The Reminiscent Exile Series, Books 1-3: Distant Star, Broken Quill, Knight Fall

by Joe Ducie

  Moving in close now, I dug a distraction out of my back pocket as my shoes clipped a hurried beat on the stone ground.

  “Emissary!” I cried, tossing my wallet—weighted with a good chunk of loose change—at the creature’s head.

  He blurred on the spot, perhaps recognizing my voice, and his jaw stretched wide to snap the leather shot out of the air. Emissary swallowed my wallet whole, and my only regret was that it hadn’t been a live grenade. Still, the split-second it took was all that I needed to duck under his chin and drive Myth into his back, right between his shoulders.

  The knife plunged into his flesh, and Emissary’s eyes blazed. He swatted me aside with a wave of his arm, but I rolled with the blow and came up on my knees still holding my sword of star iron. I’d left Myth embedded in the demon’s back.

  Flame—red, raw flame—burst from Emissary’s mouth and eyes and wreathed his head in a crown of fire. He clawed at the knife in his back, down on all fours, laughing and screaming. His bones were snapping and crackling, and his torso lengthening. I couldn’t believe my eye.

  “Is he... What the hell is he doing?” Tia breathed.

  Emissary’s head snapped around, and a string of pink flame sprayed through the air. A dollop landed on my shoulder and ignited my shirt, but Annie thought fast. She stripped out of her leather jacket and smothered the flames before they could burn me. I was left slightly scorched but whole.

  “My god, his skin is changing...”

  Emissary’s arms had thickened, and his face was now covered in what looked like emerald-green scales. His tongue, blackened and swollen, ran over a jaw of razor-sharp fangs and lolled out of his mouth. Spikes, vicious and cruel, burst through his suit, alongside Myth, and he... he grew a tail.

  Whatever was happening, the process sped up. Emissary burst from his suit, naked and scaled, and his body lengthened a good twenty, then thirty, then forty feet. No longer even vaguely human, and hissing between his fangs, he sprouted wings where his shoulder blades should have been, just either side of the Creation Knife. With a crack, his lizard-head snapped into place and he belched a torrent of hot flame at my Knightly companions.

  Garner was slow—and the flame burst through his quick shield. I caught a glimpse of his face melting before he was absorbed by the flame. Not even ash would be left of the poor bastard. I lost sight of Vrail and Dessan behind slabs of rubble. I hoped they’d avoided the maelstrom of fire.

  “Tia, Annie,” I said. “Run—run and hide right now.”

  “Dec—” Annie began.

  I didn’t wait to see if I was obeyed, and it honestly didn’t matter. If Emissary wasn’t checked now, before his transformation was complete, then none of us would be able to hide. Clenching my sword, I ran toward the beast as his tail whipped back and forth through the air.

  I was out of time.

  We were all out of time.

  Emissary reared his head back, now a creature out of the old fairy tales, and unleashed a jet of hot liquid fire into the sky.

  I came up alongside his head, snarling, sword in hand.

  The dragon looked at me, one golden slit of an eye seemed to wink, and then he stretched his jaws wide yet again and a glow of pink flame bellowed up from deep within his throat. I took a staggering step to the side and brought my sword swinging up and around over my head.

  “Bastard!” I cried, slicing at the creature’s thick hide.

  The blade cut through the neck scales as if they were butter, and a gout of thick, purple blood burst from the wound. Pure white light shone from within the sword and seared the dragon’s flesh.

  Emissary bucked as if electrocuted and roared in what sounded like agony, and spread his massive wings wide, knocking aside chunks of rubble and sending half a dozen nearby Renegades hurling ass over head. The rush of air and the swipe of his tail forced me to my knees. The tip of one of the tail spikes caught my sleeve and drew a thin line of blood across my arm.

  The hilt of the sword grew warm in my hands, and the dragon jerked its entire neck away from the blade. A loud snap, like the chime of a broken church bell, echoed across the railroads, and I was hurled back by the flapping of Emissary’s massive wings. I rolled along the ground, over rubble, debris, and glass, and came to a sudden stop against a slab of fallen skyscraper.

  I’d be a sorry case of bruises in the morning.

