The Forever Gate Ultimate Edition

by Isaac Hooke

  Ari was forced backward.

  Brute was toying with her.

  The blizzard picked up. Around them the conditions became near white-out, and Ari could see only a few paces in any direction. She fought in isolation from the rest of the world, in a private pact of doom of her own making. The only witness was the gol that would kill her.

  Brute pressed forward, on the offensive now, and Ari constantly gave ground before those blows. She was slowing down, the rage-fueled fervor of the initial assault fading, replaced by hopelessness.

  The four scimitars of her enemy danced in kaleidoscopic vortex, and appeared at turns a blooming flower, a whirling wheel, a crushing maw.

  A sword invaded her upper thigh and cut a rude gash. Another blade licked her breast. A third molested her forearm.

  Ari spun from an attack that would have taken her head. She sidestepped three blades that would have perforated her viscera. She dodged a swipe that would have severed her legs below the knees.

  She backed into a snowdrift and was sent off balance. Brute instantly batted the sword from her hand. Weaponless, she flung herself backward into the snow as more blades swooped in.

  The drift engulfed her.

  Brute raised its scimitars high—

  She rolled away and scrambled to one knee, body covered in snow. Her sword lay on the snowpack just beyond the drift.

  She was about to dive for it—

  A hilt rammed her face.

  Blood sprayed from her lips as Ari flew backward—

  She smashed into the stone fence of Jeremy's estate and slid down into the drift.

  The world faded.

  She fought back, and banished the stars and blackness from her vision, and struggled to her feet. Her face was wet. Blood? Or melted snow?

  She took only two steps before collapsing again.

  Too dizzy.

  Too nauseous.

  She dragged herself along the drift. One hand forward. The other. One hand forward. The other. The cold snow was quickly numbing her body. Already she couldn't feel her hands.

  Maybe that was a good thing. Less agony, when the end came. Because she didn't think she'd be able to ignore the pain at that point.

  Above the storm she heard the crunch of heavy boots in the drift. Boots that sounded all-too calm in their approach. Boots whose owner knew its prey was done.

  The sword.

  Had to get the sword.

  But it was behind her now.

  Past Brute.

  She forced herself to stand. Yes. Did it.

  She slipped.

  Fell again.

  How close was Brute?

  She flung her body around so that she lay with her back in the drift and faced the sky.

  The Direwalker towered above her feet, its four swords raised.

  Brute plunged those blades down—

  She split her legs to avoid the strike—

  Too slow.

  She let out a cry as one of the swords pierced her thigh and pinned her. She twisted to and fro, blotting out the pain, trying to escape. But the sword held her firm—the blade had penetrated into the harder snow below.

  The Direwalker sheathed the remaining three scimitars in a mechanical whirl.

  Brute reached into its belt and retrieved the small, metallic disk.

  68

  Ari didn't wait for the Direwalker to close.

  She leaned forward and gripped the hilt of the sword embedded in her flesh. She squeezed her fingers tightly and hauled upward.

  The blade didn't move.

  She heard a laugh now. A ghastly bass of a laugh.

  It was Brute.

  The laugh only angered her, and the rage renewed her determination, and her strength.

  She planted her uninjured foot in the snow, and strained harder, gritting her teeth. The Direwalker, still laughing, was almost upon her.

  But it was useless. All her life had been a waste. To end like this, for nothing. For no one. She pulled and pulled. The scimitar wouldn't move.

  The scimitar.

  The blade was curved.

  She adjusted the angle at which she heaved on the blade, just slightly.

  All at once the sword launched from her flesh in a spray of red mist.

  She allowed momentum to carry her upward, and she bashed the hilt into the Direwalker's chin with all the strength that remained in her.

  It was like hitting stone.

  But even stone could be moved if you knocked it hard enough.

  Brute stumbled backward a pace.

  Without missing a beat, Ari brought the scimitar about and plunged the weapon into its eye.

  The tip penetrated easily, digging into the gol's gray matter, and she felt the reverberation as the inside of the Direwalker's skull halted the blade.

