by David Finn
Demorn ran out of the bedroom and into the cold corridor. She felt alive inside a dream, but her instincts told her this was reality, however strange.
The door slammed behind her. The air was frigid in the corridor, her breath a soft exhalation of white. She had come so far and so deep. She could feel movement in the air around her, and her magic eyes could see ghostly images passing through the vast dark corridor, more haunting versions of herself, and other girls, alongside images of the Tyrant.
The farther Demorn walked down the icy corridor, the more obscure and separated from her understanding the visions became, filled with pictures of were-people, ancient echoes of her life and dreams, total strangers mixing with people as familiar to her as Smile or Kate.
She saw a lithe, red-cloaked figure standing by a vast wooden door at the end of the corridor. Her heart soared.
But even as she blinked, the figure vanished. Her arm still ached and burnt from the loss of their connection. Toxis lay dead at the bottom of an infinite electronic abyss. There was no changing that.
Demorn focused her mind and banished the images. She didn’t need or want these alternate versions of what was to come or what had been.
The wooden door before her looked built to withstand armies. As she came closer, the door shifted, becoming a cruel metallic gate, the corridor morphing to a wintery prison surrounding her.
Her magic eyes saw writing scrawled on the walls, as if by a child’s pen, in both the language of this world and that of Asanti.
BITCH OF THE GODDESS — SWORD SLUT OF The Innocents — DEATH IS CERTAIN — TURN BACK — HE SEEKS TO LEAD YOU TO HIS PIT—
Demorn ran her finger across the metallic wall. What a potty mouth. He does all this with his mind. She flattened her palm against the metal, canceling out the negative vibes.
The writing vanished. The lock shifted.
The steel gate became a wooden door again. She knocked on it.
The Tyrant spoke, soft, a touch droll. ‘Who comes knocking at so late an hour?’
She sighed. ‘It’s Demorn, leader of the Innocents, Princess of the Swords. Sorry, I have no idea what time it is.’
There was a delicate pause.
‘Ah, Demorn. You truly are a creature of the midnight hour. What’s your password?’
Demorn thought for a moment. Your password. The shadows swirled with menacing images, summoned from the recesses of her nightmares and fantasies. He was essentially a stranger to her, but the air was heavy with their echoes. She wondered if they had danced this dance before. She wondered what would happen if she got it wrong. She wondered if anything would.
Demorn leaned her head against the wooden door, letting her mind play through routines and cues. Then suddenly she knew.
Demorn said, ‘We believed in circles of trust.’
The door clicked open.
Light and noise flooded out. She slid her purple glasses on as she stepped across the threshold.
The light seemed to burn through her mind. She was inside a gigantic arena, with leveled tiers that rose bowl-like to a tiny sky high above. In the air floated hundreds of still figures, covered head to toe in ceremonial armor. They did not move or speak.
Her head felt pressurized. She guessed these creatures were telepathic, communicating amongst themselves.
She was the only one standing amongst the seats, a stone’s throw from the sandy floor.
In the middle of the Arena stood the Tyrant, adorned in cruel, spiked, jet-black armor. He waved casually to her and put on a vicious spiked helmet.
With the helmet on, he seemed stripped of any humanity. A creature of war. As much a monster as any that she had killed. His hands held no weapons, but his very presence chilled her blood.
We were very young, he said. His voice was kind as it flickered through her mind and she smiled, despite his frightening visage.
A portal gate opened at the edge of the arena, shuddering into this strange reality. She could feel the true bleakness to come, the horror side of this fantasy. Demorn went to grab her blade, but the scabbard was gone from her back. Xalos was absent, gone from inside her. She felt dumb and empty.
A huge energy shield shuddered down over the Arena, protecting the onlookers. She heard a ruffle of communication amongst the inert spectators, some collective mind exhalation.
Demorn felt a hollow, nameless fear, as much for the Tyrant as for herself.
