by Joe Ducie
I chambered again, the shotgun hot and heavy, smoke curling from the barrel and along the barrel.
Batsy turned his skull to face me, the red demon-light in his eyes flickering, narrowing.
As if I had all the time in the world, I fired again, wiping that smug look off his face, and sauntered over to the fallen creature. The torrent of light and fire from the shotgun ripped most of the beast’s snout away—and took a good chunk of the crystal skybridge with it, punched a hole clean through to the quarter-mile drop below, where the streets still swarmed with deadlings.
“If you’re the best Ash has,” I said, hoping she could hear me, that she was watching, “this fight will be over before breakfast.”
Knowing this would be my last shot, the shotgun vibrated in my hands, the business end of the barrel glowing white-hot, I shoved the barrel deep into Batsy’s eye socket, getting an angle on his brain.
“Hey,” I said. “Whatever your last thought is, I bet it’s gonna blow your mind.”
I pulled the trigger.
A rotten mix of bone and brain exited the back of Batsy’s skull, along with the last torrent of redeeming blue lightning my shotgun would ever fire. The barrel bulged, broke. I turned away from the blinding light as Batsy, his form broken, ignited in that cleansing white fire, unable to hold its form together. Good riddance.
I held up my shotgun, the barrel had warped, twisted the steel and silver. The top foot or so had bloomed like in the cartoons, like a comical banana peel, or when Bugs Bunny blocked the end of Elber Fudd’s rifle with a carrot. I laughed and tossed the weapon aside. Back to working with my hands.
I turned to see how the others were faring, Annie mostly, and a stab of blinding pain pierced my right shoulder—I was yanked backwards, stabbed in the meat just below my shoulder, caught in the claws of one of the pilot fish.
Mini-Batsy roared in triumph, hurled me over the edge of the skybridge and out into open air. For the space of two long seconds I arced above the immense city without form or tether—or parachute. A second Mini-Batsy caught me properly, it’s clawed feet closing around my chest, my legs, pinning me to its form. Leathery wings beat in heavy gusts, taking to the sky, flying me west and away from the skybridge and my allies.
I had time to glimpse Annie, her mouth fell open in an ‘o’ of shock, surprise, dismay, and see the other soldiers—Arlon and Caitlin—doing battle with the three remaining Mini-Batsy’s, who were covering the retreat of the one that had me in its grip.
This was planned, I thought in a moment of rare clarity. Planned to separate me from my friends.
Well, fuck that.
CHAPTER TEN
THEY COME TO HAUNT ME
(I am the entertainer)
I had three real options, as best as I could see it, of dealing with my current predicament. And as predicaments went in my life, this one rated somewhere between a stubbed toe and a cut that needed stitches.
Only mildly bothersome in the long run, but in the shorter sprint hurt like a motherfucker.
The air howled past my ears as Mini-Batsy fled the skybridge, skirting west, diving between and around the silver towers of the Atlas Lexicon. The scent of decay, violent gusts of fetid air, whipped at my face. The world was a blur of silver and purple.
Option #1: I used my Will and burned the monster. Problem there was my arms were pinned to my sides by the beast’s claws. We’d burn together, falling from the purple sky like a meteorite falling to earth, fiery contrail and all. Not ideal. Doomed to ruin. I didn’t doubt I’d go down in flames one day, but there was still so much work left to do. Not yet.
Option #2: I broke the beast’s grip, a wave of concussive force expanding outward from my palm—again, using my Will power. Problem there, of course, was that I’d only be free maybe twenty seconds before I slammed into the ground far below at terminal velocity. If I could trick Mini-Batsy… Wasted, pasted. Even if I survived the fall (I wouldn’t), the beast would follow me and I’d be smack dab in the middle of a deadling army without my friends and their considerable firepower.
Option #3: I enjoyed the ride, let Mini-Batsy fly me where it had been instructed to fly me. Arguably the less risky option at the moment, but given that the odds Mini-Batsy was taking me anywhere decent—Paddy’s on a Wednesday for the steak special and a pint of extra cold Guinness sprang to mind as pretty decent right now—that mid-level risk would head into the red rather swiftly.
