He’d changed. And it wasn’t just his left arm with its graying flesh and strange, spiky protrusions growing from its shoulder and elbow. There was no way to describe it, to quantify exactly what was different, except for a certain cold disinterest in his eye, a disturbing calm in his expression.
Ned raised his staff. Bolts of magic shot outward in every direction, leaping from demon to demon, burning them into the same icy ash the pub had become. One came directly at Frank, only to veer away at the last instant and destroy a fat incubus. The bolts zipped through Copper Citadel, obliterating demons but avoiding the soldiers of Ogre Company. The magic killed a few dozen of the horde before returning to the point of Ned’s staff. He lowered it, and the bloody aura around it dimmed.
Nobody did much of anything for a moment. Ogre Company and the demon horde alike gaped.
A huge green demon warrior, braver than his brethren, stepped forward. He put a shield glowing with unholy magic between him and Ned and then charged, intent on braining Ned with a single smashing strike of an ebony morning star. Ned thrust his staff through the impenetrable shield and into the demon’s heart. The warrior’s flesh and blood sloughed off into nothing. His bones clattered to the ground, shattering like crystal into powder. Ned looked bored with the entire affair.
Demons fled in horror. Those who weren’t instantly destroyed by Ned’s magic. The staff glowed brighter and brighter, and soon demons disintegrated without being struck by the red lightning. It was merely enough to stand too close to his dreadful radiance.
Ogre Company stood quiet. Victory was theirs. Never Dead Ned had become a living god of destruction, and every man could feel Ned’s cold, unstoppable power. And every soldier knew there would be a price.
Miriam drew nearer. She approached within fifteen feet but dared no closer. It was all she could do to not turn and run at that distance.
“Sir?” Her voice, taxed by the battle, was barely a whisper.
Ned didn’t look at her. “One second.”
He held high his staff and emitted a single blinding burst of light. The distant retreating survivors of the demon horde disappeared. Just like that. This time there was no fire or ash left behind. Only an emptiness that caused even the trees to tremble.
“Sir?” asked Miriam.
“Almost finished,” he replied.
He stamped his staff on the ground, and it launched a pinpoint of magic that shot across the night sky. It reached the Iron Fortress and opened a sucking vortex. The fortress tried to run away, but the pull was inescapable. Brick by brick, the Iron Fortress struggled, but soon enough it and all its inhabitants were consumed. All save one. A single tiny underworld emperor had enough strength to slip free, but no one noticed.
The brilliance of Ned’s staff slowly dimmed until it shimmered with the faintest hues.
“Sir?” said Miriam.
This time he turned his head in her direction, though not all the way. He merely cocked an ear as if trying to hear a distant sound. The calmness on his face should’ve been comforting, but there was something alien about it. It wasn’t so much calm as disconnected coolness. The serenity of a madman. A madman with the power to annihilate a horde of demons.
“Are they gone?” asked Miriam. “Is it over, sir?”
“They are. It is.”
“Then you’ve saved us. Haven’t you, sir?”
“Saved you?” He smiled then, very slightly. “For the moment.”
Somewhere high in the sacred heavens, immortals cowered under their beds and discovered the hollow comfort of futile prayers. Every soldier of Ogre Company stepped back from Ned. Except for Miriam who dared step closer until she was within his reach. The staff’s light glinted off her golden scales, turning them a coppery red: the color of old blood.
“It’s okay. It’s done. It’s all done.” She reached for Ned’s hand.
He grabbed hers suddenly. His burning touch overwhelmed her. The siren screamed, and every soldier in Ogre Company was knocked off their feet. Ned released Miriam. She fell to her knees, clutching a fresh red wound sizzling on her arms. He regarded her agony with a pinch of curiosity. He no longer understood pain, save for a distant memory. He remembered he didn’t like it, and being reminded of that filled him with contempt for this weak thing cowering before him. He would destroy it, and he would forget again. And then he would destroy it all. It was the only way to forget it all, the only guarantee he’d never be reminded of any of it.
