Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm

by John C. Wright

  4. Dangersense

  Penny stood up in a slither of silk, her face pale and motionless as ice. For once, she did not look sexy to me; she looked like she was scared to death and needed help. She spoke without moving her lips. “I did not think there was another one of you in this world. With everything being readied for the invasion of Albion, I thought — never mind! I cannot tell you where he might hear. And I must not fall alive into his hands.”

  I pretended I had a booger or something on my nose, so that I could scrape my shoulder against my face without taking my hands off Dancing Maiden. While my mouth was hidden, I muttered, “He who? I can take him.”

  “Your brother,” she whispered.

  “Dobrin? Alexei?”

  “No, one of your kind. One you cannot defeat.”

  I snorted. “Oh really? Just watch me.”

  “He’s like you. Unkillable. You. Can’t. Win.”

  “Will you kiss me if I do?”

  Her eyes flickered with anger and her voice was cold as she glared at me. “Your infatuation is what put me in this danger! This is serious!”

  “You think I ain’t serious about that kiss?” I demanded.

  I flicked my eyes toward the red cloud. It was still hanging high, coating the sides of the dome, reaching down very slowly with arms of smoke, like rusty poison seeping into a wineglass. “What is he waiting for?” I wondered aloud. “How can he see us?”

  Then I knew. That sense of being watched, that creepy feeling like spiders crawling up my spine; it was the same ghostly sensation I had gotten during that one moment when I had felt and could move my severed hand. In my mind, sort of as a joke, I dubbed it “The Quickening” but when they make the movie version of my life, they’ll have to call it something else, to avoid copyright issues. It should really have a cool pseudoscientific name, like teleproprioception, but for now let’s call it weird-beard freak-o-nightmare sensation.

  I said, very softly to her. “My spidey senses are tingling. He’s curious. He wants to know — something.”

  Penny drew a deep breath, and said loudly, “The Dark Spirit that rules your world! No doubt you are desperately eager to know the secret of how one of your kind, the Lalilummutillut can overcome and usurp his power, and become supreme of your world?”

  “Ah — Am I? I mean, yes! Yes, I am! Supreme in my world? Sign me up!”

  The dark red stain was now traveling down the dome, reaching with its many arms of smoke. But when I said that, it slowed, watching, waiting.

  In case I did not make this clear, I also could feel the hate coming off the creature. Intent as an unblinking eye of a watching cat, it was ferocious, silent, filled with fury and malice that had no purpose, no object: it radiated a hatred that was pure, and had long ago forgotten its purpose. Hate that just existed for its own sake.

  “Can you get the women out of this room?” I whispered to her.

  “Maybe, but if I signal to them he might attack.”

  Penny looked toward the other girls. She flicked her gaze toward a large archway that led into a darker chamber opposite the gallery, maybe a wardrobe or dormitory. I couldn’t tell what it was. It was very subtle, or perhaps the girls had some sort of prearranged signal. By twos and threes, moving quietly, barefooted teenagers in metal collars fled out of the room, the bigger ones holding smaller girls by the hand.

  It should have worked, but it didn’t.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Brother Abomination

  1. Blood Storm

  The red cloud moved with startling speed, swirling together like a tornado, suddenly becoming a spinning funnel of blood which touched down before the arch and blocked the way. Perhaps ten girls were still in the darker sleeping quarters, and the other forty were with us here in the domed torture garden. They were all screaming.

  I was already running. I somehow felt the cloud of blood decide to move before it went anywhere. I placed myself in between the red vertical whirlpool of medical waste and the shrieking women, then I waved them back. They obeyed without hesitation. The screams of the ten girls in the dark chamber behind the blood-tornado suddenly fell silent. I don’t know if it had somehow killed them, or if they had fallen silent for fear of drawing its attention.

  I heard bare footfalls slapping the floor behind me as the girls rushed pell-mell away from the thing. The whirling funnel of blood tilted like a top made of liquid, and moved to my right, as if to flank me. I moved with it, keeping myself between it and the women.

