by David Finn
She ripped a throwing star from her right wrist and swung with everything she had into his neck, holding the razor-sharp implement without a shred of mercy. She kept waling on him and he was out by the third blow.
He couldn’t see me, Demorn realised, as she pocketed the gun, backing up the staircase. The black cloak was wrapped around her. He couldn’t see me but my wreckage is everywhere. Her left arm was just coming back to life. Nerve tingles. Blood pumping back as she massaged her dead left wrist. Her right hand was covered in blood too, cuts from the star and god knew what else.
She could hear gunfire and shouting from the corridor. This was all insane. This was a suicide run, she thought. Low on planning, high on bravado. This is what happens when a war is being lost. But I’ve survived worse, Demorn thought with a smile. She held Prison Tat’s gun as she stepped lightly up the staircase, glancing behind her.
Something took out her feet and Demorn smashed into the hard wood.
4
* * *
A murky figure materialised in front of her. Demorn’s feet were tied in a tight synthetic mesh that extended from the figure’s wrist. Red and black light body armour. No face visible through the reflective helmet. A star sign on the chest.
Demorn threw the cracked glasses away. Her hand felt better. She trained the gun on the figure.
‘I can see you.’
The synthetic mesh released Demorn’s feet and whipped back into the wrist. The visor slid back. It was an older woman, grey and silver through her hair. Both her hands were glowing metal fists.
One side of her face was a ruin of burns and scar tissue across the cheek and neck, overlaid with scrawled sorcery symbols. The other side was undamaged and she was smiling. She had pale yellow eyes that shone in the dim stairwell. Demorn fired the gun. Three shots, point blank into the face from less than ten feet. They ricocheted harmlessly off an inner shield.
The woman smiled. The frozen scars didn’t move. ‘And I can see you, Demorn. I’ve got magic eyes too. So why don’t we stop trying to kill each other?’
Demorn bounced to her feet, rubbing her sore jaw. ‘You’re talking like I should know you, and treat you with kindness and respect, but you hit like somebody looking to send me on the last train out. What’s with that? I have no idea who you are. Are you friends with the psychotic house demon down below?’
The villa rumbled and the staircase seemed to shift beneath their feet.
‘No, I’m not. This is an opportune moment to grab your attention.’
Demorn glanced at her watch. Targeting still pointed up. ‘Consider it grabbed. You’ve got five seconds, what do you want?’
‘I want you to stop falling down the rabbit hole. That’s what is up there, Demorn. Mysteries that seem like they will lead you to infinite truths. But they’re curses not truths. Don’t look too closely into the affairs of the Death Dealers. That way lies madness. Go back to Babelzon. Go back to the Innocents. You’ve been here too long.’
Demorn grinned. ‘Ahh, Babelzon. So that’s where you’re from. It’s rare to see anybody else doing that with their fists. Normally my shtick.’
The woman nodded. Both her metal fists still glowed. Demorn was secretly impressed. She could never hold both fists in that form for so long without hitting somebody.
‘It’s almost like we came from the same Clubhouse and were trained by the same Goddess.’
Demorn shot her a stare. Her voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘I lead the Innocents, babe. It’s almost like I would remember if that was the case.’
‘You lead the Innocents? From here, Demorn? Fighting other people’s wars?’
Demorn’s ruby heart caught fire at last and her left fist became steel. She did not give a fuck, she would wipe this bitch off the planet if she kept this routine going much longer. ‘You’ve had your five seconds, babe. I get it. Somebody is paying you to take a shot at the title. I’m a busy girl. Maybe it’s time we got down to business.’
The woman said, ‘My name is Red Morning. I led the Innocents before you. I got deleted from the time-line. I got erased.’
Demorn tapped her head. ‘Not ringing any bells, sorry.’
The woman’s lip curled in response and Demorn leapt, leading with a savage kick to the body that pushed the woman off balance and backward. She ducked a swing from the woman, and smashed her hardest left into the inner face shield, cracking it. Raw power thudded through the metal and Demorn felt the right go online too. She swept upward, cracking through what was left of the shield and jawbone. The woman smashed into the alcove wall. Demorn sucked a breath. It was quick and it was brutal as so many fights were. Red Morning was laughing, half conscious.
