by Adam Carter
The four Nagas converged, holding themselves between the captured humans and the free ones.
“Well that sure didn’t work,” Darkthorne muttered. “Any other bright ideas?”
“Just one,” Kiel said. “You free Heather and Sparky. I’m going to take one of these guys out of the game permanently.” Before Darkthorne could argue with her, Kiel started running. He did not watch her results, but instead ran in the opposite direction, trying to get around the Nagas. Brown ran for him, to cut him off, while the rest concentrated upon Kiel. Darkthorne realised he would have to take care of Brown before being able to free his own people and pretended to trip over a rock. It was an old ruse, but one Brown seemed to pounce upon. The Nagas lunged for Darkthorne, although Darkthorne rolled over and touched the snake’s foot and Brown instantly became paralysed.
Darkthorne picked himself up and ran across to his colleagues, diving between Tarne’s legs and then Sparky’s.
“You planned to fall over like that, right?” Sparky asked.
“Sure, I love collecting bruises.”
Kiel gave a cry, for she had been captured, and she stood with her arms and legs held out. The remaining Nagas surrounded her, while Brown was a fair distance from everyone.
“We have a plan now?” Darkthorne asked.
“Sara’s plan suits me fine,” Tarne said, her resolve suddenly snapping. All this madness was getting to her and she had finally had enough. “Ignore Brown; they can’t get to him in the next few moments anyway. Jagrad, take Lefty; Sparky, take Claws. Leave Scar to me.”
Darkthorne and Sparky had no idea to whom she was referring with these names, although Scar was clearly the one with the scar.
Scar laughed as he saw Tarne coming for him, fury in her eyes. He leaped back a pace to evade her balled fist.
“Not a keen fan of playing by the rules,” he said. “Whatever happened to ‘no punching’?”
“Shut up, you maggot,” Tarne said, swinging another fist, which he also managed to duck with ease.
Scar continued to chuckle. “You know, I’m actually enjoying myself right now. I haven’t had this much fun since ...” He did not finish his sentence, for Tarne lunged for him again and he was forced to leap back once more. Unfortunately, he had not noticed where he was being herded by his maddened foe, and he fell straight back into the prone form of Sara Kiel. Kiel, unable to collapse because of the paralysis, resisted the impact, and Scar fell.
That was when Tarne reached him. She picked him up by the shoulder and tossed him to the side. Instantly, he cried aloud as paralysis took hold, but Tarne did not care. She smashed her fist into his face again and again and again. Blood arced backward, but still could his body not move. She pummelled his chest with her fists, and slowly an electrical crackle built up around his body. Scar was screaming in sheer agony by this time, and Tarne had no intention of stopping now. She only cared that she made the Nagas pay for everything this stupid reality was making her do, everything it had pushed her into, had made her become.
Then she stepped back and found her fists hurt too much to strike him again. Scar was a bloodied pulp by this point, his face almost unrecognizable, and he spat a fang onto the gravel. Energy continued to crackle about him, and Tarne decided she wanted to hit him again, but could not bring her fists up.
Tarne turned slowly, panting heavily, to see Sparky and Claws standing prone. Darkthorne and Lefty were still free, and staring at Tarne with an intense fear to their eyes. Neither moved, and Tarne stared daggers at the Nagas.
“Jagrad, do something,” she cried, and Darkthorne snapped out of his trace. He leaped on the Nagas, touched him, and instantly was Lefty also seized by the paralysis. All the Nagas were paralysed, and Darkthorne and Tarne were left standing.
Kiel laughed, her arms still held horizontally. “I never knew you had it in you, Heather.”
“The game is ended,” the voice of Reptant declared, and with a final crackle of electricity were all the players released from their paralysis. The Nagas fled backwards, scampering and slithering towards a gate which was being raised. They escaped before any of the Darkthorne Legion could think to give chase.
“We won,” Kiel said, rubbing feeling back into her hands. “You have to let us go now, those were the rules.”
“You cheated,” Rathbone declared. “And yet it was a most ingenious way of wining the contest.” He laughed softly. “I’m impressed.”
