by David Klass
“And welcome also to you, son of Dann,” he says. He turns his head slightly to look at me, and for a moment in the fading light I see a long scar down the side of his face where I stabbed him with a shard of glass. “We have some unfinished business,” he tells me. “Why don’t we settle accounts right now?”
“Suits me,” I tell him, trying to get into a fighting stance. I can barely stand upright on the trembling ice.
The Dark Lord could probably walk across the ice, but he chooses a more direct route. He launches himself at me from twenty feet away in an impossibly fast leap. I anticipate his jump and also guess that because his left leg is injured, he’ll kick with his right. Even so I’m too slow. By the time I start to raise my left arm in a block, the ball of his right foot thunks into my chest. I’m knocked spinning backward, as unable to stop myself as I was when blown by the Piteraq.
I crash into one of the crevasse’s ice walls. It’s as hard as granite, and the impact stuns me. When the gleaming blue world stops spinning I see that the Dark Lord has turned toward P.J. She backs away from him, her sword held at the ready. She’s being very brave, but she’ll never be able to hold him off! I try to run back to save her, but a vengeful canine beats me to it.
Gisco has his own score to settle with the leader of the Dark Army. When they tangled in the Amazon, the Dark Lord used his telepathic powers to scramble the dog’s brains. Now, Gisco charges at him fearlessly from behind and sinks his teeth deep into the Dark Lord’s injured left leg.
The spidery fiend flips over onto his back, and for a second I think Gisco has the upper hand. Once a big dog has a person pinned to the ground, it’s nearly impossible to get back up. But the usual fighting rules don’t apply to a human tarantula. As he falls backward he pulls Gisco close to him, and then uses the momentum of his fall to catapult Gisco into the air.
My canine friend is launched like a rocket. He flies high and far and touches down on his back with a sickening thud. The Dark Lord hurled him toward the river, and before Gisco can stop himself, he slides over the lip of the bank and disappears into the frigid blue water with a yelp and a final desperate twitch of his tail.
Then the Dark Lord turns to face me.
62
I try to control my rage as I race toward him. I saw what the Dark Lord just did to Gisco, and I’m out for blood—spider blood. But I can’t just attack him with a standard kick or a punch. I know from fighting him in the past that his strength and speed are matchless, so to have any chance I have to use guile and try the unexpected.
I feint a leaping kick, but instead of jumping I fall onto my back at the very last second and slide into him low and hard. Gisco had the right idea—attack the Dark Lord’s injury. I take him out at the knees and land a solid kick to his wounded left leg.
The collision knocks him over but it doesn’t even slow him down. He recovers in a split second, before I can get up from my sliding tackle. He doesn’t bother to stand, but instead comes scuttling at me on all fours, and it really is like being charged by a giant tarantula. His mouth is open and his fangs glint in the low light.
I kick at him wildly and put my arms up to try to keep his sharp teeth from my throat. I wrestled for years and I’m usually comfortable grappling at close quarters, but the Dark Lord’s balance is extraordinary and his strength is overpowering.
He quickly gains a control position and begins pummeling away at me, picking one soft target after another. An elbow thuds into my stomach, a knee slices down at my groin, and a heavy fist finds its way around my guard and crashes into the side of my head.
I cover up and fight back with everything I have, jabbing at his eyes and throat. But when I thrust up to try to blind him, he grabs my right wrist and slowly forces my arm down to the ice, exposing me. Then he does the same with my left arm.
I try to buck him off but he head-butts me, breaking my nose. I almost black out, and blink up at him through a crimson filter of my own blood.
Both my arms are pinned and my jugular is now fully exposed. The Dark Lord lowers his head, and I feel his hot breath on my face. “Now, son of Dann, I will enjoy the meal my candirú missed out on . . .”
He senses something and breaks off, twisting his body to avoid the point of a shell sword that stabs down at him with speed and power. He winces in pain and reaches around to grab the sword before P.J. can stab him again. She tries to hold on to it, but the Dark Lord yanks it from her grasp and flings her away like a rag doll. His strength is undiminished, so I guess she missed his vital organs.
