“Gilf Scanlan,” Parish shouted. “Do you feel safe within your Gran? Don’t.”
Parish turned suddenly, driving a vertically oriented fist with his thumb jutting over its top towards Scanlan inside his Gran. The black box in Scanlan’s hand burst like a bubble made of dust and then his arm followed suit.
Scanlan cried out, clutching at the root of the missing limb more in surprise than anything else. He calmed himself and aimed the Clockwork Beam at his shoulder to produce another arm.
“I will see to you momentarily,” Parish said. “Proceed, Jav Holson. Forbis Vays shall trouble you no further.”
Jav stared for a moment in disbelief, but wasn’t about to ignore his good luck. He started forward and Vays ground his teeth as he passed.
“You have no place here, Wil Parish!” Vays cried.
“Do you presume to tell me my place, Forbis Vays? I can see what the artificer has done for you—and you have always suffered from abominable ego—but do you not see with those augmented eyes of yours what I have just done? For make no mistake, this was my doing.”
Vays grudgingly stared after Jav, but Jav was gone, streaking for the Palace with the reclaimed powers of the Charge and Fire Circuits.
“Shall we fight?” Parish said, taunting. “I know my asking runs counter to your ethics. Can you reach me up here? Or shall I come down to you?”
Vays broke into a run, holding the Titan Saber at his hip.
Parish didn’t move. He remained floating in his place, his arms across his chest, his head cocked in such a way as to suggest waning patience for an impertinent child. “Nothing short of a Union Blade will even come close to affecting me,” he shouted down.
Vays sprang powerfully, arcing for Parish and intending to satisfy Parish’s wish for a Union Blade.
“I know your style, Forbis Vays, and I can see exactly what you’re gathering and how long it’ll take for you to complete it. A shame for you that I’m faster.”
Parish’s form stretched across space surreally, arriving to meet Vays in mid-arc, stopping him cold at the end of his Dust Punch. The tip of Parish’s right thumb had struck the armor plating covering Vays’s sternum, sending out ripples, shock waves that had a strange quieting effect on all around. Parish took hold of Vays, and held him suspended in the air, leaning close.
Vays could not move. The Titan Saber lost all the power he’d invested in it in an instant and fell from his hand, spinning lazily till it uselessly stabbed the waves of dust below.
“The discrepancy in ability makes this rather like murder, doesn’t it?” Parish whispered in his ear. “Do you recognize it when you’re on the other side of the equation? Do you feel it, Forbis Vays? Do you feel the very molecules that make your body whole releasing their bonds one by one, causing you to disintegrate? And do you know how easy this was for me to accomplish?”
Vays could not speak. Trying to do so merely expedited the process of decay. His newly remade body was coming apart, just as Parish had said. Emotions spiraled in his head as everything seemed to get further and further away. He was retreating, feeling cheated, feeling wronged, feeling small, hollow, and so very alone.
Parish slapped at Vays’s head, sending him back down, but the wind caught him and spread him in a spray of dust before he could reach the ground.
“You. . . you killed him!” Scanlan cried out from within Gran Mal.
“Yes, I did. Just as he killed Spaier Waice. At least it was a proper fight, though, however one-sided. Waice didn’t get that benefit.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
Parish nodded, but didn’t care. “Do you know why I started with Forbis Vays and not you?”
Scanlan shook his head uncertainly.
“First, let’s dispense with the wrapper, shall we?” Parish swept his right hand in a grand flourish and all of Gran Mal fell beneath the semblance of a heat haze that didn’t burn, but destroyed nonetheless. As with the rest of Scanlan’s machines, Gran Mal, within seconds, took on the aspect of a derelict structure, abandoned ten thousand or more years ago. The plates forming Gran Mal’s shell crumbled and poured off in waves of dust, pooling below and sending up plumes. The head enclosing Scanlan disintegrated. Scanlan employed his own powers to keep himself aloft, holding himself in a fetal ball as everything came down around him. The Gran’s reinforced skeleton still stood, but none of the steel remained true. Everywhere it sagged or drooped, groaning under its own prodigious weight, buffeted by the winds that persisted.
