by Tim Waggoner
He turned his head and saw Adamantine had risen to her feet. She still held Wyld’s spear, and of course her gauntlet remained on her hand, but she made no move to employ either weapon against the monstrous thing that was killing her followers, men and women who had pledged themselves to her, who had chosen her as their god. And what was she doing? Nothing—just standing and watching as her followers died. The despair he’d been feeling was wiped away by a burning anger, and he rose to his feet and ran over to Adamantine.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted. “You’re a god! Save them!”
Adamantine whirled on him, eyes glowing a baleful blue-white, arcs of electricity wreathing her head like a deadly crown. Geoffrey didn’t shrink back from her display of fury, though. He didn’t care what she might do to him, he was too angry to care.
“Foolish man,” she said, nearly spitting the words. “You do not understand what is happening.”
“And you do?” he demanded.
“I think so, yes.” She grew calm once more and returned her attention to her followers. Their skins had become as black as the sand beast’s hide, and their convulsions had begun to lessen. Geoffrey knew it was only a matter of time now before they were dead, and not much time at that.
Adamantine continued watching her followers’ agony for several more moments, and then—without warning—she spun around in the opposite direction and thrust her spear forward into empty air. There was a cry of pain, and then a new wave of vertigo struck Geoffrey and a gray curtain descended over his vision once more. When it lifted, the desert was gone, taking with it the blazing sun, the stifling heat, and most importantly, the sand beast. Geoffrey stood inside the TechEdge store, not far from where the registers were located, and he was not alone. The five men and women who’d been poisoned by the sand beast lay on the tiled floor, their skins a normal color, with no sign that they’d been impaled by large, curved stingers. Strangers—six in all—stood or crouched next to them, each wielding TechEdge products as makeshift weapons. Laptops were the most common, but one man held a tower speaker like a club. He stood close to Geoffrey, the speaker raised as if he’d been preparing to bring it crashing down on Geoffrey’s head. But something had interrupted him, and he looked surprised, confused, and more than a little guilty. The laptops the others held were cracked and broken, and Geoffrey realized they’d used the devices to hit Adamantine’s followers over the head and knock them out. He doubted a single blow would’ve been enough to do the job. They’d probably had to strike their targets several times to put them down. Why hadn’t he seen or heard it, though? And what had happened to the sand beast and the desert?
Adamantine stood in the same thrusting stance she had a second ago, only now her spear was buried in the belly of a man wearing a white mask with small rectangular slits for the eyes and mouth. He was dressed entirely in black—jacket, shirt, pants, socks, shoes, even gloves—and a stream of blood ran from the spear wound and pattered onto the floor. He gripped the spear with both gloved hands, muscles straining as he tried to pull it out of his body, but despite his obvious strength, he couldn’t. Of the two, Adamantine was the stronger.
Geoffrey saw other people standing farther back in the store’s aisles, maybe two dozen of them, and he knew if they decided to attack, there would be nothing he could do to defend himself. But the men and women—along with several children—appeared to be unarmed, and they made no move to come closer, simply hung back and watched, expressions unreadable. That was fine with Geoffrey.
He saw a small object lying on the floor next to where the masked man stood, and he realized the man must have dropped it when Adamantine had thrust the spear into his body. He walked over, picked it up, and examined it. It was a DVD case for a movie called Sand Quake, and on the cover was a picture of a handful of people firing shotguns at the sand beast, which had burst forth from a desert floor to attack them.
The masked man turned to Geoffrey. “Have you… seen that one? It’s a great deal of… fun.” His words came out as pained gasps so soft that Geoffrey almost couldn’t make them out.
Adamantine sneered. “You want fun? This is fun!”