“Sir?” Miriam covered her eyes as his staff flared. “Ned?”
He stopped. Something about that word made him pause. It reminded him of memories he wasn’t sure he possessed.
Part of him wanted to destroy her for her weakness, but another part of him remembered the uncertainty that came with being a little thing in a grand cosmos.
He moved toward her, but she recoiled.
“It’ll be okay.” He held out his hand. “Here. Let me help you up.”
She hesitated.
He pushed down his power. It took more concentration than it’d taken to destroy an entire demon horde, but he managed. He took her hand in his, and while his touch was hot, it didn’t burn. He helped her to her feet.
“It’ll be all right.” He smiled. “Everything will be all right.”
Rucka crashed into the courtyard, sending shudders through the ground, knocking everyone but Ned off their feet again.
“Oh, no, Ned. It will not.”
The tiny emperor grew into fifteen feet of seething demonic fury. He spread his four tremendous black wings and growled. Rucka had never unleashed his full might for fear of breaking ancient treaties with old powers. But his army was gone, his fortress destroyed. And there was nothing quite so dangerous as a demon driven to madness, boiling with all the enraged, accursed fury of the Ten Thousand Hells. Even the boundless might of the Mad Void might hesitate in the face of that.
Rucka pounced, but a bolt from Ned’s staff ripped through the demon’s chest, blowing a hole through him. He fell to one knee and gasped, but it wasn’t enough to destroy him.
Ned pushed Miriam away from him. The staff flared as he grew to match Rucka’s size. The grayness in Ned’s left arm grew lighter and lighter until it was a translucent white that spread from his shoulder to cover his entire body. His many scars turned into a gruesome black lattice across his flesh, and beneath that skin lurked not muscle and bone, but an ocean of lights, of colors and shapes that didn’t belong in this universe, held behind a fragile illusion of mortal tissues.
The staff in his hand grew and changed along with him.
It twisted into a spiky gnarled stick, squirming with a life of its own.
“You can’t defeat me, Rucka,” said Ned. “Even the unbridled egotism of a demon emperor must surely see the pointlessness of this.”
Rucka’s wounds closed. He stood and sneered. “Oh, but I know your weakness.”
He launched himself into Ned. The force of his charge carried both of them across the citadel to crash into the barracks. The building collapsed, burying them in a mountain of rubble. A blast of power disintegrated most of the debris, but some pieces shot out with dangerous velocity. They bounced off the ogres, but a few elves and humans were knocked off their feet to lie dazed and bleeding on the ground. One particularly large chunk hurtled at Frank. The ogre deflected it with his fists. His fingers broke audibly, and he grunted.
“Frank, are you okay?” asked Regina.
“It’s nothing.”
Ned and Rucka stood locked in a deadly embrace. They wrestled over the staff as it crackled with power, seeming to draw strength from both of them. Rucka dug two of his clawed hands into Ned’s throat, and Ned fell to one knee.
Miriam drew a sword from a convenient corpse. “Come on,” she grunted with her worn voice. “We have to help him.”
Frank and Regina readied their own weapons.
A column of crimson mist rose in their path. It spoke. “No. You can’t help him any more than you already have.
” The mist solidified into the Red Goddess. She wasn’t the same gnarled, old creature she’d been. She was now tall and youthful and strikingly long and angular. “It’s time to find out if Ned is ready.”
“Ready for what?” asked Regina.
The Red Goddess smiled. “Ready to be his own keeper.”
The Void roared. The staff burned brighter, and Rucka was sent hurtling, screaming, blazing into the air. The demon emperor howled all the way until he hit the ground in the woods a mile or two outside the citadel.
The Mad Void glanced down at the Red Goddess. “I see you’ve remembered what you are.” There was an absence in his voice, a certain lack of Nediness that was hard to define but still missing.
“The cosmic counterbalance that bound us both to slumber has broken. You remember what you are, so I remember what I am. You awake. I awake. That is the way of things, the nature of this ancient magic.”
“I remember,” said the Void. “Just as I remember that even your power is no match for mine.”
