by Joe Ducie
“We’ll be with you, Declan,” Vrail said and clapped me on the shoulder. “Dessan, Garner, and me. Can’t let you have all the fun, you ken?”
“I ken, my friend. I ken all too well...”
Emissary was not a force to be trifled with—even at my best. With a few good Knights at my back, and Annie, perhaps we could get a drop on the bastard. I had Myth now, the Creation Knife. Celestial illusion on my side could tip the scales in our favor. Maybe.
“You think because I’ve got some protection from the Infernal Clock, I can get close enough to stop the demon?” I had to hand it to them, at least they weren’t just firing me out of a cannon and hoping for the best. “Well, we’ll see, won’t we? I want my pardon in writing before I leave.”
Delia plucked a scroll of parchment from a pile on the table, sealed with the crest of the Knights Infernal. “I think you’ll find this in order,” she said. “Witnessed by all who stand before the Dragon Throne.”
I took the document from her, slipped it into an inner pocket on my waistcoat, and patted it down. “I’d better.”
That seemed to signal an end to this unruly and otherworldly council. I stepped down off the dais, slipped Annie’s gun back into its holster, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and sat down next to Tia in the cheap seats.
“You get points for flare, as always,” she said. “But your delivery leaves something to be desired.”
Annie stood over us, looked down at us—at me. “I want to go home now, Declan. I wish... I wish none of this had ever happened.”
I stroked my chin, scratched at an invisible beard, and sighed. “So do all who live to see such times, my dear. But you are right—home again, home again, jiggity-jig.”
THE THIRD ACT
Down, down… to Goblin Town
“When small drops began to fall and darken the world in penny-shaped circles,
no one around him scurried for cover.
For lonely people, rain is a chance to be touched.”
~Simon Van Booy
Chapter Twenty-Five
And the Sky Did Fall
So saving the world—indeed, the worlds—from Emissary came down to me, Annie, Tia, Vrail, Dessan, and Garner. Not a bad bunch, and not one I’d bet against. It felt good to be back on a quest for the Knights Infernal, even under such stringent circumstances. It felt good to be back at the head of a taskforce, to set out into Forget, to right a wrong, to stop something evil from rising. Again, it felt as though I were coming home. For the first time in a long time I didn’t really want a drink.
I requested Ethan and Sophie before departing the Fae Palace, but Drax just laughed at me. He knew as well as I did the worth of a good bargaining chip. And I would not bet two of my only few friends in the world on whether these next few hours were going to land on red or black. So no Ethan and Sophie, but I would be back for them—pardoned, healed, and unbranded.
“What are you smiling for?” Dessan grunted.
“Because that went just as I thought it would.”
“Oh? So we’re all not about to die fighting one of the Old Gods?”
I laughed. “Fairly good odds on that happening, but I was smiling more at the fact that, after everything, those lords, ladies, and Knights need me again. Five years on, and here’s a taste of vindication.”
Garner ruffled my hair. “If we’re being honest, you let them exile you all those years ago. Given your standing at the time and what you’d just accomplished.” He glanced sideways at Annie. “That is, the Renegade surrender and the end of a century of war. I was more than surprised you didn’t balk at the sentence leveled on your shoulders back then.”
“I wanted out,” I said, almost spitting the words on the floor. “But now I want back in. Yes, yes I do.”
We rode the elevators down to the levels of arched doorways that led to the Lexicon. This close to the heart of the Knights’ power, I wasn’t about to reveal Myth, my latest weapon of celestial illusion. So a quick jaunt to the Atlas Lexicon, and then—not a train—I could use the knife to cut through to my shop in Perth, on True Earth, and we could put an end to this whole sordid affair.
I was looking forward to destroying Emissary.
The ‘how’ of that still eluded me, as he’d absorbed my best Will-attacks, but I’d find a way.
Tell the truth, I was itching for the fight.
*~*~*~*
The Atlas Lexicon was just as busy as we’d left it not two days ago, before the Dream Worlds where I’d discovered Myth, before Meadow Gate where I’d discovered Tia, and before Ascension City where I’d discovered a pale sort of pseudo-redemption. We’d have to see how that would play out.
