by J. M. Frey
“Can I keep this?” Lucy asks, gesturing with the ray-gun prop, and the cosplayer yelps an affirmative before another crescendoing roar sends her scrambling back to the knot of people in the middle of the room.
Because the roaring . . . the roaring is getting louder. Getting closer. It’s a continuous rumble punctuated by a thunderous screech, like a rusty pulley, and the leather flap of what sounds like enormous bat-wings. Overcome with curiosity, Elgar shakes out of Lucy’s grip and moves to stand just behind Bevel, to the side, where he’ll be shielded by the wall.
Kintyre and Bevel themselves open one door, and pause in the threshold. They don’t look stunned, per se, but they look . . . concerned.
“What on the Writer’s green backside is that?” Bevel asks, and Kintyre shrugs, fingers clenching and unclenching around his sword. Bevel slings his bow off his body and nocks an arrow. “In the eye, do you think?”
Kintyre nods. “Quick, before brother’s wife sees.”
Bevel smirks, sardonic and cheeky. “Pip’s soft-hearted, but I don’t think even she’d want to tangle with . . . whatever that is.”
“Manticore!” someone just behind them says, and Elgar glances back just long enough to realize it’s the shorter of the two men who had been playing the card game that had accidentally doused the lights earlier. Todd? Todd, right. “It has the ability to control other creatures.”
“Other creatures?” Kintyre echoes, and Todd points to the abandoned food court. Just past the massive lion with bat-wings and a scorpion’s tail is a parade of monsters working their menacing, slow-paced way across the overturned tables and chairs. One looks like a massive, half-rotted leaf on legs, with praying mantis arms.
“King Reaper,” Todd explains, pointing to that one. His finger shifts to a man-high, deep red saurian quadruped. “Kavu Predator.”
“Are such monsters common in the Overrealm?” Kintyre asks Todd.
“They’re not real,” Todd insists instead. “At least, they’re not supposed to be.”
“I suddenly miss Capplederry, like, a lot,” Lucy shouts, coming up behind Todd to see what everyone’s staring at. “What are you waiting for, Bev? Shoot ’em!”
Bevel and Kintyre exchange another knowing smirk, and Bevel lets fly.
The bolt strikes true, and the manticore howls, tail lashing, pawing at its head before it falls down sideways, dead. The King Reaper stops to inspect the corpse with what might have been eyes, or might have been spiders.
“Good lord,” Elgar says, and though he hasn’t been religious since he lost his Aunty Lilah, he crosses himself and steps back from the door.
“Let me try,” Lucy says, shoving to the front of the group. “I’d like to save your arrows if we can.”
She levels the ray-gun at the King Reaper and fires. The first bolt goes wide. Out of nowhere, the air crackles with a whiplash of gleeful laughter. It is unexpected, high and harsh, and Elgar can’t find the source.
Pip cringes and fires again, the noise grating, but it’s clear her hands are shaking in earnest now, and that bolt misses its target, too. The laughter, now piercing and echoing around the rafters of the hall, crescendos. The third shot hits the Reaper square in the chest, and then Pip stumbles backward as the monster crisps up and turns to leafy ash. She claps her hands to the side of her head and shouts: “Shut up, you mad asshole!”
Elgar’s guts clench as he realizes it’s not one of the creatures laughing.
“Clever toy,” Bevel says, and snatches the ray-gun from her hand. Good thing, too. It only takes him one shot to get used to the kickback, and then the Predator is keeled on its side, howling through a wound that’s eating through its flesh, then ribcage, then internal organs.
The air fills with the acrid, gorge-lifting tang of burnt flesh and curdling blood. Elgar jerks the collar of his shirt up to cover his nose and mouth.
Pip slaps her hands over her ears, eyes screwed shut. “Shut up,” she hisses, over and over again. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
It’s only then that Elgar realizes he recognizes the laughter. Poisonous and sticky, like venom and honey, it’s exactly how he’d written it to be. A shivering, sickly horror squirms up Elgar’s spine. He wraps his arms around himself, shuddering with the way the voice makes the very marrow of his bones resonate, like a humongous gong rung in the deepest canyon on Earth.
