Fairest of All

by C J Preece

  “We’re not duelling for sport Charming,” she snarled. “I will kill you.”

  Something seemed to change in his eyes. She didn’t know whether it was the madness, lucidity, or the influence of the Witch, but she knew he understood. “So be it.” His voice was now quiet and calm. It was more terrifying than she could have imagined. “Lay on.”

  His voice was calm but his actions were not. With lightning speed he closed the distance and struck for her, his sword flashing in and out as he sought any weakness he could find. It took all of her skill to keep him at bay, and she could see no gaps in his stance. She found a space and disengaged, finding her feet again and launching her own attack. He parried with ease and forced her back onto the defensive.

  Snow allowed herself to be pushed away, knowing she had space to use. When he went for a high strike to overcome her middle guard she instead dropped to the floor and kicked at his knee, catching him hard on the left side and knocking his leg out at an angle. He yelled and went down on one knee, but she had no time to make it count as he brought his own sword to guard almost before she had moved out of the way. She was faster to rise, and harried him as he struggled to his feet, opening his shirt sleeve on the right and drawing first blood.

  Again on his feet Charming staggered back, staring at his own arm in disbelief. Snow didn’t give him a moment, launching forward again and hammering on him with everything she had. She drew again, this time from his left arm, but he kicked her hard in the stomach and she collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath. Above her he moved the sword to his left hand, but it would make no difference, he was as strong with either. With his right he drew a short dagger, and she understood. No one was as good with a parrying dagger as him. At least he was finally taking her seriously.

  With her left hand she drew her own dagger. She hoped it might give him pause, but he was confident now. No one had ever bested him when he fought with both blades. But he had bled twice now, and her own clothes and skin were still unmarked. There was a chance that she could win this. They circled warily now, the initial rush done. Both had been tested, and any weaknesses could now be exploited. Her only advantage so far seemed to be her speed and agility, which would only wane if the fight continued. His strength was far too much for her, and his skill unmatched.

  They struck to again, blades locking, breaking free and locking again as they struggled for dominance. She wasn’t foolish enough to risk a confrontation of strength, but she only knew a couple of tricks to break through a locked guard. He knew nearly all of them. It was time to pull out another of her tricks. The dwarves had shown her some of the more underhanded ways of fighting, and she had learnt even more from her time in the slums. While Charming tried to twist her parrying dagger out of the way of his own she stepped close, hoping he would be surprised for a moment, and head-butted him hard in the face. They reeled apart, Snow desperately trying to focus her eyes again. Charming had his hand to his cheek, and when he brought it away there was blood.

  His next attack was wild and unfocused, and she knew she had found her opening. She deflected his attacks easily and slashed for his centre, catching the outside of his doublet and ripping through it. Blood stained his chest now and he slashed wildly with his sword, catching her across her back and splitting her skin across both shoulders. She cried out and rolled away, shouting again as grit from the roof ground itself into the wound. She was still low when Charming came for her again, but she managed to get one leg up and her sword in place to block his attack, thrusting hard with her dagger and feeling it bite deeply into flesh and hold.

  Charming broke away again, cursing furiously and limping on his left leg. She had driven the dagger to the hilt in his upper thigh, and as he pulled it clear she saw blood spurt from the wound. He tried to step towards her and nearly collapsed. She got to her feet, wincing as the skin of her back stretched and pulled at the wound. She could feel her own blood leaking from her body and hoped the wound was not as serious as it felt. The fight was drawing near to an end now, they could both feel it. But the victor was still uncertain. Snow moved first, feinting right before driving hard for his left, hoping to slip in under his wounded guard.

  Pain caught her first, a sharp stabbing in her side. It felt like a bad cramp, but she seemed to be having trouble moving on that side. Charming’s face swam in front of hers, a mad smile fixed in place as another pain hit her, slightly higher than the first. Part of her realised what had happened, but her conscious mind still had trouble with the idea. It was only when she put her hand to her side and felt blood, sticky and wet, and the hilt of the dagger that she finally understood. She grabbed his wrist as hard as she could, trying to keep the dagger inside her. The sword slipped from her fingers and she whimpered.

