Papa Lucy & the Boneman

by Jason Fischer

  Those great stone lids fell closed and fought to re-open. John Leicester staggered around, blindly crashing into the buildings on either side. The giant shattered rows of windows as he lashed out impotently.

  A glass-clad Taursi reached for the Papagallo brothers, raising a shard of mundane glass in one hand. The Boneman snapped its alien vertebrae with a word. He saw a knot of resistance, perhaps a dozen of these creatures surrounded by Lucy’s mind-slaves. The Taursi fought a brutal last stand with spur and claw, dropping foes with animal fury.

  “Leave them,” Lucy ordered, and they pushed through the battle, heading for the final barricade. Bodies lay everywhere, scattered by the flaming wrecks of cars turned into bombs. The Boneman saw the last Jesusman and his child helper unleashing small-arms fire as a camel-faced man and a bird-thing scaled their wall of cars.

  Behind this flimsy defence, mere blocks away, the first of the golden towers stood. The Waking City was humming with potential. Lucy’s gateway, his golden prize, was within reach.

  “Gonna kill that Jesusman nice and slow,” Lucy began but stopped in his tracks, eyes staring vacantly. He reached out a hand, fingers curled into an invisible grip.

  “It’s here,” he whispered, smiling with rapture. “It’s here and it’s mine.”

  The Boneman felt the incredible attraction between two powerful forces and heard the echoes of a familiar whisper. The Cruik, long denied its chosen puppet, was so close now that the last of Lucy’s defences crumbled. There were no Riders to foist this awful weapon onto, no deputies to bear his awful burden. Hands shaking, Lucy reached for the Cruik, willingly.

  Nearby, a truck broke apart into shards of metal and a geyser of junk spewed into the air. The Boneman saw a parcel fall, its canvas wrap blistering with an incredible heat and pouring from it as dust. Clean and shining, the Cruik drifted into Papa Lucy’s hands.

  “Lucy,” the Boneman began but faltered when he saw the vacant smile on his brother’s face, the loving way he caressed the staff in his hands. There was nothing human in his eyes now, nothing but a cold reptile stare that considered the Boneman.

  “Put the Cruik aside,” the Boneman begged. “Please, Lucy, you’re in great danger.”

  A bloodied Taursi came running. Papa Lucy twitched the Cruik in its direction and the spiky warrior blazed with an intense light. Not even ash remained. In the afterimage of this magic, the Boneman saw faint ghosts slowly failing, images of the warrior retracing its steps. The Cruik was killing the warrior several seconds into the past, just to prove it could.

  “Stop your bleating, Sol,” Lucy said coldly. “The only thing dangerous here is me.”

  Emitting a roar that sounded like two stones rubbing together, John Leicester came for them, his eyes now open to slits as Lucy’s binding mark began to fail. In his haste, the giant trod the last of the Taursi into the dust as it lumbered to finish off his old friends.

  Lucy held the Cruik like a lance, jabbing it towards the approaching giant. An invisible fist slammed into John’s chest. The giant staggered, dropped to one knee, cracks spider webbed across the stylised tunic as big chunks of stone fell.

  “Stop, Lucy,” John Leicester said, sad and beaten. He stood up on shaking limbs and took another step forward. Lucy laughed as he swung the hooked staff like a sword. An invisible blade cut clean through the giant’s right knee, severing the lower leg. John teetered and fell with a loud groan, his impact shattering an outline into the asphalt. The cracks continued to worm through his body and limbs as he rapidly fell apart.

  “John, you know I have to kill you now,” Lucy said, standing before the soldier’s enormous face. The giant made to rise but the effort cost him too much. With one hand still obeying, John tried to swat Papa Lucy like a fly, but the sorcerer held the Cruik aloft, fending off John’s furious blows like rain from an invisible umbrella.

  John gave up and sank to the ground with resignation. He looked at his old master with stone calm. The goat on the altar, passive before the knife.

  “Deserter. Traitor!” Lucy crowed. “Feel like explaining yourself?”

  John said nothing.

  “I’ve got a confession to make, John. I always envied your golf swing,” Lucy said. He swung the Cruik at John’s cheek. The boulder of red stone split from the broken body and sailed through the air. John Leicester’s head struck the side of a building and fell to the ground in a shower of glass and broken cement.

