by David Finn
She half fell to the ground, but her hand caught the mirror.
Around her was the void. Black suns shone in a red cloud. Bloated, inert bodies floated through the gas. They were dead gods. Holy monsters that were withered and gone. She saw an entire pod of dead creatures, tentacles curled outward, thousands of them, slaughtered en masse.
She saw the Iron God, her brother’s fledging, imperfect sword impaled in his gut, spinning into an endless cycle of oblivion, tumbling toward the black sun.
Demorn floated through the fringes of extinction. She clutched at her neck but the pain locket was gone.
How stupid that seemed now. I’m not even a pawn to them, she realized. She saw the horrible, beautiful corpse of the pain goddess, her body riven with a million spears, power bled out and gone, still drifting upward. I’m not even a pawn.
Mictecaciuatl opened her awful, sick eyes. Demorn could not look away. The power of the locket was a fraction of what flooded her. Her eyes bled with raw power, shivering. Everything hurt and bled. Mictecaciuatl released her from her horrible gaze. It didn’t matter that she was just a skeletal wreck. It didn’t matter how sick she was.
‘Do not pity me, young Princess of the Sword. My creations return to the death womb. There will be pain until the End.’
In the burnt out hollowness that was the heart of the Pain God, Demorn saw a tiny speck moving toward it. In the final moment, she realized it was the Duke, a beheaded, broken doll.
A single red fire rose from the dead coals, consuming him, obliterating the old Duke utterly.
There was distant sigh, and a murmur of heat in the horrible, endless cold, the chuckle of something very old and hungry.
Demorn opened her eyes, forcing herself not to scream. She was huddled on the floor. The spinning mirror was in front of her. Demorn dragged herself to her feet. Xalos held barely any fire now. She sheathed the blade. It felt cold and dead.
The Tyrant spoke. ‘Well, that’s new, Sword Princess.’
His voice was the same but different, from behind her.
I wonder what he is now, she thought. I wonder if he has become one of those horrible creatures floating in oblivion.
‘Do you want to look?’ he asked.
The mirror rumbled, as if it too was part of the question.
‘I’m born curious. Just don’t ask me for a donation.’
She turned around. At first glance, it seemed like a trick of the eye. His old body was cast away, a cheap collection of skin and bones, withered and ancient.
They were nowhere she had ever been. A vast, hollow cave, adorned in runes seared into magnificent ebony bones. The Tyrant sat upon a magnificent cruel Throne. With a cold wisdom she realized that the throne was just the beginning, a hint for what would come.
Her magic eyes caught a glimpse of a blood pyramid that touched the very stars. She saw the symbols of Asanti upon the shining structure. Foreign symbols of many nations and worlds, many proud cities with their flags.
She could feel the standards of war upon her. Visions of herself as a great General in his holy army. The cave filled with people, countless denizens of Babelzon and the wider world beyond. A thousand courtiers for the king. The Innocents guarded him, lurking in the shadows.
The next moment there was only the Tyrant, the same but not the same as before, dressed in his sharp black suit. Energy flooded out of him. He hopped off the throne and came to her. The closer he came, the less cold she became, the more the void abated, and the chill left her bones.
But terror filled her. As a kindness, the Tyrant parted the veil. He wore the standards of the Dragon, riven through his soul. Perhaps it always had been. Perhaps it was in the birthing of a god.
She would never forget, she knew that, not until all her days would pass. She saw a pure, naked god, freshly born and emergent.
He raised a casual palm.
‘Ally,’ he said.
She nodded, pressing her hand to his.
The Ice Worm slithered through the Fort, spells burnt upon its hide. The Sisters had truly fallen.
She saw the Six Ancient Dragon Gods, huge, oppressive and old. She saw their temples, their feeding pits. She saw their tombs in the distant future, from where they watched their past and plotted their many returns and resurrections.
She saw the Tyrant at the dawning, fighting the colossal, swollen hordes on Triton in ancient wars. A distant planet. She saw him eating worlds. She saw great cruelty, she saw great bravery, and savage sadness.
