Distant Star

by Joe Ducie

  I’d won battles that were hopeless, waged crusades in the face of insurmountable defeat and snatched victory from the jaws of Oblivion. I became a figurehead for the war effort, and as a Knight—a lord of Ascension City—I was groomed for the throne.

  The penultimate battle in Reach City, which had ended the lives of so many, so suddenly, had changed all that. My hand had been forced at the cruel point of the Roseblade. I’d used the epic sword to change all Forget. Atlantis was no longer a secret anymore. The myth had been dragged screaming into the light. I’d long since attracted Morpheus Renegade’s attention, his ire, but that night he turned his whole might against me—the war was no longer Knights against Renegades.

  It was Knights and Renegades against Declan Hale.

  And I’d won, damn it, at a cost so great that there were too many dead to bury.

  When the war came down to that last, awful night, the choice had been either Reach City or the very linchpin that held Forget together. I’d chosen to save Forget, for the greater good. And for her… One day I might even come to terms with that.

  My companions and I came spinning out of the Void under a hail of Will fire and clouds of thick, choking smoke.

  The Plains of Perdition were ablaze with war.

  Tales of Atlantis had spat us out on the edge of a vast field cradled between two valleys that reached a single point in the distance. That point intersected with a monumental purple dome of light, atop a long grassy ridge.

  The Degradation.

  Arcs of multi-colored light, sizzling beams of energy designed to kill, cut through the air. A large battle was being waged before the Degradation, upon the Plains. At a quick glance, I saw the heavy cloaks of the Knights clashing against the darker uniforms of a Renegade army. The conflict was sweeping toward us and burning large swaths of the valley in its wake.

  “Looks like Faraday’s precious alliance is over,” I said, pooling Will into my palms and readying both offensive and defensive enchantments. “Look at all those poor bastards.”

  “This is…” Ethan’s eyes bulged. “This is insane! Is that a dragon?”

  “Sure is, chief.” I slapped him on the back with my glowing hand. “Welcome to paradise.”

  The thing about Will, and the realms we traversed using Will, was that damn near anything and everything could be brought from one world to the next. Creatures, such as dragons, could be transported across realms. The black market trade on such exotic animals had flourished during the Tome Wars, which was half the reason why the war had been so devastating and why the Knights had done all they could to protect Ascension City and True Earth from the Renegades.

  A war of Will fought along the Story Thread could only end in madness.

  Men and women, clad in bloody armor, fought in no discernable formations. Narrow beams of fire and hot lightning rocketed back and forth through the air while shields of Will flared to life and deflected or dispersed most of the attacks. The beams they missed engulfed Knights and Renegades alike.

  I saw a velociraptor tear out a man’s throat.

  A band of tiny creatures, that resembled a group of leprechauns, flew through the air and left trails of golden sparks in its wake along the edge of the battle. Each spark liquefied armor and flesh.

  Ethan’s dragon breathed jets of flame across a unit of Knights. They emerged unscathed under an emerald shield of Will.

  Something that looked as if it belonged to Lovecraft’s mad Arab pulled its enormous weight across the ground, all tentacles and porous skin, leaving a deep furrow in its wake full of bubbling acid.

  Clare was at my side. “They’re slaughtering each other.”

  “What else is new?” I sighed. “We have to reach the shell of the Degradation—if we’re not already too late. The Queen’s had my blood for days. She and her blasted husband already may have used it to get through. Come on.”

  The group set off at a jog, Aaron huffing and puffing at the rear, along the outskirts of the battle.

  “We’ll take a half day to even reach the shell if we stick to the edges,” Marcus observed. “This is foolish, Declan.”

  “I’m open to suggestions here.”

  “We—”

  A ten-foot lance of white ice struck the ground in front of us and exploded in a thousand deadly shards. I reacted almost instantly, as fast as thought. A wall of superheated flame burst to life between my group and the ice, melting the deadly projectiles as they flew through the wall and soaked us in a harmless spray of warm water.

  The battle had turned.

  Trouble in our road.

