“So, little dog, finally run out of mountain, haven’t you?” Paine mocked me some more.
Guess I had.
Cold up there.
We really go up this behemoth that quickly?
Guess we did.
My breath was frosty and the wind whipped at my geomancer’s coat. Paine’s laboratory coat as well, nearly perpendicular to the rest of him, looking all dirty and beat up, the hem frayed in a dozen places. He dropped his artifact satchel somewhere in the fighting. I’d lost my Anima Detection Lenses too. Still had my SDR on my finger. Not that it does me much good.
Still felt like I could go a few dozen mountains more . . . only I had just the one it looked like. Only way down was through Paine.
Down, down, down the mountainside.
On a one horse, open sleigh.
Laughing all the way.
Heh. Tell you what, Fate? When you do finally manage to kill me, please at least have the decency to not let my last thought be a Christmas carol lyric, okay?
Was a clear day.
No fog.
No storms.
Half a world away I felt a dragon smash into the walls of its cavern prison.
Nowhere else to run.
Pull off a multi-pool or die.
Slowly die. Wouldn’t be sudden.
Would be bloody.
Beaten blow by blow.
Belt whip by belt whip.
For your own good, boy!
“It’s fitting I suppose,” Paine considered our situation, “that this is what undoes you. Perhaps I was wrong . . . perhaps you were an enemy worthy of my might. All that and it is not the artifact, it is not the secrets of creation I have unearthed, it is skills I learned at our school, skills that they keep from us. I was born neither to mundanes, nor to the Old Mancy, yet I was wise and I listened. Do you know why they are so scared to teach you specifically the higher skills, little dog? Because they taught me! How I pestered them! How I begged, how I threatened to try it alone . . . eventually I had my Special Dispensation and eventually Plutarch himself taught me what no Hep had ever learned before.
“What a glorious day that was for me, the start of many glorious days in my career. But don’t you see? By teaching me, in a way they are killing you. Plutarch is burying the dagger in your heart himself. Knowing you, little dog, you still believe you have a chance. One chance in a million, but still a chance. That perfect first attempt at using a skill. Let me disabuse you of this notion. Never before in the history of the Elementalism has anyone, ever, pooled doubly on the first attempt. It is not like the other skills just hidden behind the Anima Quota, this is a rare and wondrous ability that only the best and brightest might accomplish.
“Despite my opinion of you when weighed against my intellect, I do admit you likely to be able, yet having gone weeks of practice without managing even a minute holding two separate pools in my mind . . . no, you do not have a one-in-a-million chance. You have a one-in-infinity chance. You would need to be beyond even the Greatest Power, beyond a Maximus, beyond even the dragons themselves. You are not that . . . you will never be that. You are a mistake, a mistake I am about to cleanse from creation.”
“Do love you a speech, don’t ya, Obadiah?” I was the one to mock him this time.
“Good, go out laughing, like the joke you are.”
“One-in-infinity, think it’s that high, do ya?”
“Yes,” he snarled, part dare.
“Or . . . instead of going for all of it . . . just knowing it’s possible to hold two pools at once, I could steal the second pool from my World-Breaker, couldn’t I? In other words: I could fucking cheat.”
Oh the look on his face.
Best one I ever saw on Obadiah Paine.
Better than when I dropped the warehouse on him.
That look of pure stunned, horrified weakness.
He couldn’t understand it.
Just like he couldn’t understand why Ceinwyn dropped the boulder on his head.
He was broken.
That part of his brain didn’t work.
It couldn’t accept defeat.
Couldn’t even understand the concept of defeat.
I pooled big. Go big or go home. Go big or die. Damn right! The World-Breaker did its half as I flipped it on. Always did its half. Quicker than I could even. Zip to the top of a mountain. On the top of the mountain and got to say, feeling like going back down that mountain right about now.
Hours of anima between them and I split it again and again. Still hard. Still pushing two halves into a whole, but not nearly as hard as filling both bowls yourself. Dear Mancy do I love me some cheating. Split and split and split. That was just my first onslaught. I had no second of weakness for Paine to exploit now. Days of anima flew at him. Kind of barrage you hear about from artillery in World War One. Kind of barrage made No Man’s Land.
