by Joe Ducie
Well, I’d certainly proven myself since. And what do we say about desire, Em? It’s an eternal trap.
“You wish us to fight, child?” Oblivion asked. “Here? You insult us both, though I care not for the Shadowless Arbiter’s well-being.”
“I scare you, uncle,” Born said. “Because my power is different, perhaps even greater, hmm, than the rest of you. The humanity in me, not such a weakness. You won’t admit it, but you’re thinking it very loudly.”
I was a step or two ahead. “Fight and prove which side is stronger?” I asked. “Is that what you want?” I sighed—another sigh, one more for the pile. “Wouldn’t you rather we go get ice cream?”
Born grinned. “The human side of me would very much like that, father. The Everlasting…” He shook his head.
Born snapped his fingers again, the click echoing out over the dead city and for miles into the sheer, barren countryside. In the middle of the plateau at the top of that tower, over the dais and the remains of the melted celestial illusion—the Infernal Clock and the Roseblade, more trouble than they’d ever been worth—an opulent, gilded coffin appeared, about six and half feet long. About perfect fit for a man my size, with room to spare even.
Oblivion and I exchanged a speculative glance.
“A bit gaudy, perhaps?” Born asked, talking mostly to himself. “Yes, a bit gaudy.” Another snap of the fingers and the coffin changed into a simple pinewood box, the kind of thing they buried paupers in back in the eighteenth century. “Much better. We’re not the trinkets or the charms that gild us, are we?”
I glanced down at the kid, barely standing taller than my knee in his red little sneakers, and felt another one of those moments of infinite sadness.
“King Declan Hale,” Born said and looked up at me. “The Shadowless Arbiter, Bearer of Astoria’s Mantle, and the devil’s own luck. And Lord Oblivion, the Age Flood, Everlasting. Father. Uncle. You are two sides of the same coin, and your warring has disturbed the Story Thread for the last time. I bid you, fight—let’s put one of you in the box, shall we? To the winner, well, goes the future.”
I expected wicked forked lightning to crash overhead, alongside apocalyptic thunder and the howling gusts of the end times.
But there was only dead silence.
A sort of sigh of regret in a dead city.
The prize fight, ladies and gentlemen, all for nothing.
Nothing for all.
*~*~*~*
For a brief, mad moment I expected Oblivion not to be an asshole. I don’t know why, call it being far too human, but I was disabused of that notion all too swiftly when he grasped my ghostly form with my bloody hands and lifted me over his/my head and hurled me across the plateau and into the pinewood coffin.
I hit the box hard—and even as a ghost, or something resembling such, I felt the blow as if I had full control of my body and senses. I was alive, real, whatever form I was in, and that hurt like getting thrown into a wall should hurt.
Born hurried back on his little legs to the edge of the plateau, silhouetted against the forever-twilight of this place, to watch the fight. Atlantis watched, too.
I reached for my Will light, knowing it would be nothing against Oblivion’s power, and was surprised to find it—blocked. There, certainly, but an invisible wall stood between me and the light, the arcane powers. A barrier.
Oblivion advanced on me, fists clenched, teeth gritted, and I realised all at once that he didn’t have access to his power either. We were, effectively, two drunks brawling with our fists and strength. I snatched a quick look at Born and my son winked at me.
“Little shit,” I muttered and picked myself up in time to be tackled by Oblivion. This was a fist fight, as ugly as they got.
He tackled me around the waist and attempted to lift me again, but I was ready this time and brought my fists, closed around one another down on the back of his/my neck—right between his shoulders.
Oblivion grunted—and I’m sure he was furious, wondering how Born had blocked him from Will—and felt the force of that blow like a sledgehammer. His legs went out from under him, slamming his knees against the edge of the obsidian dais, tearing his jeans. He cried out. I wondered when the last time he’d felt pain had been.
I kneed myself in the face and Oblivion reared back, nose broken, falling against the plateau. He’d already been circling the drain in my body, his presence being rejected, and that had to hurt.
“Oh, good,” Born said. “And here I thought you may have issue hitting yourself, father.”