‘What is here?’ she cried aloud, sick of these telepaths, sick of these would-be gods dancing in the heavens. Sick of monsters.
Death and endings. Just death and endings.
The Tyrant rose into the air.
Countless creatures spawned out of the gate. Energy poured from his armored hands, blurring the air. The creatures seemed endless as they poured from the portal, wave after wave of them, visions of death, fever dreams of corruption.
She saw the Bone creatures of The Grave, savage and mindless, rushing him, rushing the shield itself, burning up in front of her eyes. She saw the insanity of the Triton, marked with the Pyramid, she saw what the nightmare in the future did to its pawns. Perverted and corrupt, the flesh shell gone, no mystery over who were the dark gods and who were the puppets.
Many of them were parasites, scarab beetles foretelling the coming of something far greater, far wiser and colder and more ancient. As he killed them she could see the patterns that linked them.
The Tyrant was killing a part of a greater whole, a mechanism that could shatter the Universe, or rebuild it.
Her magic eyes recoiled as his power rolled through them, killing the beasts, wounding others, burning and charring.
Amongst the horror of death, Demorn felt a small piece of hope. He promised a vicious kind of triumph. The Tyrant rose higher and higher, red and purple light streaming from his armor, from his hands and eyes, burning through the helmet, streaming outward, blinding the mass spawning endlessly from the gate.
But there was no rejoicing, there was no celebration as he tore apart the horde. At times, she could not tell if the Tyrant was just another member of the horde in his black thorned armor, for they all seemed the same in the multitude of chaos.
But the Tyrant seemed to hold no such doubts. His measures were brutal and mercy was absent. The Bones were exploded — they were but a minor sorcery, Demorn knew that.
The tentacle creatures thrashed against his armor, dragging him back to the floor, but again and again, energy blazed out from his core, and they burnt, shriveling to stumps.
He seemed strongest in the air, an angry star of death, a hollow core that extinguished life.
She started to see the patterns forming around the Tyrant, too. She could feel the pressure on her forehead. The crowd was talking.
Demorn walked down the stone steps of the arena, closer to the shield. The light seemed to dim. What she saw next, Demorn would never forget.
A yawning pit opened in the sand, the grains becoming teeth, sand falling down, a black hole into nowhere, hungry and hollering for flesh and souls. The creatures, burning and hurt, tumbled into the chasm. It was the manifestation of the nightmare glimpsed on Sue’s face, the source code of the nightmare curse that had bound her friends to the crappy mall, destroyed Gareth, the curse that encircled her life and her friends and her dreams.
Demorn heard the scream in her ears and her mind, an incursion into what had been a completely silent fight. It was the deathless scream of the Dark One, the forbidden god whose true name not even Wrecking Ball had dared utter. It was what lay in the bowels of The Grave, the cage inside the dimension where everything had been lost to evil.
A long cold, shiver ran through her spine as she heard the imprisoned god talking, to her and the audience. It was no longer pleading, but speaking of the promise of its inevitable birthing.
Some of the crowd shifted. Some vanished. But most stayed.
The voice was almost sweet, intoxicating and specific in its dreadful promise. It talked of the fire and the bones and the ne
w day when the stars were shattered and the humans were the dog-people of their betters. And as it talked, those images filled her mind and they became the truth, she felt it happen, the future unfolding, bouncing back down through the past, following their time-lines, infecting them like a cancer.
Amidst all this, the Tyrant was a single speck of black fire, a single ember of flame, drifting . . .
Demorn closed her eyes and forced the insidious mind voice out, focusing on that single flame. Her hand was clenched so tightly she could feel her nails pierce her flesh. She forced the visions out, quieting the Dark One.
She gripped the stony seat, fingers flicking in subconscious rituals of terror warding.
When she opened her eyes, Demorn saw the yawning pit was closing, having swallowed and sucked up most of the refuse. The Tyrant’s blast annihilated the rest. Soon nothing lived on the arena floor but him.