She nodded. “You are the supreme destroyer. There is no equal.”
The Void frowned. Without saying another word, he soared off into the sky after Rucka.
“He’s going to win, isn’t he?” asked Miriam.
The goddess nodded. “There can be no doubt.”
“Then why am I worried?” asked Regina.
The continent quaked as Ned collided with the earth, and the roar of clashing gods threatened to shake Copper Citadel to ruins. What little of it that wasn’t reduced to ruins already. Many soldiers of Ogre Company were knocked off their feet again, and most had the good sense to not bother getting up anymore.
“Because to do so, Ned might very well have to become a greater monster than Rucka could ever be.”
“Can’t you help him?” asked Frank.
“No one can help Ned but Ned now. Even the gods must sit this one out.” And so the Red Goddess did sit, looking quite indifferent as the sky darkened and cracks appeared in the earth.
“We have to do something,” said Miriam.
“Then by all means, rush to his side if you must.” The Red Goddess waved her hand. Miriam disappeared in a scarlet flash.
Regina stepped forward. “Excuse me, but could you—” She vanished with another wave.
Frank, his broken hands hanging limply at his side, approached. He didn’t even have to ask, and she teleported him away.
Ace, Elmer, and a small band of goblins were next, but the goddess lowered her hand.
“Well, if this is how it’s going to be, I suppose it’ll be easier to do you all at once,” she remarked. “Everyone who wishes to have a good view of the end of all things, please raise your hand.”
The destructive powers of the Mad Void and Rucka were nearly without limits. Each sought to annihilate the other, but they regenerated from every wound. They disintegrated each other over and over again, only to reform instantly. Each rebirth burned away some of their boundless might, and the loser would be the godlike entity that was depleted first. But godlike entities had a lot of energy to burn, and it could take a century or two to find a winner—providing the universe wasn’t destroyed in the process.
Reality itself was far more delicate than either of these titans. It began to crumble around them. The speaking staff held between them became the focus of their struggle. It radiated twisted energies. The forest withered around them. Small birds and beasts were consumed by invisible flames. A blizzard of black snow fell from a red sky even as the air grew hot and sticky.
Rucka belched a toxic cloud. It dissolved the Void, the grass, and nearby stones. The dirt began to boil and churn. The Void reformed and blasted a lance of power from his eye that sliced Rucka’s head in half and burrowed into the earth. A torrent of magma gushed from the world’s wound as the demon emperor’s skull knit itself back together.
Grinning, Rucka tore at the Void’s side with his two free hands. The demon sank his fangs into the Void’s neck. Rucka’s long, barbed tail speared his opponent through the chest and pulled out the Void’s malformed heart. The organ continued to beat even as Rucka devoured it, laughing.
The gulped heart erupted in a spiky mass. It filled Rucka’s throat, stomach, and bowels. Thorns tore at his flesh from the inside out. Pain wracked his body. The Void’s heart blazed with such unnatural darkness that even the Emperor of the Ten Thousand Hells must shrink from its touch.
Rucka collapsed into a spasmodic heap. He shrieked, foaming at the mouth, tearing at his own guts. It was only temporary. If necessary, Rucka could rip himself apart to extract the heart and still regenerate.
The Void stood over the demon and considered how to rid himself of this nuisance once and for all. The answer was obvious. He must call down enough of his power to end this. One blow with sufficient strength of the Mad Void behind it would destroy anything. It could destroy everything.
The staff in the Void’s left hand churned with power; like a miniature sun, it cast aside the night in its blinding light. The world beneath his feet quaked and whimpered as the Mad Void readied to deliver the strike that would obliterate the demon emperor and this small corner of the universe.
And then he saw them. All about him. Little things. Insignificant, unimportant. Not even worth noticing. Yet he noticed them as they stood in the stinking, blackened snow, so deep that it came to an ogre’s waist. The soldiers of the company looked on, their faces etched in confusion and quiet terror.