I hated the little brat in that moment. “I’m not your dad, kid, I just fucked your mum.”
Born blinked, surprised, and then burst out laughing.
I returned his grin and Oblivion snaked an arm around my ghostly leg and pulled me down onto the plateau next to him.
What followed next was an ugly fist fight, as ugly as they got. He was a god, I was a king. He pulled my hair, I bit his shoulder. We traded blows thick and fast, aiming to wound, aiming to break. The coffin cast a shadow on us from atop of the dais and I was certain, damn certain, even if it killed me, that Oblivion would be occupying that box.
Again, if it killed me. Oblivion dead would be three of the Everlasting destroyed. I didn’t know what Born was, but he was certainly powerful, and that put their number back to seven without Oblivion. Sort of a two steps forward, one step back, issue. I’d be long dead and would not give shit one.
A minute or two later, bloodied and beaten—my soul bleeding ghost blood, some-fucking-how—Oblivion and I separated and, mirror images, clawed our way onto one knee. Breathing heavily, our faces masks of hate and pain, we stared at each other, five feet of distance between us. I wanted to hurl myself at him, drag us both kicking and screaming off the edge of the tower.
“Do it,” Born said, and he was in my head, of course he was. “A noble sacrifice.”
The way he said that last made me think it was anything but noble.
“You’re sick, kid,” I managed, wiping ghost blood from my nose on the back of my ghost hand.
“He is Everlasting,” Oblivion hissed. “And understands the burden of that.”
I nodded once and met Born’s eyes. For a moment there, just a flicker, I saw something other than mirth and sparkling intelligence. I saw uncertainty, something akin to… fear. The kid was scared. And had been putting on a show this whole time, because he didn’t know what else to do.
Just like his father would have done.
Oh, you little bastard… I loved him for that.
For being brave.
Was he more powerful than Oblivion? Potentially, though he could just be cleverer with his power. I didn’t doubt, given time, Oblivion would find a way around the block on his power. He wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice. And Born, if faced with more than one of his uncles, or his aunts? If faced with the Everlasting united against him? He would be annihilated, as I should have been.
A desperate plan occurred to me. One of those dire thoughts that felt instinctively right. But remember, when you meet him, he’s just as scared as you are…
“I,” I said, and the words fought against the rawness in my throat, “King Declan Hale of the Knights Infernal, do here bequeath the mantle of Fair Astoria to my first-born son upon the moment of my death.”
Something shifted inside me, a light shone above my heart, through the ghostly black shirt and waistcoat I wore, and a grand lock, a contract, clicked into place. The covenant was made. My son smiled sadly.
Oblivion’s eyes bulged and he snarled, leapt forward, closed my fleshy hand around my ghostly neck.
“Why?” he growled.
I stared down into my own face, swollen black eyes, blood seeping from every pore, and knew this was the end. Oh, boy, did I welcome it.
“The kid will need every ounce of power he can get if he’s going to finish what I started,” I said, and glanced at Born, who gazed at me with a contemplative look on his face, “and put you in the dirt
, Oblivion.”
Oblivion snapped his head back as if stung. “You are the most… the last… the… the…” He struggled for the words, gaped like a goldfish, shaking my head.
The light began to fade on the edge of my vision. Even now, my ghostly form fought for air, fought to live, even if the mind inside of it wanted to give up and give in.
You ever bump into your mum, I thought, knowing Born could hear me, ten thousand years ago, a little bar in Atlantis called the Embleton, perhaps, you give her my love, OK?
His face changed, that was the last thing I saw, before the edges of my vision faded, tunnelled entirely, and I slipped into unconsciousness. Oblivion’s grip tightened, his game and patience at an end, just wanting me dead. Gone.
I gave a last token effort, slammed my weak fists into his death grip, but it was done—my race was run.
Born’s face changed, I said, but a better word would be crumpled. Two feet and change, that kid, only a toddler, he began to cry.
