by Joe Ducie
I hit a shard of celestial illusion hard, the wind knocked out of me. Ash stood twenty feet away, holding up my sword, her stolen prize. “With this,” she spat, “who needs you?”
Ash turned on her heel again and fled the cavern.
I screamed after her, raw and angry, forcing breath into my lungs and out again, the pain only dulled by the blade drawn from under the boulder.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE OLDER I AM, THE WISER I’M NOT
(My name is Declan, and I’m an alcoholic)
I stumbled from the cave of celestial illusion, giving chase to Ash, back along the canyon under the purple sky, which roiled and raged with arcs of lightning, thunder, destruction. A breath-taking cold gust spun throughout the dome, whistling with hurt and anger and pain. The shield was Dread Ash, and reflected her chaotic mind.
I emerged back on the sloped hill, pulling myself along in a limped sort of jog. The obsidian circle was struck by a thick fork of lightning and exploded, sharp spears of stone flying across the hillside.
Annie, Arlon, and Caitlin dove for cover on the other side of the pillars, the stone hurtling over their heads and cutting into the lines of shambling bone men and deadlings giving them chase.
Ash had my sword—and, worse, she knew it was capable of helping her escape. Pour enough power into that blade and it could sever the enchantment that had kept her imprisoned here at the Lexicon for the last ten millennia. The celestial illusion had been her maximum-security cell within the prison, but with the sword she could cut right through the perimeter fence.
Ah, hell. Never a dull moment, no, no, no.
“Annie!” I shouted. “Which way did she go?”
The wind stole my words, but Annie looked up sharply. She grinned to see me alive and I felt a similar fierce smile on my own face.
I limp-jogged down the hillside and helped her to her feet, as Arlon and Caitlin struggled to theirs. They were all battered, bruised, bleeding. Annie’s leather jacket was torn down the front. A field bandage had been wrapped around her scalp. Blood seeped from the wound underneath.
The army of deadlings had been hurled back by the explosion, but more were stumbling over the corpses of the fallen—a lot more, thousands more. We had a minute, maybe two, before they were upon us.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked, pulling her to me.
Annie laughed and kissed me quickly on the lips. “Doing all the hard work, it looks like.”
“Did you see Ash?” I asked.
Annie thrust her finger at the slopes above. “She came out of that canyon, gave us a scowl, and headed up the mountain. She had a sword. Your sword. I thought for a moment you were gone.”
“We need that sword back,” I said. “It’s the only chance we’ve got to put an end to all this mess.”
“Arbiter!” Arlon said. “Can you slow the rabble?”
He waved at the ascending army. The wind rolled down the mountain at our backs, thankfully carrying most of the stink and decay away from us—back toward the city.
“Can we expect reinforcements?” I asked.
Caitlin shook her head. “We lost the squad getting here. It was hard fought.”
“Just the original band then,” I muttered, and glanced down at the blade in my hand, seeped in ten thousand years of softly soaring celestial illusion.
The blade glinted untouched by the purple light poisoning everything else. Indeed, a small pale-blue shield seemed to repel the dark radiance.
“What is that?” Annie asked, following my gaze.
One of those god-awful ideas occurred to me. A sordid plan to defeat the deadlings, pursue Ash, and cut her off from anything but a final confrontation. So be it…
“Right, we need to head back up the hill, quick as we can.” I pointed to the ridge above the canyon that led to the cavern of celestial illusion. “We need to get up there. Looks like if we circle round from the left the climb won’t be too bad.”
“Then what?” Arlon asked.
I shrugged, honestly racked my mind for another option, but came up blank. I think my sigh could have been heard across entire worlds. “Then I’m going to set this mountain on fire. Quickly now.”
So it was a race.
Ash in the lead, somewhere up above. I’d be able to track her down, so long as she had the sword. I had time there, time to stop her, but not much. Myself and my allies in the middle, used and abused, at the final reserves of our strength, even bolstered as I was by stolen energy. And bringing up the rear, thousands upon thousands of deadlings, befouled corpses set to dark work. They’d never stop coming, never tire. We would run until we collapsed and then we’d be devoured.