When it was done, Scanlan was still in the air and gawking at Gran Mal’s fate.
“Your machines, your Gran, despite its Vine Ganglia: they’re lifeless. They could offer no resistance to my power. The spark of life, on the other hand, is the key to defense against the forces I control. Vays was a thug. The life that permeated his being was as an afterthought. With the creation of a Union Blade, he begins to have the means to combat me, but as we have seen, that didn’t work out too well for him. But Gilf Scanlan, despite your compromised form, you command your spark as a virtuoso. Your Artifact perfectly supplements this. I don’t fear you, but you will take some effort to destroy. Worst of all, though, is the paradoxical combination of life and non-life, which characterizes the Emperor. I’m afraid my former colleague, Pylas Crier, with his more aggressive style, was better suited to dealing with that than I am. We each use the talents we’ve cultivated, though, and it wouldn’t do to turn away at the first sign of difficulty. Everything in its time, in proper order.”
“You don’t have to do this, Wil Parish,” Scanlan said.
“Oh, but I do. Besides the Emperor, you are all that’s left to bring this story to a close. You have been a great asset to the Empire, have saved it more than once from extinction, but you won’t be doing so again. You are too dangerous. You should be proud, though. That’s a compliment, and I rarely give those.”
Parish paused and eyed Scanlan carefully. When satisfied, he resumed speaking, but at a very leisurely and conversational pace.
“Do you know anything of the Divine Pattern Fist? I mastered the soft style in my far-away youth and have continued practicing it for the last 10,925 years. It’s funny that Pylas learned the hard style and I the soft when our personalities were so oppositely aligned, but of course—and history supports this—Govan Jay knew what he was doing. Anyway, with your highly-evolved brain and supplemental computing power, perhaps you can begin to understand that I’ve become rather proficient at Divine Pattern. As you’ve no doubt noticed, Divine Pattern isn’t just about punching and kicking. It’s about perceiving and altering patterns. Just as I could see exactly what Forbis Vays was doing when he was building his Union Blade, I can see the internal changes you’ve been so busy making to your own body. I can see that you’ve developed an emitter housed in that shiny new arm of yours. I’ve been gracious enough to let you finish. I’ll even hold still for you, so by all means, go ahead and shoot.”
Scanlan hesitated, then leveled his right arm at Parish, fingers splayed. A convex lens, like a jewel set within the steel of his palm, flashed. Where Parish had been, a stony gray shape with a blistered, uneven surface and matching in rough contour Parish himself, appeared, immediately dropped, and sank into the dust sea below.
“There,” Parish said, whole and undamaged, from behind Scanlan. “Are you satisfied?”
Scanlan balked at the sound of Parish’s voice. He turned to face him as he shot away, covering himself in a variety of energy screens he hoped would protect him from Parish’s power.
“Were you to succeed in bonding all of my constituent parts,” Parish continued, “which would be quite a feat since only some of me is currently here on this planet, you could not eradicate my consciousness, which is all I would need to eliminate the bonds you worked so hard to create. I suggest that you focus your creative genius on trying to survive, Gilf Scanlan.”
“You’re a monster,” Scanlan blurted. He was afraid for the first time since becoming a Shade.
Even his brush with Raohan La, though he’d been reduced to little more than brain and Artifact, hadn’t had the effect that Parish was now having on him. Part of that was because of Parish’s reputation and the extent of his own knowledge of Parish’s mastery over molecular bonds. He didn’t know much about the Divine Pattern Fist or its particulars, but Parish’s prowess was well-documented.
Parish shrugged. “I am, but not for what I’m about to do to you.”
Scanlan worked to master his fear. He had all the vast resources of the Creation Cogs at his disposal and was confident that one of his tacks would prove successful. Small, spider-like machines began blooming like time-lapsed boils upon the brushed metal of Scanlan’s face. These multiplied and connected with one another to build a heavy apparatus covering his eyes and which was faceted with several, forward-facing lenses. A pinpoint light shone from one of the lenses, pulsing rapidly. If he couldn’t confine him, he’d isolate and destroy him.
