Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9)

by T. A. Pratt

  Marla had tried to explain the dangers, but Daniel hadn’t been able to see reason, and he’d attacked her... and she’d fought back.

  She found him now, a mewling wreck of a broken body, and knelt, putting her hand on what had once been his back. She closed her eyes, sought the little spark of divinity within her, and exerted her will.

  When she opened her eyes, Daniel was whole again, heartbreakingly beautiful, long lashes and baffled eyes. “Marla?” he said. “What—what happened?”

  “You had a terrible accident, baby.” She touched his face.

  “I—you—you got older.”

  She snorted. “Just what a woman wants to hear. I can’t help it. You died young, and I was stuck living on without you.”

  He looked around at the shadowy, half-formed cityscape. “Oh. This... Isn’t really Felport.” His hand reached out, as if of its own volition, and took hers.

  She squeezed his fingers in her own. Oh, Daniel. Her Daniel. “It’s the underworld, hon. Your very own bit of the afterlife. You didn’t make a very pleasant eternity for yourself, but I can see why. You had a rough life, there at the end.”

  “I don’t... really remember.”

  “That’s probably for the best.” She considered how much to tell him, and decided to err on the side of simplicity. “I had to come down here because there’s a bad thing rising in the depths. It’s a woman that looks like a dragon and wants to be a god. I have to stop her. I was wondering—do you want to help?”

  “I—what? How can I help? I’m dead.”

  “In the underworld, that’s not necessarily a disadvantage. You’re a soul: pure intention, unencumbered by biology. Lucky bastard. Here, you can shape reality. Give it a try.”

  He frowned, and the rain clouds above them parted, sunlight streaming down. “Huh,” he said. “That’s... wow.”

  “Nicely done,” she said. “You can make whatever kind of world here you want. The afterlife isn’t something imposed on you, and it’s not punishment. It’s what you make it.” She laughed, only a little harshly. “It’s sort of like actual life, that way. I want you to know you have that power, that you can make existence here sweet, if you like. If you want to stay and play around with your new mastery of reality, that’s fine. But if you’d like to come on one last mission with me first, and help me slay a dragon....”

  “I’m already dead, right? So... I can’t die?”

  “I’ll be honest with you. The dragon has been eating the souls of the dead. I think when she does that, what happens to them is just... oblivion. So there’s some danger here.”

  Daniel scratched his chin. “Not much point in playing a game if there are no stakes, huh?” He suddenly grabbed her, pulled her close, and kissed her, and the sweetness took her breath away.

  I’m a married woman, she thought. Oh well. This hardly seemed the time to bring that up. Death would understand. Probably. Or maybe he wouldn’t. He didn’t exactly have any old girlfriends, after all.

  “You’ve aged well,” he said after he pulled away.

  “You could stand to work on your flattery skills.” He was too young for her anyway, now. She wasn’t the woman who’d loved him, even if he was still exactly the man she’d loved. “So you’re game?”

  “I’ve been suffering, splattered on a sidewalk, for I don’t know how long. Going out and fighting something sounds great.” He rose. “So where’s Jenny?”

  Marla opened her mouth to say “She died” but then realized that was hardly a problem. “Let’s go get her,” she said instead.

  •

  Jenny’s world was all fire, but Daniel had the hang of altering reality down already. He’d always been a fast learner, and naturally gifted, unlike Marla, who’d had to claw and struggle her way toward a mastery of magic. They floated in the upper atmosphere of the burning world, and Daniel kept them safe in a bubble of air. They flew through the smokeless flames, flickering in every shade of orange, yellow, and red, until a figure rose up and hovered before them. Marla recognized her old friend Jenny, but she was something more, here: a goddess of flame, with hair made of fire, and a dress made of fire, and really everything made of fire. She smiled, and her teeth were burning coals. “Marla?” she said. “And Daniel?”

  “Hey, J,” Daniel said. “How’d you like to try your flames against a dragon?”