“I’m almost out!” Annie shouted, turning and firing, the barrel of her revolver shooting flame and smoke. Each shot found a mark, though, on those deadlings too close for comfort.
“Save what you’ve got left,” I said, panting. “Quickly now, quickly.”
From the mouth of the canyon we crested the hillside, moving up to the left. The going was slow, steep, and we had to crawl, leap, scuttle up the side, but two minutes later and we stood atop of the canyon’s edge, gazing down at the frightful army, and beheld a commanding view of the Atlas Lexicon beyond.
“Whatever you’re going to do,” Caitlin said, picking off deadlings climbing in our wake with single shots from her rifle, “you’ve got a minute, maybe less.”
Working mostly on instinct, on intent, I held my sword up high, the silver-steel glinting against the tortured sky, against the cries of the damned. Beneath me, a hundred feet below my boots, sat the immense cavern of celestial illusion, all that strength and power, all that… immensity. I didn’t have the words to describe the potential. I never would.
With a cry, I thrust my sword down through the air and punctured the stone at my feet. The blade crackled with power as it bit through the rock. I fell to one knee, focusing my Will, my intent, and sent a bolt of energy from the hilt of the sword and down through the side of the mountain—into the wealth of stored power and energy in the cavern of celestial illusion.
A terrifying heartbeat passed, then another. The first rotten hands crested the hillside, the vanguard of the thousands more to come.
I’ve miscalculated, I thought. It wasn’t—
The ground began to shake.
A torrent of liquid hot flame exploded along the length of the canyon, a dozen feet high, twice as thick, like the world’s most devastating beam of energy.
We were thrown from out feet, back against the ground, and I scrambled away with Annie, holding her close, my sword still thrust into the rock, which now rattled in earthquake.
“Back!” I roared. “Move back!”
Arlon and Caitlin didn’t need telling, shuffling back on their hands and knees away from the canyon, further up the mountain.
The torrent of white-hot flame shooting along the canyon became a flood, a cascading waterfall of silver energy, an avalanche of power, which swept along the hillside and devastated the deadling army. The canyon served as a barrel, directing the colossal amount of energy I’d unleashed like a burst fire hydrant.
In a way, I’d managed to get one more shell off from my shotgun, after all. I’d turned the mountain into a shotgun, my sword the trigger.
Liquid energy, a flow of celestial magma, ate the hillside, fell downward, glassing the landscape. The deadling army broke, scattered, as thousands of them were simply ignited.
A wave of tremendous heat blasted up out of the cavern, the world’s biggest steam vent.
Minutes later, only minutes, the ground stopped shaking, the torrent of flame receded, but the damage was done.
Deep below, in the once priceless cavern, the field of celestial illusion burned and consumed, a fire that would last… well, long after I was dead and forgotten.
The cavern would burn for aeons.
I smiled grimly and gained my feet. Annie and the others gave me one of those looks that could only be read as somewher
e between terror and awe, disbelief and careful respect.
I collected my sword, smoke rising from the blade in idle wisps, and gazed up the mountain. White fire burst in gouts from the natural chimneys in the rock, chimneys which would lead back down to the cavern beneath us. Ash was up there somewhere, no doubt seething, planning to remove my head from my shoulders.
This fight wasn’t over. Not yet.
“Come on,” I said. “Annie, you and I have a story to finish on the way.”
REMINISCENCE THE FOURTH
(Eight days before Declan sets fire to the mountain, in his measure of time. Half a day before he travels back to his proper time. Six days before Dread Ash’s degradation strangles the Atlas Lexicon. One week before Declan and Annie share Jasmine tea)
The End Game,
A Most Subtle Cruelty
After nearly one year in Atlantis, plotting and planning, Tal slapped me, hard, dislodging my eye patch and sending me reeling. The pain rang in my ears.
“You… bastard,” she hissed, eyes angry and hurt. “After everything, you spring this on me now? I thought…” Her face crumpled. “I thought you were changing. I thought sobering up had given you a new perspective. But all this time, this last year, you’ve been planning this.”
