They’re trying to make you doubt yourself.
It wouldn’t work. He knew who he was. He knew what he was.
This was wrong. All of it. Reality shouldn’t be like this. Zukunft shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t die like this because she accidentally pushed her little sister into a mirror.
Bedeckt stood tall. Gods, he wished he had his axe, if just to lean on.
“This is wrong,” he said. “This is all wrong.” Bedeckt raised his hands to the sky and screamed, “I AM SANE!”
***
Stehlen’s vicious little knife came up and Wichtig knew he was dead. She spun it past him, slicing his ear. But you don’t dedicate your life to being the Greatest Swordsman in the World and not have muscle memory written so deep your brain is a chunk of clay that gets in the way. His body knew what he didn’t. In throwing that knife, Stehlen left herself vulnerable. His body moved without him, taking advantage of her distraction. He drove his sword up and into her. His clay brain only caught up after, once it was too late.
Wichtig saw six inches of the tip of his sword sticking from between her throat and clavicle. He wanted to pull the sword away, to undo what he’d done. He wanted to say sorry.
I killed her. That shouldn’t have happened.
The deadliest woman he ever met, Stehlen was too damned mean to die. When she pulled that knife he knew it was the end, and then she threw it at Lebendig. Stehlen killed her lover instead of killing him. What did that mean?
Stehlen leaned against him and he took her weight. She opened her mouth and drooled blood, trying to speak. No doubt trying to tell him how much she was going to hurt him for this.
Tears ran from his eyes and he tried to blink them away but they kept coming.
“No,” he said. “I…I didn’t mean to…”
If he removed the sword…if he left it there… He didn’t know what to do.
Stehlen leaned her head on his shoulder, and he felt her legs give. He held her upright. She was small, but gods was she solid; a tight wound bundle of iron muscle. He held her and cried into the stink of her tangled hair.
Just below his navel, Wichtig felt the prick of a knife.
She’ll kill me now. She’d make sure he died first so he served her in the Afterdeath and not the other way around. He wanted to laugh. Tricky bitch.
He held her, waiting for the pain. He reached up to stroke her hair and got his half-hand caught in the matted chaos.
Wichtig felt her draw a shuddering breath and knew it was her last. He felt her lips on his ear.
“I’ll be waiting,” she said.
“I didn’t want to kill Lebendig,” he said, but Stehlen was dead.
Wichtig held tight the emptiness of her.
Sprawled on the ground, bleeding from a score of wounds, Bedeckt ranted and raved. He was lost to madness. A girl—a pretty little thing—clung to him like he might save her from drowning. Or insanity.
Stehlen wanted to kill me because I killed her lover.
Was it possible Lebendig didn’t betray Stehlen when they returned to the world of the living? Did Lebendig choose to stay with the woman who killed her?
Why would she do that?
Once again gripping his sword, he eased it from Stehlen and lowered her to the ground. Yellowy eyes stared through him, gutted of rage and hatred. He very much doubted that was the case.
I killed her lover.
Stehlen would be waiting. An unpleasant thought. Now he knew how Bedeckt felt after he killed her back in—
The roof fell in as something huge and screaming crashed through it. For an instant, Wichtig thought it was the damned dragon finally come for him. Whatever it was hit the ground and came apart, showering him in yet more gore and blood.
“What the hells was that?” said Wichtig, staring up through the hole in the roof
“Arsehole,” said Bedeckt.
Wichtig glanced at the old man on the floor. Was he talking to me or still raving?
“That was my horse’s name,” said Bedeckt, meeting his eyes.
So, something of the old goat remains. “Good name,” said Wichtig.
Bedeckt laughed and whispered something to the pretty girl. She looked at him like he lost his mind which was funny as Bedeckt was the sanest man Wichtig ever met. Maybe the only sane man.
Why am I alive?
Nothing made sense. How could Stehlen be dead? If she and Lebendig remained lovers, even in life, why did Stehlen chose him over Lebendig?
Wichtig felt the sword, an anchor of bad choices, hanging in his hand. The Greatest Swordsman in the World. It wasn’t just a title, not just a goal. It’s who I am. It was everything. Without it he was nothing. Nothing.
