by Don Allmon
Across their network, Comet sent a knowing, victorious laugh. —Get ready to run.
—Why are you laughing? This isn’t funny. It’s scary as hell.
—Because he’s a dragon’s apprentice, and that’s a serious fucking character flaw.
Firelight rolled his head, and his bones popped and began to distend. He said to the druid, “Liar. All things crave vengeance.”
Firelight erupted into a beast like Comet had only heard of: twelve meters long, most of him tail and neck, a winged Deinonychus, some cross between lizard and bat. His arms unfurled into wings with long, elegant, webbed digits, and his legs became thick and powerful with muscle. His head had a mane of feathers and seven rococo horns. His robes were part of his magic, and they became his scales: sleek, oily black, the color car designers wished their black could be, delicately etched with alchemical symbols and flickering with an orange patina like they were on fire. His breath smelled of chemicals and his ragged mouth drooled venom. The claws of one foot, only a meter from Comet and Shaggy, were forty centimeters of steel. He was entirely terrifying and magnificent. Comet could barely breathe and couldn’t even blink, he was so beautiful. Firelight had become a drake. And even in all that awe and power, he was still only the pathetic mortal dream of what a true dragon was. That dream was enough.
Urushiol slammed its birch-tree staff down. Briars curled from the ground into thickets. Trees uprooted and formed a phalanx. The storm overhead snapped and threw down bolts of blue lightning with deafening booms. Comet’s ear canals narrowed to filter the sound, eyes polarized against the flash. Clean ozone and weird static zinged in the air.
Firelight the drake leapt at the phalanx of trees protecting the druid and tore with his great steel claws.
Comet had never fought a wizard, not face-to-face. Cupid had been their wizard in Reindeer Squad, and he’d been a guards-and-wards magus, not the blow-em-up kind, and he certainly couldn’t change his shape. Comet (like most people) had the sense that true wizards were immortal. Cupid hadn’t been immortal, but he hadn’t been easily killed either. His death had been long and terrible, and Comet had been unable to stop it. Comet had no idea how to fight this wizard.
—Run! Don’t let go! Don’t look back! as if they were Lot’s wife escaping Sodom, or Orpheus tempted by Eurydice’s silence, or Indy and Marion averting their eyes from the Ark. The two beings battling behind them were nearly gods, Kong vs Godzilla.
Comet ran over the top of the druid’s briar and hauled Shaggy up a tree, hoping it wouldn’t start moving at the druid’s command.
—On my back! Comet sent, and some twenty yards up in the air, balanced on a tree bough barely half a meter across, Shaggy trusted him utterly and leapt on his back. Comet smiled, saying to himself, I’ve won him, because the Shaggy of eight hours ago would never have done what he’d done just now. Shaggy’s arms went around his neck, and Comet caught his legs in his arms, and he ran.
Shaggy weighed 60 kilos, just a slip of a guy to Comet, who could lift a car if he tried.
—Where are we going?
—Away from JT and his friends.
—He’ll catch us. It’ll be just like Urushiol said. He’ll use us as bait.
—I know.
The drake’s head snapped their direction and screeched with eagle-like hate. He abandoned his assault on the druid and leapt into the air after them. But the forest was dense, and the druid’s magic spurred its wild growth, and Firelight was simply too big. His wings battered against branch and bole, and he fell. He tried again and again. He scraped and clawed against the trees and tore their strange face-like bark to shreds. Fetishes caught in his horns and began to smolder.
Comet ran. He ran the length of one branch, leapt to another and then to a third. His muscles screamed and reminded him it had been only two hours since he’d fallen off a car and hit pavement at 150 KPH. And 60 kilos had felt like nothing for a few of those amazing leaps, but Shaggy was starting to feel a whole lot heavier now.
His body pumped him full of endorphins and painkillers and his implants made him feel like a million bucks, all of it a lie. He dialed back the pain-dampening so he had a better sense of when his body would give out, and the sudden overwhelming ache of everything made him slip, and Shaggy yelped in terror before Comet managed to steady himself.
So much for that idea, and he turned the pain-dampening all the way up. He’d drop dead from exertion and never know it was coming.
—What are you doing to yourself?