  Hordes of travesties and war-raged soldiers threatened to overwhelm us. Clare, Marcus, and myself—the most experienced, the veterans—kept up a steady flux of mostly defensive Will work. A cacophony of charmed light doused flames, absorbed lightning, and melted steel.

  We were good. The best, once upon a time—at the start of all the great stories, yes, yes—but there was only so much we could do against the immense tide of warring Knights and Renegades.

  A wave of concussive force from behind sent us all reeling head over heels across the ground. The group was split, and the tide washed in, separating Clare and me from the others.

  I watched as Marcus deflected a Renegade soldier’s fiery sword blow to save Ethan’s life. Sophie snarled and sent a bolt of sizzling energy into the man’s chest plate—frying his insides. Her snarl turned into a surprised gape as she realized what she’d done.

  “Marc, Aaron!”

  Marcus glared at me over the heads of the soldiers between us and swung around to find Aaron, who was being attacked by a spider grown to about the size of a Mini Cooper.

  Aaron swung his duffel bag of supplies in the creature’s face, and its long, gore-spattered fangs sunk into the material and tore it apart. The contents of the bag sprayed across the field.

  “No!” Aaron yelled, and dived beneath the giant spider.

  The battle intensified, and the last glimpse I had of my friends was Marcus pulling Ethan away by the scruff of his shirt—as Clare pulled me away by mine.

  “We have to punch through—”

  “We have to run!” she yelled, above the noise and the heat and the smoke. “Or we’ll die trapped!”

  She was right. Reaching Atlantis was coming down to the wire, and the Renegades had to be stopped, no matter the cost, or the danger. Marcus and the others had made their decision to come here. They would live or die by that.

  “Okay.”

  Cut off from the others, Clare ran point, and I covered her. We managed to stay on course for the Degradation, but only just. The rise and fall of the battle’s tide had forced us more to the west, alongside a scraggly tree line alight with purple flames.

  As we ran, I tried to keep track of the battle between the Knights and the Renegades behind me. We were on the outskirts of the conflict now, jumping over the dead and the dying. One of them reached out and grasped the cuff of my trousers, pulling me to the ground.

  “Help… me…”

  He was a Knight, moaning and clutching at the bloody stump where his foot used to be attached. I shook him off, stood up, and helped him up onto his good leg. “What happened here?”

  The man was missing an eye. “About a thousand nightmares poured out of the Degradation, and the Renegades turned on us. I… I…” He focused on me. “Aren’t you Dec—?”

  A luminescent arrow pierced his neck from behind and a spray of arterial blood splashed across my face. I let him drop, and Clare pulled me away.

  “Up there!” she said, pointing at the ridge about half a mile away. The very edge of the Degradation sliced the raised terrain in half, but the flag of the Dragon Throne—the King’s flag—was planted firmly against its edge. “If Faraday’s there, Morpheus Renegade won’t be far away.”

  We stayed low, argent shields spinning ever faster around us as our combined Will deflected all it could. “Do you think they’re still friendly? This is a whole new game, Clare. The Tome Wars
renewed!”

  Clare and I ran across a small tree line, keeping to the dusky shadows as much as possible and avoiding all but the minor skirmishes of the battle.

  “I don’t think—” Clare stumbled, and I caught her. “Thanks. I don’t think they care, Declan. This is about Atlantis, remember. They’re both trying to breach your Degradation. I don’t think they care about all these soldiers tearing themselves apart! A renewed war won’t mean a damn thing if one of them takes the Lost City without the other.”

  “Good point.”

  Marcus and Sophie could look after themselves, but I was worried about Ethan and Aaron. Aaron didn’t command the talent, and Ethan was only good for party tricks. With any luck, Marcus had cleared them off the field, although from my vantage point, the entire lowland seemed engulfed.

  Under a hazy smoke cloud, the main fighting spread across the Plains of Perdition for a good two miles. Thick columns of smoke obscured the eastern grasslands and rose up along the edge of the Degradation. The cloud cast the dome in a purple, almost turquoise, light. Anything could be emerging unseen from the depths of the shield.