I held up the two swords I’d crafted in the forges of the Vale Celestia, Scarred Axis’ forges, pure starlight and power. The Everlasting wasn’t here at the moment, not quite yet, the forges swirling away on their own, which was for the best, as when I did find Axis the conversation was going to be short, sweet, and to the point.
Tal swatted away a tear and pushed me in the shoulder, but with no real strength. I put the twin swords down, the runes on one complete, still some work to do on the other, and took her hand between mine.
“Is this where you tell me the less I knew the better?” she asked, not quite meeting my eyes. Sad. Sad was worse than anger. “Trying to protect me, spare me the pain?” She hitched a breath. “Years too late for that, Declan.”
“No,” I said softly. Overhead the interstellar clouds drifted slowly, a million points of light swirled between emerald greens, sapphire blues, ruby reds… A real gem of a sky, that one. “Protect you, always, but never with falsehood. I didn’t tell you, Tal, because you didn’t want a part of this—you made that clear a year ago, in the gardens, where I drank my last drink.”
She touched a finger to the silver-shined blades resting on the forge edge. A wave of cool energy cast us half in pale light, half in dark. “How many of them are here?” she asked. “Is… he here?”
“I haven’t run into Oblivion, as best as I can tell.” I frowned. “But most of them are here, Tal. Astoria, Axis, Ash—the A-Team, heh. Scion… perhaps.” I picked up the sword with the complete runes, flipped it, and handed it hilt-first to Tal. “This is for you, if you want it.”
“Why on earth would I want that?”
A flare of something that wasn’t sympathy, or even empathy, but something crueller—the part of me that could burn worlds—but an emotion mostly condescending and arrogant shivered through me. “You want to stay here in Atlantis, don’t you?” I said, and Tal flinched at my tone. “You want the city to survive, to escape its fate a while longer yet. Then pick up the sword, Tal, and fight. The Everlasting are here for one reason, and one reason only, to ensure Atlantis falls. The city—the Vale towers we’ve claimed as our own—are a monument to humanity’s potential. As a species, we’re getting too uppity. The Everlasting are here to course-correct that, to cast us into a dark age.”
“We know they manage it,” she whispered. “We’ve stood in the ruins.”
“Yes, but not today. Not for a hundred years or more, if I have my way.” I picked up the other sword, the ring of steel on stone more than familiar. “I’ve a dark and terrible plan, Tal. It involves you, and Emily—Fair Astoria, herself—and Switzerland, and celestial illusion.”
Tal blinked. “Switzerland?”
I concentrated on the petal in my heart, caught a glimpse of Annie ten thousand years from now, sitting at her desk in Joondalup Police Station, scrawling on some paperwork. If I wanted to, I could cut a path through the Void right now across that length and breadth of time, of impossible space, and appear next to her at her desk. Getting home was the easy part.
“The Vale Crystalis, where the Atlas Lexicon will one day stand. I’m baiting the trap.”
Tal considered that, then sighed. “You’ll never tell me the whole truth, will you?”
Tal took the rune sword from my hand, stepped away, and practiced a few of the old moves they’d taught us at the Infernal Academy, over ten years ago now. Late twenties snuck up fast, I thought. You’ll be thirty soon, old man. A small part of me was convinced I’d never hit that mile marker, not with my life of excess. Ah well, I’ve done enough living for ten men. Ten miserable men.
“What’s the plan then?” Tal asked.
I grinned a not-so-pleasant grin. “He’ll be here soon.”
“Who?”
“The Forge Master, a man calling himself Alexas, and when he gets here…” I clenched my fist around the sword. “I’m going to take something from him.”
“What?”
“His sight.”
Tal shivered and took a step away from me, turning her shoulder my way. “We should probably find some cover until then.”
I agreed. We moved away from the four swirling forges of starlight, away from the central chimney of billowing frost and cold steam, and crouched down behind a materials cache of steel and what looked like mythril, a blue-silver alloy good for weapons and armour. Tal looked like she wanted to speak, no doubt tell me what a bastard I was, but then I already knew that.