  Charming fought to remove the dagger, but she held on, drawing strength she hadn’t known she possessed. With her other hand she reached to her belt and drew the emergency dagger she had carried since the day the huntsman handed it to her in the forest. She had to move fast before Charming remembered the sword he was holding, but it felt like she was underwater, fighting her own death.

  She had done it before though, and she knew she could do it again, at least one last time to make sure this bastard paid for every hurt he had ever caused. The dagger came free of her belt and she drove upwards, into the meat of Charming’s sword arm. He bellowed and dropped the sword, taking a step away from her on his injured leg. She had space now, enough to bring the dagger down to his stomach and stab it forward with all her strength. The blade slid cleanly through the soft doublet and carried on through muscle until the hilt was pressed against his body. He shouted again, but with much less force.

  Before he could move, before he could think, she withdrew the dagger and stabbed him again, putting a vertical line through the previous wound. Blood was beginning to pour from his stomach now, onto the floor and their legs. A third stab, turning the neat slices into a hole. She shifted her aim as he began to crumple to the floor, driving the blade in just beneath his ribs, forcing it past the muscle when it caught. He was on his knees now, having let go of the dagger in her side. She stood over him, fighting to stay upright and awake, and smiled.

  “From my heart to yours,” she said, driving the dagger in between his ribs until it pierced his heart. He sputtered and coughed, beginning to fold over onto himself, but she wouldn’t let him drop, instead grabbing him by the hair and forcing him to stay upright. “And here’s for the rest.” She brought the knife down through his right eye, pushing ‘til the hilt was inside his eye socket and the light had faded from his other eye.

  Snow stood back and turned to the city, watching the fires rage and the tiny dots of people on the ground, fleeing or looting or helping she couldn’t tell. From up here they all looked much the same. She could almost understand how Charming had come to feel as he did. From up here, it all seemed so small and worthless.

  Her gut stung, then flared, reminding her of the dagger still buried there. She hissed and put her hand to the wound, falling to her knees and taking deep steadying breaths. It was almost poetic, dying alongside him. But then she had never been one for poetry, and whether she died or not, she was damned if it was going to be lying by the corpse of him.

  Snow White crawled away from the body of her Prince Charming.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Storming the Castle

  Red returned to a scene of destruction.

  The city was ablaze, from the slums to the stronghold smoke rose from the streets and coiled into a sky thick with dark magic. Everywhere she looked she could see the effects of the Corruption smothering the city in a stranglehold. Bodies littered the streets, and the few still alive had no energy to move. She brought her bike to a halt outside the headquarters of the Pure and stepped off it, still feeling the sting as the skin on her back stretched and broke the scabs. The door was ajar, hanging off its hinges from the force with which it had been smashed open. She drew her shotgun and made her way inside,
noting the blood covering the walls with calm dispassion.

  Up the stairs, down the narrow corridor, doors open on every side. She moved as slowly as she dared, checking every room for any sign of life. The blood showed no signs of letting up, coating the walls, making the floor slick beneath her boots. Every room held bodies, or mangled remains that could have been bodies. Rats scurried in amongst the carnage, gnawing on exposed bones, running about with strings of muscle and tendon caught between their teeth. She kicked a particularly large one aside, hearing the snap of its spine as it smacked against a door frame.

  Any of the bodies could have been her companions. All were too disfigured to make real identification. She clung to the hope that she would simply know, either by some distinguishing feature, or maybe because she had to. Otherwise she could search until the entire world burned down and still have no real idea what had happened. At the end of the corridor she found a neatly bisected human wearing the uniform of the royal guard. The wound was as neat and clean as it could be. Clearly inflicted by someone of great strength, wielding good steel.

