by Isaac Hooke
Cora's eyes widened fearfully, and she nodded. "I won't let you down Master Jeremy."
"Good. Because now's your chance to shine, Maggie dear." Jeremy glanced at the giant Direwalker. "If you would, Brute."
The four-armed gol produced the same metallic disk it had been holding in Dhenn. Brute gave the disk to Cora.
"With this disk," Jeremy said. "All traces of you will die, Ari. With a simple touch to the forehead, you will be killed utterly in all these realms of existence that people keep telling me about. One moment you will exist, and the next you will cease to exist. I could just use a sword I suppose, but I want to make sure you're thoroughly dead. Think of this as a parting gift from the best lover you've ever had. After all, without me to warm your mattress, you've been dead all these years anyway." Jeremy shoved Cora forward. "Touch the disk to her forehead, Maggie dear. Amuse your master."
Cora walked forward unsteadily. She kept glancing at Jeremy as though worried that just walking the wrong way might upset him. When she came near Ari, she knelt, and peered into her eyes.
"It's easy, Maggie," Jeremy said. "All you have to do is touch the disk to her forehead."
Cora reluctantly lifted the disk.
"Mom," Ari said. "It's me. Mom."
"Jeremy, I—" Cora looked back.
"Do it," Jeremy said.
Ari lowered her voice. "Mom."
Cora frowned. "Why do you keep calling me that?" She brought the disk forward.
Ari tensed her muscles. The Direwalkers detected this, and tightened their grips.
There was no way Ari was going to allow that disk to touch her forehead. She'd tilt her head at the last moment. She'd break free, hurl the Direwalkers at her mother. She'd—
But Cora paused a handspan from her forehead.
"I don't know you," Cora said. "But why is it that you have my eyes, and my face?"
"Maggie, enough!" Jeremy said. "You displease me!"
Cora stared at Ari, and then recognition lit her eyes, followed by mischief. Cora winked.
Her mother's hand moved in a blur. She pressed the device to the foreheads of the three Direwalkers restraining Ari, one after the other.
The Direwalkers remained motionless a few moments, not realizing they'd been killed perhaps. Then abruptly all three slumped to the floor.
Ari scooped up the Box and shot to her feet.
Cora spun toward Jeremy and Brute, and lifted the disk menacingly.
Jeremy stepped back, raising his robed hands. "Come now Maggie, this is your master here. You wouldn't want to hurt your master, would you?"
"You're no master of mine." Cora spat the words.
Brute took a step forward.
"Be still, you fool!" Jeremy hissed at the Direwalker. "That disk will destroy you the same as the others."
Brute regarded Jeremy uncertainly, and then obeyed.
Cora and Ari warily strode past Brute and Jeremy. Cora kept her hand raised, the metal gleaming in her fingers. The Direwalker and the man swiveled to keep the disk in view.
When Cora and Ari neared the door, one of the forgotten Monitor gols surged forward without warning and slapped the disk from Cora's hand.
The metallic object dropped to the floor, and all eyes watched it bounce. Once. Twice. On the third bounce, the disk came to a rest.
Jeremy glanced up. "Get them!"
Brute leaped into motion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ari sprinted from the room with her mother.
Except it wasn't her mother—Cora reached up and ripped off her face as she ran.
Tanner raced beside Ari, his face grim, the remains of the White Poultice dripping from his fingers.
In Dhenn, Ari had doubled-back to her mother's house before returning to the transit center. She had suspected Brute would come for Cora, and though she resented what her mother had done—taking money for the revision of her only daughter—Ari couldn't leave her, not when Brute knew where she lived. Ari got there ahead of the Direwalker, but she couldn't convince Cora to come, so she threw her mother over one shoulder and hotfooted it through the tunnel. She immediately took a side passage, and could've sworn she saw Brute lumbering down the main tunnel. She took Cora back through the portal hop after pulling rank on a couple of gol guards, and she brought her kicking and screaming mother out the other side. In the city-state, after evading the gols that watched the transit center, she dropped her mom off with the New Users in the Black Den, and instructed them to protect Cora with their lives.