With a vicious yank she pulled the spear free of the man’s body, spun it around in her hands, and then struck him on the side of the head with the butt-end. The blow knocked his mask off and sent it flying, and he fell to the ground and rolled on his back, hands cradling his wounded belly. His mask hit the floor, bounced once, twice, then slid to a stop. Geoffrey stared at the man’s face, or rather, lack thereof. The skin was smooth and featureless—no eyes, nose, or mouth, not even a suggestion of them. Geoffrey didn’t know who the man was, but he knew what he was. Given everything that had occurred since they’d entered the store—not to mention his unsettling appearance, and the fact Adamantine had attacked him—he had to be another god.
Several of the faceless man’s worshippers moaned in despair at seeing their god brought low, but the guy with the speaker tower—the one who’d failed to bash in Geoffrey’s skull with it—shouted, “My lord Masque!” He started forward, as if intending to go to his god’s aid, but when he got to Geoffrey, Geoffrey stuck out his foot and tripped the man. He went down hard, his chin slamming to the floor. He groaned once and fell still. He’d dropped the tower speaker when he fell, and it had broken into several pieces upon impact with the floor. A shame, Geoffrey thought. It was probably expensive.
Adamantine straddled Masque and folded the sharp fingers of her gauntlet around his throat. Electricity crackled across the silver surface of the glove, and Masque writhed in pain.
“Geoffrey—fetch his mask for me like a good boy,” she ordered, not taking her eyes off Masque.
Geoffrey hurried to do as she asked. He ran over to the mask, picked it up, and carried it to her. The mask looked like it was made of white plastic, but it was warm and gave slightly beneath the pressure of his fingers, as if it were covered with a thin layer of flesh. He found the sensation most unpleasant, and he was happy when Adamantine took the mask from him.
She looked at the smooth surface of the god’s face. “You didn’t say the words.”
“Yes, I did.” Despite not having a mouth, his words were somehow still audible. “You just… couldn’t hear them.”
“Because of the illusion.”
“Yes.”
Geoffrey tried to make sense of what had happened. Masque was another god, that was for sure, and he had claimed TechEdge before Adamantine and her followers had arrived. When they’d entered the store, he’d somehow created the illusion of the desert and the sand beast—evidently inspired by the movie he’d been holding—to distract them while he and his people attacked. There had been no sand beast with stinger-tentacles, but there had been men and women using electronic devices as weapons in order to stop the invaders. And Masque had hidden behind the illusion to make himself invisible to Adamantine so he could attack her. Only it hadn’t worked. After several moments, Adamantine had seen through his illusory scenario, and she’d gotten the upper hand. Maybe Masque’s power didn’t work as well on other gods, or maybe the illusion he’d created had been too big and complicated to maintain for very long. Whichever the case, he’d lost, and Adamantine had won.
A thought occurred to Geoffrey then. “Uh, if he doesn’t have a mouth…”
“What we hear is an illusion of his voice,” Adamantine said, “but since we can hear it, it’s no different than the real thing.”
Geoffrey didn’t understand this part, but he decided it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if Masque was going to get the opportunity to say much more.
“In the end there shall be One,” she said, grinning in triumph.
Up to this point Masque’s voice had been weak and breathy, but now he spoke with surprising strength and bitterness.
“Why don’t you go take a flying—”
That was all he managed to get out before Adamantine swung the bottom edge of his mask across his throat in a single swift motion.
The flesh parted as if it were tissue paper and blood gushed from the wound. His body stiffened, and then relaxed. Almost tenderly, Adamantine replaced the mask on his face, and then stood. Within seconds, his body became suffused by a white light which then contracted into a sphere, flew toward Adamantine and merged with her. When it was over, there was nothing left of Masque—even the blood that had spilled onto the floor was gone.
Adamantine threw her arms out wide and tilted her head back. Twin showers of sparks shot upward from her eyes, and her laughter echoed throughout the store. Every device on the shelves activated at once, screens large and small flickering to life. Adamantine turned toward the screens closest to her, as did Geoffrey. The same image was displayed on every one: a young woman standing before an easel, painting. The woman worked furiously, applying colors so quickly that the picture seemed to emerge on its own from the canvas instead of being created one brushstroke at a time. The figure on the canvas was quite familiar to Geoffrey—it was Adamantine.