  Beast.

  Faster now up the stairs, coming out to find the top of the building had been almost entirely destroyed. None of the walls still remained, and everything had been blasted to the very edges of the building. The hole in the side of the wall now encompassed nearly the entire stretch of wall, giving her a horrific view of the city, the castle completely engulfed in fire. The bodies were stacked in the streets now, another giant dead half inside a building and at least a hundred ogres around him. She remembered the war, when the old Fisher King had told her every one of the Pure was worth a hundred enemies, but it was the hundred and first which brought down those who fell to hubris. He had died in the war, along with so many others. And now there were thousands of ogres and giants and goblins, and an entire city of Corrupted, and barely a dozen Pure left to fight them all.

  There was a noise behind her and she spun to see a Corrupted staggering through the wreckage, half-naked and covered in blood and wounds. His arm was broken and he was limping, but he still came towards her, snarling and wild-eyed. She put him down with a single shell, feeling the tug of her own wounds as she moved. She had used every healing crystal she had on her back and arms, but it still wasn’t enough to heal her fully before she had come back. If she lived through this it would be a miracle.

  “Who’s there?” She recognised the voice, but between the ringing in her ears and the explosions from outside it was impossible to figure out who it was.

  “It’s Red.”

  “Thank god.” A pile of wreckage she had taken for rubble shifted and Rapunzel appeared from beneath it. “I’m out of everything except my fists.”

  Red drew her pistols and handed them over, as well as her last clips of ammunition. “What the hell happened?”

  “It was right after you and Peter left. His song started up about five minutes later and all of the ogres withdrew. But when we all came back to discuss the final stages of the battle the Corrupted swarmed us. The goblins had been infesting the building all through the battle.”

  She could only imagine the chaos. Goblins liked to hide in walls and ceiling and explode out to grab people. A hundred of them dropping from above could bring down anyone. That at least explained why the room was quite so thoroughly trashed. “You fought them off?”

  Rapunzel shook her head. “Belle told half of us to hold this place while they drew the rest of them back to the streets. I think she wanted to try and save as many of the Corrupted as possible.”

  “Let me guess.” Red kicked a body off the ruined table and inspected the blood stains. “After they left, the rest of the Corrupted who you didn’t see before came?”

  “Pretty much. Remember Gallows Valley?”

  Red closed her eyes. It had been a massacre. “Yeah.”

  “Ashbel, Hansel, Gretel. I saw Lucy somewhere as well. Zhurong tried to draw them away and I haven’t seen her either. Savitri’s in the back room. She’s been injured pretty bad, but she should pull through, assuming no one else attacks us. I was down to rocks when you came by.”

  “And no sign of the others at all?” Red went to the hole in the wall and looked out again, as though she expected them to appear in the street below.

  “Not for at least half an hour. But it does seem like the worst of the fighting has died down. And with all the ogres gone the city is almost safe again.” Rapunzel sat down on a pile of wood and bricks, and when Red looked back she realised just how exhausted the other woman was. They both were. She rubbed her forehead, trying to think. They couldn’t abandon the house, not with only the two of them and Savitri wounded. But they couldn’t just sit around and hope that their friends were still alive and okay. They needed some way of signalling them.

  “I have a bit of a plan,” she said eventually. “But you might not like it.”

  “Does it involve going outside?” Rapunzel said with a wan grin.

  “Not you. Me.”

  Rapunzel closed her eyes, hanging her head and letting her hair fall down. She had done it all the time when they were friends, and seeing it now dragged a smile out of Red. “You’ve finally cracked.” ‘Zel said. “You’ve gone mad. We always said it would happen.”

  “I’m going to go outside and light this place up any way I can. The Snow Queen will be able to see the damn beacon.”

  “Red the whole city is on fire. How will they know the difference?”

  “I’ll think of that when I get up there. There’s got to be something lying around that can make the fire a different colour.”