  “Fore!” Lucy called, following through like a pro. He looked back to see his brother weeping.

  “What? He killed your bloody wife, Sol, so you can cut out that doe-eyed sanctimony, thank you very much.”

  The battle was over, the city’s mysterious defenders dead to the last. What remained of Lucy’s warped army regrouped before him, all machine-farts and nervous bird-warbles. They’d all seen the power of the Cruik firsthand, and none were game to test Papa Lucy’s temper.

  “Well, that was pretty straightforward,” Lucy told the army, his voice amplified by the staff. “Wait here, you bunch of weirdos. I’ve got some stuff to do.”

  The Boneman considered the last Jesusman, half dead and pale behind his flimsy barricade. Lucy threw the man a friendly wave as he walked casually towards his post with the Cruik across his shoulders.

  A wind began to blow.

  “It’s Papa Lucy,” Tilly said, shaking with hysteria. “He killed the Leicester-We-Forget. He’s coming!”

  Lanyard opened the shotgun and pulled out the empty shells with a strange calm. He fed two more rounds into the big gun and then made sure his pistol was full. Tilly fed shells into the policeman’s shotgun then laid this on the car hood before him.

  “The last of the Jesusmen. And I thought I was a relic,” Lucy called out, standing before their wall with a smirk. With the Cruik across his shoulders, the sorcerer hooked his arms over the staff as if he were a farmhand in friendly conversation with a neighbour.

  Lanyard Everett raised the shotgun and emptied both barrels into Papa Lucy’s chest. He snatched up the lawman’s unmarked gun and emptied that too. Tilly joined in, white-faced and pistol blazing. But an invisible buffer turned the gunfire aside.

  The Cruik flexed as if in pleasure, more a wooden serpent than a staff. Lanyard felt sick. He contemplated putting a bullet through his and the girl’s heads before the sorcerer could introduce them to his favourite toy.

  “Cut that out,” Lucy said with a cold smile, unfazed by the attempt on his life. “I don’t blame you for trying, but…seriously?”

  Funnelled by the closely packed buildings, a draft ran along the road. Lanyard felt the wind rise and saw the dust and debris kick along the road. Resisting the urge to reach for his telescope, he made a point of calmly reloading the guns.

  “That’s it? No begging, no final defiance? I gotta tell you, Mr. Lanyard Everett, you’re turning this into an anticlimax.”

  “Nice haircut, dickhead.”

  Papa Lucy displayed a benevolent smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “I’ve broken everything that your master ever owned, every scrap of Hesus’s legacy,” Papa Lucy said. “I gave him a good licking recently. Even went into the Greygulf and wiped out his turncoat servants. There’s no help coming for you, Jesusman.”

  “Piss off,” Lanyard said, holding Bauer’s gun ready. He threw a handful of marks at the mohawked god and muttered every word of the old sorceries that Bauer had ever shown him. Lucy blinked at this attempt, waving the sigils away like flies. The marks burned out, their potential soured and undone.

  “I fought magical duels in the Collegia.” Papa Lucy laughed. “I defeated the finest sorcerers in the Before. You’re just embarrassing yourself.”

  The wind kicked up approaching a hurricane gust. Lanyard felt a burning in his pocket and drew Turtwurdigan into the light. He juggled the glass like a hot coal until it rose from his hand to leap across the city. A tiny star in flight.

  “You’re fucked now,” Lanyard said with a wide grin.


  Papa Lucy saw a shining tornado pour into the city, chewing up everything before it. Taller than the city, that terrifying funnel destroyed entire buildings with ease. All of Sad Plain had arrived, down to the last sliver of glass.

  “I’ll deal with you two later.” Papa Lucy snarled as he held the Cruik tightly. He tapped the car hood and pointed the hook of the staff at Lanyard’s throat. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Wouldn’t miss this,” Lanyard said around a cigarette, struggling to light a match in the wind. “Not every day you get to see a god die.”

  When Lucy came running, the Boneman felt dread rush through his body. It was only when he heard the first screams behind him that he dared to look.

  A funnel of glass spun and scoured its way toward them, grinding Lucy’s army into pulp. It was Sad Plain all over again, the ruins of the city rising against Papa Lucy and his allies.