  I managed to sit up. I was still holding the hilt of my sword, but it was cold now, and the blade was snapped jagged, leaving me about half a foot with which to stab things. Blimey… Three months of work and thousands of gems worth of star iron down the drain.

  But I wounded it!

  The dragon, what I had to assume was Emissary’s true form beneath his human facade, took flight with a mighty roar. A great gust of wind slammed me flat against the shattered concrete, but blood and light still bled from the wound on the creature’s neck. The dragon flailed in the air and crashed into one of the Pillars before gaining enough leverage to kick off and rise through the sky.

  Myth, the Creation Knife, the world-cutter, was still embedded in the flesh between its wing joints. Of Annie there was no trace, nor of Vrail or Dessan. But Tia ran toward me through the chaos and helped me to my feet as Emissary reared high above the Pillars and breathed a long stream of flame into the crystal spheres of the Globescape.

  The beast spun in the air and fell back toward the Lexicon. Emissary roared, and glass shattered. Wreathed in hot flame, the dragon descended upon us with power I’d rarely seen unleashed. This was a true dragon, not pulled from fairy tales but real, alive long before the written word and the stories that made Forget.

  Emissary blasted through the skyscrapers, one after the other, like a missile wreathed in scorching pink flame. Tia cast a shield of pure energy over our heads as chunks of stone and glass rained down upon the Lexicon. The crowds ran for cover, still screaming but drowned out by the explosions, and many were trampled in the chaos.

  The inter-dimensional railroad flickered and died. Enough of the Pillars had been damaged to cripple the Lexicon’s network. I feared, briefly, what that meant for all the people, thousands of them, traveling through the network of worlds at that moment. Did Emissary just snuff out the waygates and portals? Had the Void just... fed?

  I was snapped out of my thoughts as, overhead, the crystal spheres projected with dozens of worlds shattered and began to fall from the heavens. Even I gaped, and I’d seen some truly awe-inspiring sights in my life. Worlds were literally falling out of the sky!

  The crystal spheres fell in vast chunks and tiny slivers as the projections of distant worlds flickered and died. The ground shook hard enough to rattle the teeth in my skull as the crystal struck home.

  Amidst all that, Emissary vanished. As he had done before, in human form, Emissary seemed to disappear into nothing. One moment the dragon was there, and the next a harsh clap of thunder filled the space he had occupied. Myth, my subtle weapon of celestial illusion, was gone—buried in the beast. Thick whips of liquid flame drizzled down through the air, tangled within the falling debris, as if they were a rain of deadly, fiery confetti.

  Tia stood over me and raised her hands toward the sky. Another one of her shields popped into existence, a thick barrier of transparent blue light. She poured her heart and soul into the enchantment, stretching it a good distance of about forty feet, covering the wounded and the fallen nearby.

  All but impossible to hide from the rain of sharp crystal and deadly fire. Like a gong, Tia’s shield rippled and rang as pieces from above slammed into the construct. Her knees buckled under the strain of the bombardment, and she fell with a cry. I was there, under her, and lent my strength. I grasped her under her arms and kept her hands above her head, aflame with liquid power, as chunks of thick crystal slammed into the ground, crushing those unfortunate enough to be caught beneath, outside the range of Tia’s shield.

  And then the rain was over.

  Only seconds later, but the time felt like hours. The ma
elstrom done for now, Tia let her arms fall with a moan of utter exhaustion. The sky was clear and blue above her. She smiled at me, holding her up, and then her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she collapsed into my arms. Her shield of pure Will dissipated, as spent as its creator.

  Everything was quiet. Far too quiet.

  I’d not seen destruction on this level since the darkest days of the Tome Wars. Yet powerless, I’d managed to drive Emissary away—but I’d lost Myth, which was a sore blow. The wound I’d delivered with my rough imitation of an Infernal Blade had seemed to stick, which was encouraging, but the beast was still alive.

  What kind of Knight couldn’t even slay a dragon?

  I lowered Tia gently onto the ground amidst the rubble and checked her vitals. Her pulse was thready but there, and her eyes moved beneath her lids. Her heart thumped a quick beat under warm, sweaty skin. She was alive—exhausted, shattered, but alive. Satisfied, I stood up and pressed a hand against the cut on my bicep.