The rest of my companions, including Annie, went off to the vendors to see about tickets. I still hadn’t retrieved Myth from my young detective yet, but that’s the path she and I would be taking, instead of the inter-dimensional trains, given the slip into the Void that had happened last time. Slipped... or pulled? I wasn’t sure on the dynamics of using the Creation Knife to cut through to the real world, to True Earth, but if that failed then I still had McSorley’s key, and we could use an archway in the arrivals hall to jump back to Perth.
Plenty of nice, safe options.
Weaving my way through the crowds, I took a seat on the bench overlooking the Pillars of Creation and the Globescape, the mighty steel skyscrapers and glowing spheres, just to rest my tired bones and gaze at the miraculous crystal sky.
Maybe got about thirty seconds of peace and quiet. Then Emissary took a seat next to me and slung his arm around my shoulders.
“You’re a hard man to find,” he said. The subtle strength in his grip suggested he could, with less than a twitch of his wrist, snap my neck as if it were a matchstick. The immaculate, black double-breasted suit he wore looked good in stark contrast to my wrinkled, worn shirt and waistcoat. It’d been a rough few days, losing an eye notwithstanding.
“Well, I was just about to come looking for you,” I said. His hands were stained red with what could only be dried, rusted blood. “Funny old life, isn’t it?”
“I told you not to leave Perth,” he said, and a deep growl, almost below hearing, rode along his words. Tremors heralding the quake to come.
“Yeah, see, I kind of think you actually did want me to leave. I don’t know why, yet, but you knew which way I’d run once you marked me. Care to fill in a few blanks?”
Emissary chuckled, and lashings of pink flame danced between his teeth. Smoke whirled in loose tendrils around his suit. “Don’t focus on the small details, Shadowless. You miss the bigger, indeed the biggest, picture.”
“And what’s that?”
Emissary gestured at the crowds milling below, along the railroads between the six skyscrapers powering the Lexicon, and up at the shifting crystal spheres displaying one world after another in an endless, harmonic symphony of precision and universal melody. “War on the horizon, Declan Hale. A war even you, with your knack for survival, cannot stand against.”
“Against the Everlasting?” I asked.
“No! Well, yes, but also no.” Emissary shook his head and slapped his knee. “The Everlasting are returning. That is inevitable. Scion’s ascension is only hours away, and the rest of the Family will swiftly follow, but they will war amongst themselves for control of creation—you, humans, are just scurrying little ants to be crushed in the crossfire.”
I took a deep breath, considered, and exhaled slowly. “So the gods are going to war...”
“You broke the latch. You severed the Clock. After ten thousand years imprisoned by the Knights of old, a brief speck of time on the face of this forever war, the Everlasting have returned and will make Earth their beachhead. The true world, the fallow ground on which Scion’s legions will be raised to wage war across Forget!”
Emissary threw his head back and laughed, high and loud and diabolically evil, startling the crowds moving past us and drawing more than a few curious gazes.
“You ever regret
whatever choices led you here?” I asked the demon.
“My choices have kept me alive, kept me strong throughout imprisonment. Regret? Regret is for the weak, as is death.”
My turn to laugh—none too kindly. “You’re afraid,” I said. “Afraid of dying. What exists after life for a monster like you? The Void? Endless nothing? I regret my choices, a lot of my choices. Regrets are forever, aren’t they? Death is easy, compared to that, Emissary—living with mistakes, not so much.”
Emissary tilted his head and stared at me with half a grin. He was still grinning when the bullet zipped through his skull, puncturing his skin just above his ear, and ejected a whole load of blood, bone, and grey matter out the other side of his head.
He jerked and fell into my arms, resting his bloody and broken head on my lap. With a smirk of disgust, I hurled him from the bench and onto the hard floor. Annie, standing just over my left shoulder, the barrel of her gun hot and smoking, bared her teeth in a vicious snarl.
I leaped over the back of the bench as a wave of screams rippled out from the folk nearby.
“Is it dead?” Annie asked. “Did I get—?”
