by R. E. Vance
Hermes healed himself in the light of the fire, his eyes widening as he realized the stakes at hand. It was a war of attrition—first one to burn out loses—and time was not on Hermes’s side. The once–old man turned ancient as his hand remained outstretched, a heat hotter than the Sun engulfing Grinner.
I crouched and readied my sword. But it was too hot and I didn’t have magic to protect me long enough to get close.
Hermes looked over and saw what I was thinking. Through gritted teeth, he grimaced, “Don’t, you fool,” redoubling his efforts as renewed magic flowed out of his outstretched hand. “Get out of here and find Bella. She’ll know what to do.” He was determined to hold Grinner at bay long enough for me to get away. This final sacrifice was going to kill him.
Frustrated, I sheathed my hunting sword and scampered up the hole, clinging to the fallen debris, using whatever my hands and feet could find as leverage.
As I scrambled out, I allowed myself a single second to look back. What I saw was Hermes’s body frozen, his hand still out, held up as if by rigor mortis. And somehow, his magic persisted. Perhaps it was the remnants of his soul pushing forth, perhaps the will of his life continuing past death, I don’t know. Whatever it was, his body deflated as he pushed out beyond life, until he was nothing more than bone. And still he fought on until that bone finally turned to dust.
It would be seconds before Grinner broke free.
I got through the rubble and outside. The sewer grate that I had climbed out of was still open. I jumped in, allowing human- and Other-refuse to break my fall. My head throbbed as I landed, the impact cracking several ribs. I wheezed and as I stood, my leg sent thunderbolts of agony through me. On top of the broken ribs, I had also twisted my ankle.
But none of that compared to the pain in my head. A haze of fireflies squirmed all over my vision, blinding me with pain and light.
Get up, Jean-Luc! Come on, I thought. Every time I tried to move, my head throbbed as if my skull were the leather surface of a bass drum.
So this is how it ends, I thought. Not with a bang, but with a whimper of blinding pain.
Damn it! I didn’t mind going down, but I hated the idea that it was Joseph and Hermes’s megalo-I-wanna-be-a-god maniacal killer who was responsible.
As these thoughts ran through my head, Bella blurred into sight. She reached out for me, her embrace stretching across the impossible expanse, and still she could not draw close enough. This was the end and she was too far away to comfort me. Then, as if the danger were over and everything were suddenly OK, she gave me her You-were-worried-about-nothing-Silly smile and a hand reached out for me and pulled.
I focused on my rescuer and saw a big, fecal-infested arm that smelled to high Heaven. I held onto an arm that felt like sun-baked waste and cried out, “CaCa! You’re an angel!”
CaCa helped me up as TinkerBelle floated past by me. “Tink,” I said. “You’re not hid …” but the thought was cut off by what felt like someone shoving a cattle prod through my ear and into my brain.
Tink shook her head. She understood what I wanted to say. But when she looked over at CaCa with empathetic, understanding eyes, I got it. Tink was hidden away from the world, just as much an exile as CaCa, but not because she was ugly, but because she was beauty incarnate. But unlike CaCa, who suffered scorn, the petty villagers chasing him away with their pitchforks, those very same petty villagers wanted to possess Tink. Own her. Enslave her.
CaCa and Tink exchanged glances, speaking some silent language, both nodding simultaneously. Then Tink pulled out her little wand and a puff of fairy dust floated past my nose. With a deep inhale, I sucked in the dust and in an instant, all the pain and dizziness went away. My head felt perfectly fine. Better than fine. Free and clear. Hell yeah! Fairy dust—Tylenol should patent the stuff! CaCa put his hand around my ankle, forming a cast made from GoneGods-knew-what. Not just any cast, but something that was warm and healing and comforting. Once you got passed the smell.
I looked over at the two Others that were putting themselves into harm’s way for me, not only healing me, but giving me a second chance. A second chance that I swore not to throw away.