Two full power blows from the steel fists was a lot to take. Demorn pulled the gun on her.
‘Truth time. Who sent you? Stop feeding me bullshit.’
‘I really did lead the Innocents. My name is Red Morning. I was deleted from the time-line. Erased.’
Demorn smile was cruel. ‘I think you’re an assassin telling a lie. Tell me what’s underneath the Cavern Temple. What’s our holy book?’
Red Morning held her poise. ‘It’s a first edition Dungeons and Dragons rulebook.’
Demorn pulled the shot at the last moment. The bullet struck an inch from the woman’s face. Demorn’s heart was pounding fast.
‘Why’s that then?’
Red Morning said, ‘Somebody stole it as a prank. Every leader scribbles down something in the front. Last time I checked, you were a borderline atheist, Demorn. I don’t remember you ever calling anything holy.’
And I don’t remember a damn thing about you, Demorn thought. I don’t remember a single thing you wrote in that book.
Demorn said, ‘Don’t worry about what I believe. Who would erase you? Why?’
Red Morning’s gaze was piercing. Demorn could see a red shadow rune glowing underneath the skin of her good cheek. It was an evil, old magic.
Red Morning breathed, ‘Ask your sacred Goddess, ask Adolin Mars.’
The Beast screamed downstairs, snared in the terrible battle with the kill-bots.
‘Don’t go through that door!’ Red Morning hissed.
Demorn smiled her scary smile. ‘Maybe you’re telling the truth. But you’re not the leader anymore, Red Morning. I was taught to kill my opponents clean.’
The woman grinned, skin stretched like torture over the burn scars. ‘Then do it. And walk through into a land of curses remembering who warned you!’
The sorcery sign burnt on the woman’s skin. Demorn tossed it around in her head as she watched a spell take the prone woman.
‘I do as I please, honey. Remember, I beat you with one good hand.’
Red Morning vanished. Demorn shrugged, looking up at the trapdoor.
A powerful Corizan ward burnt on the door. How strange. It was the only witchcraft she knew, taught to her by a witch in childhood. She barely practiced anymore. She wasn’t a magician and she distrusted the dangerous, fickle tricks of sorcerers.
Aquolin Industries
The words on the trapdoor floated to her out of childhood and the past. Looking at them the screams of the Beast seemed lesser and far away. Everything beneath her and outside seemed to float away. There was no villa, no staircase, just the burning letters on the door and a terrible darkness surrounding Demorn. She felt haunted.
She put her hand on the trapdoor. The letters shifted.
Parallel 54
Demorn pushed open the door and climbed through, her steel fist gripping the wood, heart beating fast as she pulled herself up.
5
* * *
A soothing robotic female voice chimed in her audio implant as she hauled upward to carpeted floor.
YOU ARE ENTERING THE 54th PARALLEL, THE LIBRARY OF THE GODS—ENJOY THE ALOQUIN INDUSTRIES EXPERIENCE, WE BUILD WORLDS
Demorn dragged herself up. Her hand tingled as the trapdoor closed behind her, runes fading. She glanced at her watch. 19.45, 2127, 121 AF. If the spea
ker was to be believed, she’d slid across a Parallel, an alternate reality. The numbers flickered on her readout as if uncertain. It was a time door, invisible now. Just a wooden trapdoor. Demorn smiled with a grim acceptance. The air felt strange, sticking to her skin, making the hair on her arms bristle. This wasn’t true time travel of course. She had learnt of this from growing up on Asanti. This was a tunnel, a jump between two points, two Parallels at a convenient juncture, touching briefly. Whatever Parallel 54 was, it was unlikely that much outside of this Library was formed or real. She would have to tread carefully.
Steady rain hit the roof. Demorn walked through the dimly lit library, footsteps light, surrounded by the smell of old books. The gargoyle towered above her, black and vast on the vast ceiling, mouth open as if to swallow all the knowledge in the world. She ran her fingers across the titles. Books of power, books of the dead, books of the worlds beyond. The air was vibrating around her. She was in another dimension, perhaps another world.