Everything was burning, even the sand itself. Demorn was amazed to see her left hand had turned to steel and still it bled, indented.
She formed a perfect circle with her steel fingers, carving deep into the rocky sea, an indentation in the stone marked with her blood. Slowly the metal faded from her hand, the flesh painful and torn beneath.
Most of the spectators had taken their helmets off. Demorn was shocked to see that they almost all wore crowns of tentacles twisting upon their heads. They gazed upon the scene with no emotion, their blank faces saying nothing.
They ranged across species and races, from young to old. Some looked just like him, burning coals of energy, others were husks of bone or flesh, and for a few, the tentacles had engulfed their entire face and body.
The Tyrant floated upward, slowly, toward her.
Everything was burning but him, this hollow black sun. The electronic shield collapsed as he approached. Her magic eyes could see him clearly now. She could see through the mask.
His face was whitened, his purple eyes too bright. He wasn’t fully sane. Who could be, anymore. His armored, thorny suit was marked with countless claw-marks, wounds of the battle. Blood flowed through his armor.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked, aware how ridiculous and thin the words sounded.
I try to think of a happy song. It makes it easier.
‘Are you dying?’ she asked.
I died long ago, if only flesh was life. But I am no more dead than yesterday, Demorn. Or last night, when we made love, promising nothing.
Demorn laughed, despite herself. She remembered waking with her hand in his, a wild ride through their fevered imagination and shared dreams.
‘Was that really what it was last night? Made love makes it sound so tender and cutesy.’
He chuckled.
But neither were we cruel.
Around her the crowd started blinking out.
‘What is all this? Who are all these people? Is this really some gigantic fucking ritual?’
Of a kind. It’s a reality collapse.
She couldn’t hold it in any longer.
‘You are aware that your little fan club are pretty much all monsters, aren’t you?’
He took off the helmet, coming to sit beside her on the stone benches. Up close the armor reeked of extreme magic and power, shuddering before her eyes. There were no marks upon his terrible, pale face. But she could sense his exhaustion, how close to the limit the arena battle had pushed him. On impulse she reached out and grabbed his armored hand, holding it tightly.
He didn’t talk for a long time. Finally he looked at her with sad eyes. His voice was soft. ‘They’re not monsters, Demorn. No more than me, or you. No more than anybody in Babelzon or Firethorn. That’s what I found out when I put on the Steel Bracelet, all those years ago.’
She raised her eyebrow. ‘What did you find out? Because I feel clueless.’
He laughed. ‘It’s okay, Demorn. Maybe one day you’ll have to carry this bracelet and understand everything. They’re survivors and diplomats from dimensions and worlds that withstood Ultimate Fate.’
She was tired of this constant struggle. The spectators had all vanished, except for three floating bodies in armor, far above.
‘How? How did they do it? By winning these ridiculous battles in arenas?’
‘By compromise. By bargaining. Sacrifice.’
His voice echoed cold in her head.
There are a variety of ways of dealing with the devil.
She was somber, thinking of the creatures that surrounded JFK in the photographs, way back at the start. Sinatra and the Ruby Lady. Leaving them in the desert. She wondered, as she often did, what happened to them.
She said, ‘Well, no devil has ever been short of people wanting to play a hand with them.’
His red, thorned armor opened up, showing his ruined, battered face. The power burnt out and bled away.
Demorn sighed, her foot kicking tracks in the sand, amongst the stones.
‘You are dying, aren’t you?’
His smile was hideous.
I’ve died three times in the Arena. Some nights I’m just not as strong.
He looked up toward the last three armored figures, floating high above. They flickered away.
It’s why so many of them come. They come to see me fall and they do not wish to see me rise.
‘How much longer have you got?’
‘A few more weeks. I won’t last another death.’
She sighed, on instinct checking her Athena gun in the leg holster.
‘So what is the point of all this then? My prize for beating your Tyrant Run is to get some depressing news?’