Comet had forgotten Shaggy had access to Comet’s life monitors.
—You can’t do that.
—I know what I’m doing.
—Bullshit you do. Stop it. Stop it or I’ll let go.
—You let go, you fall.
Shaggy cussed him, but Comet didn’t care. He ran his crazy Tarzan run, the worst obstacle course of his life. He could keep this up for three minutes? Five? Then they’d have to turn and fight and what would he do then? Surrender? That idea galled, but he’d do it. He’d do it if that meant Shaggy lived even one hour longer.
And below them, threading the forest floor, constantly hampered by trees and thorns, Firelight tried to run, tried to fly, and finally, driven to madness by the two men scampering through the trees just out of his reach, he spat his venom into the forest and ignited it.
Firelight Who Had Stood in the Maw of Abbadon the Red, Was Consumed, and Reborn spat a stream of viscous poison and spoke the words to ignite it: a hundred names he knew for fire: Fire. Fuego. Feuer. Fogo. Foc. Fuoco. Brasa. Вогонь. Агонь. Yanğın.
Below Comet and Shaggy, orange bloomed from the drake’s distended jaws. Comet jumped blind. Fire engulfed everything where they had stood. Heat blasted him. His thermal-sensitive hair went white. His mechanical eyes filtered the sudden flare. The air expanded like a concussion grenade had gone off and blew him even farther than he’d jumped. Shaggy lost his grip and flew from him.
He lashed out and caught Shaggy by the arm with one hand and branch after branch with the other, trying to slow their fall without dislocating Shaggy’s shoulder in the process. But it was a crazy fall, and there was no skill to this, no qīnggōng here, just desperation. Tree limbs battered them, but slowed them with every snag and tear. Above him, the forest canopy went up in an inferno.
They hit the ground badly, and lost precious moments while Shaggy fought to stand with the breath knocked clean out of him.
The rain came down hard now, Urushiol trying to save his Devastation forest. The air was gray with it. Their hair was plastered and in their eyes, and still the canopy above them burned as if no amount of water could drown the drake’s fury.
Between the rain and the fires overhead, Comet’s thermal vision was fucked, and he couldn’t see Firelight anymore. How could anyone lose something so big?
—Keep running. Come on, Shaggy, keep running.
Comet had carried Buzz like he was a fucking baby. He was less than useless. He was a liability. He was gonna get Comet killed. He was gonna get JT killed, and Austin killed, and Dante killed. Dante, who hadn’t done anything to anyone except be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hurt now and in a coma for no more reason than because the Blue Unicorn had spoken to her: “Help me, Dante Riggs.”
And fuck that thing. Fuck the Blue Unicorn! He wished he’d never saved it. It wasn’t even a person, not even an AI. It was just a bundle of memories strung together and replaying obsessively, memories that just happened to belong to an old dead friend that he missed terribly.
Buzz ran through the deluge and beneath spreading flames. He slipped on wet needles and mud. His hand left Comet’s, and he was afraid Comet would leave him, but he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Comet stopped, and they took each other’s hand again and kept running (Comet running so much slower than he could have, all because of Buzz).
A wizard could be killed. Austin had done it not two days before. He’d burned a necromancer made of hell money and the necromancer’s spirit
had returned to its rest. There was a trick to killing one: the closing of a circle of metaphors. Buzz wasn’t a mystic. He didn’t understand these things. Metaphors were for English majors, and he’d never even gone to college.
And maybe Buzz didn’t understand it quite right, but he knew this: Firelight was evil. Wholly evil in every way there was. And Firelight had sought the AI ghost who called herself the Blue Unicorn, after one of the purest creatures ever imagined, one murdered for its horn years ago. And that very horn lay in a cave in Austin’s hand. If ever there was a chain of metaphors and meanings that should have been magical, this was it.
—The unicorn horn can kill him.
Comet didn’t question him, not even a moment. They changed directions and ran for the cave.
Near the cave, they both hammered the network hoping JT would hear: —JT! JT! He’s coming! Firelight’s coming! Fire up that drone! Give it a gun! He’s coming!
