The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6)

by Richard Raley

  “Didn’t you hear the big man, Paine? Not that I ever gave a shit about his opinions much, but ain’t yours, asshole. Mine. My fucking problem. My fucking future. My fucking dragon. Not yours. You’re just a corpse don’t know when to die, worse than even a Construct. As for lying . . . yeah, never was good at it much, but these last years? What ya know? They did make a liar of me like all the rest. Yeah, I’m fucking good at it. Especially with you.”

  Never seen a rabid beast in this civilized world of ours, but that look on Paine’s face, the way he held himself, the hate, the rage, the pure misery of his intentions towards me, have to imagine that’s what rabid means in its purest form. “I will take it from you. I will take the mantle. I will take the World-Breaker. All of this . . . it will be mine. I will return to Earth and capture your friends. I will bring them and my army here and one by one I will conquer it all, only to return with a whole world at my knees, a whole world that just might be enough to free the rest of them.

  “You will be dead, little dog. But not your friends. They will be helpless here, won’t they? All of them, even anyone as strong as her, even your Valentine. Mundanes. Worse, baby birds unable to fly. Oh how they will be at my mercy, little dog. How I will hurt all of them. How I will make them cry your name.”

  He attacked with three different conjurations at once. One exploded a pile of iron ore in my direction, while the second and third both ripped into one of those three to four story buildings surrounding the bazaar. One attack to get me to shield myself, a follow up to try to crush me shield or not.

  What I do?

  Said ‘fuck you’ to defense and I attacked. Geo-surfed right at him, lightning quick as the building started to topple in my direction and the iron zipped on by behind my back. Forward, speed you can only manage with pool after pool chained together, a possibility you only realize exists from familiarity with this place.

  Jumped off my board with another filling pool, immediately lunging at Paine with iron fist and iron feet and iron elbows in combination. He blocked them all with his gold-plated arm, my punches hard enough to break bone, but not metal. Especially since my anima seemed to slide off of it. Did something to your artifact arm to counter my favorite move, did you? That scared of me, were you, Obadiah?

  Jumped back away from him, threw some smaller geo-mines haphazardly around him so piercing them wouldn’t be enough. Couldn’t pierce one without letting the other four explode all around you. Might not kill you, but it would hurt a hell of a lot.

  Building finally hit the bazaar. Screams had never been louder. Tried not to think about them. Just kept my dirt eyes on him. On those geo-mines. Through the rising fog of dirt and smoke and blood. Die easy, you can do it, I’ll even tell everyone you fought me for hours if you want.

  Not easy. War, remember?

  Paine threw another conjuration at his feet, one I’d never seen. A lot like a geo-mine, only . . . quicker, less violently coiled. Off it went and Paine arched up into the air, long ass jump shooting him away from my five small explosions. He didn’t land gracefully, but the remaining geo-anima in him did keep him from getting hurt in the fall.

  We both stood, watching the other.

  Fog.

  Smoke.

  Blood in the air.

  Yeah, that’s how it’s gonna be, Obadiah.

  And it was.

  Not sure the exact time, but back and forth we went. Chaining together attacks, chaining together defenses; counters hard, counters flexible, counters soft. Whatever we could get our hands on or if that didn’t work just with anima itself. Buildings. Plumbing. Street-lamps. A rock. A bit of dirt. A spare discarded gem purse. A dropped knife. A glass window from a tavern we passed by.

  Violence on a scale I’d never seen in my life.

  Aimed at me.

  Done by me.

  Through a city paying the price.

  A few times he almost got me.

  That spare second when I was out of anima.

  Such a near call.

  I never came close to catching him. Whatever I did, whatever I tried, it was like he always had anima to cancel it out, or some previously unknown conjuration I’ve never heard of before, much less seen performed. It was the anima that bothered me most. Called myself the God-King of this place and I was. So was Paine. Somewhere in that chaos we both realized that with direct shields of geo-anima backed up by more thrown into our bodies, we were damn near impervious. Could just bring whatever was flying at us to a halt.

  Not a scratch.

  Kitty Cat did more damage to me before we even got here and that was just paper-cuts.

  Couldn’t find it in me to give a shit about these people, not if it meant Paine winning, but he was the one that liked dropping the buildings on top of me. No matter how many cried out from inside them as he did so. Me, hadn’t gone that far. Not that I’ve bothered to keep any of the buildings standing yet either. Not a hero, not a beast. Just somehow stalemated by someone I should be able to overpower. Maybe not right away, didn’t think that, but eventually, right?

  Only it wasn’t coming.

  Paine always had enough in reserve.

  Eventually, we reached the outer wall.

  Like any good part of the Geo Realm, this city was built in pretty mountainous land. Also like any good part of the Geo Realm, seemed like they were always worried about clans similar to the Brightsword or perhaps animals even worse than armadillo-wolves. City surrounded by walls. City surrounded by mountains. Perfect place to have this fight . . . except for the city part.

  Wasn’t tired, couldn’t tire here.

  Neither of us could.

  Felt like it had been a long time, but . . .

  No, minutes.

  Only minutes.

  Hours of anima spent in seconds.