  Jenny laughed, and a column of fire burst from her throat, spraying droplets of plasma. “I think I’d like that.”

  •

  “No fucking way.” Artie Mann spat on the grass, then shifted his position on the wrought-iron park bench and let out a ripsaw fart. “I’ve got a cushy situation here. Why should I risk getting eaten up by Elsie Fucking Jarrow? I was scared of her when I was alive, and back then, I had nothing to lose but my life.”

  Jenny was a flying bird of flame, zipping around the baroque towers of Artie’s London, and Daniel was making every plant and tree underneath the glass panels of the Crystal Palace grow and swell and flourish with life. Leaving Marla to negotiate.

  “Are you sure?” she said. “The old team, back together, it doesn’t appeal to you at all?”

  “Hey, fuck you, Marla Mason,” Artie said. “You were supposed to avenge me when I died, and instead you let the murderer live, and used some magical bullshit to escape the compulsion!”

  “He died eventually,” she said. “And his life wasn’t so great in the meantime.”

  “Whatever. Daniel was supposed to bring me back to life, and he failed, too. What’s even the point of laying a magical compulsion on your apprentices if they can just slither out of it?” Artie gnawed an unlit cigar and scowled. Death hadn’t made him any less fat, dumpy, or generally objectionable.

  “Daniel didn’t so much slither out of anything as get killed.” She sighed. “I figured you’d take it like this, but I wanted to try.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Artie waved a hand. “I’m not as mad I should be. I twigged pretty early on that I must be dead, but this is a pretty good heaven, you know? Like that little pocket reality I made back on Earth, but so much bigger.”

  “You know, all this shit got real popular after you died.” She gestured toward the cyborg governesses walking through the park, and the genetically-engineered gorilla wearing a tuxedo, and the zeppelins drifting overhead. “People dress up in top hats with gears on them and wear brass monocles and shit. There are about a million novels and comic books about it, Victorian England with weird tech. They call it ‘steampunk.’ You were ahead of your time.”

  “Fucking K.W. Jeter called it steampunk in the ‘80s. Fucking Infernal Devices. Goddamn Moorcock’s Warlord of the Air. That was the real shit. You say steampunk got trendy? Glad I died before I saw that.”

  “Death hasn’t changed you, Artie. You’re sure you don’t want to pilot an armored zeppelin and drop bombs on a dragon?”

  “Fuck. You. In. The. Ear.”

  Marla kissed his cheek. He still smelled like cigars and body odor. Good old Artie.

  •

  Daniel, Jenny, and Marla descended to the lowest reaches of the primordial chaos. Jenny kept sending fireballs spiraling through the darkness, but it didn’t seem to hurt anything. Jenny was an uncomplicated creature, but when it came to pure gleeful destructive ability, she was to beat. Daniel was a subtler thinker, but just as powerful. With them, Marla thought she had a shot at taking Elsie down, or at least hurting her badly enough to make her flee the underworld. She could have gathered more dead allies, and it had crossed her mind—Lao Tsung, Mr. Zealand, Ernesto—but somehow going in with her oldest friends felt right. There were also limits on how long she could stand spend to-ing and fro-ing. Elsie was doubtless plotting her plots, and eventually, Death would come down here looking for her. She wanted to settle all this before that happened.

  They reached the rickety wooden stairs she’d created, and Jenny made them explode into splinters. They floated down to the metal doors, which were still broken, something that heartened Marla. They strode i
nto the anteroom, and the coat-check woman said, “Here, now, you aren’t welcome –”

  Jenny gestured, and the woman burst into flame, white-hot, and in moments, only vapor remained. “Oh,” she said. “Was I supposed to do that?”

  “Doesn’t bother me. She was just a chaos robot anyway.” Marla knelt by the broken bits of lapis lazuli, and gathered them in her hands, where they melted into her body. Her vision doubled, then somehow re-doubled, and she felt more power suffuse her. Deep in her mind something vast turned over, like a giant disturbed in its slumber. The Bride was still there, the spark of divinity burning more brightly now, but Marla wasn’t ready to let her wake up fully yet.