“Thank you,” I said to both of them. “But you’ve done enough. More than enough. I need you both to hide. Now.” But my words came too late—as I uttered them, the road above peeled back like the lid on a sardine can.
Standing not fifteen meters above us was Grinner. He had found us.
↔
CaCa immediately released his terra firma–squid attack on Grinner, which resulted in a cloud of very dark, pungent smoke filling the room. The cloud also got me and I started to curse CaCa until I saw what he was really doing. He was hiding Tink, who fluttered away and down the sewage pipes at an ungodly speed. Go CaCa! I was going to have to start paying him for his paintings.
Grinner’s face convulsed as the smell reached him, his maddeningly wide smile turning into a frown of disgust and indignation. He pushed his hands together, forcing the cloud to compress into a sphere slightly bigger than a bowling ball, and dropped it. Right on CaCa’s head.
But he didn’t just drop it. He put a bit of force behind it and the ball fell like a comet of shit, hitting poor, gentle, kind CaCa square on the head. The globe of poo tore through him, obliterating his skull and spine as it hit the ground with a giant splat. All that remained were arms and legs with no body in the middle.
“No!” I screamed. I turned to face Grinner, who stood on the street above. His damned smile no longer touched his eyes, it actual went past them, pushing those soulless orbs in his skull inside and closer together.
My first instinct was to charge him. I still had my sword. My head no longer throbbed and even though my ankle was still busted, I had CaCa’s cast of shit holding it in place. But my head no longer hurt. It was clear and I could think well enough to know that a head-on confrontation would only mean my death and much, much worse for Paradise Lot and the GoneGod world.
No—get away. Regroup. Plan. Lay a trap. Get a gun—a really, really big gun. Do whatever it takes to even the odds. CaCa’s name would have to be added to what I owed the Avatar of Gravity, to settle at a later time of my choosing.
If there was a later. I ran down the pipe, but with every few meters of ground gained, he lifted more asphalt as he calmly walked on the street above. It must have been quite a scene, watching the asphalt peel back like that.
“Stop,” he hissed.
“No,” I said, turning around to give him my middle finger. Then I resumed my “Mortal, Mortal, Mortal” song, this time to the tune of the Gummi Bears theme song. I wondered why he didn’t just stop me—push me down or take away gravity altogether. But he just kept peeling back the road as he followed me down the pipes.
I took a turn to the right, away from the chasm he was creating and down a pipe. I was trying to increase the distance between Grinner and me. It was working because it took him some time to get around the hole he had made and get to the other side. But still—he was on asphalt and I was literally sloshing through shit.
Then, as if my prayers molded reality, I saw hope. I saw salvation.
A city utility entrance stood before me, its door wide open.
Chapter 3
Revenge is a Dish Best Served as a Banquet
I ran into the utility entrance, closing the door behind me. From the door’s porthole-sized window I saw the road above tear open. Judging from the angle at which the asphalt ripped away, I suspected that Grinner didn’t know where I was. Still, he wasn’t stupid, and even though I had managed to get away, it was only a matter of time until he found me.
I turned to survey the room. There were a few pressure gauges and a couple of turned-off computers, their black screens reflecting me in their emptiness. I looked like hell. Well, at least how I looked and felt were consistent. The room had a little metallic bridge under which the river of shit streamed by. There were several pipes with various labels on them, including one that read city w
ater. There were also a few small turbines and a bunch of lab equipment, as well as a table with discarded beakers and vials.
I was in the city’s access point, where officials measured the chemical levels of the sewer and water systems. That is, until Paradise Lot became overrun by Others and city officials decided that their tax dollars were best spent somewhere with a voting population. Now it was an abandoned building, used by really poor Others who resided rent (and utilities) free.
Above me were some of the roughest, ugliest residents of Paradise Lot, the kind that hated strangers almost as much as they hated humans they knew. Being both, I rated a special kind of ire. But they were all that stood between me and the outside, where, if I did make it out in one piece, the Avatar of Gravity was waiting to capture, torture and eventually kill me.
Fire, meet Frying Pan.