“I hesitate to say that that was easy, but—” Kintyre begins, and this time, it’s Elgar who stops him, placing his own palm over his creation’s mouth.
“No,” Elgar says hurriedly, ignoring the way his hand tingles. “No, don’t say that. Ever.”
Which is when, of course, three more flares of acid-green light spark into flames in the middle of the gaming floor.
“Oh. My new pets! Such a shame. No matter!” a voice booms across the echoing, empty cement box of the convention center. His voice. Elgar has only heard it once before, in the hospital, but he knows it intimately. He’s been hearing it in his own head for decades. “There are thousands more monsters to summon forth. Such fertile imaginations, the Writers of this world. Such creatures they envision. Such deaths they design!”
“The monsters are all headed this way. We have to get you away from the innocents,” Bevel hisses over his shoulder at Elgar.
“What do you mean, awa—ay!” Elgar yelps as Bevel grabs his wrist and yanks him out into the open floor and along the wall. His bare hand, where it’s wrapped around Elgar’s skin, tingles and sparks the way Forsyth’s does when they touch one another. Elgar wrenches his head around to watch the three gouts of flame resolve into three more creatures he has no name for. The movement sends hot pain shooting up the back of his neck, still not totally healed from the whiplash, but running for his life and keeping the things that are trying to kill him in sight is worth it.
Kintyre is just a few steps behind them, and this time, the monsters don’t stalk slowly across the floor. One is some sort of legless crawly thing, until it launches itself from a pile of tables and spreads horrific, spiny wings. Elgar thinks he’ll be forgiven the girlish shriek he lets loose as it bears down on them, its wide-open maw ringed with rows and rows of fangs.
Kintyre stops, spins around on the balls of his feet, and flings himself back in the direction of the creature. Foesmiter does . . . does something too quick, and too bright to see, and then the monster is nothing more than quivering chunks of carcass on the cement floor. The laughing overhead redoubles.
“Run!” the Viceroy howls, still unseen, still menacing from above, in glee. “Go on, you fat, stupid, worthless old man! You think they can protect you?”
“Don’t listen,” Bevel hisses as he yanks Elgar behind one of the food court carts. “And keep your head down.”
Bevel takes the moment’s respite to sling his bow back over his chest and raise the ray-gun. He peeps over the top of the cart to watch what Elgar assumes is Kintyre hack and slash at the two remaining monsters. The air fills with the stench of loosed bowels and fresh meat, the sounds of boots scraping on concrete and claws shrieking against rebar. Kintyre’s grunting huffs mingle with the shrill cries and howls of the monsters. Elgar isn’t sure what’s worse. Not knowing what’s happening, or only hearing it and imagining the worst.
The surreality of the situation is punctuated by the fact that Bevel Dom, bard, fantasy knight and seventh son of a seventh son, is clutching a futuristic laser-weapon in his hand that he’s—after just a few shots—completely comfortable with. Sure, Elgar had written him to be extremely proficient with any targeted range weapon, but the picture of Bevel, in his battle leathers and Dom-amethyst short-robe, with his fingers wrapped around a high-sheen, chrome cosplay prop that literally magically works is enough for him to want to screw his eyes shut, and pinch himself hard until he wakes from this wacky, awful nightmare.
Elgar’s neck hurts, and his pulse is so fast and thready that he can feel it jumping in the hollow of his throat, clutching with taloned fingers at his lungs, prickling i
n beads of sweat at his hairline. He swallows hard, trying to beat back the fear, trying to trust the fact that it’s Bevel Dom protecting him. He should trust his own creation. He should have more faith. But a year of knowing Forsyth Turn, and several months of friendship with him, has also taught Elgar that his creations, while heroic and clever and strong, are also human. And that means fallible.
“It’s the papers,” Bevel snarls as he takes aim over and over again, firing off bolt after impossible bolt from the ray-gun. The roars and howls of dying beasts are punctuated by crackling flames and the slick, poisonous laughter of the Viceroy. “There’s no end to these monsters. He’ll just keep summoning them, again and again.”
“Words of Burning!” Elgar gasps at him. “Forsyth made them work before.”
Bevel shouts out to Kintyre that he should try to burn what paper he can with the Words, but his trothed is too caught up with keeping the monsters at bay to waste his breath on Word magic.
