Rise of the Discordant: The Complete Five Book Series

by Christina McMullen

  “Not sure I like the sound of that,” I said, reading off the message.

  “Definitely looks like we’re headed for the final showdown,” Betty added with a frown before turning and putting her arms around me. Not that I had any complaints about that, but she were lookin’ at me funny. Kinda scrutinizing.

  “Somethin’ wrong? You think I’m a weakling ‘cuz I needed to be rescued by a dame?”

  That at least got a smile and a little chuckle, which was good, ‘cuz I was kinda worried for a minute there.

  “No, I was just wondering,” she said, eyeballing me again. “Was that true what you said? About having a soul now?”

  “Oh, you heard that?” I managed to blush. Not an easy feat when one is a demon. “Yeah, it’s… Well, it’s complicated, but yeah.”

  There weren’t no way to explain it, really. It weren’t that I sat down and had a heart to heart with the Creator or anything like that, but somehow, when Ajhe challenged me, I knew. What’s even weirder is that I felt it. I felt the moment that I went from being in some sort of in-between limbo to becoming a fully official, soul-carryin’ member of Order, and I can’t say that it were too bad.

  “Good,” Betty said, leaning in to give me one doozy of a kiss.

  “Good? What? I weren’t good enough for ya as a demon?” I teased. Well, sort of teased. I still ain’t good enough for a dame like Betty, but I ain’t complaining.

  “Well, I did have to come to your rescue after all,” she said with a wicked smile that had me thinkin’ this battle needed to hurry up and be over. “Although now that I know you’re not a demon anymore, I need to stop thinking of our future children as demon spawn.”

  Whoa!

  “You… children…? With me? You wanna…”

  The incoherent babbling noises coming from my face weren’t doing much to help my claims of semi-intelligence. Probably didn’t help that my jaw were on the ground and my eyebrows was trying to climb up my horns. Betty just laughed at me. Can’t blame her.

  “I passed this place with a for sale sign on the way back from Myrna’s,” she said with a suddenly bashful smile. “It’s not too far outside of downtown, but far enough to not feel crowded in. I was just thinking… I mean, if we survive this ordeal…”

  “Hang on,” I said, shushing her with a finger to the lips. “Is you serious about all this? A house, kids, and… me?”

  She scrunched up her face like she was thinking it over and I knew she were ribbing me.

  “Well, I’m not looking to have kids tomorrow or anything, but yeah, the house looked promising and, well, I suppose you’ll do,” she said with a wink and another one of them Earth shattering smooches. “Just because I’m no damsel in distress don’t mean I don’t want my happily ever after.”

  “Okay then,” I said once I managed to figure out how to breathe again. “Since you put it that way, let’s move. We got a war to win.”

  Chapter 9

  The Paradoxical Pair

  “Here, drink this.”

  After he helped to prop me up against the back door of the Five Penny, Eller handed me a flask of something that smelled a lot like gasoline and actually had wisps of smoke coming off the top.

  “Um, I’m under aged,” I reminded him. Just the fumes alone were enough to make me lightheaded.

  “It ain’t gonna get you drunk, or high, and it ain’t gonna kill you, but it will stop the buzzing that I reckon is about to drive you insane. You uh, might need to hold your breath though. It ain’t the worst I tasted, but it sure ain’t chocolate cake.”

  I sighed. Whatever it was, it couldn’t kill me, but I wasn’t sure if that was a plus or not. I took a deep breath, held it, and took a sip from the flask.

  Eurgh!

  Oh man, he wasn’t kidding! Holding my nose was pointless. Even after I swallowed, there was a lingering aftertaste of jet fuel, garlic, and cat pee. The buzzing, which had started to get on my nerves, ceased almost immediately. While I was grateful, I wasn’t sure it was worth the tradeoff.

  “Thanks,” I managed to croak as I handed the flask back.

  “It takes some getting used to, but after a while you won’t notice. Heck, you might even acquire a taste for it.”