I drew my sword as Emissary jumped to his feet, doing a small flip in the air, and landed on his heels. He spread his arms as if to say ta-da, and pointed a finger at Annie. He laughed, tears streaking down his face as the bloody hole running through his skull sealed itself up rather nicely.
“Caught me off guard, wildflower,” he said. “Wow, that tickled something fierce!”
A gout of crimson-pink flame burst from his mouth on the last word, and he rolled his head around his shoulders, spraying the hot fire into the air. It fell, a rain of napalm, on the crowds, and cries of pain quickly eclipsed the cries of shock.
The Lexicon panicked.
Tia, Vrail, Dessan, and Garner only just made it back to us before the crowds rioted. Thinking fast, Tia created a sphere of raw Will-energy around us, sealing the group in a protective bubble and stopping us from being overrun.
Similar bubbles, smaller, appeared amongst the crowd—the Willful protecting themselves—and somewhere amidst the maelstrom, Emissary disappeared.
In his place, however, stood a cadre of enemy soldiers, held within their own protective bubble, men and women bearing the crest of the Renegade Dynasty on their uniforms. The crowds glanced off our spheres, trampling over one another to escape the unlucky few who were aflame and spreading Emissary’s fire in mindless, screaming agony.
“Renegades!” Vrail snarled. “Broken quill, now there’s something we can fight!”
“There’s another group behind us. They have us surrounded,” Tia said. A single tear rode the line of the scar cutting down her face. Here there be bad memories for Miss Moreau—of just what, I could not be sure. But the Void was never kind.
So I gave her a wolfish grin and clenched my fists. “Those poor bastards.”
But the Renegade soldiers did not attack—indeed, they seemed to form a protective ring around my wily little group and herded the crowds in the Lexicon away from Emissary’s fire, toward the arrivals hall and the departure subways beneath the Pillars.
Single Renegade soldiers broke away from the pack and doused those aflame in conjured gouts of fresh water. Smoke and steam swirled together within the scent of burning human flesh, mingled with the cries of the dead and dying.
“Are... are they helping us?” Vrail asked. Liquid-light coated his sword, rippling up and down the blade.
“They’re giving us a chance,” I said. Just beyond the arrivals hall, out on the railroad concourse, I caught sight of the monster—my ticket back into the ranks of the Knights. Emissary hurled another beam of energy into the nearest skyscraper, attacking the Pillars of Creation. Vast chunks of rock, debris, melted steel and plaster rained down upon the railroads. “Annie, give me the knife—I’m going to drive it into his neck.”
“He’ll tear you apart before you get close,” she said, but handed me Myth.
“No, I don’t think he will, not if you lot provided a distraction. Tia? With me. Garner, Dessan, Vrail... give him something to complain about. Annie, stay close, and give him a few shots if you get a chance.”
“Commander,” Garner said with a nod. He exited Tia’s bubble and dashed along the concourse with Vrail and Dessan keeping pace, fighting the thinning crowds, cleared away by the Renegade soldiers.
Only one person would’ve sent Renegades.
“What is that thing?” Tia asked, glaring down at Emissary. “It is... far from human.”
“We’re going with ‘demon servant of the Everlasting,’ ” I said. “Will-fire doesn’t seem to hurt it, bullets churn right on through, so I’m going to go cut his head off with a weapon of celestial illusion and see how far that gets us. You in?”
“Not one day ago, my biggest concern was baking enough pies for the evening rush at my bar. You’re a catalyst for change, Declan Hale.”
I laughed. “Yeah, you’re in.”
With the rough, bare bones of a plan in place, things happened fast. As the only ones brave or stupid enough to be moving toward the source of flame and misery, my Knights and companions managed to follow me close—save Vrail, Dessan, and Garner, who were tasty little goats staked out for the T. rex.
With Myth in one hand and my star iron sword in the other, I dashed down the steps to the railroads between the skyscrapers three at a time. Tia covered my left, her palms ablaze with luminescent smoke, and Annie my right, her gun drawn and at the ready.
