by Joe Ducie
‘The Peace Arsenal on the distant arm of the Story Thread outnumbers your paltry ships a hundred to one,’ Oblivion growled. ‘A thousand to one. We are coming for you, Declan Hale. Dusk will hold you to account.’
“How many ships, right now, in my command?” I asked. “If I wanted to attack, say, a vast orbital citadel, several miles across—protected by unknown and archaic magic, and possibly half a dozen Everlasting elder gods. If I wanted to ignite the stars around such a place, Secretary Briarwood, how much of the Cascade Fleet would I have at my back?”
The secretary swallowed hard and his hands shook. “Do you intend…?” He caught himself. “The Cascade Fleet stands at seventy-four percent readiness, your grace. Some four thousand battle-ready ships. The support fleet would need to be expanded, a matter of some weeks, if you are intending to launch a campaign on this… citadel. On this scale.”
I shook my head and kept an ear cocked for Oblivion. Did I hear him laughing a ‘ways back in my mind there? Or was I mad in truth, in some small way? Probably a little from both columns there. And as for the support fleet… I’d done without much support in the past.
“Just seeing what cards I hold, Secretary Briarwood…” I muttered. “An ace in the hole, perhaps. Dealer still stands on seventeen, right?”
The star iron manacle on my wrist, the only thing imprisoning the Everlasting, had a nice spider web of cracks running through it now. After only half a day. Thin, thankfully, and nothing across the surface. The stone-glass was flawed—the device was certainly flawed—I couldn’t pretend otherwise. And in the half a day I’d been wearing it, I estimated at the current rate of decay… five days? A week before Oblivion regained control? No, that was just me being hopeful. It would be less. I had to plan for… two days at the most. Even that felt more like hope than fact.
Earlier that day, I’d had the most respected and learned enchanters in the Fae Palace investigate the manacle as it sat on my wrist. One of them suggested it would need to be removed for further study, and I near pissed myself laughing at the explanation and horror that would need. Still, the enchanters had wanted to impress me, work out its secrets, but not a one of them could speak to its creation. The layered and intricate web of spells on the band were deeper than anything they had ever conceived or thought possible.
“A thousand Knights working together for a thousand years couldn’t hope to produce something so… delicate, your grace,” the Chief Enchantress had said. “Where in the Story Thread did you find such a thing?”
“Just upstairs,” I sighed, and thanked them for their time. Which I didn’t think was very kingly, either. Their time was meant to be my time. That was the point, wasn’t it? It didn’t matter. I was already a mad king.
I either had to find a way to expel or destroy Oblivion in the few days I had left, or use my new position to do as much damage to the Everlasting as possible before he reclaimed my body and, this time, made sure I didn’t have any breathing room to fuck with him.
If it came down to the wire, as these things are wont to do—we’re nothing if not thematic, the guardians of a good narrative—then I’d take Jon’s advice and hurl myself into the nearest collapsed star. A good death.
It probably wouldn’t destroy Oblivion, knowing my luck, but it would fuck up his day considerably. And that’s where I was happiest—ruining peoples (and gods) days.
“Right, thanks for the report, mate,” I said to Briarwood. “Which one of you deer-in-the-headlights is next?”
The row of advisors just off to the side of the throne, seated at a long white marble table, sat about thirty men and women—all of them Knights, as advisors and secretaries to the king had to be—exchanged startled glances.
“Come along now, I’m not known to bite.”
Eventually, a tall man stepped around the table to stand in front of the throne. Briarwood excused himself with a low bow and sat back down, trying to hide what was eminent relief. Damn, I really did scare them.
“Arbiter Cosgrove, Minister for the Unfound, your grace,” the tall man said and bowed. He had a sharp face, his salt and pepper hair short back and sides, and wheat-pale skin.