Then Ari visited Tanner and Briar, and Tanner went back in Cora's place after Ari convinced him. Brute captured Tanner-Cora. Briar was planted in the house as a Revisor when the household spy reported that Jeremy had acquired a new Revision Box. Briar's presence was in case Jeremy decided to revise Tanner-Cora—and true to form, Jeremy attempted just that. Briar had played his part well it would seem. He would be long gone from the mayor's house by now, the new Revision Box in his custody.
All that was left was for Ari and Tanner to escape with the Control Room.
The two meticulously avoided the carpet in the reception hall. Hands and tentacles formed at the fringes of that carpet, but Ari and Tanner were faster, and escaped into the foyer. Brute was in hot pursuit, racing along in that centipede fashion of his. Neither Tanner nor Ari had their fire swords, nor any other weapon. Ari wished Jeremy hadn't moved that sword rack of his out of the reception hall.
Blades drawn, two Direwalkers barred the exit to the mansion.
Without slowing, Ari grabbed a vase from a pedestal. Tanner snatched a marble bust.
Ari ran right at her opponent. The Direwalker jabbed at her with the sword but she batted the blade aside with the vase, and brought her hand around to smash the ceramic into the gol's head. The vase shattered and the gol plunged to the floor.
Beside her, Tanner had emerged similarly unscathed, the bust gone from his hands. Put to good use no doubt.
Ari burst through the front door.
Outside, it was late evening. The sky was overcast and threatened a storm.
Ari and Tanner tore past the frozen fountain on the terrace, taking the pine-lined footpath toward the gated exit. The trees sped past—
Direwalkers leaped down from the pines behind them.
And then the bomb exploded.
Ari ducked as pieces of the pines and the fountain rained past. She glanced back. A gaping hole had been carved into the front of the mansion. A crater remained where the fountain had been. Most of the trees along the path had toppled. The Direwalkers lay in various states of dismemberment. No sign of Brute.
Well done, Briar.
The gate lay open ahead. The two gol sentries were dead beside it, staked through the heart. Ari and Tanner slowed as they passed through.
"Well I can hardly believe it," Ari said. "Briar actually came through for us."
"Where are the fire swords then?" Tanner said. There were supposed to be two here, placed along the tall stone fence that enclosed the estate.
"Maybe some other guards found the swords," Ari said. "Maybe Briar forgot that part."
"Or maybe he sold us out." Tanner turned toward the house across the street, well aware that Briar was probably watching through the spyglass at this very moment.
Ari felt herself a pretty good judge of character, and she'd grown rather fond of her Uncle in the previous days. So it was understandable that Tanner's words didn't sit well with her. "He wouldn't do that to his own niece. Besides, after what we promised him, he'd never betray us."
But Tanner was insistent. "Unless the mayor promised him more."
Ari shook her head. "Briar kept you from being revised. Detonated the bomb. Took out these gols. He did his job as far as I'm concerned." She lowered the Box, taking a sword belt from one of the dead sentries and fastening it around her waist. "Let's go before Jeremy puts together some kind of response."
Tanner made a grab for the second sword belt—
A blade erupted point-first from his chest, and
he was lifted, skewered, into the air.
Tanner gazed down, squirming, and wrapped his hands around the metal.
But it was not one sword, but four, and those blades parted now, two to the left, two to the right, so that the two halves of Tanner's body splattered the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ari watched the scene unfold in a daze.
Brute stepped forward, covered in Tanner's blood.
Dead.
Tanner was dead.
Die violently as a gol, die in real life.
A rage like Ari had never felt before in her entire life filled her. An all-consuming, mass-murdering rage. She could hardly see for the red fury that colored her vision. If anger were madness, it would have known no greater insanity than this.