  I set my feet and drew my sword and assumed the stance called Heaven-and-Earth, holding the blade overhead, a vertical line of steel. “Your foe is here!” I shouted.

  Laughter came from the bubbling column of blood. It was the cruelest, most wild laughter I had ever heard.

  The blood clotted and thickened and organs formed in the middle of the goo. It turned into a red mud. Veins and nerves flickered through the surging mass. It smelled like an abattoir. I could feel the weird-beard sensation tickling all over my flesh, tugging at my organs, causing odd tides in my bloodstream. It was as if this thing, this Undying, were putting up a magnetic field to pull itself together, and that I was enough like it to be partly attuned, and feel the tug.

  I shouted to Penny, “Should I attack him before he forms?”

  She said back, quietly but clearly, “It does not matter what you do! Don’t you understand? The Undying are the most terrible of the servants of the Dark Tower!”

  “Have a little faith in me!” I said. Maybe my voice was rougher than it should have been.

  Scorn rippled through her tones. “When you’ve been doing so well so far?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You fell into that Moebius coil like an idiot!”

  “I was trying to save you!”

  “Since I command the Eden-light, I was in more danger from the rescue attempt than from the danger!”

  “Can you defeat that thing? Because I will!” I growled. “Whatever the hell it is…”

  Because now it was starting to look like something.

  “Get back with the other girls,” I snapped at her. “Use your witchy powers to protect them. I can beat him!”

  To my surprise, I heard her naked feet slapping the marble as she retreated. Was Penny actually listening to me? Did college girls have the ability to listen to high-school boys and obey them? Maybe if the emergency was desperate enough.

  2. Antediluvian

  The red mass pulled itself into a manlike shape, and flecks like dandruff formed on its surface like ice forming on a pond, congealing into webs of scar tissue. It was a blur of twisted organs and pulsating sacs in a rough apelike shape, as ghastly as something you might see in a modern art museum.

  Then a blobbish parody of a man with no features stood before me, faceless, trollish, and as hideously awful as a burn victim.

  Its flesh pulsed with an unseen power, a power of hate that I could feel tugging at me, and then the blob grew a distinct face, eyes, nose and mouth.

  He was a Neanderthal. He had shoulders like a linebacker, and deep-set eyes beneath supraorbital brow ridges, a jutting jaw like an ape’s.

  I laughed. Was this the best they could do? “I am taller than you,” I told him.

  He stood there a moment, glowering at me, and then he showed me two unexpected tricks. First, he squinted, and he made his hair of his head and jaw puff out like a cloud, or a slowly expanding smoke bomb. Then it formed itself into braids, and wrapped itself—there were yards and yards of hair—from left shoulder to right hip, and a fringe of beard and braids hung down to cover his groin.

  I wasn't impressed by the first one. “Nice hair, Rapunzel.”

  But his second trick was more impressive and it caught me off-guard. Without any warning, he suddenly ripped his left arm clean in half with his right hand. I am not kidding! He didn't show any sign of pain, and with his severed limb, he sent an arc of blood flying through the air right at my eyes.

  That's how I learned that I can p
arry liquid. My eyebrows, nose, and mouth were stinging with whatever acidic chemical was in his blood, but I instinctively flicked the blade in such a manner that it kept the burning blood out of my eyes.

  It was the best parry I had ever done, and no one ever saw it but him. When they make my life into a movie, I want a dramatic trill of bass notes at that moment. Better yet, if they make my life into a game, I want the ‘parry liquid’ skill to be something you can unlock after a side quest or something.

  Like I said, I didn’t blink. He tensed, but did not spring.

  The stinging sensation turned into burning fire across my cheeks and forehead. His blood, where it splashed me, seemed to have mutated into something that was trying to eat my flesh. It was not just a normal acid, as I could feel the malice within it, a sadistic drive to inflict pain for the sake of pain.

  But I had gotten the hang of how this world worked. So instead of panicking or running away, I called upon a higher, more powerful blood. “Precious Blood, ocean of divine mercy: Flow upon us! Precious Blood, most pure offering: Procure us every grace! Precious Blood, hope and refuge of sinners: Atone for us! Precious Blood, delight of holy souls: Draw us! Amen.”

