by Jon Hollins
Gratt’s troops were swirling around them, already disembarking from their dragon mounts.
“Back down, and get me more men!” Gratt shouted to Yorrax. Blottax even started beating his wings, like the small-minded fool he was.
Gratt turned to his troops. “Take the heavens!” he bellowed. And his troops didn’t hesitate before beginning to charge into the mess of foliage.
“No!” Will shouted, but no one was listening to him.
They were listening to Gratt.
To Gratt. And not to Yorrax.
Yorrax roared. The idiot general had stolen her initiative. He was trying to steal her heavens. They were all always trying to take what was hers. And she would have it no longer.
She whipped around, smashing her tail through as many people as she could, battering her wings against the air, lifting up. She exhaled fire.
“The heavens belong to the dragons!” she cried.
Blottax gave her a confused stare.
“They will belong to the dragons!” she corrected. It was helpful to be as literal as possible with Blottax.
“We will take them with fire and claw and tooth!” she called. “No one will stand in our—” She broke off. There was no way that Blottax was going to interpret stand in our way correctly. “No one will prevent us!”
Blottax’s face cleared. He nodded eagerly.
“Fire and claw and tooth!” she bellowed again.
Blottax happily set fire to several things. Terrax the coward was looking nervously at Will, who was still shouting, “No!” at everyone as if that could make a difference.
His eyes met Yorrax’s. The moment held. She smiled at him with many, many teeth.
And then Will ran. And the race to control the heavens began.
67
Home Awful Home
Part of Will knew he should be staggered. He should be amazed. He stood in the very heavens themselves. The home of the gods. He could catch glimpses of the Summer Palace between the trees. Golden spires winked and glittered. Arches leapt and buttresses flew. Jewels sparkled. And for all that half the windows appeared smashed, it was still the very ruling place of the gods. He could see a literal legend.
But he didn’t have time for any of that shit. Because every single being in the heavens was an arsehole, and he was in a race with them for the fate of a world.
To be fair, Will did not have any conviction that he and his friends weren’t arseholes. It was just that if any brand of arsehole were to be imposed on Avarra … Well, Will had his preferences.
The fighting seemed to spread with the strength and ferocity of a wildfire. Gratt’s once-dead soldiers were wrestling with gaggles of bedraggled, confused guards who for all their sluggish, drunken movements were also almost twenty feet tall, built on a scale that equaled Gratt’s. When their blows landed, the once-dead folded around their limbs. When their swords connected with flesh it sheared, and limbs and torsos flew free of each other.
The guards, however, were far from invincible. Will passed the same scene repeated over and over again: three or four of Gratt’s once-dead bearing a guardian to the ground and turning their yellow fur red, blades rising and falling in the steady rhythm of slaughter.
“Faster!” he managed between bursts of breath.
“I was thinking,” Balur grumbled, “that we were agreeing that you would not be giving orders anymore on account of you being a genocidal prick.”
That felt a little below the belt to Will, especially when he was trying to psych himself up for an epochal battle to save the world.
As they raced, the physical evidence of Barph’s ruinous reign in the heavens surrounded them. Walls and pathways had collapsed into rubble. Weeds, vines, and brambles reclaimed the once-manicured grounds. The vegetation was riotous and uncontained, blocking their path, forming dead ends and obstacles. It snagged their clothes and their feet, swiped at their skulls with gnarled claws. Statues once elegant and elaborate were now defaced and disfigured, scrawled over with chiseled and painted obscenities. Gazebos had collapsed into jagged piles of splintered, splintering wood.
Three of Gratt’s soldiers tried to waylay them as they scrambled over the remains of some formerly elaborate trellises. Balur laid into their attackers with obvious glee, claws ripping and rending, teeth snapping obscenely into vital parts. Lawl too seemed to have some aggression issues to work out. He picked up a branch and battered one of the once-dead into bloody submission.