Bevel burns what paper his Words can reach nearby, the syllables of it gorgeous and syllabant and hissing in Elgar’s ears. They sound like fire. Elgar scrambles on his hands and knees to shuffle every paper within arm’s length onto the pile. Bevel has to keep popping his head up to shoot at the monsters, though, his attention divided.
“Get back inside, you fools!” Kintyre calls over the din, and Elgar wrenches himself to his knees, clinging to the side of the upset hot dog cart to see what he’s talking about.
At the far side of the room, the large doors to the ballroom have been thrown back.
“What are they doing?” Elgar hisses. “They’re going to get killed!”
From this distance, it’s difficult to distinguish individual faces, though Lucy and Forsyth are distinctive enough in the forefront of the rush. Like football linebackers, the group of be-weaponed cosplayers surges out onto the floor, ray-gun blasts sizzling and filling the room with the tang of ozone and even more burnt flesh. Magic swirls and pulses through the air, some of it the watercolor swirls of his own creations, some very clearly the recreation of effects he’s seen on television, in film, in anime and comics.
“No!” the Viceroy sneers from above and all around them. “No!”
“Clever Forssy,” Bevel says with a panting grin as he pops back down behind the cart, taking a moment to rest.
“What? Why? What’s he doing?”
Bevel’s grin gets wide and ever-so-slightly goofy, his dark blue eyes shining with mirth and adrenaline. Elgar chokes back a startled sound. He knows that Bevel loves action, but he never realized that this is what his creation would look like in the midst of a heated battle. Elgar had spent so much time detailing the way the armies moved, the way the villains gestured, or the arc of Foesmiter and the bend of Bevel’s bow, that he hadn’t spared much description for the faces of his heroes. He never realized that Bevel would be so happy to be fighting for his life.
Is it because they’re in the midst of doing exactly what Elgar has written Bevel for—to support Kintyre, to protect the innocent, to cross swords with evil? Like Forsyth, who is most content when he is behaving as a spymaster, who is most himself when in the pursuit of information, is Bevel most himself when in mortal peril? Or is it that he is fighting beside his trothed? His husband?
Kintyre comes sliding around the side of the cart on his knees, grinning like a little boy. He steals a second of their reprieve to wrap one large arm around Bevel’s shoulders and draw him up for a windblown, breathless kiss. It’s quick, and chaste, but it leaves them both pink-cheeked and giggling like children.
“Useful to have a bookmouse for a brother, eh, Bev?” Kintyre asks, releasing Bevel to shift over to the cart and watch the action.
“Why?” Elgar asks again.
“Look,” Kintyre grunts, impatient. “Don’t you see what they’re doing?”
Elgar looks. “Burning the paper.”
“Means Forssy figured it out, too,” Kintyre says, and he sounds approving. Elgar tries not to goggle at a Kintyre Turn that approves of anything his brother does, much less speaks admirably of him. And he’s heard it twice now in as many hours. “He’s using the resources at his disposal. There’s no way he could have burned them all with his Words fast enough. But with an army . . .”
“But they’re not an army,” Elgar protests.
“They’re the best we’ve got in a pinch,” Bevel says. “And if they’re going to kill monsters and burn paper, and use up all of the Viceroy’s resources so he’s forced to show his hand, then I won’t be turning them away.”
“Is that what we’re doing?” Elgar asks. “Trying to get him to show his hand?”
“Or his face,” Bevel says with a casual, sideways shrug.
It’s Gallic, and arrogant, and Elgar can’t remember if he’d ever written that gesture onto Bevel himself. He doesn’t think so. It’s yet more proof that his creations are more human, more complex, than he’s suspected. It’s odd. Eerie. Unsettling. Uncanny.
“We can’t hit at him until we see him,” Kintyre says. “And we won’t see him until he’s exhausted every other avenue first. It’s what he does.”
A thought occurs to Elgar. “Like him going after Ahbni?”
Bevel nods, spares a second to peek up at the battle, then ducks back down and runs a hand through his sweaty hair, pushing it irritably off his forehead. “Find her, and I bet we find the Viceroy.”
“But we’re not looking. We’re just . . . sitting here! Like sitting ducks!”