Shit, I thought. Boned by a bone-monster.
I remember thinking I’d have given anything for a handful of Knights Infernal at my side on the bridge. Now I was glad they weren’t here to see this embarrassment. I had one hell of a reputation out in the Story Thread, a thousand earned names and titles—hero, villain, genocidal librarian, the Shadowless Arbiter, saviour and destroyer… Declan Hale, the rightful king of Ascension City—cruel trophies, each one of them, but I had earned them. Bled and died for them. This predicament was best left out of the history books.
My shoulder hurt. The stab wound from the other Mini-Batsy’s claws had punctured me deep, a good inch or more. Hot blood flowed sticky down my chest, staining my shirt crimson, and had completely ruined my favourite waistcoat. For that alone this beast would die.
We left the main towers of the Atlas Lexicon behind, swooping low toward the ground. I tried to free an arm, work it toward the sword I wore on my hip. If I could get that sword loose, my mockery of an Infernal blade, then the odds would change. Once we were close enough to the ground… or even a rooftop.
Mini-Batsy glared down at me, eyes red like the dying embers in a coal fire, as I wormed and wrestled in its grip. Shocking pain bellowed like a klaxon alarm from my pierced shoulder, but I was used to such nonsense. Pain was temporary, regret was forever. I forget who said that.
The city below gave way to more expansive parklands, of the sort we’d crossed to reach the Vale Crystalis in the heart of the Lexicon what felt like days, not hours, ago. A crimson rain of blood drops, my blood, watered the grass below. The towers were gone, more office blocks and buildings between the parks, and the ground sloped up to meet us as we entered the foothills of the mountains.
A small smattering of forest, sort of a palm with three fingers stretching out, creeping up the side of the mountains, swept beneath me. We were maybe ten metres above the tops of the trees. I had a terribly stupid thought. I can survive ten metres…
I’d worked my left hand to the hilt of the sword. I had no room to draw the blade or swing it, but then I didn’t need to. My right hand I spun, palm outwards, placed flat against Mini-Batsy’s crooked claws.
I summoned my Will, opened my mind to the currents of power, the ascending oils at the heart of the universe. Like a door swinging open, there was strength, power—intent. I snarled, gritting my teeth. This was going to hurt, possibly break bones, but so be it.
I summoned a blast of raw power, a concussive wave of strength, and the energy exploded from my hand—strong, but also tempered so as not to reduce my bones to jelly. A flash-bang lit up the sky, a crack like a whip, and Mini-Batsy’s claw sprang open. The beast shrieked in surprise and pain.
So did I, as what felt like a hammer punched me in the side of my chest. I felt one or two ribs break, possibly just cracked, but I didn’t hold out much hope for small mercies today.
Mini-Batsy let me go, let me fall.
But the beast recovered almost instantly.
I drew my sword as Mini-Batsy spun in the air, surprise turned to anger, and dove to recapture me. I’d been expecting that, grinning as it’s skeletal arms extended to snatch me.
I let the snatch happen, let the beast pull me in close, and then drove my sword between its ribs, right through the flimsy armour that couldn’t stand against an enchanted blade, and skewered the beast’s rotten heart.
The light in Mini-Batsy’s eyes blinked out, dead between heartbeats, and it’s form erupted in that cool white fire anything with a pulse longed to see.
Snarling again,
I spun the flaming corpse through the air, giving thanks to whatever god of fools and war criminals that watched over me that the fire was benign to the living. The white flame was a cool breeze, light and tingling, licking at my skin, almost refreshing.
We struck the treetops of the forest hard, but the disintegrating beast absorbed most of the impact. I bounced off its ruined husk—bruised, battered, bleeding—but alive. The tree canopy was nice and thick and my fall slowed almost instantly. Errant branches and twigs snapped under me before I came to a sudden stop, the air cast from my lungs, in a tangle of wood and leaves somewhere in the upper branches.