“There’s no time,” Will tried to explain as he pulled Balur away from committing the coup de grâce. “The palace is the only thing that matters. If we lose the palace, we lose everything.”
Balur took a parting kick at one soldier’s head, then started running again.
Will had run before. Had run for his life. Had run to try to save lives. Had run toward and away from redemption. But he tried to run now as he had never run before. He tried to put everything he had into it. He had to beat Gratt. He had to beat Yorrax.
He failed on both counts.
The Summer Palace had obviously had its heyday. In the golden sunlight that suffused the heavens, its walls still glowed like something living, like something with the spark of life within. Fragments of the palace’s former glory could still be seen in the broken shards of stained glass windows that still clung to their limestone frames.
Vines and brambles had taken their toll here as well, though. The same obscenity-laden hand had brought its chisels and paints to these walls. Some damage was even more recent, however. A dragon had smashed through one of the palace’s massive windows and then somehow gotten itself turned around and hung wedged in a gash of masonry, breathing fire down on the gathered guards below, who thrust spears upward, peppering its sinuous neck with jagged wooden adornment even as they died. Another door had been smashed to pieces, but the doorway itself was now ringed with the bodies of the once-dead. The attackers’ arms and legs were crushed into obscene parodies of limbs. The exact source of these injuries was nowhere in sight.
“Well,” said Will, “that’s not completely reassuring.”
“Do not be hesitating now!” Balur roared. “Be pretending you still have balls!”
Will would probably never admit it to Balur’s face (mostly because he anticipated being dead within the next fifteen minutes or so), but he rather enjoyed it when Balur got in these boisterous moods.
They careened along the wall of the palace until another doorway lurched at them from around a curve in the architecture. This one had the benefit of not being ringed by the dead.
Balur’s foot connected with wood. Rusted hinges gave way. The door flew. And then they were in.
They were in a corridor, the opulence of the palace still apparent despite Barph’s tenure. The marble tiles on the floor were dirty and stained, but still retained their luster beneath the grime. Dust had collected on the ornate wainscoting, but the craft and care that had gone into its construction was still clear. The vases perched on ornamental tables might have been surrounded by dead blooms and full of stale wine, but the delicacy of the painting beneath their rich glaze still held its power to transfix.
And then a wall tried to hit Will in the face.
He had trouble working out what was going on at first. He was running, panting hard, scanning for danger, and then a wall that hadn’t been there a moment before was abruptly six inches before his face. He pulled up hard, turned sharply to take the impact on his shoulder. He stared about dazed. Then one of the ornamental tables lurched across the corridor and poleaxed Lawl and sent him facefirst into the floor. And then suddenly the tiles were slipping beneath Will’s feet, sending him stumbling, and a heavy oil painting of Toil wearing far too few clothes was lurching away from the wall, trying to smash its gilt frame into his chin.
“The defenses!” Lawl yelled from the floor. “Those idiots have already triggered the defenses!”
And this was what Cois had described. Their blood was not in the font at the palace’s heart. Its
very fabric was trying to attack them, to reject them.
“Quickly!” Lawl was scrambling to his feet. “It’s only going to get worse!”
And so they ran.
“This way!” Lawl pointed through a set of rooms lined with paintings. Will’s lungs burned.
They piled into the room. Its walls started firing their paintings across the room, heavy, hard projectiles spinning with all the grace of an Analesian learning ballet.
“I have done some ridiculous shit with you!” Afrit said, as a rendition of Betra and Klink showing more than familial affection almost decapitated her. “But this …”
Gilt, plaster, and wood showered them as a frame collided with Balur’s shoulder and drove him to the floor.
“Be fucking this shit,” he yelled.
“Faster!” Lawl and Will said in unison, the former god picking up on the refrain even as they tripped and scrambled. A frame caught Will a glancing blow on the head, turned him around. He stared, dazed, as blood fell into his eyes. Afrit grabbed his arm, steered him toward further dangers.