She drew her blade without a word. She stepped forward, each step measured, precise. When she closed with the Direwalker, she moved faster than she'd ever moved in her life, without thought of repercussion, without thought of her own safety. Her blade was a blur of steel. Her arm a smear of flesh. She beat back those scimitars like a swordswoman whose whole life had been mere preparation for this moment, and the stunned Direwalker was forced to retreat.
The wind picked up as she fought. The snow began to fall.
She heard only the sound of the swords, hers and her opponent's, a continuous clang clang clang as the four-armed Direwalker struggled to parry.
Clang clang clang.
Clang clang clang.
CLANG.
Her blade struck one of Brute's wrists. She'd hoped her rage would be enough. That the hand would sever. But her weapon merely bounced away.
She was immediately forced on the defensive, parrying—clang clang clang.
Then her sword found Brute's heart.
She thrust with everything she had, and with utmost purpose, as if the sheer force of her will could drive that blade through the heart.
But the tip didn't penetrate. The reverberation of the impact jarred Ari's whole upper body. She'd risked much in that attempted killing blow, too much, and left herself entirely open. The resulting reverberation only worsened matters, temporarily numbing her.
She was defenseless.
But Brute didn't kill her.
The Direwalker smiled. It crossed its blades over its chest in a double X and flung its scimitars outward, hitting her with the flats of the blades.
Ari was forced backward.
Brute was toying with her.
The blizzard picked up. Around them the conditions became near white-out, and Ari could see only a few paces in any direction. She fought in isolation from the rest of the world, in a private pact of doom of her own making. The only witness was the gol that would kill her.
Brute pressed forward, on the offensive now, and Ari constantly gave ground before those blows. She was slowing down, the rage-fueled fervor of the initial assault fading, replaced by hopelessness.
The four scimitars of her enemy danced in kaleidoscopic vortex, and appeared at turns a blooming flower, a whirling wheel, a crushing maw.
A sword invaded her upper thigh and cut a rude gash. Another blade licked her breast. A third molested her forearm.
Ari spun from an attack that would have taken her head. She sidestepped three blades that would have perforated her viscera. She dodged a swipe that would have severed her legs below the knees.
She backed into a snowdrift and was sent off balance. Brute instantly batted the sword from her hand. Weaponless, she flung herself backward into the snow as more blades swooped in.
The drift engulfed her.
Brute raised its scimitars high—
She rolled away and scrambled to one knee, body covered in snow. Her sword lay on the snowpack just beyond the drift.
She was about to dive for it—
A hilt rammed her face.
Blood sprayed from her lips as Ari flew backward—
She smashed into the stone fence of Jeremy's estate and slid down into the drift.
The world faded.
She fought back, and banished the stars and blackness from her vision, and struggled to her feet. Her face was wet. Blood? Or melted snow?
She took only two steps before collapsing again.
Too dizzy.
Too nauseous.
She dragged herself along the drift. One hand forward. The other. One hand forward. The other. The cold snow was quickly numbing her body. Already she couldn't feel her hands.
Maybe that was a good thing. Less agony, when the end came. Because she didn't think she'd be able to ignore the pain at that point.
Above the storm she heard the crunch of heavy boots in the drift. Boots that sounded all-too calm in their approach. Boots whose owner knew its prey was done.
The sword.
Had to get the sword.
But it was behind her now.
Past Brute.
She forced herself to stand. Yes. Did it.
She slipped.
Fell again.
How close was Brute?
She flung her body around so that she lay with her back in the drift and faced the sky.
The Direwalker towered above her feet, its four swords raised.
Brute plunged those blades down—
She split her legs to avoid the strike—
Too slow.
She let out a cry as one of the swords pierced her thigh and pinned her. She twisted to and fro, blotting out the pain, trying to escape. But the sword held her firm—the blade had penetrated into the harder snow below.