I try to use the distraction of P.J.’s attack to throw him off me, but in a heartbeat the razor point of the shell sword is pressed to my throat. I stare back up into those black eyes. They truly are subhuman, devoid of even the slightest trace of sympathy or mercy. They’re the eyes of death itself—as cold and empty as a yawning grave.
His head dips toward me a second time and his fangs graze my throat as if he’s searching for the exact right spot to bite down. I writhe away from him on pure instinct and try to force my right arm between us, but he pins me down. He opens his mouth to sink his fangs into my jugular, but, at the last possible second, someone else’s arm slides around the Dark Lord’s neck and pulls him off.
My broken nose chokes my breathing and I can barely see through the pain and the blood, but I glimpse my father choking him from behind. I try to get up to help, but I can’t rise higher than my knees. So I kneel, watching the battle between the two titans of the far future.
What’s the best way to kill a spider? It must be to snap off its neck. My father has the Dark Lord in a death hold. He lifts the spidery fiend off the ground and shakes him back and forth as he squeezes the life out of him. “I spent enough years in your prisons, cousin,” he rasps. “Now you’re my captive. I will end it for you quickly.”
The Dark Lord twists and contorts his limbs, scratches with his nails and kicks backward, but he can’t break the hold. Suddenly his body seems to contract in on itself and four additional limbs appear as he morphs from man to spider. He flails all eight legs wildly and hisses and spits venom, but he still can’t free himself.
Then he’s a man again, and his movements begin to slow. Even through my blood haze, I can see that he’s dying. A final fury kindles in his glittering soulless eyes, and he makes one last, superhuman effort to free himself, spinning and arching his spine nearly in half so that for just a second my father almost loses his grip.
The Dark Lord takes advantage of that second to reach his arm behind his body and stab upward with the shell sword.
My dad gasps in pain, and then I see a matching fury in his own eyes as he conquers his agony long enough to give a tremendous final twist with his powerful arms. There’s an earsplitting cracking sound as the Dark Lord’s neck breaks, and he immediately stops thrashing about. My father continues twisting for several more seconds. When he finally releases his grip, the Dark Lord sinks to the ice, his head wrenched nearly completely around.
As he lies on the ice, he begins to transform. He shrinks to less than half his human size, and eight limbs hang motionless. His face, however, remains the face of a man with a grand ambition, stopped at the last possible moment, his countenance frozen forever in an expression of agonized defeat.
I struggle to my feet and stagger over to my father. “Dad, you won! He’s dead! Are you okay?”
He turns toward me and gives me a tiny smile, and then I see the shell sword embedded in his chest. He opens his mouth to speak, and manages, “Yes, my son . . .”
Then he topples over onto the ice next to the corpse of his nemesis.
63
I crouch next to my father, and pull the shell sword out of his chest. I hurl it away, and it slides over the ice and disappears into the freezing river.
My father grimaces and closes his eyes for a second, and I feel that his chest is wet with blood. “Don’t go,” I plead. “Please.”
He’s fading fast, but he looks up at me and his eyes gleam. He
reaches out and takes my hand. I squeeze it, and feel a slight pressure back.
I look around wildly for help. P.J. rushes up and kneels on my father’s other side. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I couldn’t stop him from taking the sword . . .”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I tell her. “You saved my life.” I look past her and see two distant forms, hurrying toward us. Eko is running quickly over the shaking ice. But she’s outpaced by the wizard, who skates along in an effortless glide, as if a secret wind is pushing him.
“Kidah is coming,” I tell my dad. “He’s almost here! He’ll fix you up somehow. I lost one father. I don’t want to lose a second one.” His grip is getting weaker by the second. “Your people need you. The future earth needs you. Don’t go,” I plead. “The King of Dann must live!”
He moves his lips with a great effort and gasps, “The King of Dann is dead. Long live the King.” He squeezes my fingers one last time and looks right up into my eyes. “Destiny, Jair,” he whispers faintly. “Destiny . . . and duty.”