The Legion had not noticed it thus far, but the audience had exploded into violent applause. Tarne’s anger dissipated as she realised this, for with the crowd on their side, they would likely not be punished.
“We shall have to rethink our games in future,” Rathbone said. “Perhaps all contests within the arena should be as violent as this. I can picture it now. Back-stabbing-gammon, draughts of poison ...”
“You ever play snakes and ladders?” Kiel shouted up. There was a deep rumbling throughout the audience which told her this was probably a taboo subject.
“Enough,” Reptant said, rising and both looking and sounding very imperious. “You have violated the rules and must be punished.”
“They have shown initiative, and must be commended,” Rathbone countered.
“I think we have an advocate,” Sparky muttered.
Tarne nodded. “Let’s just hope it saves us, eh?”
“They cheated,” Reptant repeated icily.
“They entertained,” Rathbone argued. “And that’s what the games are all about, after all.”
Reptant scowled at him. “At any rate, this is not for us to decide. Their fate rests in the fins of higher powers.”
“You ... you don’t mean ...?”
“Yes,” Reptant said, a small smile playing across her lips (which no one in the arena could possibly have seen, being so far away), “their fate shall be decided by the great and mighty Cod.”
“Cod! Cod! Cod!” the cheer of the crowd erupted.
“Looks like our fifteen minutes are up already,” Sparky sighed. “Ah well, anyone got a bottle of lemon juice?”
A pale mist churned within the skies above the arena, and a great fishy face took shape in the ethereal fog, staring down with large, rounded eyes.
“Speak, oh Cod,” Reptant said, her arms held wide in supplication. “Let thy will be known.”
“The laws of nature exist to be followed,” its mighty fish voice carried through the arena. “The shepherd’s flock runs with the herd.”
“Just as I suspected,” Reptant enthused overdramatically. “The infidels are to be executed.”
“Now whoever said anything like that exactly?” Tarne asked. “I think you’ll find your cod said something about sheep. Do we look like sheep to you?”
“The reference was to mammalian life in general,” Reptant told everyone.
“The dormouse and the doorman,” the cod continued. “One with cheese and one without.”
“You cannot refute this implication,” Reptant said triumphantly. “Now the great and mighty Cod is saying you are the vermin crawling upon our floors and that you must do without.”
“Or do with,” Darkthorne said. “He mentioned the dormouse first, and ‘with’ before ‘without’. That suggests we’re to be the ones who get the cheese.”
Reptant did not pause in her damnation of them. “Then your last request is for cheese and it shall be upheld. The Great and Mighty Cod is nothing if not generous.”
“The sand is falling,” continued the Cod, “and must be bottled before it ripens.”
“Your time is running out,” Reptant laughed at her captives.
“Oh, do shut up,” said the Cod.
“Shut ...” Reptant hesitated. “Yes, the Cod wishes you silent as you die.”
“Uh,” Tarne said, “I think his fishiness,” and here she offered a mild curtsey, “might have been talking to you, Reptant.”
“Darn tootin’ I was,” the Cod said. “Now where was I? My memory’s not too good, don’t you know.”
<
br /> “We’re not going to survive this,” Kiel muttered aside to Tarne. “We have to rush these guys, try to make good our escape. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of us’ll get out of here alive.”
“I’m still holding out on all of us getting out alive,” Tarne replied. “Let’s just wait and see what the cod has to say.”
“I can’t believe this,” Kiel said. “You’re willing to risk our lives on a fish we hardly know?”
Tarne blinked. “I’m sure that didn’t sound quite so funny when it was still in your head, Sara.”
“There’s nothing funny about any of this,” Kiel snapped.
“Agreed,” the fish said. “Which of you is spokesperson?”
“I am,” Darkthorne said, stepping forward.
“And do you wish for me to spare your life?”
“I do.”
The fish shrugged. “Very well.”
Darkthorne blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“So we’re free to go?”
“You’re free to go.”
“Well ... er ... thank you, Mr Fish.”
“You’re welcome, Mr Primate.”