Frying Pan, meet fire.
Hellelujah!
↔
I opened the door leading upstairs. Whoever lived below was watching the carnage above, but there were plenty of Others that hung out in the darkened halls of Paradise Lot Municipality. The One Spire Hotel was smack dab in the middle of a slum—I have no illusions to the contrary—but there was always a spark to it, a bit of life. The wino angels sang, the pan-handling gargoyles thanked you as you passed by. The poor and downtrodden may not have made eye contact, but there was always a shift in their body language that acknowledged your presence. But these Others were something else altogether. They watched as I passed by, their eyes filled with abandoned hate.
These were the Others who truly had nothing, the real have-nots of the GoneGod world. They each seemed to just sit around, counting the minutes as they waited for sweet oblivion. I looked down the hall and wondered how many lived here. A hundred? A thousand? How many of them had lived full, happy lives before the GrandExodus? I’d seen poor, and I’d seen desperate. But this was a whole new level of destitute. And here I was, naïve and idealistic, believing that I was living the worst of it, when there were many so much worse off than me.
If I lived through this, I’d come back here and do something. I didn’t know what—but something.
Two valkyrie loitered by an open doorway. When they saw me, their eyes lit up in surprise and one of them ducked into the room. I knew if I walked down that hall, I’d be in for trouble.
Best to find another exit, I thought, but before I could go back from where I came, the valkyrie came out, followed quickly by an uppity harpy.
“You!” the harpy shrilled. “What in Tartarus are you doing here?”
↔
I considered putting up a fight. Probably would have won, too. But given what was waiting for me outside, I thought I’d let this play out in here first.
The two valkyrie escorted me to a dim room that once-upon-a-time belonged to a middle-management employee and forced me to sit in a plush chair opposite an old office desk.
The harpy hopped onto the bureau and announced, “Hear ye, hear ye! Bow before the great Yara-Uno, Master of the Concrete River, Guardian of the Hallowed Halls of City Municipality.”
Two candles were lit, illuminating a bulbous red creature whom I hadn’t noticed in the chair opposite me. He was about three feet high, fire-engine red, bald, with two pencil-thin appendages that stuck out from where his ears should have been.
“Holy crap, you’re a friggin’ Yara-Ma-Yha-Who,” I muttered as I stared at the Australian red vampire in awe. Unlike your typical vampire, this guy had no teeth—instead, he had many octopus-like suckers on the palms of his hands. Legend had it the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who gobbles up his victims, sucking on them like hard candy for a day or two before spitting them out whole and healthy, if not wet and somewhat traumatized. I’d seen all sorts of demons and monsters, but I’d never seen one of these before; I had been sure that, amongst the thousands of pages we were forced to study about all the different kinds of Others, the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who wasn’t real. I mean, come on, he looked like a giant red thumb with limbs. “I thought you were just a legend.”
The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who smiled. “I am a legend,” he said in an Australian accent. “You the reason why the First Law is tearing up the streets above?”
I nodded.
“And he is here, why?”
“He thinks he can reopen Heaven.” Why lie? They’d eventually find out. Hell, the way Grinner flapped his mouth, I was kind of surprised word hadn’t gotten around yet.
The red devil shifted in his seat. “Which one?”
“Not sure,” I answered. “He listed like five of them. And something about how he was the new ‘god of gods’ …”
The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who nodded. “Doesn’t matter,” he grunted, opening a drawer, pulling out a piece of paper and tossing it over to me. “You him?”
I picked up the page and saw one of CaCa’s drawing—a sketch of Joseph at the “Coping with Mortality” seminar. Miral was standing behind him and to his left was little old me, another pair of eyes watching Joseph as he spoke. From the overly optimistic smile I wore (not to mention the distinct smell of shit), this had to be CaCa’s work.
I pointed at myself in the sketch.
“And you were there when he died?” the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who said, pulling out a metal knitting needle and brandishing it like a fencing sword.
I gulped, looking at the needle and imagining a death by a thousand pokes. I shook my head.