The world spun around my hand, a snowfall of white fire sparks danced around me, the last of Mini-Batsy. Everything was quiet, everything hurt. I took a careful breath, knotted as I was in the tree. My ribs protested the air, but that was the worst of it.
I turned my head, fearing a broken neck, a compound fracture, but everything worked as well as could be expected.
Through the branches, I could see the forest floor about five metres below. It was going to be one hell of a climb down, but I could make it.
First though, I took a minute to catch my breath.
I should have been dead ten times over.
*~*~*~*
The climb down out of the tree wasn’t as agonising as expected—it was far worse. Annie always said I had a problem with my expectations. In this, at least, I was willing to concede the point.
What should have been the work of thirty seconds took me fifteen minutes, and by the time I fell into the bed of old crunchy leaves and dirt at the base of the tree near the remains of a long dead campfire, I was covered in a cold sweat, shivering with pain.
In need of a healer.
But given the purple sky, the utter hopelessness seeped into the air—the Void on its way, eager to devour my world—I was on my own.
Using my Will power to heal was more than possible. The only problem: I wasn’t very good at that kind of subtle manipulation of energy. I was more of a blow-things-up Knight Infernal. If something needed destroying during the Tome Wars, King Morrow had sent me to destroy it. I’d earned such a reputation for destruction that he’d promoted me to lead the Cascade Fleet against the Renegades. The campaign of fire and death I had reigned down upon those armies was now legend and nightmare. Those memories hurt, but fondly.
“Sophie,” I whispered. “Wish you were here, kid.”
Sophie was the healer of the group, one of the few to stand by me during my exile. If I was a firework—big explosion that quickly burned away—she was an ever-burning flame. Her skill with the subtleties of Will manipulation was frightening.
Then I thought of Tal, Sophie’s sister, and of Dread Ash corrupting Tal’s body. Perhaps it was better Sophie wasn’t here. I didn’t think she could take another blow like that, not so soon after Tal was rescued from Lord Oblivion.
I sat and bled for a time.
Eventually, when I felt a little less faint, I hacked together a crude battlefield tourniquet for my shoulder, using some of the very same branches that had broken my fall and shreds of my waistcoat. Very rarely did my awesome waistcoats survive these adventures. My tailor back in Joondalup always smiled when I walked in, knowing he was about to make a week’s worth of sales in a morning. Still, looking this good didn’t come cheap—
I cried out as I tightened the tourniquet, disturbing my ribs, which after some inspection may have erred less toward broken, simply bruised and cracked. Small mercies, after all. I let the tourniquet sit until the blood oozing from the wound slowed to a trickle, began to clot. Only then did I attempt a few minor healing enchantments.
Nothing major, as I was likely to scramble my organs, but I pressed my hand against my shoulder and gently pulsed Will light against the wound, through the cloth. After about ten minutes of that, the wound looked a day old, instead of fresh. About the best I could do. The pain was substantially less, too. Enough that I could gain my feet, with the help of a convenient snapped branch serving as a walking cane.
My bones, my very soul, protested the movement, but there was still work to be done today. All too easy just to die under this tree. I worried on Annie and my allies. What was my next move?
The edge of the purple shield guided me through the forest, heading west, as planned. My progress was slow, but steady. I realised I’d lost my eye patch somewhere in the fall, and my ruined milky-white eye caught the occasional glimpse of light. Mildly disorientating, but I quickly adapted.
The forest was well trodden ground, plenty of dirt paths cut through the trees, and I headed inevitably upward, climbing the foothills, and emerged on a small rise overlooking the tops of the trees behind me—and within the shadow, if shadows without a sun had been possible, of the mighty towers of the Atlas Lexicon.
The mountain sloped above, the forest and the city rested below. I retrieved the map from my back pocket and got my bearings, using a small boulder as a natural table. It took me a minute, but I got there in the end.
Mini-Batsy had dragged me a good distance of the way I’d been planning to travel with Annie and the others. I was too far south, by about a mile and a half, but the area to the northwest, where I needed to be, was closer than ever. And, as I scanned the terrain ahead in that direction, looked clear—no deadlings, no tentacle monsters, or winged beasts. At least, none I could see.