  Finally. A weakness.

  She withdrew the sword and a stream of gore vomited from its useless eye.

  Brute remained standing.

  She was about to gouge the other eye when the Direwalker drew its remaining blades. Brute was expecting her to go for its second eye.

  So she did the unexpected.

  Ari whipped the sword down like a club, putting her body weight into the blow, and hit Brute in the ankle with the flat of the blade. Again it was like striking stone, but she managed to move the leg enough to unbalance the Direwalker, and Brute fell to one knee. Fresh blood spurted from its eye.

  Ari retreated into the blizzard. She could scarcely see. She scooped up the Box from where she'd left it beside the dead sentries, and then she dove into the snowdrift beside the stone fence of Jeremy's estate. She crouched, waiting.

  Above the storm she heard the crunch of the Direwalker's feet in the snow, and she tensed, sword at the ready. Would the raging wind and the blinding snow be enough to cover her footprints? The trail of blood?

  Brute ran right past without spotting her. It probably helped that she lurked on the side of the eye that she'd gouged.

  When that hulking figure vanished into the storm, Ari scrambled to her feet and took off in the opposite direction.

  Blinded by the snowstorm, she wasn't sure how long she ran, or how far, but she ran, and ran, and ran, as if she could outrun the fact that Tanner had died.

  She blotted out the pain in her leg. That was one of the nice things about being a gol. You could ignore pain entirely and still use a limb no matter how badly damaged it was. Still, all bodies obeyed the physical laws of the world for the most part—except Brute's, maybe—and she'd have to wrap that leg eventually or she'd bleed to death.

  So she set the Box down in the snow, removed the black tie that hung from her fake bronze bitch, and secured the silk around her leg like a tourniquet. Her fingers were so numb it took her three tries to tie the damn thing.

  When she was done, a powerful gust of wind momentarily blew the veil of snow from her, and she realized where she was.

  The Forever Gate soared beside her, towering with the magnitude of her crimes.

  The Forever Gate she had sent Hoodwink across ten years ago.

  To his death.

  She wished she could ignore the mental pain as easily as the physical.

  But she couldn't.

  And so it was that the enormity of what she had done came crashing down on her, and she fell to her knees.

  69

  The snowstorm raged on, the whirling flakes slicing at the air. The wind howled like a banshee promising doom.

  Ari gazed up at the Forever Gate, but its infinity was lost to the storm. She scratched a pit into the snowpack with her scimitar, and wedged the hilt into the hole. She positioned the sharp tip of the blade so that it kissed the soft tissue beneath her sternum. It was a testament to the volatility of her emotions. Only moments ago she had been fighting for her life. Now she was freely ending it.

  Die on the Inside as a gol, and you die for real.

  She deserved death for what she'd done. She'd allowed Hoodwink to die. Led Marks to his doom.

&nbs
p; And now Tanner was dead, because of her.

  Tanner.

  Dying was the only way to end this grief. Dying was the only way to save herself.

  The only way to reach Hoodwink.

  Her father hadn't sold her to Jeremy. She knew it in her heart. But even if he had, it didn't matter. Not anymore.

  She'd been given a second chance at life. Youth. But it was past her time. Well past her time.

  "Across the Forever Gate," she said. "To the morning of the new world. I'm coming to your utopia, Hoodwink."

  She grabbed the base of the sword with both hands.

  "This isn't the way," Hoodwink said.

  She stiffened, and glanced over her shoulder. "Hoodwink?"

  But no one was there. The storm played tricks with her mind.

  She closed her eyes and thrust her body forward.

  But an arm wrapped around her torso, pulling her back, denying her even this release.

  "What?" she said. "Can't you leave me alone? Can't you let me do this last thing in peace? Let me choose my own exit to the world?"

  She turned around, ready to accept whatever death the giant Direwalker decided to inflict on her.

  But Tanner stood there. Tanner, his body intact, with no sign of the terrible injury. Cora's robes were gone, and he was dressed in a heavy cloak more suitable to the storm.