The wrappings covering Parish’s face began to emit thin wisps of smoke. Parish laughed. “With enough time and if they were all here, you could destroy my every molecule, but unfortunately neither condition can be met. In fact, you’re out of time, Scanlan. I told you to defend yourself.”
Parish lanced through the air, stretching across space as he had during his bout with Vays, and drove his Dust Punch through Scanlan’s three energy screens, which ate away the wrappings to reveal an arm of throbbing purple light. Scanlan gawked at the inefficacy of his defenses as Parish’s fist sank through the workings of the exposed Creation Cogs, his thumb striking something vital within. Parish retracted his arm, backed away slowly, still hovering, as Scanlan’s screens winked out in succession. In an instant, the Creation Cogs burst into a puff of dust, hollowing out Scanlan’s chest chassis. As Scanlan began to fall, his remaining flesh and blood liquefied, discoloring and rotting. His machine parts came apart and rained down like a scrap dump.
Parish regarded the Palace. “Good luck, Holson.”
14
THE VISCAIN EMPEROR
10,923.026.1330
Planet 1612 (Loss)
Root Palace (Aurinel Coast)
Jav shot for the Palace, a fiery streak raising a wake in the dust sea. As he passed over the courtyard gate, the Palace’s environmental barrier filtered his trailing flames, causing them to well up against the wall and upon what appeared to be thin air. No matter. He reignited the Fire Circuit, enveloping himself once again and giving birth to a new blazing tail.
He struck the face of the Palace, his flames once again buffeting the Vine fiber, but this time, they continued on with him inside, boring a char-black tunnel. He burst through the doors to the Emperor’s chamber, knocking them from their frame and filling the chamber with liquid, spiraling fire.
The giant gourd, usually fixed to the back wall of the chamber, wailed in protest at the intrusion, and was already moving, dislodging itself from the wall. The fleshy shape rose at the top of a body made up of bundled lengths of bent and crooked driftwood, creaking and cracking with every movement, ready to receive whatever was coming. And indeed, with an outstretched left hand of sharp, jutting branches, the Emperor caught Jav, piercing his side in the process.
Jav was immune to the firestorm he’d admitted, but the raging flames scored the entirety of the chamber and the Emperor himself, knocking him back. Taking advantage of the momentum, Jav pulled himself free of the Emperor’s fingers and dropped to a crouch on the floor.
The fire, product of a Gran or not, seemed only to annoy the Emperor with its noise and tumult. As the last of it battered his carved features, he took a step forward.
Holding his side, Jav stood. He marveled both at the Emperor’s new proportions and his ability to catch him in spite of the Charge Circuit. He wondered if anyone had ever seen the Emperor in this state.
The Emperor towered over Jav, staring down at him from a height of twenty meters. Dark purple veins pulsed beneath the skin of the otherwise pale, fleshy gourd, and the driftwood more than passingly resembled misshapen bones.
“Jav Holson,” the Emperor thundered. “Consider what you do.”
“It can’t be that you fear me,” Jav said.
“You do not understand.”
“There’s still plenty that I don’t, it’s true, but I know enough.”
“Do you?” Do you not feel that your progress has been. . . easy?”
Jav regarded the blood freely flowing from his side, the cold creeping through his body, radiating out from the wound he’d received time and again, either odds-defying in its placement or really just a connection to a terrible truth that was beginning—or had been struggling for some time—to assert itself. “No, I don’t. I’ve got several new scars and some aching old ones that speak to the contrary.”
“Turn away Jav Holson, for both our sakes. Be content with what you have done thus far. Return to your Loss Queen. Live a full life.”
“Not before I’m done here.”
“If you proceed you destroy us both.”
Jav cocked his head. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded almost as if the Emperor was on the verge of pleading for his unnatural life. How could that be?
“You’ve already gone to great lengths to destroy me,” Jav said, “and yet here I am. I think it’s only fair that I return the favor, at least as long as I’m able.”