The sword dipped, the bloody tip touching ground. He wanted to drop it, to never hold another sword again.
I killed her. Stehlen was his friend and he killed her.
He saw Opferlamm. She was dead and still, eyes wide and seeing nothing. Gods she was so young. Was she even out of her teens? I was going to— She died following him. She died believing in him. I took her on as an apprentice because I was scared of being alone.
He killed Lebendig.
He killed Stehlen, his friend.
His selfishness killed Opferlamm.
The sword fell from numb fingers.
He hid behind his hands, anguish tearing sobs from him.
No one was walking away from this. Outside a Therianthrope dragon flew around dropping horses on people and some Geborene Geisteskranken pillaged reality with their delusions. A sword was useless here and he had nothing but his petty Gefahrgeist power to face them with.
Beyond these thin walls, an army of corpses fought hordes of demons made of smoke and Wichtig didn’t have a clue as to what the hells all that was about. Pure madness. It looked like the end of the world.
Inside what remained of the farmhouse, Bedeckt’s ravings grew in volume. Wichtig stood motionless, watching Bedeckt through the gap left by missing fingers. His old friend looked so lost, so alone. Even that monstrous axe was nowhere to be seen.
Bedeckt stared past Wichtig and said, “This isn’t real.”
But it was.
It was insane, and it was real.
Wichtig wanted to go to his friend, to stand with him. He wanted to put a comforting hand on that scarred old shoulder, tell him he wasn’t alone. He stood motionless.
Bedeckt was alone.
We’re all alone. It had always been the truth. Even together, even in those rare moment’s of camaraderie, they were each alone. Too afraid to trust. How many times had the three of them charged into dangerous situations? How often had they faced impossible odds and battled their way free? And yet we’re cowards.
Bedeckt, still glaring hatred past Wichtig, roared incomprehensible babble and pushed to his feet, knees wobbling like he’d collapse back to the floor at any moment.
Lowering his hands from his face, Wichtig glanced over his shoulder and saw the Geborene priest.
“Oh.” The Wahnist came for them.
Wichtig felt naked. Where’s my sword?
He’d dropped it. Idiot, he heard Stehlen say.
The beautiful girl with the green eyes spasmed in sudden agony and writhed on the floor, screaming. It looked like something was trying to claw its way free of her chest. Another younger girl he had somehow not noticed before, crouched nearby, eyes locked on Bedeckt.
Claw its way free.
Wichtig remembered his conversation with Nacht. Morgen’s Reflection told Wichtig the Geborene godling sent a Wahnist—he couldn’t remember the man’s name—to ensure they all died. The Holy Exorcist, that’s what Nacht called the man. He said the man drove people’s inner demons from them, that they clawed their way free. And judging from what looked to be fighting its way out of the green-eyed girl, she had a big one.
Bedeckt stumbled toward the priest, moving to stand between the Exorcist and the woman. He screamed, fists clenched and shaking, face purple with rage.
“This is wrong,” yelled Bedeckt. “This is all wrong.” He lifted his fists to the sky. “I AM SANE!”
The world stopped, a held breath.
As one, the dead toppled boneless to the mud.
The demons, smoky wraiths of nightmare, came apart like ash in a wind storm.
Wichtig stood in silence, staring at the world beyond the farmhouse. He felt small, unimportant. The Geborene priest blinked in confusion, head turning, eyes wide as if seeing all he wrought for the first time. This was a man with his own inner demons.
A distant scream shattered the silence, growing in volume. Movement drew Wichtig’s eye and he saw a middle aged woman falling from the sky in a mad tumble. For a moment, he thought the dragon must have dropped her, but then saw she was naked and realized she was the Therianthrope dragon. She landed far out in the corpse-strewn field, crunching to the earth with the sound of shattering bones. She lay motionless, limbs bent at odd angles, eyes staring into the sky that cast her out.
Bedeckt folded, crumpling to the ground. The green-eyed woman crawled to him. She looked lost, like now, after all this madness, the world no longer made sense. The little girl Wichtig had seen crouching nearby was gone. Had he imagined her, or was she some kind of hallucination?