Working together, Vrail, Dessan, and Garner crossed their streams of raw, Willful energy in a concentrated burst that sent Emissary staggering back. Even above the sounds of chaos and destruction, I heard the bastard laughing. But he was laughing with his back to me.
Using the niftiest tricks from the Willful stories, Garner levitated a chunk of debris from Emissary’s assault on the skyscrapers and slammed it into the creature. Emissary bellowed a thick gout of flame that absorbed the rock and forced Dessan and Vrail to split, veering out of the path of the projectile.
Moving in close now, I dug a distraction out of my back pocket as my shoes clipped a hurried beat on the stone ground.
“Emissary!” I cried, tossing my wallet—weighted with a good chunk of loose change—at the creature’s head.
He blurred on the spot, perhaps recognizing my voice, and his jaw stretched wide to snap the leather shot out of the air. Emissary swallowed my wallet whole, and my only regret was that it hadn’t been a live grenade. Still, the split-second it took was all that I needed to duck under his chin and drive Myth into his back, right between his shoulders.
The knife plunged into his flesh, and Emissary’s eyes blazed. He swatted me aside with a wave of his arm, but I rolled with the blow and came up on my knees still holding my sword of star iron. I’d left Myth embedded in the demon’s back.
Flame—red, raw flame—burst from Emissary’s mouth and eyes and wreathed his head in a crown of fire. He clawed at the knife in his back, down on all fours, laughing and screaming. His bones were snapping and crackling, and his torso lengthening. I couldn’t believe my eye.
“Is he... What the hell is he doing?” Tia breathed.
Emissary’s head snapped around, and a string of pink flame sprayed through the air. A dollop landed on my shoulder and ignited my shirt, but Annie thought fast. She stripped out of her leather jacket and smothered the flames before they could burn me. I was left slightly scorched but whole.
“My god, his skin is changing...”
Emissary’s arms had thickened, and his face was now covered in what looked like emerald-green scales. His tongue, blackened and swollen, ran over a jaw of razor-sharp fangs and lolled out of his mouth. Spikes, vicious and cruel, burst through his suit, alongside Myth, and he... he grew a tail.
Whatever was happening, the process sped up. Emissary burst from his suit, naked and scaled, and his body lengthened a good twenty, then thirty, then forty feet. No longer even vaguely human, and hissi
ng between his fangs, he sprouted wings where his shoulder blades should have been, just either side of the Creation Knife. With a crack, his lizard-head snapped into place and he belched a torrent of hot flame at my Knightly companions.
Garner was slow—and the flame burst through his quick shield. I caught a glimpse of his face melting before he was absorbed by the flame. Not even ash would be left of the poor bastard. I lost sight of Vrail and Dessan behind slabs of rubble. I hoped they’d avoided the maelstrom of fire.
“Tia, Annie,” I said. “Run—run and hide right now.”
“Dec—” Annie began.
I didn’t wait to see if I was obeyed, and it honestly didn’t matter. If Emissary wasn’t checked now, before his transformation was complete, then none of us would be able to hide. Clenching my sword, I ran toward the beast as his tail whipped back and forth through the air.
I was out of time.
We were all out of time.
Emissary reared his head back, now a creature out of the old fairy tales, and unleashed a jet of hot liquid fire into the sky.
I came up alongside his head, snarling, sword in hand.
The dragon looked at me, one golden slit of an eye seemed to wink, and then he stretched his jaws wide yet again and a glow of pink flame bellowed up from deep within his throat. I took a staggering step to the side and brought my sword swinging up and around over my head.
“Bastard!” I cried, slicing at the creature’s thick hide.
The blade cut through the neck scales as if they were butter, and a gout of thick, purple blood burst from the wound. Pure white light shone from within the sword and seared the dragon’s flesh.
Emissary bucked as if electrocuted and roared in what sounded like agony, and spread his massive wings wide, knocking aside chunks of rubble and sending half a dozen nearby Renegades hurling ass over head. The rush of air and the swipe of his tail forced me to my knees. The tip of one of the tail spikes caught my sleeve and drew a thin line of blood across my arm.