She saw him weeping for his first love. She saw what lay against the Void, in eternal parallel, a vast universe of Living Suns, with their own coded language, and she could almost decipher their many codes, she could guess and feel so many things.
He gently released her hand. Warm lips brushed her forehead.
‘See, Demorn, it isn’t all death. There’s life in those wild heavens. You gazed at graveyards too long.’
‘Were you really there? At both the beginning and the end?’
The Tyrant God smiled kindly. ‘I have been now. There are many ends. And just as many beginnings.’
‘How New fucking Age,’ she drawled. ‘Who would have thought hippies were onto something.’
Demorn looked at the Portal. ‘I can smell burning. Firethorn is still under attack. You could come with me, rising god. We could prevent the White Fort’s fall.’
He shook his head. He seemed to be struggling to hold onto something. Her magic eyes saw the dragon thrashing beneath the skin.
‘I may already be there. Me, or some distant version of me.’
She murmured, ‘When next we meet, we may be friends or lovers. Or strangers, with swords at the other’s throat.’
He kissed her softly. ‘You’re a romantic soul, Princess of the Swords. Who would have guessed?’
She kissed back. ‘Oh, just about anybody who spent a full day and a night with me.’
He held up his hand, free of the Silver Bracelet. The bleeding had ceased. Scars marked where the wounds had been.
‘The Great Black Dragon, Fal-kazar was partly divine, only a few centuries from Emergence. It was his lair where I found the Steel Bracelet, so many years ago.’
‘Did you kill him?’
His eyes blurred. She could see universes birthing and dying to live again in his gaze.
‘Somebody in the group did. Perhaps the Twin Wizards, they had such raw power. Perhaps it was me. Time has made so much distant.’
‘It would drive me mad, all this knowledge of what has passed and what shall come.’
His vision focused on her. Around them howled the void.
‘No, you see clearly, Princess, with your magic eyes and burning sword. There is only now. The past is dead and the future has not come to pass.’
He looked around, finally noticing the howling wind and the Void.
‘See how the Mirrors have gone silent. Go now!’
She saw what lay beneath his suit. There was nothing in his body but a shifting, ceaseless energy.
‘Will I remember?’ she said.
‘Remember what?’
Her smile was a death grin through the mask.
‘All this. Me. My brother. The Innocents. What we fight for.’
He kissed her softly, electricity on their lips.
‘I am sending you, not some ancient prophecy. You will remember everything that you want to remember.’
She laughed gently. Her hand flicked across the pearl handed pistol on her leg. ‘Cool. I’m taking my gun this time.’
She ran her gloved hand across his skin. Her voice was a soft whisper; her knife found his throat.
‘Keep your promises, Tyrant. I will come back and slit this pretty throat if you betray us.’
He smiled, and swore to her in Asanti.
I would not betray you, for that would mean betraying my own heart.
Ah, but hearts are so fickle, Demorn thought with a sigh.
She knew he could hear her thoughts, trembling on the edges
of godhood. In the end, a little had to go down to trust. She could hear the ancient war cries of her sisters, the harsh clang of steel on steel. Fever gripped her. Ice ran through her soul.
Demorn ran through the spinning dark mirror, green eyes ablaze, Xalos spawning from her very soul, howling the death chant of Asanti.
Part 5
1
* * *
Demorn came through the portal into her vast bedroom, glum and vague, the scanners recognising her. Xalos shone in her hands.
She threw the sword away, Pain’s acidic blood still burning upon it.
Feeling empty, she crawled into her elegant four-poster bed. On the walls huge screens played random images from old movies, stars centuries dead mingling with each other.
Smile knelt on the marble floor. The red light stained him. He was very thin and pale, skin blotchy. He was dressed in thin black leggings and a generic black t-shirt with a red smiley face clinging to his wasted body.
He turned to her, yellow eyes tombs, the smiles burnt and gone.