Spotting his sword lying at his feet, Wichtig bent to collect it. He stood, unable to explain what he felt. Something—no, everything was different. For the first time in his life, the world made sense. He was good with a sword—maybe even the best—and it didn’t matter. He was just a man. A man without friends. He used people his entire life, casting aside those he no longer needed. He fled his emotions and called it manipulation.
He told himself someday he’d return to his wife and son. He wouldn’t. He’d never see them again. He was a coward.
He told himself he was all that mattered. He was wrong. None of it mattered. He was nothing.
Wichtig tried to strike a heroic pose to make himself feel better and nothing happened. No light illuminated him, no breeze caught his hair. He looked like what he was, a beaten man covered in horse guts, alone and without a friend in all the world.
He wanted to kneel in the mud and cry, but the young woman was watching him and he didn’t want to be embarrassed by a show weakness. Coward. Shame gnawed at his guts.
A whimpering sob caught Wichtig’s attention and he turned to see the Geborene Wahnist. The man looked riven. Wichtig strode to the priest and ran him through. The priest put up no fight, if anything, looking grateful. After cleaning the sword on the man’s filthy robes, Wichtig sheathed it. It was all he had. His only friend. Hadn’t Opferlamm said something like that?
Never again. Never put it down again.
Wichtig approached the woman and she watched, green eyes showing no hint of fear.
After what she’s seen, hardly surprising.
“I’m Wichtig—” He wanted to say more, to brag that he was the Greatest Swordsman in the World, but nothing came out. It felt like a lie.
“Zukunft,” she said, staring at him. Even covered in horse gore she was gorgeous, green eyes framed in blood red. She rested a hand on Bedeckt’s chest. The big man lay still like stone.
“Is he…?” Wichtig couldn’t ask. “Will he…?”
“He’s dead,” she said. “They’re all dead.”
Wichtig tried for humour. “He’s been dead before. Bedeckt would never let that stop him.”
“No,” she said. “He’s gone. He saved me. He stayed and he didn’t abandon me.”
“He was like that,” said Wichtig. He frowned at the corpse of his friend. “Sometimes.”
“I thought she wanted me to suffer,” Zukunft said.
“She?”
“My sister. In the Mirror.”
“Oh.” What the hells is she talking about?
“She was trying to show me there are people you can trust, people you can count on not to let you down.” Zukunft’s gaze fell to Bedeckt and she reached out to touch his face. “She wanted to show me that assuming the worst of everyone was madness. That it was wrong. I was wrong. And she chose Bedeckt, the most unlikely man, to show me.”
“Your Reflection chose Bedeckt to teach you about trust?” Wichtig laughed. He little better, a little more like himself.
“She wasn’t my Reflection,” said Zukunft. “She was my sister.”
Wichtig shrugged this away. Mirrorists rarely made sense. She might be beautiful, but the woman was clearly insane. Who the hells would turn to Bedeckt for lessons in trust?
Wichtig turned to take in the carnage. Bedeckt, Stehlen, Lebendig, and Opferlamm all lay where they fell. All dead. Just beyond the shattered wall lay the Geborene priest and, beyond him, the burst remains of the Therianthrope who’d plummeted from the sky. Had Bedeckt done that? Did the old bastard’s mad insistence reality make sense somehow rob everyone of their delusions?
“You were so sane you were the craziest man I ever met,” Wichtig told Bedeckt’s corpse.
Zukunft looked up at his words and he saw something familiar in her eyes.
Wichtig laughed again. He struck a pose and a breeze ruffled his hair in spite of the thick shellacking of drying horse blood. He flashed her a cocky grin, his favourite.
“You were his friend,” said Zukunft. She brushed fingers across Bedeckt’s brow but her eyes, so green he wanted to drown in them, never left Wichtig.
“Not was,” he said. “I am his friend. I’ll see him again in the Afterdeath.” He winked, feeling more and more like himself. “Though hopefully not too soon.”