His gaze fell across Regina and Miriam. He couldn’t quite remember them anymore. There was nothing to remember. They were but particles of dust. They mattered not at all.
“Then why do you remember their names?” asked the Red Goddess, standing suddenly by his side.
He turned to her. “It’s nothing, an empty memory from a man who never was.” He looked at Rucka, still writhing in quiet agony beneath the Void, still struggling to remove the heart he’d so foolishly swallowed. All the light in the staff faded into a blackness that consumed the night in an ebony fog so thick that only the Void, Rucka, and the Red Goddess could still see.
“Are you a god who dreamed he was a man?” asked the goddess. “Or are you a man who dreams he is a god?”
The Void smiled grimly. “I am. And I shall always be. But these things beneath me will pass away. As will their world one day. Today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, when does it matter to me? It is all but a moment in eternity.”
Rucka had nearly succeeded in extracting the heart. There was but a handful of seconds left for the Void to take advantage of the demon’s weakness. Otherwise, the titanic struggle would renew.
The Mad Void raised his staff to plunge it into Rucka.
The goddess leaned close and whispered in the Void’s ear.
“It matters. If not to you, Ned, then to them.”
The Void hesitated. Not long ago, by his measure of time, he would’ve destroyed Rucka, this world, these specks, and countless others, and the entire universe as well without a second thought. But things had changed. He’d lived as a man, as many men. The exact memories eluded him, and he could only recall Ned’s life.
Even measured by the insignificance of mortal lives, it had been an exercise in absurd futility, a complete waste of time, a struggle against fate to find a place in a world that cared nothing for one more mote crawling upon its surface. But there was some strange dignity in it, and in all these little things. And though they didn’t mean anything and their lives or deaths meant even less, the Void saw them as oddly beautiful in a way he’d never before imagined and couldn’t completely understand.
He lowered his staff. The darkness faded, and the night returned.
He smiled. At Miriam. At Regina. And Frank. And the whole of Ogre Company. The blizzard ended. The snow turned white, then faded away.
The Red Goddess held out her hand. “Give me the staff, Ned. You don’t need it. The power lies within you. It always has. You’ve chosen not to use it before. You can choose not to again.”<
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Rucka sprang. He threw the Void’s own heart at it, and the blackened organ wrapped around its former owner. Rucka knocked the staff from the Void’s hand, seized him by the throat, and before the Void could recover from the surprise, the demon reached into the Void’s head and plucked out his eye. The Void slumped on the ground. His body shrank into Ned’s proportions.
The Red Goddess moved to stop Rucka from inserting the eye into his empty socket, but his barbed tail sliced her into quarters. Rucka put the eye in its place and cackled.
“It’s mine!” he screamed triumphantly. “The power is all mine!”
“No,” said Ned.
The demon whirled on the little mortal creature below him. Ned looked completely normal except his eyes had grown back and his left arm remained red with its patchwork of blackened scars.
Rucka raised his heel to crush the speck. He slammed down his foot, but one touch of Ned’s red fingertips pushed the demon off balance. He crashed to the earth.
“But I have your eye!” shouted Rucka.
“But my power lies elsewhere.” Ned’s left arm sparkled for an instant. “You were looking in the wrong place.” He clenched his fist as Rucka tried to rise, and the demon fell as if bound to the ground.
“You can’t hold me forever!” said Rucka. “I’ll break free. Even if I have to tear the world apart to do it!”
“I know.”
“And I’ll come back! Again and again, I’ll come back! As many times as it takes!”
“I know.”
And he would. And each time he would fail. And each time Ned would have to call upon the Void’s power to defend himself. And a little piece of his humanity would disappear until it all disappeared, until he became the Mad Void again.
“There’s only one way to stop me! But you haven’t the strength for that. Because all these worthless mortals mean something to you. And to destroy me, you’ll have to destroy them all. They’re your weakness. It’d be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.” Rucka laughed anyway.
Ned gestured with his left arm, and still laughing, Rucka was raised into the air and shot up and out of sight.
In the Company of Ogres Page 30