  My wounded, useless eye was as painful as a bee sting doused in sweet liquor and set alight. As if guided by Destiny herself, I found and retrieved a bottle of scotch from the broken storefront of a little, burning gift shop spared under Tia’s shield and wandered over to a wooden crate, loosed from an overturned truck of similar wooden crates. Pulling the cork out with my teeth, I took a heavy swig and felt all the better for it. My shoes were scuffed with ash and dust, and that seemed somehow more real than the true cost of the battle.

  We’re outclassed, I thought. Emissary is faster, stronger, and simply better in every way. Broken quill, he’s destroyed the Lexicon!

  “He’s not indestructible. Night’s bite... repelled the blight...” I muttered, and I don’t know why, but that felt like a thought in the right direction. “Only the guilty understand the cost of true power.”

  Where had I heard that? Hadn’t Forget suffered enough under my true power?

  Night’s bite...

  I stared at the half a sword in my hand. The blade had snapped and formed a crude point. Too long for a dagger and far too short for a sword. So why had the blade wounded the dragon when all other means had failed?

  “Night’s bite... Knight’s bite.”

  A slow, careful smile spread across my face. Could it be that simple? I felt the weight of history on my back, the weight of something that had, over the last ten thousand years, become simply ceremonial. The Knights Infernal gifted their graduates with a blade made of star iron—an Infernal Blade. Star iron was a rare element, one of the few things that could not be written into existence, and owning a blade was a point of great pride. The element had many uses—from restricting Will power to increasing the potency of runic warding.

  Perhaps, back in the days of Emissary and the Old Gods, before Ascension City, before even Atlantis and the Infernal Clock, star iron had been put to a more practical use.

  Perhaps it could make gods bleed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Murder City

  Annie found me, in the end, and took the scotch from my hand and tossed it aside. The bottle shattered against a chunk of crystal the size of a bus—flickering even now with faint images of fallen worlds—and amber liquid, like so much spilled poison, soaked the ground.

  I wasn’t sorry to see it go. I drank too much—the last few days and hangovers had made that clear—and relied far too much on the dull buzz to get me through the day. A facade of happiness as fake as the human skin Emissary had worn.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. “How, Annie? How are you okay?”

  “Not sure I am...” Annie turned, holding a pale hand against her hip. Blood stained her blouse, leaked between her fingers, and dribbled down her jeans. “It’s not too deep, but it needs stitching. Can we still get home?”

  I nodded but didn’t elaborate.

  “Is Tia...?”

  “She’s alive. She overdid it, exhausted herself. Saved a good many lives, but she’ll need some rest. A day’s worth if not more.”

  Another woman stepped lightly through the pieces of fallen crystal, around the debris of the broken skyscrapers, and found me slumped and somewhat defeated. She wore a gown of midnight-blue, stretched gently across the bump in her belly, and over her right arm she carried a brown jacket.

  “Timeless, graceful Emily,” I said. “Why, oh why, am I not surprised to see you here? Thank you, I guess, for sending those Renegade soldiers. They did some good.”

  “Declan,” Emily Grace said with a smile. “And Detective Brie. I found your jacket, honey. Here.” Emily handed Annie the jacket and also placed a delicate hand over Annie’s bleeding side. A quick flash of light and the wound sealed over, leaving not even a scar.

  “Thanks. Oh, that’s better. Thank you.” Annie shrugged into the brown leather jacket, singed a bit around the collar, and zipped up. She hugged herself. “So... he’s a dragon.”

  “Yup.”

  “We need a brave knight,” Emily said, her lips twitching. “Do you know any, Declan?”

  “I’m reminded of a quote. Something about how all the brave men are dead.” Work of a few seconds to fetch another bottle of scotch, but... no. No answers to my woes in the bottom of a bottle, however many I check. “You know what’d really help—if I had the Roseblade.”

  Emily had the good grace to blush. She’d killed me for that sword and the eternal petals of the Infernal Clock. “The Roseblade is... beyond my reach for now.”