  Overhead, a point of light flew, a glowing sun that dove into the heart of the storm. Turtwurdigan’s heart. Great flashes of lightning flickered in the centre of the tornado. The twister formed limbs, a rough man-shape that towered above the buildings.

  Then the wind stopped as suddenly as it had arrived. Glass shards hung suspended in perfect sequence, each touching the other. This gargantuan being took one shining step, and its body tinkled with a brain-twisting melody, an alien music that got into his head and made him question his sanity.

  Marks fell from it like snow as bright alien sigils. Where these symbols touched the living, they brought madness or catatonia.

  The face, that horrid face! A snout swinging freely, eyes a sunken hell of mirrors and reflected light. He’d seen that face in his dreams, awoke from a thousand nightmares where he remembered the singular attention of those eyes.

  When the transformation was complete, the being resembled a Taursi rendered as a hundred-foot sculpture. Deep in its innards, its heart glowed with a white heat, a furnace that slowly baked everything within a mile of it.

  Turtwurdigan.

  The Boneman stood numb, even when Lucy shook him and said something. His brother gave up in disgust, racing off to fight the Mother of Glass by himself.

  “Lucy!” the Boneman cried. Turtwurdigan stood tall, her glass quills spread, glowing brighter than the sun’s heart. The glass shards that formed her chest folded inwards, a shining iris that drew light into the demon’s heart.

  Then she emitted a beam of light so powerful that it burned everything it touched. When Turtwurdigan turned that radiant sword against Lucy’s forces, his freaks died by the dozens. The beam left nothing but spots of grease and clouds of ash drifting across the ground.

  The Boneman froze. All of his art, new and relearned…all of it fled from his mind as his greatest fear approached him.

  He stood helpless as Turtwurdigan returned him to the flame. His agony was an exquisite thing as his rebuilt flesh melted from his bones. She focused the sun-ray on him for several moments, perhaps remembering him from the old days. Remembering her defeat at his blackened hands.

  This time, I die, the Boneman thought. My bones to dust, and then I am released once and for all.

  Then the fires passed from him as she moved across the ravaged street for further mayhem.

  But the Boneman still stood. Once more, he lived. His mastery over death was not an easy thing to overcome.

  In a state of shock, he examined his blackened skeleton. A distant part of him noticed how it still smouldered, the delicate interplay of bones, all still joined, and his limbs moved the way they were meant to.

  “You can’t kill me,” he sobbed hysterically, some scrap of spirit serving as a tongue. “You can’t!”

  Knots of their soldiers attempted escape by scaling the blockages in the side streets. Turtwurdigan let no one escape and set buildings blazing on every street.

  The Boneman fell to the ground, clutching his bony knees against his rib cage. Once he’d been the saviour, but this time he could only stare as Papa Lucy faced Turtwurdigan alone.

  The ray of light came down upon his brother, but Lucy held the Cruik on high as he met the attack with an unseen force from the staff. The flames flowed around the sorcerer but they warped and melted only the road. Lucy gave the staff a deft twist and pulled something downwards.

  It was the heart of Turtwurdigan, shining and burning. Lucy pulled it forth, fought the glass body as it stretched out and attempted to reclaim its centre.

  Finally, the heart snapped free, and tonnes of glass fell, littering the Waking City as it once littered Sad Plain. The shards rained down upon Lucy’s protective shield. He stood safely as the heart of Turtwurdigan lay at his feet.

  Then he slammed down the Cruik, cracking the heart like a nut.

  “You only get the one body, Sol. I had a hell of a time growing you that first one.”

  The Boneman tottered along behind his victorious brother, and they were the only two to walk away from that charnel house. Thousands dead, and now only the Jesusman stood between Lucy and the golden towers. The dying man and the girl had abandoned their barricade. Lanyard Everett was slumped against the tower itself, gun across his lap.

  “Why spare the Jesusman?” the Boneman said shakily. “Why did you let him live through all that?”

  “I wanna make that son of a bitch hurt,” Lucy said. “I was expecting more. A Jesusman? He’s barely a sorcerer. But he won’t die easily, no. He’ll see the end of this and then he’s gonna burn.”

  The very word made the Boneman’s smoking bones ache, but the skeleton followed his master faithfully.