  “Huh?” I nearly choked again as the vile stuff threatened to come back up for a torturous repeat. “I’m never doing that again!”

  “Suit yourself,” Eller said with a shrug, capping the flask and shoving it into his pocket. “But in a few days, the buzzing will be back, maybe even sooner given what you did. There’s a couple of spells, but they ain’t nearly as effective.”

  “Okay, wait a minute. First of all, a potion that tastes that bad but isn’t a permanent solution to anything should be against the law.” I immediately regretted speaking because as soon as I opened my mouth, the taste hit me again. “And second of all, what exactly is it that I did?”

  “You created an illogical paradox.”

  “Um, aren’t all paradoxes illogical?”

  “By definition, no,” he said with a frown. “But we don’t have nearly enough time to get into the many different tangible, insubstantial, and theoretical paradoxical variants. None of that matters at the moment. What matters right now is figuring out how to use your powers to the advantage of our side without causing an even bigger catastrophe than what we have at the moment.”

  “So, um… What does that mean?” I asked, hoping it didn’t mean what I thought it meant.

  “What it means is that right now, you’re an almost invincible weapon against the worst Chaos can throw at us.”

  My mood lightened considerably. “That’s great, right?”

  I’m not sure it was worth the whole jet fuel-litter box mouth, but being an invincible weapon had its perks. Not only could I end the war, but I could do so because I was more powerful than Nai. I wouldn’t hold it over her head or anything, but I have to admit, I was kind of looking forward to seeing her face when she found out I was more powerful than her.

  “It would be,” Eller said with a look that told me I wasn’t going to like what he had to say next. “But due to the type of illogical paradox you created, you’re highly unstable.”

  Sometimes being right sucked hard. Really, I should have figured the whole thing about being an invincible weapon was too good to be true.

  “This is going to be difficult for me to explain in terms that you’ll understand,” he said as he lit a new cigar, which just annoyed me more. Not because the cigar smelled terrible, though it did, but because I was tired of hearing things like that. The problem wasn’t that people thought I was too good. The problem was that because I’m a nice guy, everyone thinks I’m an idiot.

  “I’m a straight A student, Eller. Try,” I huffed.

  “This ain’t got anything to do with smarts, kid,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “At its simplest, you have disproved your own existence through a series of logical reasoning. However, substantial evidence to your existence also exists. Therefore at the moment, you are caught in a paradox in which you do not exist, yet you don’t not exist.”

  “Huh?” Okay, maybe I spoke too soon. Maybe I really was as dumb as everyone thought because nothing that Eller said made any sense to me. “How can I be here if I don’t exist?”

  “I didn’t say you don’t exist,” he corrected. “I said you both don’t exist and don’t not exist at once, which isn’t to say that you exist either, but there is evidence of your existence. Much like Schrodinger’s thought experiment, the formula for this paradox is far too complex for casual conversation.”

  “The piano playing kid from Charlie Brown?”

  “No, that’s… Look, it doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that right now, you are in an illogical state of being and not being. Your existence is both validated and nullified at the same time.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense!” I shouted in a frustrated huff.

  “That’s a paradox, kid,” Eller said with a shrug.

  “Oka
y, so how do I un-paradox?” I asked.

  “How do you what?”

  “How do I reverse this thing? How do I stop being a paradox and go back to being Jem, the guy who totally exists without question?”

  Apparently, that must have been funny because Eller didn’t even bother to hide his amusement. “You can’t simply reverse a paradox.”

  “But of course you can!” I sputtered. “Didn’t you just do it a few weeks ago?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened because I wasn’t exactly myself at the time, but I’m pretty sure the whole reason that Eller was now able to leave the bowling alley was because he was no longer tied to the rift by the djinn paradox.

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The argument with Louise created a paradox. When that happened, it derailed the external paradox that kept me tied to the location of the rift. While I’ll never be able to reconcile the illogic of the argument Louise used against me, it has no bearing on my existence. You, on the other hand, seem to have argued yourself into the most unenviable paradox of them all.”