  “And if something else sees the flames instead of our friends?”

  “That’s why you’re staying in here with Savi. If something goes wrong I draw it away. Hopefully the others will still see the flame and come running, so you’ll have help anyway.”

  “I still say you’re mad, but I can’t think of anything better.” Rapunzel walked over to her on unsteady legs and they hugged quickly. “Good luck.”

  “And you.”

  She left Rapunzel in the ruins of their war room and hurried up to the roof.

  There wasn’t actually much left of the roof. What there was was a blasted out wreck with floor pillars at each corner that used to support walls and a ceiling. The debris blocked the stairs, but she was able to slip through some of the wider gaps and eventually come out to the open air. The damage to the city looked even worse from her new vantage point, as she could see in every direction, and it really did look as though every single street and every single building was on fire. It didn’t look like they had succeeded in saving the city from much of anything.

  She put that out of her mind. She wasn’t about to start fighting every fire after all. All she had to do was start a new one and attract the attention of anyone who cared to look, a much more sensible plan. She started by digging out all of the bits of wood she could find. The rain was finally beginning to let up, after having pounded the city constantly for so many days, and she was able to work quickly to build a bonfire in the middle of the space. Thankfully what was left of the walls would serve as a wind barrier until it got going, and most of the heaviest beams had already fallen into the middle, giving her a frame to build around. It took her maybe half an hour to construct a reasonable bonfire, and clear the stairway so she would be able to get downstairs quickly.

  Now the only problem left was how to start the bonfire, and what to add to it to make it burn some different colour that would attract the attention of the Pure and let them know someone was still there. Red knew a little about some chemicals that could make fires burn in different shades, but she had none to hand, and wouldn’t know where to find them in the burned out husk of a city. She was looking around for any inspiration when she saw it lying to one side, the most obvious answer to her problems.

  A Terminal lay broken and abandoned under a pile of masonry, the screen cracked and most of the back exposed, showing the wires a
nd boards which gave it life. She went to examine it, noting once more how the patterns of runes had been woven into the electrics right from the beginning. It was amazing, looking back, that no one had seen the signs. But then no one had cared, and she had done more than enough reminiscing. Hooking her fingers under the casing, she dragged the terminal to the bonfire and shoved it underneath the pile of wood.

  It wasn’t the first time she had seen one of the Terminals burned. When they first came into use she had seen a group of anti-Dreamscape activists set one on fire in the middle of main street. It had glowed a bright vibrant green, and released clouds of multi-coloured smoke that stank of chemicals. Once they were out of their protective casing they were reasonably easy to light as well, and whatever was in them burned hot, hopefully hot enough to light the wood as well. If she could find one more Terminal she would be assured of a bright green flame amid a roaring fire.

  Back down one flight of stairs she found another Terminal, and for once found herself thanking Charming for having them installed so easily into so many people’s homes. It was definitely an unwieldly thing, but once she heaved it onto her back it was easy enough to drag it up the stairs and rest it on top of her woodpile. The only thing left was to take a handful of shotgun shells and a pair of pliers and get to work popping the primers and pouring out the powder in a pile in the terminal. Four shells left her with a reasonable heap of powder right in the middle of the Terminal’s workings and she drew a match, leaning close and wishing Adam was there to witness her stupidity. He had drilled her in basic fire safety on day one that he found her in Lips.

  The gunpowder flashed and ignited in a second as she scrambled out of the way, the Terminal going up a second later, a dark purple smoke billowing out of it as the flames took hold. Green fire started to lick at the underside of the wood, catching and adding a few almost cheerful orange flames to the soon-to-be inferno. She made for the safety of the stairwell as the wood truly caught, the smoke turning black and the flames deep red, only a hint of the green at the very bottom of the pile now. Satisfied that her signal would work she rushed back down the stairs two at a time, shotgun back in hand and a fierce smile on her lips.