The Direwalker sheathed the remaining three scimitars in a mechanical whirl.
Brute reached into its belt and retrieved the small, metallic disk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Ari didn't wait for the Direwalker to close.
She leaned forward and gripped the hilt of the sword embedded in her flesh. She squeezed her fingers tightly and hauled upward.
The blade didn't move.
She heard a laugh now. A ghastly bass of a laugh.
It was Brute.
The laugh only angered her, and the rage renewed her determination, and her strength.
She planted her uninjured foot in the snow, and strained harder, gritting her teeth. The Direwalker, still laughing, was almost upon her.
But it was useless. All her life had been a waste. To end like this, for nothing. For no one. She pulled and pulled. The scimitar wouldn't move.
The scimitar.
The blade was curved.
She adjusted the angle at which she heaved on the blade, just slightly.
All at once the sword launched from her flesh in a spray of red mist.
She allowed momentum to carry her upward, and she bashed the hilt into the Direwalker's chin with all the strength that remained in her.
It was like hitting stone.
But even stone could be moved if you knocked it hard enough.
Brute stumbled backward a pace.
Without missing a beat, Ari brought the scimitar about and plunged the weapon into its eye.
The tip penetrated easily, digging into the gol's gray matter, and she felt the reverberation as the inside of the Direwalker's skull halted the blade.
Finally. A weakness.
She withdrew the sword and a stream of gore vomited from its useless eye.
Brute remained standing.
She was about to gouge the other eye when the Direwalker drew its remaining blades. Brute was expecting her to go for its second eye.
So she did the unexpected.
Ari whipped the sword down like a club, putting her body weight into the blow, and hit Brute in the ankle with the flat of the blade. Again it was like striking stone, but she managed to move the leg enough to unbalance the Direwalker, and Brute fell to one knee. Fresh blood spurted from its eye.
Ari retreated into the blizzard. She could scarcely see. She scooped up the Box from where she'd left it beside the dead sentries, and then she dove into the snowdrift beside the stone fence
of Jeremy's estate. She crouched, waiting.
Above the storm she heard the crunch of the Direwalker's feet in the snow, and she tensed, sword at the ready. Would the raging wind and the blinding snow be enough to cover her footprints? The trail of blood?
Brute ran right past without spotting her. It probably helped that she lurked on the side of the eye that she'd gouged.
When that hulking figure vanished into the storm, Ari scrambled to her feet and took off in the opposite direction.
Blinded by the snowstorm, she wasn't sure how long she ran, or how far, but she ran, and ran, and ran, as if she could outrun the fact that Tanner had died.
She blotted out the pain in her leg. That was one of the nice things about being a gol. You could ignore pain entirely and still use a limb no matter how badly damaged it was. Still, all bodies obeyed the physical laws of the world for the most part—except Brute's, maybe—and she'd have to wrap that leg eventually or she'd bleed to death.
So she set the Box down in the snow, removed the black tie that hung from her fake bronze bitch, and secured the silk around her leg like a tourniquet. Her fingers were so numb it took her three tries to tie the damn thing.
When she was done, a powerful gust of wind momentarily blew the veil of snow from her, and she realized where she was.
The Forever Gate soared beside her, towering with the magnitude of her crimes.
The Forever Gate she had sent Hoodwink across ten years ago.
To his death.
She wished she could ignore the mental pain as easily as the physical.
But she couldn't.
And so it was that the enormity of what she had done came crashing down on her, and she fell to her knees.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The snowstorm raged on, the whirling flakes slicing at the air. The wind howled like a banshee promising doom.
Ari gazed up at the Forever Gate, but its infinity was lost to the storm. She scratched a pit into the snowpack with her scimitar, and wedged the hilt into the hole. She positioned the sharp tip of the blade so that it kissed the soft tissue beneath her sternum. It was a testament to the volatility of her emotions. Only moments ago she had been fighting for her life. Now she was freely ending it.