  The glowering Neanderthal flipped the meat and flesh off the bone in his right fist, and the bloody mass crawled across his beard-covered body and reconnected at his left elbow stump. It only took a second. The left arm hung limp for a moment, then he flexed his hand, and I could see the new bone growing into place like seeing someone stuff a pool cue down a stocking. Then his left arm was good as new, and meanwhile his right fist was carrying a radius and ulna. The bones of the skeletal hand clenched themselves into a fist to form a nice bludgeon on the end.

  By that time, I was done with my prayer, and I felt myself forcing his vile essence out of me. His blood drops left me, and went back to him, and they flew through the air like red bees returning to the hive. He breathed them into his nose and open mouth.

  “That is a cute trick,” I said. “Rip your arm off and beat me to death with it. Is that your plan?”

  He glowered at me, his eyes squinting with crazy mad-dog wrath, his big square teeth clenched, his face pale with fury. He raised his bone club and took a step toward me: I shifted my weight to my back foot, and brought my blade into Chudan no Kamae, a middle stance, sword level and pointed at the foe, slightly above the waist. He stopped.

  I called to Penny without turning my head, “Can this guy talk? I thought they had the Ur speech power. Why doesn’t he have any canine teeth?”

  Penny said softly, “You are Antediluvians. You are vegetarians, and need consume no meat. Haven’t you noticed we have smaller teeth than you?”

  “Don’t remind me,” I muttered under my breath.

  The Neanderthal looked at me carefully, drew in a breath, and swelled up. I mean he got bigger by maybe three inches, maybe four, but growing in all directions. It looked terrifying.

  I think I would have run screaming from the room if his head had started to expand at that point. The degree of control he had over his body was freaking me out. I was wondering what he couldn’t do. Change into a chimera? Grow an extra heart? Extra limbs? Send an eyeball floating off by itself on spy missions?

  Instead he spoke, “Epushtu ikkan’ ayyu?” It was weird, but his accent and grammar were all different from the Ursprache that Abby spoke, but somehow the words still twisted themselves in my brain and I found myself understanding him, as easily as if I had remembered all along what his words meant. “What magic be yours?”

  I said, “My magic? I got rhythm. I got music. I got my gal. Who could ask for anything more?”

  He shook his shaggy head. “You be a yearling. You know not how to make the blood release its virtues. And yet when my blood was in you, it did not blind you or make the nine alchemical terrors in your brain. How do you fend my blood away? What magic be yours?”

  He meant the prayer I had used to focus my concentration. “Real magic,” I said. “This magic comes from the tree upon which they hung my Lord, and it is stronger than the tree whose stolen fruit gives you your power.”

  He said, “Tell me your name, yearling.”

  “You first.”

  “Your name be Yu Ferst?”

  “No. Who’s on First; What’s on Second;” I Don’t Know is on Third; and the shortstop is I Don’t Give a Damn. “You tell me your name before I tell you mine, fathead.”

  “I be Rahab.”

  I snorted. “So you be, be you? Well, I be Ilya. And I be kicking your butt now, unless you be nice and smart and just back away.”

  He shook his head. “Your blade be proof against the man-wolf. It hold no hurt for me.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  Rahab grinned. Between two lips of colorless gristle, his teeth were as square and yellow as the teeth of a cart horse.

  “Ilya be a boy, then? Boy be a fool, yes? Does the boy know which hand to wipe his bottom, which hand to eat? Does he know right hand from left?”

  “I'm the fool? The boy knows to use toilet paper. You should try it sometime.”

  Rahab pointed with his arm-bone club over my shoulder at something behind me. I kept my eyes on him. “That be your gal? Your toys?”

  “Everyone here is under my protection.”

  He held his left arm out and it grew longer and hairier until it was like an ape’s arm. “Can do with any part. Strong and thick. You get?”

  “Get what?”

