Distant Star

by Joe Ducie

“Would you bargain again with Lord Oblivion?” Tal’s smile turned forlorn. “Declan, would you dare? After the last time? But what have you left to trade, hmm? Certainly not your shadow. Your soul, perhaps? Damn yourself to grant me something I gladly gave up.”

  “I need you with me.”

  “You need nothing and, to be honest, deserve even less.”

  I knew the truth when I heard it. Tal never lied, not ever, which was what made her so wonderful. Her words mirrored my thoughts. She knew me so well. I let her frail hand fall and clenched my fists. “I have a request.”

  “That’s why you are still alive and the armies of Ascension City are not. You never push, do you, Declan? You move so carefully, with such faux confidence, such dangerous charm. You request when you could so easily demand.”

  “Tal, our choices five years ago are killing Forget. The Story Thread is unraveling, and travesties from the Void and beyond are seeping into all worlds. It’s my fault, and I will not endure another bloodbath. Can you do anything to stop the Degradation?”

  “I am the Degradation.” Tal’s form shimmered and moved around me like a blizzard of living sparks. “My life force feeds the shield around the Lost City. You would unmake all that I am?”

  “I would. Time’s up, honey. Better a renewed war between the Knights and the Renegades, don’t you think, than the end of so many worlds?”

  Tal snarled and her crimson eyes flared. She drew a small dagger from her belt and slashed it across my face. I snapped my head back a moment too late, and the blade cut across my cheek and along the bridge of my nose. The pain was real enough. Blood ran in rivulets into my mouth.

  “I exist outside of this world—of all worlds. Your request is denied, Knight. In the words of one far greater than you: You shall not pass.” Her voice deepened at the last of her words, becoming something far older and crueler. Perhaps my Tal was here, but she wasn’t alone. Those red eyes…

  Oblivion was watching, the Voidling had said back in Perth. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  Tal took a deep breath and calmed herself. She sheathed her tiny, vicious dagger and cupped my bloody cheek. “There, there now. I’m sorry.” She ran her fingers along the deep cut, and I felt the skin tingle and stretch. “That’s better.”

  The bleeding had stopped. I pushed her hand aside and felt the skin for myself. The cut was a week old at least, and was healing. My mind flashed back to my death… I’d had a scar just like this—recent, raw, but mending.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  She licked my blood from her fingers. “Time is… Well, time can be persuaded here. Atlantis exists in a crux, powered and held by the Infernal Clock, and hidden ten thousand years in the past.”

  “This is the past?”

  “One of many, and only a small shard of the whole.”

  “Oh, Tal.” I’d always thought she was special. “You’re not my Tal anymore. I’m sorry. So, so sorry… last time counts for all. I give my love to whatever is left of you behind those eyes.”

  She giggled. “Depart this place or perish, Shadowless—”

  I drew the sword at my waist, and it flared to life with ethereal brilliance—the silver light from my Will. The single, flawless diamond in its hilt shone against the purple sky and sparkled with radiance found. Tal leapt back but not quickly enough. With a whimper, I drove my sword into the glimmering ghost and scattered all that she was, and the eyes of a god, into the ether.

  The Roseblade sang.

  She, whoever she was, would be back, given the delight I saw in those heart’s-blood orbs.

  I didn’t have much time, even in this land that time forgot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Infernal Clock

  Five years ago, on the eve of the Degradation, Tal and I had run these ruined streets together, ahead of the Knights and the Renegades. We had run hard and fast, desperate to seal away the chaos we’d found and unleashed.

  The Infernal Clock and the promise of immortality.

  The Roseblade that had destroyed Reach City.

  Well, no, that didn’t own the madness—not even close. I’d destroyed the city by using the Roseblade, which was a tool of intent, after all. My doing. Eight million dead and a corner of Forget turned into a horrendous monument to the power found in the Lost City—all my doing.

  The race had been on that night. Everyone thought I’d left the Roseblade sealed away inside the Degradation alongside the Infernal Clock. I’d sealed it away all right, inside a simple chest and given it to Aaron. Half the reason I’d grudgingly accepted my exile was because the temptation to use the sword again would have been too strong.