‘Demorn!’
Exhausted, she replied. ‘The one and only.’
‘We actually won?’
Demorn was deep in the bed, covers over her aching head.
‘Let’s call it something like that. I’m alive, the Club is still standing.’ She peered through the blue curtains at the flickering candles. ‘What the hell are you doing anyway?’
Smile looked shame-faced.
Demorn casually flicked a energy star from her wrist, knocking out the candles.
‘Enough with praying. I’ve seen the things you call gods up close, they have teeth that eat souls. There’s nothing to worship — only fear.’
Smile opened his mouth to speak.
But she was exhausted and in no mood for debates, and she was most likely right anyway. He felt a wave of affection for her. She had risked so much, giving her life to battles which reverberated through his life as mere echoes.
He went to her, brushing her long brown hair upon the pillow. Her hair had grown back longer.
Dreamily, she caught his hand. ‘It’s a war now, Smile. Not a battle anymore.’
She’s reading my mind, he realised. He wondered what had happened in Firethorn. In these quiet moments, alone with her, all the glitter left Smile’s face, and he looked young again. His pallid white skin was pasty, marked with the red scars from what the scientists in Mexico had done to him.
But Smile didn’t care, not when it was just the two of them. She’d always kept him safe. Her vengeance on the scientists had been a terrible, wonderful thing.
Smile closed his eyes. With his wonderful digital mind which forgot nothing, he was floating in the cryogenic chamber again, the horrible metallic surgical matrix upon him. He heard her gun in short bursts, and smiled, knowing there was still a chunk of him that would be saved.
She had just kept killing, following the online trail through shadow corporations, gated mansions of CEOs living in Beverley Park, glamorous assistants left dead by stunning hotel pool sides, covert mercenaries who fled down to Jamaica, or didn’t flee, choked out in a sleazy motel in Chicago barely struggling, their last image Demorn’s blazing eyes and scary smile.
Smile’s face glistened, memories catching up to now, this moment. Her wave of killing and retribution had peaked while he rehabilitated in a private hospital. She had come to him most nights, telling him how she had almost finished this job. But he could see the rage in her eyes and Smile knew that she wasn’t even close to finishing this job, she never would be.
Smile had told her he didn’t want anymore death.
It passed through his eyes and mind like a film. Demorn could feel it, too.
Deep shadows lay under her glittering eyes.
‘I just need to sleep, hon. I can’t sleep there. I just need sleep.’
Her invisible blue watch was flashing. The pod lowered from the ceiling, pink light bathing her face.
‘Your scar is gone,’ he said.
Demorn smiled vaguely. The pink pod encased her. Her green eyes glittered.
‘It comes and goes like the weather.’ Her smile lit up the pod. ‘It’s what kept me from modelling, the uncertainty.’
He patted her hand.
She blinked slowly, under the power of the pink pod.
‘Sue?’
He said softly, ‘She’s downstairs drinking tea with her sister.’
Demorn was almost asleep, but looked pleased.
‘Who says they don’t write happy endings anymore?’
She vanished beneath a swirling wave of misty pink. The pod’s glass lid closed. Demorn was gone.
Smile quietly left the room, the multi-coloured mask glistening over his face, not hiding the real tears behind all the electronic beauty.
2
* * *
The sky was blood red. Black worms filled the empty spaces, icy trails in their twisting wake.
Demorn rode the Death Cat, which roared at the angry sky. The beast was loyal, the survivor of fifty battles in this War. Wizards had resurrected the creature twice, the bond to Demorn stronger each time.
Smile sat behind her, nervously holding on, arms around her waist.
The air was heavy with the smell of sulfur. Her spiked crown was gone. She wore a huge black helm, images of cruel serpents carved into metal.
Demorn turned to look at Smile with a strange smile which held no mercy. He saw what lay in front of them and his heart grew still.
A river of flames burnt before them, heat blowing into their faces. Across the river and low mountains, a shimmering golden city lay on the horizon.