He held his palm up. A glowing purple pyramid radiated. His armor vanished, and the Tyrant now wore a smart looking black suit. His terrible eyes were shut in some private communion. A blurring encased his form.
The Ice Worm has emerged from his grotto, full grown, covered in the scars and words of the Plague God. He stalks the city. He stalks the White Fort. We won’t escape this doom . . .
She caught his shoulder as the mind-voice died.
‘Hey, I’m right here, talk to me. Did you go to the White Fort? Is that where you’ve been? While the city waited for you to come Home?’
His voice was kind, almost vague. ‘Oh, I went way past Firethorn and the White Fort. I got lost out there. It’s a vast universe, dimension upon dimension, and I could go anywhere.’
His purple gaze was terrifying. Suddenly, she dug him. She knew what it was to wander for so far and long that you knew nothing but the journey.
‘But you got Home.’
He smiled in his distant way. ‘In the end. The Source Stones dragged me back. My ship now orbits Babelzon. And you came back, Princess of the Swords, returned from the Grave world. You broke the Repeater curse. You carry the Sword again. Events are synching up.’
‘We did that,’ Demorn said, pissed off. ‘Alex and Guard Dog and Wrecking Ball and me. We did that. Not some weird celestial force, not you.’
The Tyrant ran his hand through his hair.
‘You’re right. It was a desperate and brave escape. Maybe there is hope left.’
The Arena vanished. They stood in the control chamber of his ship. It was almost blandly impersonal and functional.
He staggered, his face battered with wounds as they re-emerged into reality. She saw his white shirt stained with blood. The Tyrant ground his teeth and the bleeding slowed, then faded.
‘But I have seen the edge of the universe, Demorn, and I’m right, too. There’s a weakening in the design. Perhaps a designed flaw, who knows.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I don’t.’
‘The flaw helped you escape the Grave. As it helps the forces bleeding through the fabric of reality.’
She looked at the Tyrant steadily. ‘Just tell me straight, boss. Is the whole universe about to explode no matter what we do? If so, can I just go back to bed, listening to love songs and missing my ex-girlfriend?’
The Tyrant laughed. ‘You’re calling her your ex now? Well, that is pers
onal growth.’
Demorn couldn’t help but chuckle.
‘What a concept. I might as well try some, if reality is about to collapse and everything.’
5
* * *
It wasn’t what I had expected, Demorn realized. I thought the Tyrant would be a Tyrant. But this Court is empty of courtiers. It’s just him and some ghosts.
The Tyrant looked young and tired and slightly nihilistic in the soft light of the control room. Kind of hot in a suit though, Demorn thought. His battered face repaired itself of the most grievous wounds as he operated the console, images of the galaxy spinning before them in the room.
The star charts were not wholly unfamiliar to Demorn, for she had seen her brother examine similar things aboard the Spire inside Memory Garden. But it was not her primary interest, and she watched the rotating galaxy constructs with a mild apprehension.
The control room looked out onto Babelzon, but not as it was normally seen in the City below. She saw the planet beyond it, Earth, phasing around the City like a shadowy twin. She saw the huge tears in space that were the Portals, the incessant traffic passing through them.
In exhaustion, she slumped on a leather couch, in front of a small coffee table. Her magic eyes could pierce the veil within the room. It hadn’t always been a bland, functional ship. She could sense at one time this had been a living construct of wood and sinew, an intelligence that was not artificial, but was now inert.
‘Where did you get this ship?’ she asked.
‘From a friend. A long time ago.’
‘Who was he? It has traces of Asanti vessel rigging.’
The Tyrant clapped her on the shoulder with a friendly charm.
‘I don’t remember him very well. That’s the sad part of being a hero, Demorn. You lose most of your friends if you don’t die.’
He noticed something on the couch. ‘You’ve drawn a circle.’
She looked at the armrest. Again her left hand fingers had turned to metal and she had formed a circle upon the leather, charring it. The miniature circle glowed with an eerie fire.