  Worse than a scream is a scream cut short…

  Clare and I ran towards the ridge, well clear of the main battle and a quarter mile from the rim of the Degradation. We encountered very little resistance from the scattering of soldiers below the hill. Most of them were focused on the battle.

  We reached the base of the ridge below the Degradation. Moss-covered and weatherworn tombstones protruded from the earth like the teeth of an ancient and terrible beast. The cemetery was old and rose up the hillside. Some of the graves looked fresh, and were marked with the sigils of the Knights and Renegades alike.

  These men and women had died here in the five years since my shield around Atlantis came into being, since I’d crippled the Story Thread. They had died because of me, to destroy the creatures seeping out of the Degradation.

  “Hale!”

  Breathing hard, I snapped out of my thoughts. King Renegade stood above us on the crest of the lower graveyard, alone and arrogant. He held a familiar looking dagger, stained red, in his hand. A key to Atlantis, torn from my side.

  “Come on down, Morpheus!” I called. “Let’s put an end to this.”

  Renegade snarled and slapped his free hand against his leg. Cords of fetid yellow light flew from his fingers and flowed into the ground. I cursed and shot a bolt of silver light at the mad king, but the ground shook and knocked me aside. Clare caught me, and I kept to my feet.

  The grass began to ripple and bulge in warped, undulating waves.

  “Oh dear…” I knew what Renegade had done. Bastard.

  A third army entered the fray.

  They came from below, from the shallow graves that littered the vast ridge. Rotting skeletal arms burst through the dirt and clawed for the surface.

  The earth spat up a dread legion of the undead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Fury

  Fucking necromancy.

  Summoning zombies, the soulless, walkers, politicians, the undead—call them what you will—was a desecration against everything I knew to be true and right. To be just. A primal rage, as red-hot as burning coals, descended over my vision.

  Such anger, once upon a time, had scorched a city in blind arrogance. My rage that could annihilate and kill and disrupt the flow of time, a rage as raw as sin, was only intensified by the cries of Clare Valentine trying desperately to pull her leg clear of the rotting-fleshed hand rising from beneath her feet.

  “What move to make next, Declan?” Renegade was laughing, still miles clear of sanity and heading straight to the heart of crazy town juggling TNT. “Atlantis is mine!”

  His voice shuddered through my mind, and I realized a moment too late that he’d caught me in a web of compulsion, a thick, persuasive binding of Will—like the kind I’d used to send Jeff Brade spinning across the Void during the attack at my shop. Morpheus turned and fled up the hillside, leaving me pinned to the ground and unable to move.

  I fought it. I hurled my Will back against his touch and gnawed at the strands of biting steel that bound me. The hold he’d placed on me, as brutal as any physical beating but somehow so much worse, like jagged hooks digging deep furrows across my brain, shook and spun.

  My Will wasn’t strong enough. The shambling creatures risen from below the earth surrounded me. Even if I did get free in time, I was trapped—

  Firm hands, like sledgehammers, pushed me in the back and I was thrown across the tombstone-ridden dell, through the clawing arms of the undead. I slammed into the base of the ridge. The wind was knocked from my lungs, but I was clear of the disgusting creatures.

  Clare had hit me with a pound of raw Will.

  She saved my life and freed me from Renegade’s compulsion.

  Gasping for breath, I stumbled to one knee in time to see Clare’s arms alight with purple fire. She swung lances of sharp energy at the onslaught… but it wasn’t going to be enough. One of the creatures sank its teeth into her neck from behind, biting into the ropy scar tissue that crossed her throat.

  “NO!”

  I stumbled forward, firing shots of wild Will into the fray. A recently deceased Knight, stinking of death and decay, latched onto my arm in a surprisingly strong grip and pulled me round in a vicious circle.

  A burst of heat energy exploded out of my palm and into the zombie’s neck, severing its head. The distraction cost me. Clare had vanished from my sight, beneath a horde of the bloodthirsty creatures. I could hear her screaming.