All Paine could do was defend himself.
Turtle up, dodge, try to find some out.
This was the very reason I brought him here to the Geo Realm and finally the chance I hoped for had revealed itself. Maybe not one-in-a-million, maybe not one-in-infinity either, but one-in-a-billion? That’s Maximus kind of odds.
Half a world away the dragon stopped smashing against its cavern and instead it roared.
Unlike my retreat up the mountainside, there was no angle for Paine to run to. I covered all of them. Rocks, explosions, spikes, all types of madness and weapons and death. The earth struck at him over and over. Battered him. Beat him. Whipped him. Through all that pooling and all those attacks I advanced. Nothing fast about it this time.
At a walk.
As mundane as you get.
I savored it.
I held back.
Just enough.
Just enough to set myself so that when I reached Paine . . .
I grabbed his ass and I geo-surfed him down the mountainside. Pushed his face down into the rocks as anima tore the ground about us. Leaned in on his chest so it didn’t fare much better. I pushed at him and with anima, I carved myself a gash in the mountainside with Paine’s body.
He survived.
Long minutes of our descent and he survived it.
Just like me, he’s a God-King here.
Hard to kill.
He survived, but not without cost.
Bloody, beaten, broken.
All three.
Still had fight in him. Still counter-attacked when I thought he had nothing left.
Made me chew into him again, but this time I aimed at his gold-plated arm and his gold-plated leg, ripped both of them away, crushed them, shattered them into so many pieces they could never be reassembled.
He screamed as he crumbled. No words for it. No words he was capable of. Was only in his eyes that I saw them. Impossible. Somehow, he still pooled anima. I ever go down, I hope I go down like Obadiah Paine did. Fucker fought until the end.
Fucker fought beyond the end.
I balled up a whole two hours of secondary pool goodness in my fist and smashed him across the jaw with it.
Still conscious.
Still growled.
Still hated.
I was winded now.
I paused for just a second to catch my breath.
Watched in awe as Paine crawled towards me, only got one arm and one leg. No artifacts. Covered in blood. Face bruised more than mine had ever been. Nothing that looked like he looked should ever be able to move. Yet on he crawled toward me. Yet there he was, hand on my ankle, hissing, sputtering.
Knelt down to grab at him, look him in the eye.
Mistake.
Knelt down just far enough so Obadiah Paine could grab the World-Breaker and yank us out of the Geo Realm.
[CLICK]
Only . . . not back to Earth.
No, that’s my toy, Obadiah, you might turn the ignition, but I’m the one at the wheel.
Stopped us in the middle of the In-Between.
That nothingness hurricane of creation t
hat ain’t even got enough enough to be a Realm. Place where one second inside of it feels like eternity. Place where you can see what you are, where What You Are can be unmade a single knot at a time.
What is this? Paine thought. This is . . . too much . . . not me . . . not . . . everything . . .
Yeah, that was about as good a description of the place as you could get.
Everything. Nothing.
The In-Between.
No place for mortals.
Mundanes just self combust right on entry.
Intra . . . maybe last a few seconds.
Ultra . . . maybe a minute or two?
What you say we have ourselves an experiment, Obadiah? I asked him.
Take me from here! Please! he actually begged. Not here! Not like this!
DO NOT HESITATE, IT MUST BE DONE, came Meteyos’ voice from out in the void.
Can you feel them, Obadiah? Ain’t just him. They’re all here somewhere. All the Realms. All the prisons. All the dragons. Earth too. Just waiting if you have the will. Me . . . I don’t, not yet. One day maybe. You . . . shit, you surprised me just now, maybe you last five minutes floating out there without me. Think you up for it?
I felt him there.
The Broken One.
Felt every piece of him.
Felt every memory.
Felt every desire.
Felt the hate.
Of me now. Me above all else.
It cannot end like this, his being shrieked in rage.