  Days of anima spent in minutes.

  Months of anima . . .

  Years of anima . . .

  Buildings I left alone, but those walls I called fair game. Big ass boulder after big ass boulder piled on top of one another. Ripped them out and threw them at Paine’s head. He did the same. Both of us screamed as we were battered in turn. Maybe even wars have some fight in them. Punching with anima as it were. Punching with the earth itself. Again and again and again.

  Give in.

  Kneel.

  Break.

  Neither of us would.

  Hour long pools turned into two hour long pools.

  Dangerous for me.

  Two second gap instead of one second gap.

  How is he doing it?

  Something wasn’t right.

  Tried to split my large pools in two, but Paine still blocked my counter attacks. Geo-mines, thrown stones, spikes of metal ripping right up from the ground. Along the wall we fought now, dismantling it as we went.

  Even with learning geo-surfing over the last six months I never could have anticipated the movement of it all. The speed. Even the angles of attack we developed against each other. Everything we were taught at the Asylum, even everything I experienced since my graduation couldn’t compare. It was all very logically based around straight up encounters, mancer versus mancer in a single room. Almost like a duel really. Even at the final lesson plans when we finally got to group tactics of attack and defense in Elementalism as a Weapon or during Winter War training, it didn’t come close to reaching even a single percent of what Paine and I threw at each other.

  At first I stuck with my geo-surfing and he with his springboard, but at some point one of us copied the other, can’t even be sure if it was me or him or the other way around. The whole idea of the dirtboard even evaporated, geo-anima directly infused into feet as we smashed and grinded and threw our way about. It wasn’t beautiful, it wasn’t a feat of agility like some ballet or dance, but a demolition derby only made possible by strengthening conjuration after strengthening conjuration as we wheeled and pinballed into objects, sometimes barely keeping from doing so face first.

  Still, the speed.

&
nbsp; The angles.

  One moment attacked from the side, then the back, then from the front again.

  It wasn’t just with movement where we copied, evolved, or died, it was with attacks and defenses too, all sorts of conjurations. Replication, sometimes even experimentation. What was at first blocked soon became deflected, what was deflected was soon grabbed and thrown back, even slingshotted in a different direction.

  It was a maelstrom of destruction and Paine and I were at the center of it.

  Around and around we went.

  Moving, moving, always seeking another attack.

  For me, bigger attacks.

  For him, a greater number of them.

  “Look at you!” he taunted when we paused outside the city walls. “All your stolen strength! All your stolen power and what can you do with it? You’re an untrained babe. A weakling. A slave to their rules and you’re about to die because of it!”

  Couldn’t see any Black Elves now.

  Living or dead.

  Couldn’t hear any proclamations from Meteyos now.

  Advice or damnation.

  Just me and Paine.

  Catching our breath.

  A twisting, bloody, rampage of a path behind us.

  Just follow the screaming.

  Still the screaming.

  Still the laughing.

  “How are you doing it?” I asked.

  “No, no,” Paine mocked me, “not this time. No Question and Answer. Just death, death because she and all the others like her bowed before the Divines, because they limited us, limited you to protect their Quota. And why? Look at this place! Look at what we can do! We’re the gods here, not those red angels fallen from the skies! We were the gods there too once . . . listen to the dragon and he could tell you; how much I know, little dog, how much you’ll never learn because you dared to stand in my way.”

  I attacked before he did.

  Almost got me killed.

  Again, what Paine did seemed impossibly quick.

  I had a feel for his pools and knew mine were almost twice as large as his and yet . . .

  We pooled at the same speed and yet . . .

  Somehow he blocked the full weight of my attack and had enough left to send a boulder at my head.

  Know why I didn’t die?

  At my head, not at my chest.

  Know why I didn’t die?

  Four inch indent in the ground I stumbled into.

  Know why I didn’t die?

  Cuz I’m so fucking short.

  That’s why.

  Right over the top of my head in that perfect window where I was anima-less.

  Block and attack, almost simultaneously.

  I stood there shocked, realizing how lucky I’d been.

  Paine snarled, also realizing how close he’d been.

  He came at me, same move. Over and over. No, it wasn’t a split pooling. It was something else. Had a different beat to his pooling now. Didn’t look or feel like split pooling either. Something else I hadn’t unlocked yet. Another trick they hadn’t taught us. Same one Paine taunted me with during our last Question and Answer in the Ouroboros?

  Try learning something new or figuring out a formula while someone is shooting paintballs at your head. That’s what I was going through. Forget massive pools, I couldn’t risk them. Even a second of weakness was risky. Purely defensive, purely on the back foot, purely King Henry Price retreating, backwards and backwards.

  Along that city wall for awhile and then up into hills, finally up the side of some canyons.

  Fleeing, dodging, jumping, surfing, whatever it took to survive as Paine gained the advantage. Showed him what I had, he formulated a strategy to beat my hand, and now here it is. Sure enough, it was kicking my ass pretty good. As much as a God-King of the Earth could get his ass kicked at least. Being knocked about more than I wanted, being corralled. I fled to higher, more defensible ground and away from the city—what you know, do have a little hero in me after all—but now Paine was the one pushing me.