His grip loosens, and then goes slack. I hold on to his hand for a few more seconds, and then let it fall as my head sinks to his chest.
Kidah kneels down next to me. He tenderly closes my father’s eyes and whispers, “Goodbye, old friend.” A tear runs down the old wizard’s cheek. Then he takes the chain with the Star of Dann off my dad’s neck and drapes it over my head. The blue jewel flashes as it falls to my chest. My vision clears and I’m able to breathe more easily.
Eko runs up, and then stops short. I recall that she was an orphan, and the Dannites took her in. She bows low to my father’s corpse, and when she straightens back up the sorrow and loss I see in her face are not merely of a High Priestess who has lost her leader, but also of a girl who has had a revered father figure taken away.
Eko glances at the spidery carcass of the Dark Lord, lying next to my dad, and then turns to me. “Our King gave his life for the best possible cause, Jack.” She reaches out and gently wipes the blood from my cheek. “You and your father have won a mighty battle.”
“He won it,” I tell her. “P.J. helped. I did nothing. I couldn’t even stand up and fight next to him when he needed me most . . .”
“That’s not true. You fought bravely,” P.J. says, her eyes on Eko, who is ministering to me. “It was my fault. He was killed with my weapon.”
I start to answer, and then Kidah yells, “WATCH OUT!” And he points straight up.
I follow his finger, and see that several enormous chunks of ice have broken off the walls of the crevasse and are plummeting toward us.
We dive out of the way as the ice chunks crash down all around us. It’s like being targeted by a meteor shower. The fissure’s floor trembles at the impact and buckles in places. Small and large cracks open. One great ice boulder falls into the nearby river, which overflows its banks and hisses up toward us. It splashes us with freezing water before quickly receding.
We stagger to our feet as a familiar laugh rings out. A voice booms from everywhere and nowhere: “I told you I would come down to you, and here I am to finish this once and for all.”
64
I look around and don’t see the Omega Box. Then an orange tunnel is lasered through the crevasse wall near us, and a figure strides purposefully out of the opening.
He looks like a normal man of medium height, with a pleasant, almost genial face and sandy brown hair.
“Spread out,” Kidah commands. “Don’t let him—”
Fire erupts from the Omega Box’s eyes, and streaks toward us. It would incinerate us, but the old wizard anticipates the blast and darts forward. He circles his hands in a sweeping pattern and a disc of flowing gray energy takes shape in front of him. He tilts it like a shield just in time to intercept the Omega Box’s heat beam. Some of the heat filters through the gray plasma, and Kidah begins to tremble and drip with sweat.
The Omega Box laughs. He continues to walk toward us—he’s now less than fifty feet away. “Well done, you old trickster,” he says, the beam of heat still flashing from his eyes. “But why prolong the inevitable?”
“The only thing that is inevitable is your failure,” Kidah calls back. “It is written in the annals of Dann that you shall soon be as dead as you were before Jasai screwed you together from nuts and bolts in his workshop.”
“The future appears more clearly to me than to your pathetic seers,” the Omega Box answers. “I see a dead King and a foolish Prince who will soon join his father in darkness. Jasai was right—you humans all deserve to die. I will be happy to speed the process along. Then I shall return to the future, and rule the Dark Army in place of their fallen lord. They who have been built in laboratories and had their DNA stitched together will accept me as their leader.” He amps up the heat beam.
Kidah grunts and almost drops the shield. He clearly doesn’t have more than a few seconds left.
I find myself running. Just before Kidah raised the shield, he told us to spread out. That must be the key to fighting the Omega Box. His power seems almost unlimited, but also narrowly focused. We need to attack him from several directions at once.
Heat energy reflected by Kidah’s shield nearly broils me alive as I sprint toward the Omega Box. I scream and almost go down, but somehow I keep running, and burst through a barrier of fiery pain. I remember my dad, and how he kept fighting even after he was mortally wounded. He gave his life to stop these guys, and now there’s just one more battle left to win. I launch myself at the Omega Box in a desperate flying leap.