  “Stupid boy! I to rip your head off. Prop it up there. Right there.” He pointed behind me. I kept my eyes on him. “Then I rut her. Rut her fierce. So fierce I break her inside, all crushed bone and blood jelly, yes? You see it. I will break her.”

  I heard a whimper from Penny. This is the girl who sailed around the world by herself. I did not think she was capable of such pure fear.

  Rahab smirked. “Doctors here learn how to change bodies from us, from Host who Yearn for Death in Vain. We make others yearn for death also. Once blood of Rahab is inside her blood, make her more nerves more feel more pain. Make her stomach acid dissolve this part and that part of her innards. Twist her bones like pretzels and snap them like sticks. Yearling Ilya—he be able to do any this thing? He stop me? No? Our kind, we fight blood to blood. How you fight me, little brother?”

  I was not sure how to respond to all that, so I resorted to that calm samurai stare my brothers use when they practice sword forms.

  Rahab was not impressed. “You know nothing. Make your hair grow long. Can Ilya do this? Can Ilya do anything?”

  “I can free you from your slavery to the Dark Tower. Would you rather be free or play Jack the Rapist for your masters?”

  3. Fate of Iron

  His face contorted with hatred.

  When I say his face contorted, don’t think that his eyes bugged out and his lips drew back from clenched teeth. No. Think of his eyeballs actually growing bigger, and the bone sockets and flesh surrounding his eyes expanding grotesquely to compensate. His mouth grew larger and his jaw increased its bone mass, so that the lower half of his skull deformed and pushed forward, and teeth grew larger, and yellower, and pointed, and the color of his lips went from red to black, and the muscles in his cheeks and the side of his face rippled and puffed up.

  It would have looked like something from a cartoon, except that a putrid, burnt smell was also coming from his flesh. And I knew I was seeing an incredible use of a power to control every cell in his body, maybe even every particle, and it was a supernatural power, indeed, an immortal power.

  I was so amazed that I almost missed what he was shouting. “There be no escape! All be slaves! There be slaves who know them chained. Me. There be slaves who know nothing. You. You cannot free anyone. There be no freedom. There is nothing but the stars and fate!”

  He drew a deep, shuddering breath, and hissed through his still-elongating teeth. “Your fate, you meet now.”

  4. First Round

  By the time he was done speaking, I could barely m
ake out the words, because his incisors had grown like the fangs of a saber-toothed tiger.

  He must have removed all the vertebrae of his neck at the same time, and replaced his neck cartilage with some sort of elastic membrane, because all of a sudden his head shot forward like a snapping cannonball, with a neck longer than a giraffe’s and powerful as the body of an anaconda behind it.

  Rahab tried to bite me on the neck, but his jaws, even though he had strengthened them like the jaws of a bulldog, could not penetrate my mail coif. I smelled the venom that pumped from his fangs, and heard the hiss of acid dripping from his tongue. But I also felt the ripple of chain links across my neck and shoulders, as the cunning metal armor moved more mass into that area, so my neck armor grew thicker.

  I had been trained not to look an opponent in the eye during the fight, but to use my peripheral vision and watch his hands. It was good for me at that moment that I did as I was trained, because I did not strike at the exposed four-yard-long neck—the obvious target—or at his right hand which held his truncheon. He started to swing, but it was a fake-out, because he passed the truncheon to a tentacle or tail he had been growing out of his back, sneakily out of my line of sight. This third arm came darting out suddenly from over his shoulder, snatched up the truncheon, and struck.

  I parried the blow and chopped the third arm off at the wrist. The truncheon hit the ground instead of hitting my helmet, and the white bone of the truncheon’s head turned into a black blood, which splattered across the marble, hissing and wriggling. That goo would have been all over my face, digging into my eyes and up my nose if I had taken the head-feint. I could feel the black substance, the hate of it, with my spidey-senses.

  Meanwhile, the saber-toothed tiger fangs had gotten caught in the links of my chain coif, or, rather, my smart armor had tightened on them. During the moment it took Rahab to eject his fangs, leaving them twitching at my neck like digger wasps, still injecting poison into me, I reversed my grip on my sword and slashed it through his neck. Halfway.