  "I watched you die!" Ari said. Joy competed with disbelief inside her. She didn't know if she should hug him or stab him.

  Tanner shook his head and spoke above the storm. "The blow didn't finish me. I lay there, dying, the blood flowing from my body. Just flowing. But I'd stashed a handmirror in my outfit while pretending to be Cora. I used it to disbelieve reality before I died. Kind of a record for me. Five minutes." He smiled grimly. "Turns out the threat of impending death is a wonderful goad."

  "Impossible. Five minutes? You would have bled out in under thirty seconds. You should be dead." She scooped up her sword and stood in one smooth motion. She wedged her forearm behind his head and pressed the blade to his throat. "Who are you? And why do you wear the Poultice?"

  "Ari." The man was breathing hard, now. "It's me. It's really me. Listen, if I was in a human body, you're right, I would've been dead. But I used a gol trick to cramp my arteries. Stanched the blood flow. Sure, some blood still got through, but it gave me enough time to escape. Ari, you have to believe me. Ari. Teach."

  Though he'd used his private nickname for her, she still wasn't entirely convinced. "I thought you needed to target a tracker when you inject on the Inside, otherwise you appear somewhere random."

  "You carry a tracker on your person."

  That was true. She studied Tanner uncertainly for a few long moments, and then she released him with a shove. "If you're lying to me..." She raised the weapon dangerously.

  "I'm not," Tanner said. He seemed frank, she had to admit.

  "A gol trick huh?" She glanced down at the tourniquet she'd tied over her own wound. Just how many gol tricks were there that she didn't know about?

  She worried that he would give her hell for what she'd almost done in her grief just now, even though she truly deserved whatever tongue-lashing he might give. Instead he said, "I brought presents."

  Tanner held up a sword belt.

  She caught the new belt, and cast aside her existing blade. She touched the hilt. Vitra flowed within her. Life.

  She drew the blade.

  A fire sword. The surface gleamed eagerly.

  "Maybe you really are Tanner." Either that, or he was the person who'd stolen the fire blades in the first place.

  She sheathed the sword in the scabbard she already wore. "Tell me something, Tanner. Why didn't you pull me out after you disbelieved reality? Why leave me with that monster?"

  "I was going to," Tanner said. "But I wasn't sure whether you'd attached the tracker to the Box, yet. If I pulled you out before then, we'd lose the Control Room. I didn't want to take the chance. So I decided to come back in first, just to be certain. I figured you could take care of yourself until then."

  Tanner's gaze abruptly latched onto something behind her, and his eyes went wide. "Run. Run!"

  Ari looked.

  Within the whirling snow a shadowy form loomed.

  Three scimitars extended in deadly greeting.

  70

  Tanner released a covering wall of flame, and Ari scooped up the Box.

  "Come on!" She sprinted through the storm across the fresh layer of snow that covered everything. When she glanced back, she could make out Tanner just behind her. And almost lost in the white-out beyond him, the Direwalker. Brute hadn't assumed its centipedal form. The snow must be too deep for that.

  She followed the street, those portions of it she could discern anyway, and quickly became lost. Then she remembered she could overlay the city map in her head. She did so, and when she saw where she was, she had an idea.

  On a whim she vaulted onto a barrel beside one of the small houses and scaled the coarse stalagmite of frozen shit that had accumulated from years of chamber pot dumping. She swung herself onto the roof with one hand. The roof was slanted slightly, and the accumulated snow broke off and slid away. Tanner came up beside her.

  The flimsy rooftop timbers creaked.

  "What are we doing up here?" Tanner said above the storm. "The roofs won't hold us."

  "They'll have to."

  Brute bounded onto the rooftop beside them. Ari felt the whole thing shake.

  She ran, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, clumps of snow sliding down. Some roofs were dual-sloped, others single-sloped, but either way it was a struggle to keep balanced. She used the fire sword to clear a path when necessary, because snow had apparently accumulated for years on some of these roofs—it was a wonder the timbers hadn't collapsed from the weight.