  “Jenny, open up that door,” Marla said.

  The burning girl pointed, and the wooden door glowed with heat, then dimmed, but still stood, unbroken and unharmed.

  “That much heat would have melted the moon,” Jenny said.

  Marla sighed, walked up, and rapped on the door sharply with her knuckles. “Elsie! Open the door. You’re in a closed system in there, very stable, it’s not good for you. Come on. Add a few variables. Who knows what might happen?”

  From beyond the door, there came a chuckle, and the door unlocked itself with a quiet click.

  The three of them rushed in, and did battle.

  •

  After about half an hour, Marla lay gasping on her back, Jenny crouched beside her, burning like a bonfire. Daniel had his hands up, moving them around like a puppeteer manipulating invisible marionettes. “She’s... getting... loose,” he said, gritting his teeth with effort.

  Marla groaned and sat up. The dragon Elsie Jarrow was suspended upside down, wrapped up in the roots of the world tree—or whatever the hell kind of tree Elsie had conjured, if there even was a tree up there, and not just roots for the look of the thing. Daniel had caused the roots to grow and slither and bind their enemy, but Elsie was gamely gnawing on them.

  The dragon and Jenny had traded fire for a while, but they might as well have been throwing buckets of confetti back and forth, for all the damage it did either of them. Daniel had tried to suck out all of Elsie’s life force, but she was somehow tapped into the raw stuff of chaos, and replenished her power endlessly. He set up a nice feedback loop, though, linking all their life forces so Elsie couldn’t harm him or Marla without inflicting even more damage on herself, which had cut down on the direct attacks.

  “This is stupid.” Marla stood up and brushed soot off her knees. “Elsie! Don’t you think? This is stupid?”

  The dragon stopped chewing on the roots and let her head flop backward, looking at Marla upside-down. “It was fun at first,” she admitted. “But, yes. Now it’s stupid. We’re fighting a real battle in an imaginary place. We’re all good at hurling bits of the impossible at each other, but we’re not really getting anywhere. I figure, we’ll just keep battling until your month of divinity is up, Marla, and the law of the universe will drag you back to the mortal world. Without your divine spark lending these two strength and providing them with a day pass out of their respective afterlives, I’ll be able to eat them. It’s going to be slow, and boring, and I hate it more than I hate brussels sprouts, but that seems to be what we’re doing. Oh well.”

  “Huh,” Marla said. “Did you want to take a break and drink some tea or something?”

  •

  They conjured a little table and a pot of tea and a few cups. Jenny boiled the water, then went flying around in the cavern, throwing fireballs at stalactites. She’d never been much of one for sitting down. Elsie stopped being a dragon, and took on a human form. Marla had never seen the woman in her original body, and wondered if this was a facsimile. She was petite, with a mouth that was a bit too wide to be pretty, and bright red lipstick that matched her hair.

  “Why didn’t you just change into a smaller form to escape the roots when I made them grab you?” Daniel said.

  “Oh, I could have, but you were trying so hard. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

  Elsie, Daniel, and Marla sat sipping green tea and staring at each other. Finally, Daniel raised a tentative hand. “So, I have a question. Is there some reason Elsie shouldn’t become a god?”

  “Only logistical ones,” the chaos witch said.

  “And ethical ones,” Marla said. “She’s a murderer.”

  “Says the god of Death,” Elsie retorted. “How many did you kill, even before that was your job?”

  “Also, she’s insane,” Marla said. “The phrase ‘insane god’ is not a comfortable one.”

  “I was insane, yes. But only because I didn’t have a body, and being a human mind without a body is confusing and very stressful. Also, everywhere I went, people died all the time, even if I didn’t want them to. That sort of thing will put some cracks in your composure, Marla. If I were a god, I wouldn’t need a body, or I could make a body, and I’d only be toxic if I wanted to be.” She leaned forward, smiling at Marla, eyes twinkling . “Come on. I’d be a wonderful trickster god. The world would be a much more interesting place with me in it. It’s not like I’m evil. I’m just... vivacious.”