Velvet curtains tried to smother them. Brass pipes unfurled like snakes. A tumor of ornamental swords barreled down a corridor toward them. Chandeliers fell like catapult stones, and then their fractured crystals whirled up into deadly hurricanes of glinting, spiraling blades. Floors gave way beneath their feet, trying to spill them down onto jagged basement tiles. Doorways grew teeth.
Every step seemed to make it worse. Will walked through a room with his arms clutched over his head as every tile peeled itself off the floor and shattered against his arms. His clothes and skin were shredded. Sheets of blood fell to the floor, only to be blown back against his bruised flesh in stinging flurries. A curtain snagged Lawl around the neck and the former god had turned blue before it was torn free and set alight. Every baluster on a sweeping staircase cracked Balur across the shins hard enough to shatter. The splinters flew in a storm around Afrit, stinging her again and again.
They were gasping, bleeding, and bloody.
“Faster!” Will urged.
“Fuck you,” Afrit told him.
“We’re almost there,” he told her.
“We’re halfway there,” Lawl replied.
“Fuck you,” he told the god.
Curtain cords whipped them. Tables chewed them. Statues swung marble fists.
They passed bodies along the way. Errant gangs of once-dead who had penetrated farther than Will had given them credit for. One room contained a dragon’s corpse, the furnishings all burned to ash. The ruined remains of a ceiling beam were lodged deep in the back of the dragon’s skull. Everything was curiously quiet, all the room’s armaments spent on the former attacker. They crossed cautiously, and Will felt an unexpected sense of gratitude toward the dead beast.
Somewhere along the trek he stopped feeling truly human. Not the way he had before, not when he believed he was a god. This was a new sensation. A new kind of torture. The distinction between whole and broken flesh became fuzzy. The sense of pain was absolute. He was just a collection of wounds. He was just hurt. He just wanted to lie down and let the Summer Palace kill him.
“Faster,” he said, only just aware that he was on his hands and knees.
“Faster.” He was crawling. Something was beating against his back. He thought he remembered seeing flying books with inch-long fangs.
“Faster.” Maybe he said it. Maybe someone else did.
It took him a little while to realize the attacks had stopped. He lay down, his hot, bloody face pressed against cool white tiles. His breath bubbled in the blood and snot and spit leaking from his nose and mouth. He watched as his fingers spastically dragged his hand through his field of vision, still desperate to make some sort of forward progress.
“Be coming on.” Balur’s voice was ragged. There seemed to be significant dents in his massive frame.
“Is it …” Afrit’s voice seemed to come from a long way away. There was the sound of ragged breathing. “Is it …” She descended into coughs. She tried a third time. “Over?”
“The eye … of … the storm.” Lawl was in no better shape than any of them, perhaps worse. The former god seemed to be missing some fingers.
“We’re here?” Will found the strength to roll over onto his back. He began the slow, laborious task of sitting up. “We’ve reached the font?
“Through …” Lawl raised a shaking hand. He’d definitely lost some fingers. “Through those doors.”
They were in a large stately room, bare except for its ornate, gilded wall paneling and its statue of Lawl giving everyone the finger. Will couldn’t tell if it had been originally carved that way or was a victim of Barph’s malevolence. The room’s exact purpose escaped Will. For once, though, its purpose wasn’t to kill him. That seemed like enough for now. Because he was finally here. All the lives lost. All the damage done. One more door, and he could bring it all to an end.
It was worth it, wasn’t it? This made sense. He was saving the world.
Wasn’t he?
Will honestly wasn’t sure. He’d lost his way somewhere. For all the evil he’d done, there had been a sort of peace in his previous certainty. Things had been simple then. Everything was a question now. Nothing was an answer.
Except … Through those doors. Going through there. Ending this. That would be an answer of sorts, wouldn’t it? Perhaps not the one he’d intended. Perhaps not even one that was better than the answer Avarra was living with now. But an answer nonetheless.