Through the gray of the rain, Buzz barely saw anything, but heard the eagle-like shrieks behind them growing nearer. Then they burst into the cave, stumbling, drenched, water streaming from their hair (Comet’s cool and red now).
The ground shook and dirt fell in little rivulets from the cave ceiling.
“Get back. Get back!” Comet shoved Buzz behind him and drew his pistol. Buzz stood behind him but pulled his too.
—JT, we need the horn!
—No! Austin needs it for the spell!
Firelight, human so as to fit through the cave’s mouth, appeared in a swirl of flame. No one hesitated. Everyone fired: Comet with his pistol. Buzz with Comet’s spare (recoil painful as ever). JT’s little drone with an assault rifle taped to it jury-rigged. JT himself stood guard over the two sleepers as if his body could stop the wizard’s approach.
The wizard swept bullets away with his hand. Some struck him anyway, tiny violent explosions of black cloth as they tore into the wizard’s body and appeared to do nothing but enrage him further. He transformed right before them, and there was the drake. His black scales gathered the strange light of Austin’s spell. He blocked the exit. He was huge and only showed how large the cave was by the fact he didn’t fill it.
Firelight didn’t bother to deflect the bullets now. They sparked and ricocheted off the impenetrable scales of the thing, but the bullets must have stung because his jaws spread wide and he spewed his venom and spoke his words, and fire engulfed JT’s drone. He kept on, more and more flame, until the drone glowed like the nose of an orbital plane on re-entry. When the drake stopped breathing, the drone slumped, waxenly formless.
—JT, the horn!
—No!
Comet shot Buzz a glance. Buzz ran for the whirlwind spell and the horn that powered it.
Comet ran out of ammo, dug in his pockets for more, and came up empty-handed. He dropped his pistol and charged the drake. He fucking charged him, like he was going to beat him senseless with his damn hands! Buzz stopped, frozen solid with fear for Comet.
Comet leapt and kicked the thing so hard in the chest, Firelight stumbled back—just one hind foot repositioned, but still, he stepped back. His jaw snapped at Comet, so he whirled and kicked him in the chin. Firelight roared, and fire ran from the corners of his mouth. —Shaggy, I ain’t doing this to look good!
“No, Buzz! Please, she’ll die!” JT moved to intercept him like this was a football game.
—He’ll kill us all, JT, and Buzz tried to slip past him.
JT made a half-hearted swipe to stop him. One last feeble, —Please, Buzz, don’t, and he caught Buzz by the jacket. Buzz thought it was all over. There was no way he could wrestle free of an orc, but then JT let him go.
Buzz fell into the spell, and its magic pulled weirdly at what little aura remained to him. He reached for the horn, and Austin’s spell sucked him in.
There’s a million kilometers of road ahead, all arrow straight. She’s got her truck (monster wheels one K high); she’s got a friend (the name is a blur in her head and she can’t pin it down, but her friend don’t seem to mind); and it’s a beautiful fucking day (sky the color of a sim with no feed: Bill Gates’s blue). Dante rolls down the windows. The wind smells like cookies.
She’s headed West—capital W-e-s-t—where Elrond and Gandalf and Frodo went. It’s somewhere near Hawaii, she thinks.
She feeds music into the truck. “‘It’s a death trap. It’s a suicide rap. You better get out while you can.’” Crap music. It’s not part of her collection. She don’t know where it came from.
Her friend says something. Dante don’t know what. (She hasn’t made any sense yet.) Her friend says: AC23:A0CE:9292:1B60:2001:2010:2061:3001.
There’s a hitchhiker on the side of the road dressed in Vietnam camo. Elf ears stick through cuts in his floppy fisherman’s hat. He tries to wave her down, fucking loser. He’s been trying to wave her down since forever.
Dante, can you hear me? It’s Buzz, do you know me? You need to stop for him. He’s trying to help. But Dante won’t hear him, and Dante doesn’t stop.
Dante Riggs has got her road. She’s got her truck. She’s got a friend. There’s nothing else she wants. Dante Riggs will drive West forever. There’s a million K of road ahead. And each K a hitchhiker, all of them elves, all tragic as fuck.
They pass him again. He holds up a sign. He’s held signs before. Please stop. I’m a friend. Going West. All lies. The sign he holds now: JT loves you.