  Suddenly, I was channeling more Will than I had in five years. I was back in the wars, in truth and in heart. Twin jets of dark green fire flared from my palms, wreathing my arms in deadly flame. My skin, the only flesh immune to my power, tingled beneath the ferocity.

  I danced among the dead, cutting a path toward Clare. My strength to sustain the flame waned, and I stumbled, breathing hard, spit running down my chin. I’d cleared great swaths of the creatures, but I’d not done enough. I could barely breathe, let alone reach Clare in time to save—

  A voice roared behind me. “Let her go!”

  Aaron, alone and unarmed, hurled himself, all one hundred and thirty kilograms of hefty fat, into the shambling creatures and began to tear them apart with his bare hands. He fought as if possessed. Something swaddled in a cloth bundle was strapped to his back.

  I watched, stunned, as one of the zombies latched its teeth into his meaty bicep. With a bellow, Aaron drove his fingers into its hollow eye sockets and wrenched its rotten head from its neck.

  Seeing that jarred me into action.

  I leapt back into the fight, shooting short bursts of explosive light—all I could manage—into the creatures, and gave Aaron room to work. He knelt down where I’d last seen Clare and, with a wail, lifted her up into his arms and turned to run as I covered him.

  Most of the damn things had been destroyed. I cleaned up the survivors stumbling in Aaron’s wake as he crossed the desecrated earth, bleeding and panting. He fell to his knees against a rise in the ridge populated with swaying daffodils and carefully lowered Clare to the ground.

  “Declan! Declan, you heal her!”

  I took out the last shambling corpse and turned away sickened. Clare’s wild screams had simmered down to something shallow and desperate, to something final. I spat out a mouthful of blood and ran to Aaron. My legs failed me when I saw Clare, writhing on the hillside.

  She was unrecognizable, save for a single perfect eye that fluttered from blue, to red, to gold. My palms were lit with healing light, but I was too late. Her blood oozed from dozens of deep bites. The grass beneath her was stained a shocking shade of purple. I put a hand on the back of her neck and gently lifted her head onto my lap.

  She bucked in my arms, and I whispered sweet nothings, holding her tight.

  Aaron burst into tears, his massive chest heaving up and down. He seemed indifferent to his own wounds.

  “Take…” Clar
e groaned. “Take… cake, Dec…”

  “You too, sweet thing,” I whispered.

  Then she was gone.

  Clare died in my arms under the glare of the Degradation, under the very last of my good intentions.

  After a time, perhaps a minute, though it seemed stretched into an awfully long year, Aaron and I abandoned her at the base of the ridge and set off after Renegade. Our fight was no longer for Atlantis.

  A king dies today, I thought. Warm tears coursed a narrow track through the blood on my face. My earlier rage became something else… something cold.

  Shadowless.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Ruthless

  “Where are the others?” I asked quietly, walking up the hill to the Degradation’s edge with my fists clenched.

  Aaron sniffed and wiped his eyes on a sleeve slick with blood. We were beaten and ruined before the true battle had even begun. Our efforts were madness but the kind of madness I’d been good at, back in the day. Shoulda, woulda, coulda come alone…

  “Marcus… he fled, Declan. He tried to bring me with him, but he cannot control my Will—I have none. He took Sophie and Ethan and faded back along the Void. Back to my villa, if I properly understand your diving.”

  Trust Marcus…

  I nodded. “Good, I suppose. He saved their lives.” Sophie would be furious with him, but it was done. “I think he caused this, Aaron.”

  “Marcus? This battle?”

  …until he gives you a reason not to.

  “I think he told Renegade, or Faraday, that we were coming. When I sent him to get Tales of Atlantis. I think he wanted me stopped.”

  “But why?”

  I shrugged. “He wasn’t my friend, these last five years of exile. No, I think he was sent to watch me. To make sure I didn’t make a move on Atlantis, and if I did… to stop me. He told Morpheus Renegade, I’m sure of it, and Renegade turned his army here against Faraday to make it that much more difficult for us to reach the Degradation.”

  “So… he has betrayed you.”