  Higher.

  Higher.

  Up a mountain.

  Days of anima.

  Weeks of anima.

  Whole lives of anima.

  An hour every other second.

  Time had no meaning, but it wasn’t taking nearly as long as it felt like.

  Flying by, flying like I was flying to avoid my death, just without my geo-strengthened feet ever leaving the ground.

  “What will you do, little dog?” Paine called after me. “No one here to save you this time! No earthquake that can harm me. No buildings to drop on my head. Look at how outmatched you are. Where is your precious dragon? He saved you the last time, didn’t he? He won’t now! Want me or not, he will be forced to have me. It is my mantle! It is my crown! My world to break if I choose it!”

  World-Breaker.

  Still had it in my hand.

  “Yes, flee, little dog!” Paine mocked me. “Flee back to the Earth! Admit I’m your better!”

  On Earth the World-Breaker was about as useful an artifact as has ever been made, but here it would just complicate things, it would just be another pool of anima . . .

  Fucking god damn son-of-a-bitch, I thought.

  More than one pool of anima.

  That’s what Paine was doing.

  He was pooling twice.

  At the same damn time.

  Which should be impossible, except . . . except everything else that was supposed to be impossible.

  And why not?

  Why stop at just trying to pool once?

  You couldn’t restart a pool after you stopped, but who said you couldn’t have more than one at a time?

  Just the kind of in-your-face obvious shit that the Asylum likes hiding from people ain’t in the know. Need to know the secret exists to be able to solve it, ain’t that the way it’s been these last couple years?

  Extended pools.

  Split pools.

  Holding a pool outside your body.

  Multiple pooling.

  That only the strongest Ultras can manage.

  Even more dangerous than all the rest.

  It was . . . like splitting your brain in half. Or your soul, if you have one, not sure if Paine does. Splitting your brain in half, being ambidextrous, pleasing two women at exactly the same time. Even guessing it, even knowing it for a certainty . . . well, one way to get that information. “On to your game, Obadiah! Multiple pools, is that it?”

  He snarled instead of answering, driving me back up the mountain. Mountain I was quickly running out of.

  Like I’ve said . . . moving fast.

  Words don’t do it justice.

  CGI might, but like I got the budget for that shit, ya know?

  Just these words.

  Words that become ideas.

  Ideas that might save my life up on that mountainside.

  Only . . . multiple pooling.

  Not an easy leap to make.

  Not like with the others and even then I was shit at it for a long while with a lot of practice to make perfect. Even as dangerous as some of the situations I was in, none were this dangerous. None had my fellow God-King trying to crack my head open with every rock on this mountainside.

  Know how many rocks are on a mountain?

  A fucking lot of them.

  As intimate as our war had become, Paine was well aware of my thoughts. Well aware how near I was to risking an attempt and in that attempt was perhaps, just perhaps the slightest chance of his defeat. I was stronger. Only ignorance kept him as my equal. How that drove him mad. How that made him growl as he kept on the attack, kept pushing me to the summit.

  How you like this fantasy shit, Val?

  Could see the city from up here.

  What was left of it.

  Most of it was still standing. Just had this lightning-like scar across the streets that cared not a whit about buildings or roads or thoroughfares. Less than cared about them, looked like whatever had done it really did
n’t like it any civilization. Wasn’t just what we had done directly, but all the rest. Rioting for sure, some of it religious and some of it just the common frustrations of the peasant class having enough of this shit. Fires . . . all over the place, smoke rising in plumes, since how many of those buildings Paine knocked over had fireplaces? Quite a lot of them. Was an exodus as well . . . three roadways out of the city and all of them were packed with dark masses of fleeing civilians.

  What ya know. Meteyos ain’t Godzilla, I’m Godzilla.

  Or Paine is.

  Which makes me King Kong, I guess.

  Yeah, that’s what I thought about looking down on all that shit.

  That’s what I thought about with my life on the line.

  Godzilla and King Kong.

  I’m deep, yo!

  I threw myself out of a crevasse Paine formed under my feet just before the whole bit of earth rose up and tried to swallow me whole. Told you, we’d reached a new level of experimentation and mutation here. Anima conjurations the likes of which I would have to spend months working out in my head. If my head had the space for it. If my head was still on my shoulders.

  Multiple pools, should be thinking about multiple pools.

  Felt wrong. Felt wrong in a way extended pooling never had. That just made you feel stoned. Felt wrong in a way split pooling never had. That just made you dangerous company to be around. Felt wrong in a way holding a pool back never had. That just hurt you. This . . . this felt like it defied the natural order. You were a mancer and you had one pool of anima to fill. Simple.

  But this . . . two pools. Three pools?

  Pretty sure Paine was just using two of them.

  Made his max per pool smaller I think. But adding both together made the cumulative total larger and the adaptability it gave you, especially in the Geo Realm where all this fighting took place around a single second of vulnerability . . . on Earth it would be less impressive, outside of the total anima you could hold. But here, in the Geo Realm that second of vulnerability was everything and by being able to pool twice in staggered rotation, Paine removed his vulnerability.