  I would have cut a vicious, bloody path through Ascension City and seized the Dragon Throne. As you do when you’re young, I guess.

  As much as I detested Faraday’s kingship and his laws barring me from Forget, after Nightmare’s Reach I’d been shaken enough to see that gaining the throne with the Roseblade was insane. I’d thought Clare was dead, and I’d known Tal was dead… no one could have stopped me.

  Except myself.

  At least I’d forced an end to the Tome Wars.

  I’d buried the damned sword and accepted Faraday’s exile. Better a defeated fool than a victorious monster.

  I couldn’t make up for what I’d done and the lives I’d destroyed. The Degradation was a mistake, but at the time, necessary, and here we all were, Knights, Renegades, and my merry band, fighting over this husk of a city once more.

  My face hurt where Tal had cut me.

  Sweet like cinnamon, that one, I thought as I ran through the streets paved with dust and strewn with cherry blossom petals.

  Tal’s favorite flower.

  Of Morpheus Renegade I had lost all sign. His footsteps, if indeed they had been his, had petered out. I gazed up at the mile-high skyscraper, a spire of obsidian rock smoothed and shining under the twilit sky. Are you up there, you bastard? He would die for what he’d done to Clare, even if I brought her back with the Clock. He would die for so much more, as well. Some men just needed killing, and Renegade was long overdue on his butcher’s bill. The weapon of mass destruction strapped to my waist would see to it, if nothing else. I patted the Roseblade and headed into the dark, all-consuming tower. God, I hope it didn’t come to that…

  Inside was a large open space of sharp shadows and little else, at the heart of which rose an impressive set of steps, spiraling up in loops through the ceiling and into the tower beyond. I made for that staircase, panting and dreading the climb to come. I would’ve traded the Roseblade for a sip of liquid courage.

  “Last piece of the puzzle,” I muttered, climbing the mighty spiral staircase. Torches of blue light, centuries old but inscribed with runes of power, spluttered and died on the walls as I passed.

  My death was falling into place. I wore the right clothes and bore the correct scarring across my face from Tal’s handiwork. All I was missing was the gaping wound in my stomach.

  A wiser man would’ve been running in the other direction. But I’d never been mistaken for wise, and what was it the Historian had said? You have to be brave.

  Well, so be it. Although there was nothing brave about what I had planned for Renegade, when we caught up.

  I don’t know how long I climbed in the dark, but eventually the spiral staircase ended in a wide and gloomy space, lit only by Atlantis’s terrible sky, the inner curve of the Degradation, through long-shattered windows. In the center of the room was a high-backed stone seat, carved from the same rock as the tower. Another throne from another time.

  Now that I was here again, I was sure of it. Ascension City had been founded on some faint, lost memory of Atlantis. The blueprints were nearly identical.

  Beyond the throne was a final set of stairs rising up behind a pair of dilapidated and cracked golden gates. Tal and I had forced our way through those gates once upon a time. At the top of that staircase we’d found the Roseblade, seen the Infernal Clock, and
bartered with a creature of such power that it could rightly be called a god.

  Nothing for it, Dec. Keep moving. Time to put an end to all the warring and power plays before anybody else died for the ambition of selfish men.

  I moved past the throne and through the old gates. Last time I’d been here, I’d lost so much and gained so little. A moment’s hesitation was all I could afford. Weary and hurting, I climbed the last hurdle and reached the top of the staircase, the end of the road.

  Wind whistling through my hair, I looked out at the Lost City and the miles of dead ocean, surrounded by those impossibly tall mountains. The wall of the Degradation sizzled above it all.

  I stood atop a wide and broken plateau, gazing up at that sky strewn with heavy violet clouds that sped across the atmosphere as fast as Willed fire. A storm of cherry blossom petals had been swept up into the heavens. They fell like snow and choked the world.