Demorn rounded the corner, slamming into a figure moving too fast in the narrow corridor. Her body shook as he hit her, but she didn’t fall. Demorn’s eyes burnt through a spell of invisibility. She saw a man wrapped in a thin magic cloak, knocked to the ground. He spun around. Demorn’s blade surged to her hand and lay across his throat. Unshaven with a greying beard, his eyes shifting wildly in an expressive black face. In his hands there was a shining hollow skull, purple eyes blazing across the dimly lit bookshelves.
She ripped the cloak off him, wrapping it around her hand. He quickly moved the skull into a black bag but Demorn tut-tutted.
She murmured, ‘A God Skull? I’ll take that.’
The flames of Xalos curled near his face. The shining eyes dimmed inside the black bag, stopping the eerie reflections upon the strange books which filled this musty space.
‘More of a demigod, really,’ the man said. For all his greying beard and tired face, his eyes were young and his voice was soft.
Demorn withdrew the blade from his throat.
‘Just give the Skull to me. You wouldn’t even know what to do with it.’
He raised an eyebrow at Demorn. ‘I was planning on selling it on the black market for an obscene price.’
‘Ok, maybe you did know what you wanted to do with it. Who are you?’
‘They call me the Wolf.’
An eerie sense of déjà vu. His smile was a grin as he tossed her the bag containing the Skull.
‘Easy come, easy go, Demorn.’
The purple light lit up her pale features, blending with her eyes, making Demorn appear otherworldly. Her glance was cold and she tried to burn through his mind, but it was all layers of misinformation and mystery.
‘You know me?’
The Wolf was laconic. ‘Sure. I know of you. You’re the famous Wandering Princess of the Swords. You save people. You save cities. Defend causes. You’re expensive.’
Hmm. ‘Where are we, Wolf? What is this place?’
The Wolf looked up to the high ceiling. ‘Well, it’s a library now, but it was a Dimensional Fort. Built by god knows who to defend the barricades against the Void and the evil, dark gods.’
The Wolf looked around at the shelves with their almost oppressive sense of history crushing down on them. He picked a slender book off the shelf. Triton Conversion Strategies in a Corporate World. He held up the book.
‘Which makes this funny.’
‘What’s funny?’
He said, ‘This Fort is now run by Triton cultists. Sponsored by Bankers, true death-dealers. They’re the ones manning the Forts. They serve the very demons the Forts were supposed to be guarding against.’
Demorn was gazing into the God Skull, only half listening. A spectral image of a glass crown shimmered around her head. Her voice was a whisper. ‘We let them in a long time ago. This skull is sacred. How did you find it?’
‘It’s what we do. Lady Josephine found it on some stolen Source Core logs. I work for her, she sent me in.’
Demorn looked at him, comprehension dawning like a rising sun. Josephine. The exiled diplomat. Santos’ contact.
‘The Lady Josephine?’
The Wolf half-bowed. ‘The very same. She’s my business partner.’
‘You and the Lady Josephine are thieves!’
The Wolf arched an eyebrow. ‘She’s a diplomat. I prefer to call myself an intra-dimensional entrepreneur.’
Ha.
The Wolf sighed, rapping his fingers against the book and putting it back on the shelf. He seemed to be tossing lines around in his head.
‘It’s not that I don’t care. It’s tragic how everything ends. I just don’t care that much.’
Demorn laughed loudly. ‘Your precious business reached out to my patron, Baron Santos. I actually believed that whole pitch about saving Bay City.’
The Wolf held up his hands. ‘What’s not to believe? I hope you do it. I hope it all works. I hope the cheque clears. You’re used to people calling out for help, Demorn. You seek them out, you want to help. The Wandering Princess of the Swords. Isn’t that your whole pitch? Sent by her boss to kill all the bad people.’
Demorn put the Skull back in the bag with a small sigh. ‘It’s not my whole pitch. And Santos is not my boss.’
He corrected himself. ‘Sorry, business partner.’
She sheathed Xalos in a blur. She didn’t feel threatened by Wolf. ‘So why are you here? Just to steal?’