  “Even if I thought you’d make a non-terrible god, it’s not like it’s up to me.” Marla scowled. “I don’t have a magic wand I can wave and say—‘Poof, you’re a god.’”

  “I do,” Daniel said. “Well, not a wand. But magic? Sure.”

  Elsie looked at him. “You are very handsome and smart. I can see why Marla likes you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marla said.

  Daniel reached out and touched Marla with his fingertip, right between her breasts. “There’s a spark of divinity in you. I can see it, glowing, so much brighter than your ordinary life force. You know my power: I move energy around. I could take a bit of your spark and move it over to Elsie. It’s no harder than draining life from one person and using it to strengthen another.”

  “Sure, but that would diminish me,” Marla said.

  Jenny landed beside them. “It’s a spark, you said? It’s a fire?” She shrugged, flames shimmering around her shoulders. “So... it’s easy to make a fire bigger. You just feed it.”

  “Feed it what?” Marla said.

  “Feed it primordial chaos.” Elsie slapped the table. “That’s where gods came from in the first place, anyway. This stuff, swirling all around us... it’s basically the stem cells of creation, right? It can be whatever we need. Even divinity.”

  “I do not like this idea.” Marla crossed her arms.

  “Oh, that’s just because you’re locked into this win/lose paradigm, Marla sweetie.” Elsie reached over and patted her hand. “But this way, you win by letting me win.”

  “That first part, about me winning, that’s okay. It’s that other part....” Marla drummed her fingers on the table. Her eyes caught the tattoo on her wrist: the words “Do Better,” inscribed on her flesh by her god-self as an admonition, an encouragement... and mission. Was Marla just being stubborn and vindictive? Think about it. So Elsie became a god. What was the harm? Oh, sure, it could go terribly wrong, but really, before the woman had gone insane, she hadn’t been famed as a slavering monster. She’d been known in the sorcerous community for her sometimes terrifying whimsy, her twisted sense of justice (which overlapped with her twisted sense of humor), and, yes, for being fun, in a certain wild bacchanalian sort of way. Unpredictable, dangerous, afflicting the comfortable, but no, never what you’d call evil, not until her power destroyed her body and she lost her mind.

  “If you become a god, are you going to just murder a bunch of people?”

  Elsie shook her head. “Dead people are boring, anyway. No offense, Daniel and Jenny. Alive people can do things. I like it when people do things.”

  “No causing plane crashes for kicks, either, understood?” Marla said. “Or ferry disasters, bus crashes, earthquakes... that kind of stuff is my purview. I realize I can’t tell you not to mess with people, but don’t mess with lots of people all at once.”

  “I can w
ork with that. The personal touch is more my style anyway.”

  “Hmm. No doing damage to the structure of reality, either. You can’t turn cities into, I don’t know, giant mushrooms, or anything.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. And if I do, I won’t act on it.” Elsie bounced up and down a little in her chair. “I get to be a god? Really truly a god? I’ve always wanted to be a god.”

  “If you’re sure you won’t be an evil god.”

  “Hmm, well, evil depends a lot on your viewpoint, but I don’t have the patience to be an effective sadist, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Marla put her face in her hands. Do Better. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this,” she said.

  “Should I do it?” Daniel said.

  “I... Yeah. Okay. But listen. After you move some of my divine spark into her, I want you to fan the flames of my godhood first. Give me back the fullness of my power, and then do Elsie. I don’t want her to be the only full-blown god in the room, not even for a second.”

  “Very prudent,” Elsie said. “I can’t be trusted. Which is why I’ll be such a good trickster god. I wonder if Coyote is real. Or Hermes. Ooh, or Kokopelli. They’re going to love me.”