“But that is exactly it, Jav Holson. Do not pursue your revenge.”
“Revenge? There may be some of that mixed in, I’m not so naïve to think that I’m above it, but more than for me, this is for justice.”
“There is no absolute justice. It is a human construct, a tool to help perpetuate the species.”
“That’s not an argument against it.”
“Perhaps not, but I am not human. I am essentially selfish and even in this incarnation I wish to continue. But you, too, can continue. I promise not to harm you,” the Emperor said, and then his tone changed, becoming desperate, “but you must give up this notion of destroying me—for both our sakes!”
Jav paused to consider this. He was beginning to understand the nature of the recurring ache in his side and the numbness that always came. Though he’d denied it, he was beginning to understand why both he and the Emperor might have considered his progress to have been perhaps too easy. The numbing cold had spread throughout his body now and broke suddenly like a reverse fever. He was out of time. If he walked away as Samhain suggested, the Kaiser Bones might be coaxed into healing him, but it would only be temporary. It had always only been temporary. There was only one thing to do, and he’d known it from the beginning. He held his hands out before him, preparing for the Kaiser Claw.
“Samhain,” he said. “Even if it means my own destruction, I can’t—I won’t—turn away. You’ve used me to kill too many, but I share the guilt. I might last a week, a month, even a year, but I couldn’t face the Loss Queen or myself if I allowed you to continue in this incarnation or any other.”
The forces between Jav’s hands were growing and growing, warping the space in the Emperor’s chamber, causing the limited instances of color to bleed in running swaths. Jav bent his knees to spring and time seemed to slow. The Fire Circuit at his sternum erupted, covering him in a sheath of liquid flames. The Charge Circuit engaged, and despite Jav’s real-time speed, the Emperor watched as he approached, as he moved up a fixed diagonal, easily tracked but impossible to escape this time.
“Nooo,” the Emperor cried, raising his spindly arms of bleached wood in a failed attempt at defense.
Jav struck the Emperor’s face with his outstretched hands, the powers of the Fire and Charge Circuits converging with that of the Kaiser Claw, and reality shattered like a pane of glass. Dark shards holding fragments of the Emperor’s image fell away to reveal a blinding white light into which Jav disappeared.
15
THE END
10,923.023.1800
Planet 1612 (Loss)
Sanga Mountains • Loss Tower
&
nbsp; Lagrein, stripped of his Totem, burst into the chamber. He was panting, his short hair was mussed and sweat-spiked, his neck was a livid purple. He stopped at the threshold and gawked at what he saw.
Champagne sat upon the floor with Jav Holson’s head in her lap. Jav still wore the Kaiser Bones, but his helmet lay beside them, upright and staring sadly with its fixed sockets, bearing witness to truth and tragedy. Wet blood washed his chin and both sides of his mouth. He convulsed and fresh blood oozed again from either side. Tears streamed down Champagne’s cheeks as she absently stroked his hair, attempting to comfort him.
His eyes asked the question he was unable to voice, and she obliged him with an answer.
“You were placed in the superposition: simultaneously here, dying in my arms, and out there, fighting your way through your former allies to the Viscain Emperor. Two possibilities, both equally true; one dimmed, the other allowed to flourish. But even with the resources of the Tower at my disposal, I could not make this permanent, or force the desired possibility to certainty. It was an experiment of sorts, and the results were. . . spectacular. You exceeded all expectations,” she said smiling through her tears and shaking her head. “You are the man I’ve been waiting for for so long. You kept your promise to me and to yourself, living exactly as long as you needed to. Your wounds, those sustained before you arrived here, were beyond my ability—anyone’s ability—to heal, and the two possibilities, both projected from the same source, necessarily collapsed back into one reality. This is as it must be.” She stared down at him, wishing things could be different. “I will wait for you.”
She bent to cradle his head in her arms and press her cheek to his as she sobbed. He feebly reached up with his right hand, brushing her soft black hair with his fingertips, trying to return her embrace. She felt his muscles convulse, and knew he was struggling for words now.
The Loss Queen (Approaching Infinity Book 5) Page 23