  They walked up to the abandoned barricade. Lucy threw the cars and trucks aside with a simple wave of the Cruik. The brothers approached the towers, and now the Boneman could feel the potential contained in the structures, the great stores of energy filling each one to the brim.

  Something about this bleedthrough felt wrong, and the spirited defence of this place was unexplained. Why John Leicester? Why the strange Taursi? There’d been power stores in the Before but nothing on this scale. Lucy had obviously found a gateway into another Realm, a direct path that didn’t require the Greygulf. He needed to access this energy to open the way.

  Even with the Cruik, he wasn’t sure that Lucy could survive the attempt.

  “Turtwurdigan’s finally dead,” the Boneman said. “We’re safe. We can go now.”

  “Oh, I’m going,” Lucy said. “And I want you to come, too, you walking xylophone. We’re checking out of this dump.”

  The Jesusman tried to hold himself up as the sorcerers approached, but he slid halfway down the glass tower. The girl helped to push him upright. Her face was drawn with fear, and her pistol was aimed at Lucy’s heart.

  Lucy twitched the Cruik and sent the girl tumbling across the ground. She flopped across the cement like a ragdoll, and when she stopped rolling she did not move. The Boneman took one shuffling step towards her, mortified, but Lucy held him back with a raised finger.

  “The girl, I don’t care about. But the Jesusman, he and I are going to have a little chat.”

  Lanyard the Jesusman stared at them groggily, his face grey and slick with sweat. He raised the enchanted shotgun, but the end of it wavered. The weight of the weapon finally proved too much for the man to bear. Lucy laughed.

  “Mister, you couldn’t guard a bowl of milk from a cat,” Lucy said. “I’m guessing the standards for Jesusman recruitment have fallen in recent years.”

  “Get stuffed,” Lanyard whispered.

  “I had a friend called Hesus once,” Lucy continued. “Smart man in many ways, but he asked too many questions. Why bring all the refugees to this shithole, when there were so many better worlds to settle? Why the Cruik? Why such an interest in the Taursi relics?”

  Papa Lucy leaned in close, his nose almost touching the Jesusman’s. The broken man struggled to raise his great gun, but Lucy gently pushed it to one side and shook his head as if disappointed.

  “I’ll tell you why. This place? It’s a gateway, some
thing my little brother has probably guessed…but there’s more. Turns out that there’s direct access between this world and the kingdom above.”

  The Boneman reeled with shock. The Taursi marks, the Taursi temple beneath Bertha’s island hideaway. It all made sense now.

  “So enjoy the show, Jesusman. Before you die—and you will die—I want you to see this. Watch what you failed to stop me from doing.”

  “Don’t do this, Lucy,” the Boneman said. Everything, the evacuation, the old war, all of this was in service of Papa Lucy’s true ambition. Those who’d died today—even Bertha—all of these were acceptable losses.

  Luciano Papagallo always got his way.

  “We’re going to Overhaeven, Sol. Today, we war with the gods.”

  He raised the Cruik, touching the hook end of the staff against the hot glass of the tower. The sinister construct writhed, pushed against that humming glow. Lucy gasped with pleasure, his eyes half-closed with orgasmic bliss.

  The Boneman witnessed a black line spread out from the point of contact, a wriggling fault in the glass itself. It pushed forward, spiralling around the tower like a tangling root. At the forefront of that perfect curve was the questing face of something that didn’t belong in this world.

  But it certainly belonged in the Overhaeven. The Boneman saw the bristle of limbs as the Cruik’s shadow gripped the golden tower. In that other world, a black serpent walked on a thousand feet.

  The Cruik wanted to go home.

  “I need more time,” Lucy said, the first beads of sweat appearing on his forehead. “Help me, Sol.”

  The Boneman rested his skeletal hands on his brother’s shoulders, added what he could to Lucy’s struggle. He reeled with the strain but felt the immense forces at play here. The Cruik was drawing a massive amount of energy from the towers to fuel its assault on the boundaries of reality. All of this was being grounded through Lucy.

  It took enormous strength of will for the Boneman to resist this load, even on the periphery of the sorcery. How Lucy was able to keep his body from drifting apart on an atomic level, the Boneman could not guess.