  Well great. I still didn’t quite understand, but I knew enough to realize that whatever was going to happen to me probably wasn’t worth it even if I was the most powerful anti-Discordant weapon known to Order. But weapon or not, I wasn’t going to do anything until I had a chance to talk to a higher power, so I shifted myself out of the time stream.

  Or not.

  I attempted to leave the Cycle, but instead of finding myself in the presence of the Creator, I was still sitting in the alley. I tried again, but it was the same thing. I kept trying, but for my efforts, all I got was more and more exhausted and the buzzing was already starting to come back, so I stopped. Nothing was worth having to drink that stuff again.

  “I can’t leave the Cycle.”

  “No, I imagine you can’t.”

  I was kind of taken aback at how casual Eller was acting about this. I was ready to have a full blown panic attack and he was just sitting there, puffing on his cigar like nothing was wrong. I was about to comment on this very fact when he cut me off with a look.

  “Ah hell, Jem, I know it isn’t the most ideal of situations, but getting angry isn’t going to help. If anything, it’s just going to make you more volatile and we don’t want that.”

  “Why? I’m kind of screwed no matter what, right?”

  “At the moment, yes, yes, you are, however…” He held up a hand to once again stop my protest. “I am working on this as we speak.”

  “How?” I asked. As far as I could see, he was just sitting there smoking and petting what I was pretty sure was now just a harmless little dog. At least there was that. There was no way Desmond could argue with me about keeping the dog now.

  “I don’t know yet. That’s what I’m working on. I’m admittedly more comfortable with statistical paradoxes, but do enjoy a challenge.”

  “A challenge? Yes! That is it!” I said, finally feeling like some of this was beginning to make sense. “You argued with Louise and it changed the paradox that kept you at the bowling alley into a different kind of paradox, right?”

  “That’s the abridged version,” he said in a tone that told me I did not want to try and wrap my head around the unabridged version.

  “So if we were to have an argument…”

  “You are using that noggin of yours,” he said with an impressed smile. “You’re on the right track. You’ll need to fully talk through the process for a paradigm shift, but I’m afraid I’m incapable of helping you on that front.”

  “Huh? But if that’s what you did, then you should know what we need to do.”

  “It doesn’t quite work like that, Jem. If I were to begin discussing quantifiable theories of existence, there is a damned high probability that my own paradox might shift into something dangerous and unstable. In fact, I hate to say it, but I don’t even know what we could safely argue about.”

  “So could I argue with someone else?”

  “Absolutely, but remember, Louise had specifically argued me into a paradox as a way to save me. A random argument, no matter how heated, is not going to create a paradox. It’s going to take someone with a very specific skillset or someone with as much to lose as you have.”

  “Oh?” I began to laugh. Surely it couldn’t be that easy. But then… Yeah, it really could because technically, it won’t be easy. Ugh! I was even beginning to think in paradoxes! “You had me scared for a minute there.”

  Eller looked at me as if I’d grown another head. “And you’re not now?”

  “Of course I am,” I said before bursting into a giggle fit that was paradoxically induced by both my panic and potential relief.

  “Care to enlighten me as to what is so hilarious?

  “Oh come on, Eller!” I gasped out. “You’re a genius and you’ve met my sister.”

  Finally, a spark of understanding flashed in his eyes. I could tell he was likely calculating the odds of my plan working. As far as I was concerned, there was no way it couldn’t work.

  “Jem!”

  Speak of the devil! As if she somehow knew I was talking about her, Nai limped into the alley, looking angrier than usual. Which, really was saying something since Nai was never not angry.

  “What the hell did you do, Jem?” she growled. Yes, my sister actually growled at me. “I can’t use trans-cyclical travel. I can’t even kill anything because I keep disappearing. I tried to leave the Cycle to see what was happening and I can’t even do that! Yet when I-” she cut off. “Whose dog is that?”

  “Mine, I guess,” I said with a shrug. “It was the dragon, but I destroyed it.”