  A fetid stink of sulphur clung to the air. The ground beneath my feet was cracked and breathing. Arcs of red light, like magma, burned within the stone. The roots of the Infernal Clock splintered out from the center of the plateau. The Clock grew on a dais that overlooked the abyss of Atlantis.

  A curious place to find a crystal rose.

  “But then a rose is a rose is a Rose,” I whispered and stepped forward toward that beautiful chasm, the end of the road, the white flower of moment—the Infernal Clock.

  All that I had done or ever did, was to gain this moment under the burnt sky, amidst the dust and the fire and the dew-speckled petals of Time.

  To save the Story Thread.

  To reignite the Infernal Works.

  Above all, and most recent, to bring Clare back to life.

  Memories came to me of Tal and the last time I was here. Always the understanding, the knowledge, the know-how of the universe, was thrust through my mind.

  Years ago, the Everlasting Lord Oblivion had barred our path to the rose. I was alone this time. The gods outside of creation did not seem to care that I’d made it this far again. Perhaps that should have worried me, but my desire to see Clare remade washed all worry away.

  I could feel the Clock ticking inside my head like a song—a terrible song of Forget, which sounded a lot like Springsteen circa 1975. Broken heroes just born to run. Or something. It ticked away, second between second, and I understood what it was saying, singing, screaming.

  “I hear ya…”

  I touched the Infernal Clock—perhaps the first to do so in the history of this and any universe—and was dashed to pieces on a landscape of such immense size that it dwarfed distant stars and the black space between distant stars. The truth of reality wasn’t distance, but size. In a shade of a moment I was pulled and wrenched in both inner and outer space, across galaxies of fire and within atoms of ice. I saw worlds end and begin in rage. I saw how little humanity understood existence. We were children. Ants. Playing with the ascending oils of creation crashing on the shores of an endless beach.

  And I was not even a grain of sand on that beach. I was not even the smallest fraction of a grain of sand on that beach.

  I wept. My irrelevance was infinite.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Infinite Sadness

  Tal wrapped her arms around my chest as I sagged to my knees. She was a ghost of a memory and couldn’t hold my weight. She slumped down with me and rested her head on my back. All things being even, she had reassembled herself in record time, but then was that so surprising, really, after everything else?

  “I tried to warn you, Declan. You were never meant to listen, though.”

  “There’s so much… nothing. We’re dancing on a sheet of thin ice over a precipice of… of chaos and nightmare. Always. All the time. Even the Void is just a stretched canvas… Tal, I…”

  I was wracked with harsh sobs. If Tal hadn’t been less than smoke, my heaving chest would have shaken her loose.

  “Hush now.” She giggled and the sound was not even close to human anymore, more like nails on a chalkboard.

  “I don’t want to know. It’s too much. Take it back!” I spat at the Rose, the Infernal Clock, and it glittered with indifference. Tal’s laughter was infectious. I laughed too, though the sound was indistinguishable from garbled cries.

  Time trickled on, as it does—even in the heart of Atlantis—and I slowly came back to some semblance of sanity. I shook away the vestiges of what the Clock had shown me. Eternity, or something like it. A glimpse of the infinite sadness made real. A glimpse of chaos unbound. The knowledge had almost driven me over the edge, screaming into the blissful nothing. But no—not yet.

  Work still to be done, boss.

  I may have been less than an insignificant speck on the face of an immense and cold universe, but I still found meaning, hidden in lost shadows and pieces of cake. I mattered to me. Tal mattered to me, what was left of her. Sweet Clare. There were people I cared for, people who had purpose. Sophie, Ethan, and Aaron, just to name a few. Emily Grace, back on True Earth, to name one more.

  There may have been no meaning in the very large—existence was mindless chaos—but the Clock could not erase meaning from the very small.

  I leveled the Roseblade against the golden-green stem of the Infernal Clock. The thud of rushed, clapping footsteps sounded behind me. A long, harrowing cry for mercy echoed throughout my skull. I heeded it not.

  “No!” Morpheus Renegade screamed across the vast plateau.

  I severed the spine of all that ever was, and all that ever could be—born within those blasted, those awful, those dum-de-de-dum-dum… distant stars.