And the fish vanished from the sky.
There was much commotion about the stands then, for the Nagas were uncertain as to what was happening, and seemed to consider the events of the past few moments nothing short of a grand jest. Reptant realised they would momentarily look to her for commands, and she rose in anticipation of them. “The prisoners are to be executed at once,” she decreed. “So speaks ...”
“I think I just said to let them go,” the Cod reminded her, reappearing and then disappearing once more.
“Uh,” Reptant said nervously, “let them go.” And she sat down.
The four prisoners were led out of the arena. The Nagas did not know whether to hiss or cheer, so they went with cheer since that made them feel better about themselves. The prisoners were led to the edges of the city and booted out, the great portcullis slamming down to bar their re-entry. Unfortunately, there were still many people queuing to be allowed into the city who were now trapped outside, in addition to several city guards.
“I can’t believe we survived,” Sparky said as they began the trek back towards the encampment of whatever the name of that general was who ran it. “I mean, we didn’t get that peace treaty settled, but at least we’re all still alive.”
“For the moment,” Darkthorne muttered.
“Well that was a sour note if ever I heard one,” Sparky said. “What’s the matter, Jagrad? Why so glum?”
But Darkthorne could only shake his head. “I still can’t get over everything that’s happened with Old Man Robes.”
“Old Man Robes?” Kiel asked. “That was the name you mentioned earlier, wasn’t it, Heather?”
“Uh, might have been,” Tarne replied evasively.
“I just wish I hadn’t seen him,” Darkthorne said. “I wish I’d never laid eyes on that old man, and now ... now it seems as though you’re being afflicted by him too, Heather.”
“What?” Tarne asked, still wary of Darkthorne, yet surprised he had revealed this much. “What do you mean you saw him? When?”
“Years ago, yesterday, I don’t know.”
“Don’t trust him,” Old Man Robes said fiercely, standing beside Tarne now, although everyone aside from Tarne, Darkthorne included, could not even sense his presence. “Heather Tarne, I have been trying to warn you for a long while of the evil within this group, although have been unable to find a time where I had you alone to myself. I have never known the name of the evil and as such could never come outright and speak with you, in case the evil also can see me.”
“He appears in strange forms,” Darkthorne continued, either oblivious as to the old man’s presence or else pretending that he was. “Sometimes as a dog, or a genie, or even as Dixie the pixie.” He chuckled softly. “But always as someone no one else can see.”
“He is a deceiver,” Old Man Robes continued to warn, “placed within your ranks to find and to kill you because you hold the knowledge within your brain which might bring about his liberation.”
“He never touches anything,” Darkthorne continued to himself. “Never does anything, really. Always afraid of locating the one being who is truly evil.”
“The evil I seek,” Old Man Robes told Tarne urgently. “He wishes to destroy you, Heather Tarne. That man, the evil, wishes to steal your body, because it is healthy, while his is withered and feeble. His last action in life is to reach out and steal yours, for he is the darkest of spectres, the most dire of wraiths. He is a ghoul who shall not wait until you are dead ere he takes to feasting upon your body.”
Darkthorne turned to Tarne then and sighed heavily. “Is any of this making any sense to you at all?”
Tarne was a tad confused with what they were both saying to her, and said at last, “Just what are you, Old Man Robes? What are you, and why does Jagrad consider all this to be something other than reality?”
“Because it is something other than reality,” Old Man Robes said. “It is his reality, created by his mind that you might become entrapped, that you might cycle through worlds limitlessly, until he decides to close his web of deceit and kill you.”
“He’s a spirit,” Darkthorne explained to her. “I don’t know if he answered your question, because I can’t hear him any more, but he’s a spirit, although I never could figure out where he came from, or what he wanted.”
“I want nothing, Evil,” Old Man Robes spat at him, “save your destruction and the freedom of Heather Tarne.”
“He considers you evil, Jagrad,” Tarne said, drawing her knife and wishing she had a sword like the others, “and to be honest with you, I’m starting to believe what he’s saying. Everything has been pretty freaky around here lately, and I’m beginning to accept that perhaps you’re responsible for it all.”