Though the sky here was an eternal, bright night, I kept a good account of the time in my head. Shortly after midnight, the Forge Master strolled into the space between his starlight forges. Alexas—Yet-to-be-Scarred Axis of the Everlasting—six and a half feet tall, silver-grey hair tied back in a short ponytail, skin alabaster pale, wearing loose-fitting breeches and a leather jerkin, exposing his heavily muscled arms.
The bear in the bear trap.
I looked to Tal, who nodded. The light in her eyes had changed from sad, weary, to a look I knew well from the Tome Wars—the look of a killer, a soldier, a Knight. Red work to be done, that look said. They’d almost made us eager for such work, back in the academy days.
Axis placed a hand on his central forge and frowned. He knew someone, someone handsome and wearing an eye patch, had been at work with his tools. A sneer crossed his face, a glimpse of the true creature within, then faded back to something near-human. In the dim light, his skin grew even paler—I could see veins, arteries, pumping purple ichor through his body. His mask’s slipping, I thought, as something that felt like a wave of ice washed over me and Tal. He knows you’re here, I thought, a split second before Axis spoke.
“I know you’re here,” he said, his voice echoing across the vast open forge, rattling the tools on the workbenches, sending a shot of pure fear coursing through my body. “Show yourself.”
Tal closed her eyes and whispered a short prayer.
“Me first,” I whispered and picked up both of my freshly forged swords. “Step in if it looks like I’m struggling.”
Tal cursed and I stepped out into the forge, skirting the edge of one of the starlight pools. Axis spun to face me, his face hard and then softening slightly when he saw me sauntering toward him, closing the space between us. I held my swords low, at the ready, but not hostile.
“Arbiter Hale,” Axis said, and if I hadn’t known the truth I could have mistaken the jovial hostility in his tone for curiosity. “What brings you out this evening?”
“I’ve been using your forges,” I said, and lifted my swords. “You like them?”
Axis scanned my work with a masterful eye, noting the runes on one, the incomplete work on the other. He crossed his massive arms and shrugged. “Adequate work,” he said. “Fit to purpose… but wh
atever purpose would that be?”
Knight’s bite repels the blight, I thought, the snatch of old rhyme that revealed one of the few weaknesses of the Everlasting. An Infernal blade, forged with pieces of star-silver, star-iron, and enchanted with the right runes could wound an elder god. I couldn’t kill Axis with these blades, but then I knew he didn’t die here anyway. I could make him wish for death.
“Thought I’d give one of the Everlasting a haircut.”
Axis’s face changed in a heartbeat and he charged me, lightning-faced, getting inside my guard, hands extended to crush my throat.
I was quick—just quick enough—to sidestep the attack and bring the rune blade down across his heavy arm. The blade sung as it carved a neat slice across Axis’s bicep.
Knight’s bite.
He stumbled, looked stunned at the line of rosy red blood on his arm, and then his face shuddered with rage. I’d taken a smart handful of steps away, putting about ten feet between us. He turned to face me and clenched his fists together.
“How do you know of me?” he asked, his voice dropping all pretence of friendliness—of humanity.
“We’ve met in the future,” I said. “I knew you the moment I saw you in this forge.”
Axis thrust his arms forward and a colossal wave of air slammed into me, tore one of the blades from my hand, and I rolled ragdoll across the forge. I grasped the edge of the furnace, thankful it was cool, to stop from falling into one of the starlight pools.
Axis moved in to finish me, as easy as that, when he was struck in the back by a glowing green sphere of energy. He stumbled, his leather jerkin sizzling, and spun.
Tal sighed. “Looked like you were struggling, Declan.”
Axis the Bear, the yet-to-be-Scarred, strode across his forge, the flames from Tal’s attack eating at his vest and back. The burning flesh didn’t seem to bother him.
“You as well, girl?” he spat. “Your bones will make a poor morsel for my dogs.”
I stood, held my remaining sword above my head, the other lying out of reach, and enchanted my throwing arm with strength, accuracy, a dash of fucking hope.