  The Clock screamed as I cut it in half.

  But then the Clock would, being the complainin’ fateful sumabitch that it was. I needed the petals—to bring Clare back—and severing the Clock was the only way to unmake the Degradation.

  The scream rode the edge of the wind, and, for all I knew, echoed across the vast, bountiful realms of Forget. A near-silent scream of mercy unheeded, of regretful fury. The radiance of the petals seemed to die as my sword passed through the fragile, timeless stem.

  I caught the Clock before it fell to the barren rock, while Tal’s terrible laughter echoed in my ears. The thorns cut my fingers and lacerated my palm. The pain stung like all hell, but considering the crime against creation I’d just committed, the pain was bearable.

  The ground began to shake. Torrents of liquid flame burst forth through the dust across the harsh horizon, setting alight the blizzard of blossom petals. The sky ignited—a million million petals caught alight. The rose was heavier than it should have been—worlds heavier, boss. It shook in my grasp, in its death throes. I quickly sheathed the Roseblade to hold the Clock steady with both hands.

  It was over and I had won. But the cost, as always, was a defeated victory. With Atlantis’s power source severed, the Degradation would disperse, there was that, and the Story Thread would recover, given enough time.

  “You… you utter fool.”

  I turned and stared at Morpheus Renegade. He was ashen and shaking, stumbling toward me with arms outstretched. Foamy blood and spit oozed from his mouth and ran down his chin. He was insane—I could sense it, smell it on him as if it were a disease. Perhaps I hadn’t beaten him here, after all.

  “You touched it, didn’t you?” I asked, gesturing with the Infernal Clock. “It drove you mad.”

  “Do you know what you’ve done? What you’ve unmade?” He drew a long, thin rapier from the sheath at his belt. His once-shiny armor was splattered with gore and coated in slick dust.

  I raised a glowing palm. “Stop.”

  His sword shimmered and thick coils of dark flame spun around the metal, narrowing to a slender point. “You think to command me, Hale? This is my city—that is my prize. Give it to me!”

  He thrust his blade forward and a ball of crackling energy burst across the space between us. I waved my hand and deflected the bolt skywards, into the fray above. The burnt orange sky was tearing itself apart now, a
nd glimpses of fresh blue firmament were seeping in. Atlantis was falling through time, as the Degradation died.

  Renegade and I fought, moving back and forth across the plateau. In one hand, I held the Infernal Clock and in the other, a pool of luminescent smoke.

  In my mind, there was only one thought, one urge: Kill.

  Clare’s dried blood on my hands and in my clothes drove that urge.

  I embraced it.

  Renegade moved in close, swinging his slim sword and howling for my head. He closed the gap between us, making it next to impossible to fire off a shot of Will, as all my time was used to weave between his deadly blows. A large man, but old, Renegade used his size to force me toward the edge of the plateau.

  I tried to redraw the Roseblade, but was too slow.

  Renegade’s hand closed around my arm, and he pulled me harshly to the side as he reached for the crystal rose. I slammed my fist into his face, cracking my knuckles, and we separated. His blade cut a thin line through my shirt and across my chest. A line of blood blossomed through the fabric.

  “Ha!” Renegade roared, sensing an advantage.

  I ducked low as he swung in again, and I slammed the pommel of the Roseblade against his leg as I drew the crystal sword, dropping him onto one knee against the stone. He whipped his sword around, aiming for my neck, but I lunged back a step.

  Our blades caught—the Roseblade cut through his weapon like a hot knife through butter.

  His rapier shattered, and Renegade was left holding a hilt attached to a few inches of warped steel. He looked stunned.

  I sensed my advantage—

  Tal giggled.

  —and drove the Roseblade through his chest plate and into his heart.

  The enchanted sword slipped through the king with little resistance. I snarled, breathing hard, and forced the cool crystal to the hilt into his chest. Two feet of bloody blade thrust from his spine. Renegade fell back with me atop of him, driving us both down onto the plateau. The Roseblade cut through the stone and pinned him to the tower.