His smile was nervous. ‘Truth? I stayed too long in the last Parallel. I got caught in a bad loop, bouncing between three mirror worlds, versions of Bay City that were almost the same. And the longer you look at me, the more I’m getting the feeling our time-lines don’t match. I know you, Demorn, but you’re not the Demorn I know.’
Demorn was watching him closely. The Fracture Event destroyed the Mirror Worlds. Nobody was supposed to bounce around the Parallels like this. Nobody who wanted to stay sane and not fall into the crevices and chasms left after the Event.
She said, ‘Well, I’m the one you’ve got, Wolf. And half the time I don’t remember who I am.’
The Wolf checked a flashy watch around his wrist. She saw a neon readout. He said, ‘Bay City is where I met Josephine. I’ve been working with her awhile. We got complacent and lazy and used to luxury. Josie has been entertaining, holding too many of her damned parties. She’s buying into that dark god bullshit.’
‘Then she’s a fool. It’s not a joke,’ Demorn said.
‘I know that. So does she, under the pills. We barely got out of Parallel 45.’
The Wolf rattled his wrist. ‘My transporter is dry. I need a refill if I’m going to escape the bomb. Josie just loves blowing everything up.’
‘You’re being very honest,’ Demorn said. Humour mixed with suspicion in her. ‘It makes me wonder why.’
Demorn was browsing the shelves as she spoke, half an eye on him. The library was at once both familiar and sinister. The rain thundering on the high glass roof gave a layer of mystery. The names on the book spines felt plucked from her thoughts. Names from her deepest dreams. Secret lands. Cities from the Prussian Front which she had forgotten, erased by blood and steel.
She picked up a small leather edition entitled, Fractured Loves. As she held the book a memory shimmered out of the deep, mysterious valley she still dreamt of, where Kate flew across the sparking nameless lake, and they had found peace at last. It felt like another life, a golden time she barely remembered outside of the dream. Somewhere they found peace, gone upon waking. Kate’s perfume still on her, leaving Demorn feeling closer to her than she had been in years. She turned the page. Demorn saw Kate’s face shining on the paper, blue eyes wide and packed with yearning.
Demorn dropped the book as if physically stung. It clattered to the floor. She backed away, Kate’s face still flashing before her eyes. She was drawn to a huge window on the far wall of the Library. Power vibrated off the glass. Tall, stormy waves crashed in the impassable black ocean. She felt horribly cold and a
lone. She felt at the edge of the universe with strangers for friends. Filled with clients and missions but so empty of anything that was her own.
Demorn’s vision pierced past the pale reflection in the glass. Another world. A woman, clad in black leather, with a savage scar across her face was gazing into the same glass window. Her eyes were a ghostly blue. In her hand was a curved scimitar of black flames. Demorn could see pink graffiti-strewn concrete walls behind her, a land of desolation and combat so close to what she herself knew. A shade darker, but the same battle, the same war. The same scar, Demorn breathed, touching the invisible cut upon her cheek, but deeper on this girl. Demorn kept gazing into the mirror until the woman vanished, the scimitar aflame, the last thing to fade, outlasting her reflection, her ghost.
‘You can see it too, can’t you?’
Wolf’s anxious, nasal voice startled her. The red book trembled in her hands and she almost dropped it. The mirror shifted. Replacing the woman was the churning, broiling sea, teeming with corruption and waste, black waves rising and falling without end. A coldness filled her heart as she saw a huge tall ship riding the dark waves. The standard upon the black sail was the red crown of the Skeleton King himself. Demorn felt a hand on her shoulder, pulling, and she dragged her eyes away.
‘Be careful!’
‘I know what they are,’ she said in a dreamy voice. ‘It’s a fleet of Banker ships come to seize the Fort.’
‘They aren’t seizing anything,’ the Wolf said. ‘This Fort is already theirs. This is a Triton stronghold. They come to take souls of the dead.’
Demorn then saw the icon of Triton emblazoned on the ship’s hull and her mood grew still as it surged across the water, coming ever closer. He was right. The mission Santos had given her reasserted itself in her mind. They should be careful. This was a place of great magic. A magic that ate souls and didn’t care about humans and their short, pitiful lives. She racked her brain to remember the lessons learnt in Asanti or spoken about by her brother.