He looked toward his mistress and saw her gazing at the image displayed on the screen of a computer tablet. She walked close to it, reached out and—after a moment’s hesitation—touched her fingers to the screen. And then, as if the physical contact was a trigger, the image winked out, not just on that screen, but on every screen throughout the store.
“What was that?” Geoffrey asked.
“I am not certain,” Adamantine said, still gazing at the blank tablet. “But I think we may have just witnessed my birth.”
* * *
Adamantine gave Masque’s followers the same choice she’d given Wyld’s: follow her or die. After seeing how easily she’d defeated their master, they all wisely agreed to become hers, and she spent some time having each of them kneel before her, just as Geoffrey had earlier that day, and Binding them to her. When that task was completed, she commanded several of her new followers to tend to those that had been wounded during the battle for possession of TechEdge. Of the seven followers she’d entered the store with, three—including Geoffrey—were relatively uninjured, one remained unconscious, and three were dead. She ordered that the dead ones should be taken outside and thrown into a dumpster. Geoffrey found this cruel, but he didn’t say anything to Adamantine about it, mostly because he didn’t want to end up in the dumpster himself. But also because he recognized that since she’d been alive for less than twenty-four hours, she hadn’t had time to develop any funereal rites for her followers. Since he was her priest, attending to such details could well fall under his job description, and he decided he’d take care of it. Eventually. For now, the dumpster would have to do.
The unconscious follower was the redheaded woman with the multiply pierced ears. She was taken back to the employee break room where there was a couch she could lie on. One other follower was assigned to sit with her and see to her needs. Geoffrey had no idea if she would recover or if she’d join her dead companions in the dumpster before the sun rose. He considered praying to Adamantine for the woman to be healed, but he decided against it. Adamantine wasn’t really that kind of god. She was more of a “vengeance is mine” type.
Once that was taken care of, she commanded her remaining followers—all of them—to go out into the streets, tell everyone they met how wonderful she was, and bring back new recruits to join the flock. She could’ve gone out herself to tend to this task, of course, but this method was more efficient, allowing new followers to be recruited more swiftly. And when competing with other gods in the Apotheosis, building one’s power as fast as possible was the key to victory.
“I’m stronger now, and I’ve given each of you a spark of my power,” she told them. “The people you speak to will respond to that spark. It will compel them to accompany you back here—provided you are also persuasive enough with your words. See that you are. There are three vehicles parked outside. You may take two of them. Fit as many as you can within them, and the rest of you shall walk. Now go.”
Geoffrey was afraid that someone—especially one of the new followers—would question her, complain about going out into the cold, ask where they were supposed to find people to talk to at this hour of the night, whine about not being permitted to take all three cars. But no one said anything, and he was relieved. The keys for the Geek Fleet cars were in the manager’s office; the followers took two, and headed for the front of the store, discussing who was going to get to ride in a car with a heater and who was going to be stuck hoofing it in the cold. Geoffrey didn’t go with the others. Adamantine hadn’t ordered him to stay behind, but he was her priest. His place was at her side unless specially instructed otherwise.
After the others left, Adamantine began walking through the store’s empty aisles, and Geoffrey followed, maintaining the now customary three steps between them. The screens were blank now, the store quiet. Adamantine had deactivated them before giving instructions to her followers, perhaps because she hadn’t wanted to speak over their din, or perhaps because she wished to conserve her power. She walked past displays for cell phones, laptops, desktops, keyboards, printers, DVD and Blu-ray players, sound equipment, video game systems, and flat-screen televisions, occasionally reaching out and brushing the silver fingers of her free hand across a plastic casing or a row of keys. She was silent as she did this, and Geoffrey wisely kept his mouth shut as she surveyed her new “temple.” After a time, she spoke without turning to look at him.