“My luck’s never this good…” I muttered.
And what about dear Annie? Emily whispered in the back of my mind.
Did I head back to the city? Make enough noise that they could find me? I didn’t even know if they’d survived the attack on the bridge… But that wasn’t true, was it? If Annie had fallen, if her injuries had overcome the petal in her heart—that little sliver of cruel immortality—I would have felt it. Hell, given the power in those petals, if one had been destroyed perhaps only a crater would have been left of the Atlas Lexicon.
Annie lived, and if I concentrated, I could even feel her, moving closer, heading west—she had her own map, and I’d shown her where we were heading.
I did something I probably shouldn’t have then, not without explaining it to her first—that long overdue conversation. I used our connection, the twin petals, to send her a message. If I’d been asked how I did it, before I did it, I wouldn’t have been able to say. Not really thinking about it, just expressing my intent—much like harnessing Will in its most fundamental capacity—I spoke to Annie through our shared immortality.
I’m alive. I’m heading on. Good luck, Detective.
The words left my heart and travelled to Annie’s. I felt a moment of surprise from her, shared emotion, before the connection grew hazy, radio tuned to static, and I lost her. But it was enough. And, when all this was said and done, it would require some explaining. I worried I would lose a friend over that. But then, if I hadn’t done it, Annie would be a year dead anyway.
It was most likely approaching the early hour before dawn outside of the shield, if my sense of time inside the purple prison was right. Time running out. I folded the map away and turned northwest—heading into the grassy green and rocky foothills below the mountains.
I’m coming Tal. Ten thousand years too late, I know. But better late than never.
THE THIRD RESOLVE
We’re All of Us Bastards Now
“It is the wine that leads me on,
the wild wine
that sets the wisest man to sing
at the top of his lungs,
laugh like a fool - it drives the
man to dancing… it even
tempts him to blurt out stories
better never told.”
~Homer (The Odyssey)
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CAVE OF BLUNDERS
(All these broken promises will end well for you, I’m sure)
When I’d been piecing together my dark and diabolical plan, I’d been worried that—after ten thousand years of lying in wait—the crux of the scheme, the key to the w
hole affair, would no longer be there. A lot can happen in ten thousand years, least of all to something as… delicate… as what I’d done in the past, in Atlantis, to cause this whole mess at the Atlas Lexicon in the first place.
And the nagging thought in the back of my mind, the one that never went away: whenever I’d tried to thwart the Everlasting, I’d lost more than I’d won. Every darn time.
But as I limped across those foothills, cursing every rise in the path, every boulder my bruised and battered legs had to climb over, leaning on my trusty walking branch and expecting it to snap every other step, I felt the plan—sensed, as only I could (and possibly Annie, if she knew the truth), what lay hidden ahead. The petal in my heart began to sing. I heard the gentle hum, as if the melody were blown in lightly on a breeze, an echo from a great distance. The voice was ethereal, angelic, light. The voice of a distant star.
Like that track in The Return of the King, where they crown Aragorn. Like that.
The song gave me strength, stood as a bulwark against the poisonous purple shield—the western edge of which sat less than a quarter mile away on my left, cutting clean through earth and rock as if it were butter, slicing a mountain in half.
From where I’d emerged from the forest and gained my bearings, it had taken me a cruel, agonising two hours to cover a mile in the foothills. If I’d been at my best, the same distance would have taken ten, fifteen minutes. Now I was close, I could feel it, to the cave. Seeds seeped in time, another legend if I pulled it off, were about to bear fruit.
And the path had remained unmolested. No deadlings, no monstrosities from the sky. I had the sense I was being watched, but that could have been good old healthy paranoia. If anything, I felt alone, isolated. My glimpses of the city, visible every time I crested another rise, and more so as the foothills started to give way to the mountain slope proper, showed monsters scuttling like ants through its streets, but other than that… nothing.