I saw his palms ignite with liquid fire, tears staining his cheeks, and then I saw nothing more in that fabled, that ancient, that hum-diddee-hum-hum, Lost City of Atlantis.
*~*~*~*
Death hurt a lot.
I remember thinking that the last time I had died, thinking that death had been like going to sleep. That the resurrection had hurt a lot.
I blinked against blue skies and a bright sun, tasted the air on bloody lips, and as reality coalesced around me I realised—not entirely without a sigh—that I was alive. Moreover, I was home on True Earth.
I didn’t know how much time had passed since the fight in Atlantis, but I wagered only a few minutes. I stood back in Riverwood Plaza, on the very same spot where Born had swept me and Oblivion away to the Lost City. I stood without Oblivion, and moreover, I stood in my own body.
That tortured, ruined husk, bleeding from a dozen wounds, swaying on the spot, drunk and hungover at the same time. I felt worse than I’d ever felt in my life. Quickly, desperately, I scoured my mind—but I was alone there, as well. Lord Oblivion was gone. What had happened after I passed out? What had Born done? I would not believe Oblivion truly gone until I saw his remains in a crystal coffin.
Tal and Annie were at the marble fountain in the middle of Riverwood Plaza, only half a dozen feet away, and Annie held a familiar young man in her arms. It was the same day then, perhaps even the same moment. The young man, Born, but no, this was different. The look on his face as he stared at me wasn’t familiar.
“Declan,” Annie said, staring at me uncertainly, her eyes taking in my many wounds. “I don’t know how, but this is Arty. He’s been wanting to meet you.”
“We’ve met before,” I rasped, and held my hands about twelve inches apart. “Oh, when you were about this big, kiddo.”
The kid, Arty, gazed shyly from Annie’s shoulder at me and then turned his face away into her neck. I was a sight to behold. I was scaring him.
“What happened to him?” Tal asked. She hadn’t put her knife away.
“He made a choice,” I said. “He chose… to be human.”
Annie bounced him on her arm when he began to cry. “Hush, hush,” she said. “It’s OK. Is the other…?”
“The Everlasting Born is still in there,” I said, knowing without knowing. “Slumbering, perhaps, waiting for his body to catch up with his mind.”
“I think his adoptive parents will be missing him,” Annie said. “The family I left him with. They must be beside themselves.”
Tal took my hand and it hurt. Some, all, of my fingers were broken. “Say goodbye, Declan,” she whispered.
“Goodbye, Declan,” I managed and tore my hand from hers with the last of my strength.
I grinned, laughed aloud, then fell back in a dead faint, an arc of blood from my face spattering my son and marking him like a brand. Born of the Everlasting had saved my life and given my son—given himself—a chance to be a kid.
That felt like a win.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE WIELDER OF THE SPEAR
When I awoke, unsurprisingly not dead, it was to the worst hangover of my life. My mouth was drier than parchment left in the desert sun, the drinker’s curse, and the dim, clinical white lights in the ceiling scorched my retinas as if they were blazing stars.
I groaned and tried to move, but I was strapped to a bed—a gurney, really—and I was in a hospital. The scent of ammonia, designed to mask the disease and pain of the place but somehow amplifying it, that familiar scent of impending death and illness, clung to the air. I was in a clean room, it seemed, about fifteen feet across by the same wide. An airlock separated the room from the corridor outside.
Annie Brie sat in a chair next to the bed, snoozing in a quarantine suit. Her eyes flickered beneath their lids, in dream, and a small frown creased her brow.
I had enough slack in my restraints to reach out my right hand—lifting my arm was a struggle worthy of song—and rest my palm on her knee. She stirred but didn’t wake. I squeezed her knee with all the strength I could muster below her light blue hazmat suit. I noticed with approval her revolver sat in its holster on the bedside table, next to a wall of machines beeping away, sensors and needles plugged to me and through me.
She had been on watch.
Protecting me.
Against… well, let’s be honest, against fucking anything.
The effort required to squeeze her knee made my head spin and my arm fell limp at my side.