Bevel offers him another cheeky grin. “Well, it’s not like he’s gonna come out otherwise, with Forssy stuck to your side like a cockleburr.”
“Oh my god. I’m bait?” Elgar shrills. “Again?”
“Can’t fight what we can’t see,” Kintyre says with an unapologetic shrug that matches Bevel’s.
“You guys are . . . are . . . assholes,” Elgar says, and then stops to blink. Huh. That’s . . . that’s what people have been saying about his work for years, and yet he hasn’t really . . . honestly, it hadn’t occurred to him that his creations might actually be . . . exactly what people called them. Boorish. Narcissistic. Shallow.
“There’s no point in changing what’s proven to work,” Bevel says. “One way or another, the Viceroy wants you dead. So if we stick to you, and wave you under his nose, he’s eventually going to have to stop puppeteering fictional monsters and come out to do the deed himself.”
“Oh god,” Elgar says with a groan. He covers his face with his hands, mortified and terrified, all at once. He wishes that he had stayed over with Forsyth and Lucy. At least they seemed to think through their plans before implementing them. Even if they sometimes do over-think them.
“Bev, let’s start moving toward the army,” Kintyre says, apparently confident that their conversation about dangling Elgar like a worm is over. “Burn what we can see as we go.”
“They’re not an army,” Elgar protests once more, weakly, but he is utterly ignored.
“I don’t like that we might miss some,” Bevel says. “But that’s better than sitting here, letting the monsters creep up on us. If nothing else, we can keep the creatures distracted and let the army finish the flush.”
“They’re not an army,” Elgar repeats, a little louder.
“Right, I’ll take point; you take rear. Let’s head down that way.” Kintyre points to a side aisle clear of hazards. “Push him to the back when you reach the army, and I’ll take its head.”
“Right,” Bevel agrees.
“They’re not an army!” Elgar shouts. “They’re just . . . just fanboys! Smelly, sweaty, self-important, vacant, playing at heroics and sucking back too much Mountain Dew fanboys! You’re going to get them killed if you encourage them to do more than they’re capable of!”
Bevel and Kintyre both frown at Elgar, faces darkening.
“How dare you demean their bravery?” Kintyre grinds out. “They are doing this for you. For love of you, Writer.”
And there, right there. That is
it, that is the fear that has been fluttering in Elgar’s chest since it became clear that the Viceroy would target anyone and everyone close to him in order to traumatize and torture Elgar, to literally scare him to death. Juan, and Linux, and now Ahbni? There it is, pinned down and labeled. Finally.
Dread that someone is going to die and it will be all his fault. No, not dread. Apprehension. Anxiety. Dismay. Consternation. Terror.
“I never asked them to!” Elgar chokes. His eyes are burning. He can’t seem to get a full breath. He feels shaky, hollow, and yet completely filled up with something sharp and boiling.
Kintyre’s frown turns less disapproving, more puzzled. “You didn’t have to.”
“I . . . what?” Elgar says, and it’s a sob. He touches his face, and yeah, he’s crying. He is actually crying.
“You can’t control who loves you, or why,” Bevel says gently, as if Elgar is a foolish toddler who’s never been taught this before. Maybe he is a fool. “And if they choose to put themselves in peril for love of you, you can’t control that, either.”
“But I don’t want . . . I don’t want them to!” he protests.
“And yet, there your army stands. There it battles, in your name.”
Elgar wrings his hands, desperate to make his heroes understand. “But they’re not an army!”
“Of course they are—look at them,” Kintyre orders with a scowl. He draws Elgar up to his knees, so the three of them can look out over the convention hall floor together.
The cosplayers have spread out from their knot by the door. Lucy and Forsyth are still in the forefront, generals directing the fighting. Those with offensive weapons are doing their best to damage the monsters and creatures that keep springing up, hydra-like, from the sediment of papers, cards, figurines, comics, posters, and anything else the Viceroy can draw from. The attackers have ranged into a semi-circle, protecting what appears to be several staff-wielding wizards, witches with house-robes and wands, a whip-thin Asian boy dressed in some sort of red, Chinese-inspired armor making elaborate hand motions and tumbles, and a masked video game character.