The unfound were the children of the Story Thread, particularly on True Earth, that had the potential to be trained as Knights Infernal. To join our ranks. To protect the Story Thread. Fresh meat for the grinder for the wars to come. My wars now, I thought with some reluctance. It’s all mine, the fate of the knights—whether we rise or fall. I’d been scooped up by the unfound in my youth, blessing and curse for all involved. My father, Walter Hale, a man long dead, had been so proud. His own son, strong enough to be a Knight! I wondered what he would think of me and the bloody life I’d led now. Probably better he was dead.
“The Infernal Academy continues to operate despite the recent… upheaval,” Cosgrove said. “I advised your predecessor on the need to increase recruitment, but given the funds required to expand the academy my request was not viewed favour—”
I held up a hand and cut him off. And then I chuckled. “I like you, mate. Already angling. Top stuff. Approved—triple the recruitment. I want as many kids in the academy as you can find. Any of them capable of sparking their Will, get them in and get them uniformed. War is a ‘coming.” Oblivion’s taunt about the number of ships in the Peace Arsenal bothered me. I addressed the long, lordly table of advisors. “And which one of you is responsible for the starship factories? Manufacturing and maintenance? Well?”
A severe woman with a grey bun of hair stood at the table. “Secretary of Defence Faron, your grace.”
“Ships,” I said. “Start building ships. We’re going to need them. Found new factories, take whatever you need from the treasury, but get those ships under construction. Now. Today.”
She blinked and bristled with a hundred questions.
I answered the unspoken but important ones. “I don’t care for the cost—empty the treasuries, write a few worlds full of resources into existence—we’re at war with the Everlasting, you hear.” And so started the muttering again, the scared glances. They didn’t believe, even though that morning one of the Everlasting had taken over their city.
I didn’t know which was worse—that they thought me as bloodthirsty as Oblivion had been in his rebellion, or that they did not believe in the threat presented by the Everlasting.
I stood from the throne and addressed the chamber at large. “Hear me, all of you, and record what you hear. I want my face on every screen throughout Ascension City and our worlds before sundown. The Knights Infernal are at war. We are at war against the Everlasting, against the Elder Gods who seek to destroy us. And make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, my lords and ladies, they are real, they are here, now, among us. All of our resources, every able Knight, is to be called into service.”
I slammed my fists together and let the sound echo on the edge of a bolt of Will light, just a trickle to get the point across and make them all sit up a little straighter.
“I did not unseat Jon Faraday or plunge our kingdoms into chaos for shits and giggles, so you hear me well. I am here to begin a campaign. We are at war.”
As I spoke, someone slipped into the back of the chamber through the vast vaulted and golden doors that hung broken on their hinges from the assault. Only a Knight could move so unmolested into this space, come so close before the Dragon Throne, and Knight she was.
My heart fled me, all my bluster failed, as she strolled not to the expected tiered seating or the viewing boxes, but directly across the hall—the heels of her boots clicking against the marble floors like the tick of a clock counting down toward something dire.
“War, is it?” she said, and her voice carried well across the chamber. The anger, the spite, too. “That did not take you long, Declan. No, not at all.”
My royal guard, Vrail and his well-chosen lieutenants, stepped forward from either side of the throne. I waved them back—delicately, so as not to offend men and women who had fought and died for me, knowin
g the cost of failure would be certain exile and, more likely, death.
As she drew closer, her auburn-red hair hanging over her shoulders in gentle waves, her eyes raw with tears both angry and sad, I stepped down from the dais. My secretaries all stepped away, leaving me and her alone before the height and weight of the Dragon Throne. That dark seat loomed over us like a speaking demon.
I stood a head taller than Sophie Levy, Tal’s sister, but felt so much smaller.
I’d done both Levy sisters more than their fair share of disservice over the years, and now Sophie, poor Sophie, something truly awful.
She was in love with Ethan Reilly, my wayward apprentice. Oblivion had torn Ethan’s head from his neck as he seized control of my body at the start of this whole mess. The latest chapter. Tal and Annie had fled across the Story Thread, along with Vale Tylia, knowing full well they didn’t stand a chance against Oblivion. I held a sneaking suspicion now that they had fled to Sophie, which made sense, and who last I heard had been studying her Will abilities at the Infernal Academy.