She don’t know what that means, and it makes her so angry. She asks her friend what it means.
Her friend says: 2001. 2010. 2061.
It’s 2075, goddamn, don’t you know?
So she stops and pops the door. Her friend slides to the middle and the elf climbs in. Her friend says to the elf the first thing she’s ever said that makes any sense. She says:
printf("hello, world");
It was the ancient programmer’s mantra that did it, and Buzz broke free of Dante’s dream.
The unicorn horn in Austin’s hand shone brighter than the Pleiades. Still, it seemed to take years to reach it. But he did. And he turned and threw it toward Comet, a charming and perfectly hopeless throw.
Another roar and a whump and it was a good thing Comet couldn’t feel a damn thing. Comet flew, swatted through the air by the drake’s tail, to slam into an immense hanging root. He fell to the floor, landing on hands and knees, and the drake reared back and inhaled deep.
The whirlwind spell broke apart with a strange slow sigh, and Comet felt the explosion of magical power tug at what little was left of his aura. Firelight felt it fully. The drake’s breath hitched. He didn’t spray venom and fire as he had meant to.
The unicorn horn tumbled in the air, nowhere close to Comet. Comet almost laughed it was so beautiful that Shaggy couldn’t throw for shit.
He leapt and caught the horn in midair, and he sailed across the cave, and anyone who might have seen him would have said he could fly, though that was impossible, wasn’t it? He slammed hard into the drake’s neck. He wrapped his legs and one arm around him so he couldn’t be shaken free, and he drove the tiny horn under Firelight’s scales and into flesh. The beast’s skin sparked. Silver-white cracks spiraled out from the wound, shattering scale after scale, the cracks like gunshots. Comet stabbed again and again, over and over, and searing blood sprayed everywhere. Comet dove away from the rain of poisonous blood and rolled to safety.
Firelight gurgled his name, lost his form, became a wizard again. He staggered against the wall of the cave entrance, hand against his neck. Between his fingers, blood flowed violently free. He gave them an all-encompassing look of such venomous hate that it froze them in their tracks as if it were a spell. Then he fled out the tunnel and into the woods.
They ran down the mountainside. Comet and Shaggy carried a groggy Austin between them, though Comet wasn’t doing much better. He slowly dialed back his pain-inhibition and let himself feel the damage one abrasion, cut, bruise, and cracked bone at a time. Jason carried Dante, still as unconscious as ever.
Far away and high above, Firelight flew west. He was barely a speck against the storm raging around him.
They slid down muddied embankments and kept running until the rains let up and the druid’s tempest was behind them and there was sunlight again, a different world than the one they’d just left. They’d reached the end of Urushiol’s demesne.
Ahead: a ruined blacktop road that hadn’t seen traffic in years, except for a 2074 Corvette Dawnstrike FX27 painted Event Horizon Black and a customized Kawasaki crotch-rocket painted Comet-colored. How the motorcycle had gotten there, who could say? The druid, Comet supposed. The hood of the Corvette was banged up all to hell, like a hailstorm or a bag of nails had hit it. The Kawasaki was scratched up and battered too. There were clumps of dirt and grass in the engine and twigs caught in the wheel framing.
Jason laid Dante on the pavement. They all stood around her and waited. Either she’d awaken now, or . . . well, Comet didn’t know what. He wasn’t a medic or wizard, either one.
Shaggy looked terrible.
—You okay? He sent just to Shaggy so no one else heard.
—I don’t think so, Shaggy sent back.
—You did the right thing.
—I want the right thing to feel like the right thing.
And he tried to take Shaggy’s hand through their link, but Shaggy didn’t send the response packages, so Comet stopped trying.
Dante stirred. Her eyes fluttered open, and Jason spoke a prayer of thanks to a goddess he never named, and Austin sighed a nonreligious, “Thank God.”
She said, “JT?”
“I’m here.”
“JT, they killed a unicorn.”
“It was just a dream. Somebody else’s dream. It happened a long time ago.”
“It felt so real,” she said, confused and doubting him.
—See? You did good, Comet sent to Shaggy. —You saved everybody.