A push knocked him away from the World-Breaker.
You ain’t the story, asshole, you’re just a chapter in mine.
Out he floated into that hurricane of creation.
There he died slowly.
Piece by piece.
I watched for a time, before my worry for the others in Eureka overwhelmed my need for revenge.
When I left him there was no man left, only a once man-shaped mote of light screaming in the darkness.
Session 180
If I was anyone else, without my history of corporal punishment and abuse, pretty sure Ceinwyn would’ve slapped me upside my thick head. As it was, her hand still twitched at the sight of me appearing exactly where I’d left the Earth, her ageless eyes warring between anger and relief.
Juxtaposition between the Geo Realm and Eureka was calming, even if that part of Eureka had seen better days. Looked like a battle took place there, but a battlefield is a whole lot better than the apocalypse of my own making I just left behind. Dead bodies, but far fewer. Burned out cars, crumbling buildings, even a water main burst. Was beautiful compared to the destruction I just abandoned.
Yeah, I went back to the city.
I had to see.
Had to find the crossover too.
After that, Eureka, even bruised, was so beautiful.
So was Ceinwyn Dale.
Standing tall waiting for me, clothes singed, blood speckled across her face, cut on her neck. Beautiful cuz it was her. She was alive and not dead at my feet with Catherine Hayes standing victorious instead.
Bit of a Schrodinger’s Kitty Cat, ain’t it?
Could’ve found anything.
What I found . . . was victory.
Victory of life and of blood.
How about that shit, Poug?
Ended up with both.
Not a flawless victory, not one without cost, far more messy than the personal victory I extracted from Paine as I let him drift off to his doom. Still . . . victory. Angry as she was over the stunt I pulled, defeat wasn’t present in Ceinwyn’s ageless eyes. No horrible news to share. No dead T-Bone or dead Vicky.
Could see it.
Could read it.
Even me.
Especially me.
Need to read them eyes to know if Mom is home.
Ain’t saying there weren’t dead.
Plenty of bodies to be seen as my gaze finally shifted away from those ageless blues.
Dead mancers, mancers most would say were past saving.
Or worse, Wilders trained illegally to form a private army.
Every prude on the Learning Council would turn their heads and give a snort.
Were dozens of dead Wilders surrounding us, all clumped together, especially near my improvised wall. Was still standing in places, others had crumbled under the first onslaught, giving a path for Paine’s forces to flow through, only to meet whatever conjurations my side threw at them. Some of the bodies were burned, others torn to pieces like they had been scratched to death. Saw one that had been zapped, dark scorch over its heart. Another with both arms ripped off. Bunch had just been shot, multiple times.
No Three Queens to be seen.
No Isabel.
Maybe deeper toward the city itself and away from the highway. Buildings over there hadn’t destroyed themselves after all . . .
Back behind me were more bodies and wounded, already being seen to by the living. Coyotes took the brunt of the attack it seemed. Or just couldn’t stand up as strong as even eight mancers did. Strength in numbers mean you gonna be sacrificing some numbers to win. SUVs took a beating, some of theirs, some of ours. One was still burning. Another looked like it had been blown in half, but by what I couldn’t be sure.
Place must look like a rainbow explosion with Anima Detection Lenses.
Still . . . we fucking did it.
I fucking did it in the Geo Realm.
They fucking did it in Eureka.
Didn’t want to. Didn’t plan on it.
But still . . .
It happened.
Victory.
Curator and his army got a bloody nose, got its balls shoved up into its throat by a swift, well-placed kick.
Ceinwyn wasn’t alone. She was in the middle of conversing with Vega and Mama Welf when I appeared. Generals at discussion after the battle is finished, counting their casualty lists and deciding what to do next with the army? March on Rome? Pillage the countryside? Sue for peace?
Now they just stared at me.
Vega like I was a long range, risky bet that had finally started producing a profit. A potential profit he saw before everyone else.