“I don’t think so,” said Zukunft. “His madness made the world sane, if only for a moment. He died in a sane world. I don’t think there is an Afterdeath in that world.”
She mirrored his own thoughts, but hearing them said aloud made them seem, well, mad. Could it be true, was sanity Bedeckt’s delusion? He thought about the Therianthrope tumbling from the sky, human and unable to become the dragon she thought she was.
Sanity from madness? Unlikely.
Wichtig turned away, unable to face the certainty in Zukunft’s eyes.
Sanity and sense were delusions, and dangerous delusions at that. His own delusions were all that made him what he was, all that stood between him and normality. And that—the thought of being common—scared Wichtig more than anything.
He glanced at Stehlen, for the first time noticing the pommel of a sword sticking up past her shoulder.
My second sword.
She brought his sword, carried it all the way from the Gottlos Garrison.
But why? Had she intended on returning it, or had she planned on mocking him with the fact she robbed him blind? Again.
Mockery, no doubt. And yet he knew she would have returned the sword. It was part of how she won.
Wichtig looked about the farmhouse, spotting Stehlen’s sword on the floor, one of her knives in Opferlamm and another in Lebendig’s throat. “Keep the sword,” he told her corpse. “You’ll need it where you’re going.”
And I killed her.
He dragged a length of horse innards from his shoulder and dropped it at his feet. Horses. Where was Opferlamm’s? Wichtig couldn’t see the beast anywhere. He stifled a laugh. Bedeckt’s horse must have landed on it.
Guess I’ll be walking.
He remembered his dream of the old man, walking out of the mountains and understood.
“I’ll never ride again,” he said, turning to again face Zukunft.
“Pardon?”
“I hate horses. Always have. From now on I walk.” The damned things always get killed or stolen anyway. Or dropped on you by a dragon.
It was all a lie but he couldn’t tell this beautiful woman he was punishing himself for killing his friend. She’d look at him like he was weak and he couldn’t have that.
This is how I will honour Stehlen.
Someday far from now, when he once again met Stehlen, she would see the sacrifices he made for her and not kill him.
Slim rutting chance of that.
>
He watched Zukunft bend to kiss Bedeckt on the forehead and then rise to stand.
“When we were back in the Afterdeath—before we escaped—my sister promised she’d lead Bedeckt to a means of stopping Morgen.”
Wichtig glanced at his friend’s corpse. “I guess she lied.”
“No,” said Zukunft. “At least not completely. “I think she manipulated everyone. I think she got exactly what she wanted.”
“How does that help Bedeckt? He’s still dead. And Morgen—”
“Stehlen will blame Morgen for all of this. She’ll see it as a theft.”
No one steals from Stehlen. The little shite was as good as dead. “Oh.”
Zukunft looked at everything like she couldn’t believe she was here, couldn’t believe she survived.
“Shite,” said Wichtig, as his gaze fell upon the corpse of his oldest friend.
“What’s wrong?” Zukunft asked.
“A god promised if I saved Bedeckt’s life he’d heal my scars, make me beautiful again.”
She tilted her head, made a show of examining his face. “You aren’t that bad. You’re still handsome. Just…rugged. Some women like that.”
She wants me. Whatever Bedeckt did to reality, things were returning to normal. I am Wichtig Lügner. “Do they indeed?” He met those green eyes with a flat grey gaze and pushed his Gefahrgeist power against her. She smiled, nervous, and licked her lips. She didn’t look away and he felt a little more of the old Wichtig return.
Morgen and Nacht. What should he do about the Geborene godling and his damned Reflection? Could he force one of them to make him beautiful again? While Nacht promised to heal his wounds, return the missing fingers, Morgen promised wealth and fame. He wanted all of it.
If I was rich, I could return home to my wife and son.
If he did, would he get Fluch killed like he got Opferlamm killed? He glanced at his apprentice’s corpse, saw eyes that would never age, never know love or pain or happiness. ‘I am your only friend,’ he remembered telling her. ‘I will look out for you. I will keep you alive until you are able to do that on your own.’ He lied or failed and didn’t like what either said about him. I can’t fail Fluch like that.
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