“All this time, all the years in exile, and you just take the throne inside an hour,” she said and slapped me across the face.
The slap echoed across the chamber, up into the high arched ceilings, out across the tiered seating where it mingled with the gasps of the lords and ladies.
“Why all the moping about on True Earth in that bookshop? Why all the drinking, you son of a bitch?”
“Sentinel,” I said to the royal knight over my left shoulder. “Your sword.”
The man handed me his blade, a curved rapier, infinitely sharp, etched with runes and enchantments. It was a proper Infernal blade, capable of so much… cruelty. One of these could give an Everlasting pause. The metal burned them, hurt them. In a very real way, I was part Everlasting with the cancerous weight of Oblivion in the back of my mind, though still human enough to not want my head chopped off.
So I fell to my knees before Sophie and held the sword out to her.
She took it by the hilt, masking her surprise, and I raised my head, offering her my throat. You could have heard a pin drop from a mile away at that moment.
Sophie levelled the blade against my neck, drew a thin line of blood on its razor edge, her face a conflicted snarl. Smoke rose in sharp, acrid curls from the cut. Oblivion’s essence. For a moment, just a red, desperate moment, I was certain she would do it—take my head—but then her face crumpled. Tears rolled down her cheeks in awful rivulets.
“Shit,” Sophie said. “It is you, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “It’s me, ‘Phie.”
“You expelled Oblivion?”
“No, but I’ve got him on lockdown… for now.”
She sighed. “How long do we have?”
“Not long—days, at the most.”
“Shit,” she said again.
I stood carefully and took the sword from her hands and handed the blade back to the Sentinel Knight. Then I embraced Sophie Levy, hugged her gently, and she cried into the nook below my shoulder for a good minute or two as the lords and ladies, the nobles of Ascension City, watched on.
“You came,” I said, “even though you knew Oblivion was here. Even though you knew it was all but certain he had me in his thrall. Still, you came.”
“Both of you had a lot to answer for,” she whispered. “Answer to me for.”
“He would have killed you, ‘Phie.” I took a deep, shuddering breath. “But damn if it isn’t good to see you. Apart from Vrail here, I’m rather on my own.” I lowered my voice. “Out of my depth. Are Tal and Annie safe? Don’t tell me where they are. If I hear it, then…”
“The Everlasting hears it. They’re safe. They don’t know I came here. Though they may by now.” She considered. “Tal may come, too, now. Annie is busy, though. What are we going to do, Declan?”
Despite my fear for their lives, and Tal being so close to Oblivion again, I felt my heart warm a little at that. I wanted my friends and allies around me. I didn’t want to face what was to come alone.
“Make them regret ever fucking with us,” I said and Sophie’s face settled into the grim certainty of the resolved.
“Good,” she whispered. “For Ethan.”
I addressed the chamber at large again. “You hear that? Years you left me in exile, years I fought your wars and your battles alone, while you hated and feared me, pretended I didn’t exist unless you needed saving. You’d still be fighting the Tome Wars, that mad bastard Morpheus Renegade, if not for me—if not for my allies, such as Sophie Levy here. All of you, all you cowards, it’s time to step off the bench and be held to an accounting.”
I reclaimed the Dragon Throne and sat down tall, domineering—for the first time that day, I sat as a king and meant it. “When they ask you for a way out, when the worlds balk at my war, recoil at my rule and my demands, tell them this: We will make them regret ever fucking with us. The Everlasting no more. This is the command of your king.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KING DECLAN THE COWARD
‘Ageless and alone, he stepped into exile’
Later that night, as I considered getting a few hours of sleep—I had been awake for days, weeks, if you counted the time spent as prisoner in my own mind. The toll that was taking should have long since driven me mad, but we’d crossed the borders of that territory long before now. As best as I could judge, only the day I had been back in control since the manacle closed around my wrist on the Dragon Throne, counted toward my physical fatigue.