He stood. It hurt, and it took an effort that almost staggered him, but he would see this through. If for no other reason than that Lette would have wanted him to. She had stood for this answer, or something like it. She had fought for this. She had seen the world with far clearer eyes than he ever could, and she had maintained this course alongside him. The best he could do was hold it in memory of her.
“Okay,” he said.
And then there was a crash. And a roar. And his hope sagged to the floor.
Another set of doors—directly opposite the pair Lawl had pointed to—crashed to the floor. In the broken frame stood Gratt.
“Gods,” Afrit said, still on the floor. “We really cannot catch a break today, can we?” She looked up at Will. “I think you’re fucking hexed, I really do.” She spat a long wad of blood onto the floor.
“You,” Gratt growled at Will. “There are no words that will save you now.”
Will thought about that. “You know what?” he said. “I think that there is one, actually.”
Gratt was a far less complicated being than he’d like to pretend, but even he hesitated for a moment. Just long enough for Will to smile.
“Balur,” Will said.
Gratt’s eyes narrowed in confusion. Then Balur smashed into him with all the force of siege weaponry.
The once-dead general reeled under the impact, staggered to one knee. Balur was a bleeding, dripping, broken-limbed ball of fury. He rained down blows. He bit. He kicked. His ferocity was an obscene refutation of all his pretenses of civility. This palace had stripped Balur down to his essence, to his purest self. Far more than the Analesian Desert ever could, this palace had made him strong.
“Now!” Will yelled. He was already running.
Lawl was somehow ahead of him, at the doors, heaving them open. Afrit was on her feet, yelling curses, scrambling forward. Gratt was delivering a two-handed blow to Balur’s midriff, driving the lizard man back.
The moment seemed to stretch forever. Will covered half the distance to the door. Half again. Half again. Half always seemed to remain.
And then he was through, and it was the beginning of the end.
68
Well, What Did You Expect?
Afrit dived through the door. She landed hard. Every part of her hurt. She wondered why she had dived. What had she been trying to avoid?
“Well,” said a voice, “if I’d known I was going to have guests, I would have tidied up.”
Afrit blinked a
nd looked around. Were there meant to be voices in here? She didn’t think there were.
Wasn’t there meant to be a font?
They were in a hall, long and grandiose. The ceiling seemed very far away, vaulting over massive columns painted blue and red and gold. Tapestries and banners hung beneath them, though the edges were ragged. There were windows high above them, the golden light of the heavens outside falling down in great cataracts. And there was a throne.
And on it there was Barph.
And there was no fucking font.
Afrit picked herself up slowly. Will was transfixed beside her, staring at the god, their tormentor, their enemy. Barph wore an expression like a cat who had just been presented with a very large bowl of cream.
Lawl, though, against all sense, was hurrying toward the front of the hall as fast as his broken body would carry him. His head was bowed. He held his hands clutched together out in front of him.
“I’ve brought them to you,” he said. And his voice was no longer full of anger or pride. His voice was suddenly a broken cracked thing on the edge of a wheedling tone. Lawl unclenched his hands long enough to wave them back at Afrit and Will. “I bring you tribute.”
“What?” Will said beside Afrit. “What the actual fuck?”
“Hello, Father,” Barph said, full of smug magnanimity. “What a pleasant surprise this is.”
A surprise … But … what was happening?
“I thought …” Lawl was almost at the foot of the throne. “Perhaps … I would … You could …”
“What would you do, Father?” Barph asked, and there was something a little less than magnanimous in his voice now. Something with a serrated edge. “Would you insult me again? Would you belittle me? Banish me? Spurn me? Hate me? Castigate me? Destroy my works and my memory? What would you do, Father?”
“No.” Lawl reached Barph now, actually dropped to his knees. He stared at the floor, utterly craven. “I am a proud creature. I know that. I have always known that. You have always known that. But pride made a of fool me. I was …” Lawl hesitated, seemed to swallow. “I was smug and self-centered and blind. And I didn’t recognize … I couldn’t see … I’m so sorry.” He risked a look up. “Son.”