Oblivion left Dusk in command of the Peace Arsenal above the ruins of their ancestral home and fled across the Story Thread, free and easy without capsule, as was his way, dragging me with him. I used the word fled, thought it at him, because it irked the ageless bastard, and made me feel better despite my utter helplessness trapped back in the brig of my mind.

  At best, I could hope for another miracle star iron manacle, but I didn’t think that was likely. I had to think on my options, on what I knew could and would work. As was now habit, I guarded these thoughts well—that vault of secrets, one secret less now that Dusk had rumbled Annie—but the only real weapon I had against the Everlasting, Oblivion in particular, possessed as I was in my own head.

  I had time, a little time, so I had to do what I do best. I had to reminisce, had to be the Reminiscent Exile once again, and hope for a plan within the chaos.

  The manacle was planted in the past, by your future self, I thought. Time travel—you know it’s possible, you’ve done it before, and more than once. Always to the past, days or millenniums, it doesn’t matter, you know it’s possible.

  Could I swing that to my advantage? I felt sluggish and slow in my own head, a side effect of the week or so on the booze, no doubt. My brain cells weren’t firing on all cylinders. Hell, they hadn’t been for years, but I could be clever when I wanted to be. My cleverness had destroyed Dread Ash… sort of. I got real lucky there. But then I was real lucky, too. Such luck had kept me alive, one way or another, the dice tumbling around the cup for years after I should have fallen in one fight or another.

  It was Oblivion’s influence as well as the booze. He was once again in control, and whatever I was trapped in my own head—soul and consciousness, little else without a body—it was slowly killing me. Tal had endured for half a decade, which just showed how much stronger than me she could be—she was.

  Run, Tal. You and Annie run.

  I didn’t doubt Oblivion would find them… eventually, even sooner rather than later. He was a relentless, sleepless god, and they were human. But strong. And would give him one helluva race, if I knew them at all.

  Petals of the Infernal Clock, I thought, and that was the heart of any potential plan, wasn’t it? The only cards in the deck that mattered in this high-stakes game. With those petals, I could kill Everlasting. There were more than enough, double even, for every last one of the Elder Gods to be put in the ground. It was a beautiful irony that those petals could return humans to life, yet send immortals to their death. Again, it stank of someone being very clever a very long time ago, stank of a necessary balance.

  Creatures of honesty, I heard Quirinus say, echoing around my mind’s mind.

  When I had used the Roseblade to sever the Infernal Clock in the ruins of Atlantis-that-was, those petals had struck the obsidian spire of the Vale Atlantia and torn the pocket world around the city apart. The power unleashed had destroyed the reality of the place, forcing it from hiding and into reality.

  Emily, Fair Astoria, had claimed the remnant petals as they fell from the Clock—all save one, which I had snatched and which Aloysius Jade, once my enemy, now somewhat an indifferent bastard, had used to bring me back to life after Morpheus Renegade (once considered my greatest enemy, though that was a lot of gods and demons ago) had gut-stabbed me with a poisoned blade. Later that year, Emily had slipped one of the petals into Annie’s jacket in the ruins of an interdimensional train station, knowing—again knowing the future—that it would be needed after we fought Scion and the youngest of the Everlasting killed my loyal and honest detective.

  Where are the rest of those petals now?

  If I had any hope of clearing this mess, any hope of getting out of this a
live, it rested with those petals. Pure, concentrated celestial illusion, forged to purpose and promise. The Story Thread was vast, to put it mildly, and I couldn’t even begin to fathom where Emily would have hidden them…

  I began to fathom anyway, because I had no other option.

  I thought on those final moments inside the Degradation, the shield Oblivion had placed around the ruins of Atlantis, our dark bargain that had freed him and started this whole sordid mess, when the Infernal Clock was severed:

  I shook away the vestiges of what the Clock had shown me. Eternity, or something like it. A glimpse of the infinite sadness made real. A glimpse of chaos unbound. The knowledge had almost driven me over the edge, screaming into the blissful nothing. But no—not yet.

  Work still to be done, boss.

  I may have been less than an insignificant speck on the face of an immense and cold universe, but I still found meaning, hidden in lost shadows and pieces of cake. I mattered to me. Tal mattered to me, what was left of her. Sweet Clare. There were people I cared for, people who had purpose. Sophie, Ethan, and Aaron, just to name a few. Emily Grace, back on True Earth, to name one more.

  There may have been no meaning in the very large—existence was mindless chaos—but the Clock could not erase meaning from the very small.

  I levelled the Roseblade against the golden-green stem of the Infernal Clock. The thud of rushed, clapping footsteps sounded behind me. A long, harrowing cry for mercy echoed throughout my skull. I heeded it not.

  ”No!” Morpheus Renegade bellowed across the vast plateau.

  I severed the spine of all that ever was, and all that ever could be—born within those blasted, those awful, those dum-de-de-dum-dum… distant stars.