Mental and emotional fatigue was another matter entirely, but I’d been running on fumes there for years anyway.
So I’d been awake a day.
In my grand and royal quarters, I sat reading a tablet slate device full of intelligence reports, or lack thereof, resource distribution, and the escalation to war footing I had ordered only a few short hours ago. Such an escalation sapped so many resources so swiftly I had no idea how the Tome Wars had been fought and funded for a hundred damn years.
Need’s must, I suppose.
I sat alone. I had wanted the peace and quiet. Well, save for Oblivion, who spat hate at me, whispered dire prophecy, shared images of the future and pain I could expect once he was back in control, and who read all the reports alongside me, unfortunately. If, when, he regained control, he’d have all the knowledge he needed to send the Peace Arsenal against the Cascade Fleet. Which added not just my life in the balance, but that of the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children—teenagers fresh out of the academy—on those ships. It meant the cost was real, as real as it gets, and I couldn’t lose. I had to beat him, expel him, before our time together drew to a close… one way or another.
As if to emphasise that point, the star iron manacle chimed as a crack breached the surface. A piece of the stone-glass fell away, a sliver about the size of a match stick, and shattered against the floor.
The manacle felt even more brittle for it, and Oblivion stirred in the back of my mind like a snake of oil and smoke.
I needed to move.
To act.
Enemies on all sides, enemies within, and me with an empire at my command that, in a few days, I would be powerless to stop Oblivion obliterating or using to his dark ends, as was his original intention before Future Declan had thrown a star iron wrench in the works. Once again, the stakes had been raised, the world was about to end and needed saving. I was back against the wall, but luckily that’s where I thrived.
A gentle knock on my chamber doors felt familiar, for some strange reason, though it took me a moment to realise why. Then I smiled. I had expected that knock, and given the guards on duty a whitelist of people—only a handful—allowed in to see me that night, should they show up at the palace begging for an audience.
The doors swung open on silent hinges and Tal Levy entered my quarters.
She entered in boots and jeans, a white blouse, stepped across the fine rugs and carpets above hardwood floors, around the fancy sofas and couches, glanced up at
the crystal chandeliers and out of the open windows at the glittering silver towers of Ascension City. She stepped around the long mahogany table, to my side of the table, and I caught the scent of strawberries and fresh rainfall—a scent that was wholly Tal, that made me feel like I was sixteen years old again and more nervous around her than any god or demon since.
I leaned back from the table, sat tall in my chair, pretended it was a throne, and Tal chose to sit on my lap, swinging her legs up and around over mine and the arm of the chair. She placed her arms around my neck and I rested one of my hands on her knee, the other on her lower back.
We’d sat like this for hours in the past, back before… before.
Tal gave me a hug and sighed, her breath warm, scented with red wine, intoxicating, against my neck. I failed to suppress a shiver.
Our history could best be described as romantically horrific. We had been lovers at the Infernal Academy, doomed beyond and into the Tome Wars. I had considered her the love of my life. I had seen her fall in the ruins of Atlantis to Oblivion unleashed, becoming his host—as I was now—for the next six years. The torments and horrors she endured in that time, horrors Oblivion played on fast forward in my mind right then—a creature of malice and spite, a paltry god—were abhorrent. I had saved her, unleashed the Peace Arsenal, which was now poised to destroy us all, to spare Tal another moment in the Everlasting’s grasp.
We had spent a year together, a friendly year, getting to know one another free of the Everlasting in Atlantis, ten thousand years in the past, at the Vale Celestia, the Atlantean training academy. There I had also met Emily Grace again, alive and young, and Dread Ash. Scarred Axis, and a few others, I’m sure, had crashed that party. Atlantis, even ten thousand years ago, hadn’t been a vacation, but it had been a chance for Tal and me to breathe after long years of hurt and war. And, in my case, scotch.