  “What? That’s not… Oh my cow! Did you seriously think this dog was the dragon? Jem, how much of an idiot can you be? Just because the description in the wiki says they can appear as something seemingly innocent doesn’t mean any old mutt is a dragon.”

  I was actually so grateful for the fact that I had a chance to unload this paradox that I couldn’t even be annoyed with Nai for assuming once again that I’m a complete idiot.

  “Nai, stop insulting your brother for a moment and take a good look around. Do you feel the dragon?”

  Cool. I didn’t have to get mad at Nai because Eller got mad for me. Nai stopped her string of insults and looked around, casting out with her mind to get a sense of the emotional climate and frowned.

  “Okay, I don’t feel it, but that doesn’t mean anything because right now I can’t feel jack squat except that horrible buzzing in my head that just gets worse the closer I get to you. What did you do, Jem?”

  “I um… created a paradox,” I admitted. There was really no sense in lying. “That’s how I cast out the dragon. Or turned it into a dog, or whatever happened.”

  “You what? Oh, you have got to be kidding me!”

  Okay, I was kind of used to strange things happening when Nai got mad. As agents of Order we had access to some crazy magic and sometimes Nai could lose control. But I never saw anything like this before. It was kind of like she was a hologram, but not a very good one. Parts of her became transparent or faded out completely before flickering back, like she was shorting out.

  “Is that what this is?” she asked, gesturing violently with what was left of her arms.

  Oops… I felt awful. Nai’s existence was tied to mine, so when I created a paradox by arguing myself out of existence, the same thing happened to her. Only it seemed she was getting the worst of it.

  “Uh, yeah,” I confessed. “But uh… on the bright side, the dragon is gone and I’m a powerful weapon.”

  “That’s supposed to be the bright side?”

  Okay, so I wasn’t expecting Nai to be super excited or anything, but I didn’t expect her to get so angry that her face turned red. If she hadn’t been almost completely insubstantial at that moment, she probably would have choked me.

  “Wait! Nai, we can destroy all of the Discordant,” I explained, hoping to calm her down before she got her form back and choked me for rea
l. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “What? No Jem! What I wanted was to destroy the Discordant myself! Something that until five minutes ago, was supposed to be my destiny. Instead, you’ve made me completely useless and took that title for yourself. And for what? I don’t see you destroying anything but my last nerves.”

  “Huh? I mean, yeah, it’s annoying, but I didn’t make you usel-” I began, but cut off when Nai lunged at me. I put up my arms to defend myself, but instead of connecting, Nai flickered out and went right through me. I can’t begin to describe how creepy it was. She lunged again and I rolled out of the way.

  “Nai stop!” I shouted. “If you attack me while you’re flickering you might flicker back half way and get stuck and then we’d be some kind of mutant monster!”

  “What? Ew! That’s… Ew!” Nai shuddered, but at least she stopped attacking me. I was right when I thought it wasn’t going to be easy. I had to get Nai calmed down enough to properly argue with me. Another paradox. Great. It was almost as if I couldn’t stop thinking in them.

  “Nai, listen. I know it sucks and I totally didn’t mean to do it, but we can fix this.”

  “Fix this? How? Jem, this isn’t some simple idiot mistake! You had to go and get philosophical in the middle of a war, question not only your existence, but mine as well. How the hell do you plan to fix this?”

  “We just have to... Hang on…” Suddenly, something occurred to me. An actual silver lining and maybe the key to ending the battle with the Discordant. “If you don’t not exist and exist the same as me, you’re a powerful weapon too! Yeah, we’re a little unstable, but I know how to fix that. We can work together and get rid of the Discordant!”

  Nai rolled her eyes and glared at me. If she wasn’t half-substantial, I was sure she would try and attack me again.

  “No, Jem. In your little existential crisis you forgot that you are half of a split soul. Whatever you did to make yourself a supposedly powerful weapon, and believe me, I question the powerful part, did the opposite and rendered me useless.”