But it did rouse Detective Brie. Her eyes fluttered open, hazy and uncertain for a moment, and then laser-like focus returned. She snapped her hand out to the handle of her revolver, scanned the room, before relaxing.
I smiled at her.
She smiled at me.
“When I said we should get a room,” I rasped, “this isn’t what I meant.”
Annie rolled her eyes. “Your sense of humour and timing didn’t survive the ordeal then? Shame. You’re in Joondalup Hospital, Declan. True Earth.”
I chuckled and my chest felt like it would tear apart.
“Any of those buttons morphine? Push it repeatedly, please.”
Annie hit me with the good stuff and I relaxed into a fluffier daze.
“The doctors have about a thousand questions for you.”
I licked my dry lips. “Medical marvel, am I?”
“You were dead on your feet when I brought you in here.” Annie’s face darkened. “Literally, I had you leaning against me, eyes open, bleeding from everywhere, and you were ranting… about something, something that sounded important.”
“What?”
“Desire’s eternity,” she said. “You kept saying that over and over.”
I nodded. “That makes sense.”
“No, no it doesn’t.”
“It will. It’s where I’m going once I can stand.”
Annie considered that, then nodded. “You’re leaving. Your time here in Perth… it’s over.” She crossed her arms over chest, crinkling the hazmat suit. “I’ll miss you.”
“I want you with me,” I said. “You, more than anyone, Annie. You’re a survivor, like me.” She stared at me and said nothing. “Any other visitors?”
“A man named Vrail, said he was a Knight. I didn’t let him in, though I doubt I could have stopped him if he’d insisted.” Annie reached out and touched my arm. “Your brother reclaimed the throne in Ascension City, and exiled every Knight that supported you. Vrail and the others, I think they’re watching the hospital. But he said to tell you, if you woke up—and at the time none of us thought you would—that when you need them, they’ll be there. He mentioned Reach City. Tal was here, briefly, and she went with him. ‘To ensure Declan’s kingdom’, she said.”
I shuddered at that. Reach City was a ruin, a dead world. I had killed it. Fitting that my allies had taken refuge there. Clever, too. The Knights Infernal, my brother in particular, liked to pretend the Reach didn’t exist. That Tal had gone to see to the administration of things was encou
raging. She was still on my side, and off the bench. Good.
“Well, we can’t go back now,” I muttered, mostly to myself. “Everything’s changed.”
“Did you kill Oblivion?” Annie asked.
I shook my head.
“Fuck,” she said.
“He’ll be back—his brothers and sisters—and sooner than we’d like. I have something they want, Annie.” I considered the mantle of power, felt it as a core of strength within my mind, a concordance of knowledge and power. Once I recovered, I’d be stronger than ever before, and Oblivion wouldn’t try to possess me again. Not after how well it had gone the first time. I was a virus to the Everlasting, in every way, shape, and form. And I had not yet begun to fight. “Which is why we need to go to Desire’s Eternity.”
“It’s a place, then?”
I nodded. “Orbital space station, massive, the size of New York. I’m certain there’s something there that can kill the Everlasting. I want to find it and make bullets aimed straight at their blasted hearts—”
I fell into a coughing fit and spat blood down my chin, onto my clean white hospital sheets. My throat was fire, torn and bleeding.
“Shit,” Annie said. “The god slaying will have to keep a while longer yet. I’ll get the doctor.”
I wanted to argue, but the doctor would have the good drugs, and right then and there I would have traded the whole sordid mess for just one of those pills. I’ve an addictive personality, it’s a flaw, and I’m working on it.
Annie called for the doctors using the intercom on the wall and a whole fleet of white-coated, hazmat-suited medical practitioners arrived within about ten minutes. That airlock really slowed down the painkillers, but when one shows up bleeding from the eyes and through the skin, I imagine hospitals liked to err on the side of caution.
What followed was a week of poking and prodding, as my body returned to health far faster than even the most optimistic doctor’s opinion. That was my Knightly constitution, my Will—I healed fast, always had, and had always needed to, what with the adventuring and the world ending chaos I found myself in every other month.