  “You lost it?” I blinked and then considered. “No, you’re up to something, aren’t you? Fair warning, Emily, I defeat Emissary, and I’m reinstated into the Knights. I’ll be coming for the crystal sword then.”

  A wonderful smile claimed Emily’s face. She sat herself down on my knee and draped her arms across my shoulders. I found myself with a hand on the bulge of her unborn child. “They offered you a pardon? How exciting. You know, you could come and be my Knight, sweet Declan—Prince Consort of the Renegades. No? But did I just see you lose another weapon of celestial illusion?”

  I grimaced. “I think it wounded the beast, but I’m not sure.” The gouts of dragon’s blood still sizzled in small pools beneath the fallen crystal globes. I met Annie’s gaze. “We should get back to Perth, reassess and regroup. Are you coming with me, Emily?”

  “No, I am not.” She stroked the swell of her belly, her hand gliding over mine. If the old prophecies were to be believed, the child of the Immortal Queen would destroy Forget to save it, or some such nonsense. “I fear the Everlasting are about to cast their first stone on Perth’s still waters, Declan.”

  “Emissary tearing through the population wasn’t enough?” Annie asked, somewhat sarcastically. She was tired—on edge. Weren’t we all? “How do we get back without the knife?”

  “McSorley’s portal arch,” I said, tapping my pocket. The ornate key he’d given me was a comforting weight. “Should work, even despite this devastation. The arches, unlike the Lexicon, are powered by the negative energy of the Void and—”

  “Enough,” Annie said, holding up her hands. “Enough. Let’s just head home.”

  Emily let me stand, and I scooped up Tia in my arms, gave the Renegade queen a farewell nod, and followed Annie into the terminal. The damage was less severe here, but great chunks of shattered crystal had plummeted through the ceiling and smashed the stained glass windows, and the screams of the dead and dying echoed from wall to wall.

  “The Knights will be here soon,” I said to Annie. Tia was as light as a feather in my arms. “They’ll help those that can be helped.”

  *~*~*~*

  It took a while—and Annie had to put three days of parking fees on her credit card to get her car out of His Majesty’s multi-story—but we made it back to True Earth in the late afternoon, having crawled through the debris and destruction at the Lexicon with Tia in my arms. We filled McSorley in on what we knew, what had happened at the Lexicon, and he in turn told us about the horror inflicted on Perth in the last few days. Emissary had be
en busy, preparing for Scion’s ascension. The streets were scarred and bloody. We drove in silence, just ahead of the day’s end traffic, north on the freeway back to my shop, Tia asleep and frowning on the back seat.

  Annie jammed a charger into the car’s cigarette lighter and plugged the cable into her phone. After a few minutes, the device beeped to life, and a string of tiny chimes announced the arrival of a new message. Then another. And another.

  The chimes went on for about a minute.

  “Brian,” she said. “And work. Ninety new messages. Forty missed calls. Shit.”

  “Are you going to call him?” I asked gently. First thing I was doing when I got home—after putting Tia to bed—was taking a shower and then grabbing a kebab from across the plaza.

  Annie frowned. Her knuckles gripped the wheel as we zoomed down the freeway. “Later. Once I’ve dropped you off. Do you think... is Emissary here?”

  “According to McSorley, he killed a good fifty people while we were away. Stole their hearts and all. He says police and federal agencies, as well as the military, are scouring Perth.” As I spoke, a cadre of police cars passed us on the other side of the freeway, just across the train line. “Which will do about as much good as tits on a bull... He’ll be here, Annie, if we didn’t beat him back. As Emily said, the Everlasting—Scion—is making his play. For whatever reason, perhaps to bloody my nose, they’ve chosen Perth to do it. We need to be ready.”

  A tear rolled down Annie’s cheek. She didn’t bother to swat it away. “How can we fight them? You’re powerless, none of your friends made it back with us, Tia’s unconscious... Even the knife is gone! Declan, I’m scared.”

  I watched the lines on the freeway zip past. “We’ve got half a star iron sword and your handgun.”

  “I’m out of bullets,” she said and laughed shrilly. “Sorry.”