  Using the city map, she made her way back toward the richer quarter. The roofs became progressively higher, and the distance between houses widened. The leaps were becoming harder.

  A gust of snow momentarily cleared the air beside her. She glanced to the right. The Forever Gate climbed into the sky, as expected.

  What's impossible, is possible, she remembered telling Hoodwink ten years ago. Ascend the impossible.

  She reached the house she sought.

  "This way," she told Tanner over her shoulder. "To the Forever Gate!"

  She slid down the sloping roof to the eave, and a clump of snow came with her. She balanced there while the snow fell over, and then she ran along the rooftop's edge. She spotted the portcullis that sealed the alleyway below. Without the key, that tall gate was virtually unscalable, especially when time was of the essence—hence the need for the rooftop route. Though she supposed the fire sword might have been able to carve a path through it anyway.

  Ahead in the white-out, she caught glimpses of a rope hanging down from the heavens.

  The rope that climbed the Forever Gate.

  It was a bit of a leap from here.

  But she could make it.

  She sheathed the sword, braced the Box between her elbow and ribs, and when she reached the corner of the rooftop she jumped—

  She hit the Forever Gate—

  Bounced off—

  Wrapped her numb fingers around the rope—

  She came to a halt eight paces above the ground, and nearly dropped the Box.

  The rope shook as Tanner hit the wall and latched on just above her.

  "Look out!" Ari said.

  Brute leaped from the nearby roof. The Direwalker was aimed straight at Tanner. Ari loosened her grip and slid down a pace. Tanner did the same.

  Brute collided with the Forever Gate where Tanner had been, and bounced from the rock. Those four hands fumbled for the rope, but Brute's momentum had already carried the gol too far from the Gate. Flailing hands grabbed at Ari's back as the four-armed Direwalker plunged past.

  The snow puffed where Brute struck the ground.

  "Climb!" Ari clamped one of the side handles of the Box bet
ween her teeth, and scaled the rope with both hands, not the easiest task given how numb her fingers were. She hauled herself near Tanner's boots, and was ready to climb over him if need-be. But he got the message and moved.

  Ari felt the rope stiffen as Brute joined them below.

  "I'm not sure this is such a good idea," Tanner said.

  "Move!" she said through clamped jaws. Her voice was muffled.

  And so she was finally scaling the Forever Gate, taking the same path of doom she had sent her father on those many years before.

  She wasn't sure how long she climbed. Three minutes. Five. All she knew for long moments were the exertions of her muscles, and the cold wind whipping at her exposed flesh. Jeremy's "suit-and-tie" was hardly an outfit appropriate for such a climb. She couldn't even feel her fingers anymore, and sometimes had to look to make sure she was reaching for the rope and not empty air. Her jaw was quickly becoming sore from gripping the Box handle. She ignored the pain and cold with the gol mindtrick, but her body would eventually give out. It was inevitable. Even gols were subject to the laws of the Inside. Except Brute.

  The snowstorm lessened the higher she went, and she briefly wondered what excuse Tanner would give for that. The system saves computational power by limiting the storm to the innermost regions near the ground.

  When she'd climbed a sufficient height, she paused, and drew the fire sword from her belt. Brute was about eight paces below her. She meant to cut the rope beneath her and send Brute plummeting to its death, however a gust of wind assailed her at that moment, and her unbalanced body hurled into the Forever Gate. When she collided with the hard stone, the sword flew from her numb fingers.

  She watched, mesmerized, as the sword plunged. The blade sparked every time it bounced from the Gate until it was lost to the storm.

  Brute would have survived the fall anyway. And the Direwalker probably would have scaled the wall regardless of whether there was a rope or not. But at least its fall would have bought them time. Why did the wind have to gust right when she meant to cut the rope? Well, nothing she could do about it now. Tanner still had his sword, at least. Speaking of Tanner, he'd continued to climb, probably assuming that she was right behind him. She'd have to hurry to catch up.