The sky was filled with the shattered visage of a god, flickering in and out of reality. Smile’s face turned almost invisible in terror.
Smile started to disintegrate back to Babelzon. Demorn caught his hand, and he solidified, gazing up at the blood red sky.
The face of the god was enormous, seeming to cover existence, flickering in and out, contorted in either agony or death.
It wore the face of the Tyrant. Smile’s heart grew cold as he looked upon it.
The face of the god shifted. Demorn glimpsed her own face amongst the blood clouds, the tall, spiked crown upon her head.
‘What does it mean?’
She reached out to Smile, brushing a thin trail of purple dust along his electronic face, then drawing it across her own cheeks, beneath burning eyes.
‘It means the past is but a dream. And the future a mirage.’
She squeezed his shaking hand. Soldiers of many races and nations, living and undead, walked alongside the prowling Death Cat, grim and solemn.
Several in the mass carried the standard of Firethorn, a red flame on white. Many others held flags and standards of other nations and cities. This vast army of the dead and living marched with Demorn, marched for her.
She stood up on the Death Cat.
‘The present is now. This War, nothing else. Look at how far we have come! Look upon what we have done!’
Xalos in her hand, blazing with purple fire, held to the sky. The army began chanting her name and that of Firethorn.
Smile looked into their faces but saw nobody he recognised. He was a stranger in this land and to these people.
Smile looked up to the blood-red sky and the image of the shattered god which sometimes held his sister’s face. It terrified him.
The sky shifted to the starless nothingness which had destroyed Asanti, the old terror of Ultimate Fate, gnawing on the bones of reality.
The longer he looked upon it, the fainter it grew, until finally, he found himself looking at the bleeding sky.
‘What have we done?’ he murmured.
Demorn laughed. ‘We’re doing more than surviving. We can win now.’
She kissed him on the cheek and swore eternal fealty in Asanti.
She watched the lithe black ice worms circling the golden city, shadowing the sun. She saw the familiar Triton symbol flashing in the sky, archaic and bizar
re in this dimension.
‘The city on the horizon. Guess what the locals call it? TRITON.’ Her eyes burnt. ‘Can you imagine, Smile? I could rip that damn Pyramid down.’
His face glittered, at odds with terrified eyes.
‘What will happen?’
She brushed his chin with light fingers.
‘Maybe everything will change.’ She kissed him lightly. ‘Keep the Club afloat for me.’
Smile nodded, overwhelmed. Then he was gone, reality snapping him back through the walls of space and time to Babelzon, the memory of her glazed eyes seared into his mind.
Demorn watched him go, sad but pragmatic. She caught the small silver orb floating where he had been and placed it in her jacket.
Her fist was metallic. Mictecaciuatl sang a savage song in her mind, as she had for days. The locket was hot upon her breast.
Demorn had to still her mind, turning her hand to flesh again. The distant, gold city sparkled on the horizon, like some beautiful, horrible promise of the future.
‘We can win. We’re doing more than just surviving,’ Demorn murmured.
She didn’t know what it was that filled her heart, but it was no longer a simple thing.
Demorn signaled for the Court Witches to start fording the river of fire.
Her commands rippled through the tight army like a wave. Many feared the demigod with her terrible burning eyes and black serpent helm, forever watching the horizon like a mad seer.
The ice worms flew back across the sky like death butterflies. She saw the soldiers running backward, away from the cliff face.
Xalos howled from her soul, even as it blazed in her hand, hungry for a terrible vengeance long delayed.
She felt the mighty Serpent before she saw it. Imprinted on her soul. Never forgotten. The oldest enemy for all Innocents. Slithering through the Cavern, bathing in the deep water, eating generations of Innocents whole, a forever evil with an endless hunger.
It had eaten king and queens, it had eaten Emperors, it had swallowed the bones of gods.
The river of fire bent low, the spells of the witches collapsing. She saw soldiers disintegrating around her, slow to flee the ledge.