Mama Welf’s dark eyes were as wide as I’d ever seen them. Had her Lenses on still and I could only imagine what I looked like after all the anima I’d just unleashed against Paine. Still held a pair of nearly hour long anima pools, held over from the ride. Wasn’t as thick or as pure on Earth, but . . . still felt like I could make mountains crack if I needed to do the job. Lucky for Paine’s wild bunch they were already driven off, or I’d have shown them what a real prophet can manage when their false one just fell to pieces.
Ceinwyn . . . angry as she was, walking over and threw her arms around me. “You are such a bloody fool! You have to stop, King Henry! Do you understand? You’re going to get killed if you keep doing this!”
Didn’t know what to say to that or to another hug from her. “Everyone’s safe, right?” I double checked.
She finally released me, emotion again warring between slapping me or not. “A few wounds but nothing serious. Somehow. This . . . when you left, well . . . it was chaos. It’s a miracle, but no, no one is seriously hurt.”
Didn’t know I was so worried about what I might find.
Even with that blood, even with Paine dying like that, finally, something I never expected, something that tasted sweeter than I ever imagined, it all would’ve gagged me if I returned to find a dead friend. Or . . . worse . . .
As it was, I felt a retch in my stomach.
Same feeling I got after Paine beat me in the Pit.
Managed to hold it in this time.
Probably thanks to Ceinwyn’s hand on my shoulder.
Gonna have to beat her off of me so I can go see the others.
Val.
Needed to see Val.
Susan.
Wounds, what did that mean?
But alive!
Worry quickly gave way to elation.
To a canine grin.
/> “Everyone’s okay,” I said, chuckling, and no, I did not tear up in relief and if anyone says differently they’re a fucking liar.
Vega interrupted the reunion. “Where is the Curator?”
Ceinwyn blinked at that, remembering it wasn’t just me that had disappeared in the middle of that first surge of chaos earlier. “You . . . King Henry . . . did you?”
Her news for me was nice, but mine for her was better.
“He’s gone,” I told her. “He’s gone, Ceinwyn. No more Curator. No more Obadiah Paine.”
She closed her ageless eyes, overcome by emotion. Whether relief or more anger I’m not sure, but she couldn’t even open her mouth, much less talk.
Mama Welf nodded at me, apparently pleased. Moira von Welf. Wasn’t nearly as bloody as Ceinwyn was. No cuts. No bruises. Smelled a bit like she might have been in a fight, but didn’t look it. Except for a smudge of dirt on her forehead. Even with that, she still looked like she was ready for a ball.
My brother-in-law was the one who took that announcement the worst. Battle brought out emotions in him, the side he hid so well when his false face was in place and his lips were singing a little polite tune to distract you with. “Gone where? Left wherever you traveled to? Trapped? Or dead? I want a body! I lost over fifty Coyotes and have one-hundred wounded. All to kill him! And for what? Where’s our trophy?!?”
I gave some canine grin his way. “Glad to see you too, Vega. Listen, I threw him down a fucking mountain. Broke him. Bloodied him. He tried to use the World-Breaker, but overrode him. Got him into the In-Between, how about that? Only nothing more. No escape from that place. Nothing at all in that place. I was the only thing keeping him together and then . . . I just let go and let his screaming, terrified ass to drift into the Void, pieces of his being disintegrating second by second. Was barely even pieces left by the time I took off. I think we can all admit he more than deserved it.”
“No body,” Vega rolled his eyes, cursing in Mexican.
“You that fucking scared of him, huh? Guess what? Your big, bad boogeyman begged me in the end. He’s gone. He’s done.”
“Proof!” Vega growled at me. “You don’t leave a body when what you seek is uncertainty or fear. But here . . . a body we could wave before all our allies and any of his that are still breathing, so valuable! We could have given it to your Council! We could have . . . what a loss. You killed him, I believe you, my brother, but you could have killed the myth as well. The myth lives and half his army is escaping as we speak. Under the myth, eventually they will gather again. You had something so precious, so rare in this world of ours, something even I have only had a few times in all my years and you just let it drift away?”
The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6) Page 81