He turns his head quickly, and his heat beam swings toward me. Since I’m airborne, I have no defense.
Suddenly the Star of Dann flashes, and I see a dozen phantom versions of myself flying along on either side of me. The heat beam slices through one shadow image and then another as the Omega Box tries to pick out the real Jack Danielson. Before he can take a third guess, I’m close enough to try to kick his head off.
He raises his arm in a last-second block, and my kick thuds hard into his shoulder. It’s like fighting a walking oven—as soon as my foot makes contact, the sole of my boot sizzles off. He stumbles back a few steps from the force of my kick, while I crash to the ice and skid.
The Omega Box rights himself but before he can fire a blast at me, a dark shape leaps toward him from behind. It’s Eko, stabbing down at him with a black laser sword.
He senses her attack, ducks under her sword thrust, and swats her away like a pesky flea.
The only way to fight a demon from hell is to keep attacking. I get to my feet and run at him again. He wheels back toward me and opens his mouth, and crimson flame erupts. I dive underneath the tongue of fire, and punch upward at his groin.
The Omega Box’s red-hot knee brands itself into my chest and the searing pain stuns me. He grabs me, and pulls me up so that we’re face to face. I can feel the molten heat radiating from his body. He smiles, and then his mouth starts to open wider and I know flames are about to char-grill me. I rip the Star of Dann off my neck and shove it into his mouth, and jam it far down his throat.
He drops me and staggers in a circle, trying to claw out the Star.
Kidah runs up and waves his right hand, and what look like a hundred purple darts shoot out toward the Omega Box. Even while choking, he still has the presence of mind to aim his heat beam and irradiate the darts in mid-flight. The blast nearly immolates Kidah, who flings himself sideways across the ice to get away.
We’re all taking our best shots, but this doomsday device seems unkillable. We’ve tried lethal kicks, laser weapons, and potent magical spells.
The Omega Box opens his mouth to an incredible circumference and with a great effort spits out the Star of Dann. He looks around at us triumphantly, and then he stares fixedly up at the sides of the crevasse. His heat beam shoots out at the glittering walls above us, and instantly the fissure begins to tremble.
Chunks of ice break off and plummet toward us. I see Kidah concentrating on them as they fall, and
somehow steering them away so they just miss us. But there are more and more of them, and even Kidah has his limits. We’ll soon be buried alive by these massive ice blocks.
The Omega Box is focused on bringing the walls of the crevasse down. He doesn’t spot a new dark shape that charges at him from the side. I remember what Kidah told P.J. when he gave her the shell sword—it might be the only weapon that could pierce the Omega Box’s defenses.
The dark shape powers in at him like a heat-seeking missile. I see four enormous paws driving a low-slung body forward, and then powerful legs thrust upward into a ferocious bound. Gisco must have fished the shell sword out of the river, and now he holds it in his jaws as he flies through the air and stabs it into the Omega Box. Take that, microwave man! the dog snarls telepathically.
The gleaming shell sword does what all our laser weapons couldn’t. The Omega Box topples to the ground, and lies there writhing. He reaches around to try to pull the weapon out, but before he can do that Kidah sweeps his hand to the side like an orchestra conductor, and a falling ice chunk the size of a house changes direction and slams into the Omega Box, flattening him like a cockroach.
P.J. runs up, and I grab her and pull her to one side, just in time to avoid another falling ice slab. The Omega Box’s heat beam has destabilized the entire fissure. The walls are shaking, and starting to crack and crumble.
“Let’s scram while we still can,” Kidah tells us. “We can go the way he came.”
I retrieve the Star of Dann and follow the rest of them into the tunnel that the Omega Box lasered through the crevasse wall. A low rumble sounds from all around us.
“Hurry,” Kidah implores, “this way!”
In the faint blue light cast by the Star of Dann, I see that the wizard has found a spot where a moulin from the surface crosses the tunnel. We climb into the moulin, and Kidah conjures a disc beneath us. A powerful gusting wind pushes us up through the drainage tunnel.