“Then you are a friend of the One Made from Refuse and Archiver of the Lot. A friend of his is a friend of ours! I am Yara-Uno, the first of my kind and the last of my race.”
May the GoneGod bless your soul, dear sweet CaCa, I silently prayed. That’s twice today that you’ve saved me!
The little red thumb stood on his chair extending out his wafer-thin arm at me in an awkward handshake, a wide smile on his face revealing thousands of suckers in his gums. Then his expression went very grave and he said, “Tell me, the Unicorn killer—that him outside?”
I nodded, a gesture he imitated. Yara-Uno’s nod turned into a swaying as he put the weight of his little body on each leg. The change in his demeanor seemed to act as a signal because without a word, the harpy leapt off the desk and left the room. Yara-Uno continued his odd oscillation for a few more seconds before fixing his eyes on mine and saying, “Thanks be to you, human, for you have brought our enemy to our home. This is a truly appreciated gift.”
↔
Then things happened much faster than I thought possible. I mean, I’d been in the Army, I’d been in Special Forces, I was used to having to get ready for battle at a moment’s notice—still, I’d never seen troops prepare as fast as they did. There must have been a hundred Others, all armed to the teeth: helmets made out of paint cans and buckets, body armor fashioned from sheet metal and chicken wire and weapons that were bats with nails, kitchen knives with door handles as hilts and a whole hodgepodge of common items taken to their deadly extreme. Hell, one gargoyle had an old Christmas stand as a shield and candle stick with fashioned razor blades as a mace. A valkyrie wielded a short sword, a minotaur a war hammer. There were Others who, given how deadly their equipment looked, I figured were once-upon-a-time warriors of Other worlds.
And within seconds a makeshift army of mythical creatures stood at the ready, Yara-Uno their commander.
By the GoneGods above and below—all this time I had arrogantly thought we won the war against the Others because they were too weak and incapable to stand up to human brutality. But seeing this makeshift army standing shoulder to shoulder, I suddenly understood that the only reason we “won” was because most of them did not want to fight.
But give them a cause—a true cause like avenging the death of the One and Only Unicorn—and you’d see a whole new kind of enemy. I only prayed that humans would never do anything to unify them against us, because if we did, we’d surely lose.
“Now,” Yara-Uno said, “tell us about our enemy.”
There was a chance to take down Grinner. So here I stood with my brothers- and sisters-in-ar
ms—more like my brothers- and sisters-in-wings and -horns and –other appendages.
“OK people,” I said, looking into the crowd. “Ahh, not people, but creatures.” Not a good start to a pep talk. I cleared my throat and started again. “The thing outside killed the Unicorn.” This drew a reaction from the crowd—dwarves punched the floor, valkyrie threw their heads back and shrieked, minotaurs snorted—every Other in the room jeered in their own special way. “That freak killed Joseph because he wants to be the new head honcho. Something Joseph died trying to stop. Something we’re going to finish.”
I told them about the gravity and air attacks I’d seen, his desire to rule Heaven and everything else I knew about Grinner. Once I was done, I waited with dramatic pause before throwing my hands up in the air and crying out, “For Joseph! For the Unicorn!”
The crowd erupted in snorts and cheers and cries. “Good speech,” Yara-Uno said. “Not as good as mine … but good enough.” He gestured to the troops of Others that were working themselves up into a battle frenzy.
A distraught pixie fluttered in and whispered something in Yara-Uno’s ear. The red vampire listened, then lifted his scrawny arms in the air to silence the crowd. “He’s outside and he suspects we hide the human.”
“Took him long enough,” I said, drawing my own sword.
Yara-Uno shook his head. “No. You stay here.”
“What? This is as much my fight as yours,” I said through gritted teeth.
“With that?” he said, pointing at my leg. He had a point. “Besides, your smell will distract me.”
“Fine,” I said, “but if you start to lose—”
“Lose?” he said, pulling out his knitting needle. “Yara-Uno never loses.”