“Me?” Darkthorne laughed, taking a step towards her. “Come on, Heather, you know me better than that.”
There was a flash of motion which brushed past Tarne and she saw Sara Kiel leap towards Darkthorne. He did not have time to react other than with a shocked gasp before Kiel’s sword slashed upwards, tearing cleanly through the man’s chest. Blood shot out in a single crimson stream, branching off in a strange spider-web pattern before splashing across the ground. Darkthorne’s body fell. He gasped spasmodically for air, although his lungs churned blood from his mouth, and his life-fluids frothed upon his lips. His body gave one final shudder and he moved no more.
Jagrad Darkthorne was dead.
“My God,” Tarne uttered, aghast. “I can’t believe you just did that.”
But Old Man Robes breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s over, Heather. You’re safe now from the scourge of the Evil.”
“Safe is a relative term, old one,” Kiel said, turning slowly and staring directly into his eyes. A cruel smile twisted her lips. “I should be thanking you, Old Man Robes. I had no idea Darkthorne had been a former victim, that he had been here for so long. I assumed my prey was one of these three, and I just had to determine which. That Darkthorne should have proved to be such an old hand was surprising, to say the least.”
“You!” Old Man Robes exclaimed somewhat needlessly. “You are the Evil.”
Kiel inclined her head briefly. “I couldn’t see you before, couldn’t hear you either, in fact. I suppose Jagrad there stopped believing you could help him and so ceased being able to communicate with you. I never could, but then I never much cared for you either.”
“Yet you can see him now?” Tarne asked warily, realising her knife was by far inefficient to take down one such as Sara Kiel.
“Only through you, Heather,” Kiel told her. “You see, being able to detect Robes is all a matter of faith. I never knew where he was, hadn’t actually expected for him to be following us around all the time. It was only when Darkthorne started to draw the information from you back in that cell that I began to understand Robes was w
ith us, and had been the whole time. When I’d begun to believe he was here, I realised I could slowly start to make him out. And now I can see him, it’s over. You are my prey, Heather Tarne, and through you I shall live again.”
“I have no idea what either of you are going on about,” Sparky said defiantly, “but Jagrad was my friend. He may have been a loud-mouthed idiot, but damn you he was my friend.”
“Sparky, no,” Tarne shouted, although it was too late. He ran for Kiel with his sword, swinging wildly, although Kiel stepped back, parried the blow, and twisted her blade so that even as he shot past her, she brought the sword down vertically, the blade passing through his spine. Sparky’s backbone cracked audibly and he gave a final small shriek and collapsed.
“No,” Tarne whispered, taking several steps back herself and holding her puny knife as though it was going to do anything against one such as Sara Kiel.
“What are you?” Tarne hissed pure hatred.
“A woman who’s trained with the masters of this fantasy reality,” Kiel laughed. “And now that I have you, your body shall be mine, Heather Tarne, and your mind shall be tossed into the oblivion of this realm. This ... false state of nothingness.”
“No, Sara Kiel,” Old Man Robes declared heatedly, “that is not to be so.”
Kiel laughed loudly at the very suggestion. “You cannot hope to prevent my will, old man.”
“Maybe I can’t prevent you, but I can certainly slow you down. And perhaps, along her journey, Heather shall prove able to locate the means of your destruction.”
“I’d only follow her,” Kiel informed him. “Heather, your death will be far swifter if you just surrender now. It shan’t even be painful, for I need your body intact, and your mind stress-free.”
“The cat’s eyes,” Old Man Robes told Tarne over his shoulder. “The eyes of the cat shall be your beacon into the next world. Find them and move on, and stay one reality ahead of this monster.”
“Stay one reality ahead of her?” Tarne asked. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You have to control your own destiny,” Old Man Robes told her. “You must embrace the realities and purposefully move onto the next. Thus far, Darkthorne controlled each world, but now he is dead. Now is the time to seize your own destiny and defeat Kiel. There is a means to her destruction, there must be. You just have to live long enough to find it. Now go!”