“My kind mature rapidly, and as we grow in power so too do we grow in knowledge. I have defeated two gods since you Bound yourself to me, and I now know much more about myself and about the Apotheosis. For instance, I know that as we speak, other gods are battling out there—dozens of them—some dying, some living, only to die the next time they face an opponent. I can feel it happening, Geoffrey. I can sense the exchange of power that’s taking place in this town, can feel others growing stronger, just as I have. Eventually, one of them will seek me out here. Or perhaps I will go out in search of them.” She shrugged. “I will know what to do when the time comes. And I have learned something else—something of the utmost importance.” Now she stopped and turned around to face Geoffrey. “I know who created me, who created all of my kind.”
Geoffrey was taken aback by this statement. He understood that Adamantine and the other gods that had appeared in Corinth weren’t omnipotent, but it hadn’t occurred to him that they might have been made. He’d imagined them as some kind of natural phenomenon that had, for whatever unknown reason, simply sprung into existence one day. But of course they had an origin. Didn’t everything?
“You’re talking about the woman we saw on the screens, the one who was painting a picture of you,” he said.
Adamantine nodded. “My power increased after I defeated Masque, causing me to have a vision—one you and my other followers shared.”
“The woman we saw on the screens… she created you and the other gods? Is she a god herself?”
Adamantine frowned. “I do not believe so. I sense that she’s a human, but one endowed with special ability to make myths into reality.”
“A Mythmaker,” Geoffrey said.
Adamantine smiled. “Yes! And I want you to find her and bring her to me.”
Geoffrey was so surprised by Adamantine’s words that he spoke without thinking. “Why? More to the point, why me?”
Adamantine’s eyes flashed with anger at being questioned by her priest, and for an instant, Geoffrey thought she might kill him, but then the fire in her eyes dimmed, and when she spoke, she sounded almost apologetic.
“Instinct, I suppose. I feel that it’s important to have her by my side. Perhaps she will be able to tell me more about my origins and how the Apotheosis works. Such knowledge could well prove to be the difference between victory and defeat. As for why you…” Her features hardened then. “Because you are my servant and I have commanded you to do this for me. That is all you need to know, is it not?”
Adamantine tried to hide it, but Geoffrey understood that she was afraid. Any b
eing powerful enough to create Adamantine and the other gods could be powerful enough to destroy her as well. Better to send an expendable servant to fetch this woman than to place Adamantine’s own existence at risk.
Geoffrey bowed his head. “Of course, my lady. How am I to find this woman? Do you sense where she lives?”
Adamantine’s eyes narrowed, as if she suspected he was mocking her, but then she thrust Wyld’s spear toward him.
“Take this.”
Startled, he took hold of the spear, surprised to discover how light it was. Adamantine then removed the gauntlet from her hand and held it out to him.
“Take hold of the index finger,” she said.
Geoffrey was afraid to do so. He’d seen electricity course through the gauntlet, enough power to kill him a hundred times over. But he reached out with a trembling hand and gripped the finger. The metal was much colder than he expected, and a shudder ran through his body.
“Break it off.”
Geoffrey doubted he had the strength to do as she said, but he tried and the finger snapped off as easily as if he had broken a matchstick in two. Adamantine then slipped the gauntlet back onto her hand, her index finger now sticking through the hole he had made.
“Put it on.”
His hand trembled even more this time, and he had to concentrate mightily to keep from dropping the metal finger. He managed to slip it over his own index finger, and he felt the metal contract slightly until the fit was snug. Now that it was on him, it didn’t feel quite so cold, and if it wasn’t exactly comfortable, he thought he could live with the feel of it on his flesh.
“I am connected to my creator, and after my vision I can sense her, and through that—” she nodded toward the silver-clad finger on his hand “—which is as much a part of me as my own heart, you shall be able to sense her as well. Use it to guide you to the Mythmaker, capture her, and bring her back to me.”
