by Aaron Crash
“So, Quinnie, you and the Bobs are going to be shuffled through buildings across the Great Salt Flats, twelve buildings, four of which came from the unfortunate Fortune, Wyoming, which has returned to the nothing it came from. That will happen to us all eventually... we will return to nothing. For now, though, we are very much somethings, am I wrong?”
She didn’t answer. Yes, this man above her was one more of her sins. If only she’d let Vandrus Dree cut his throat, this legend come to life.
The lost king chuckled. “You don’t need to answer. While I have my fun playing the shell game with the three of you, I have me twelve howitzers, and I’ll be shelling the hell out of the entire area. And then, of course, there’s my undead army. I was thinking, the door thing was fun, but it was missing something. There were all those corpses hanging around on the Game World, and I figured I might as well put them to use. Ha, that’s what Zothora called it... the Game World, and for her, it was only a game. I can respect that like no one else. Too bad she lost and lost big.”
The figure whirled a blade down, and she saw it was a curved blade on the end of a pole, and on it, in ancient Lyra, was its name... the Day Glaive.
“Poor Zothora. Like me, she liked a game that draws a little blood.” He nicked her face, and blood dripped onto the floor. And then, dice fell, two cubes, six sides. She didn’t see the number, but the lost king laughed. “Oh, shit. That’s this building.”
A second later the dice, the Day Glaive, and the lost king were gone. Half the building exploded as another shell hit it, and there was noise, dust, and pain, so much pain.
“FAITH!” STEVEN TRIGGERED the Baxter armor. Shaze had their claws torn off and their heads removed as the steel plates covered him. And then, BlackBlood spikes sprouted out of the cracks.
The spears ripped through the backs of the demons, only something wasn’t right. The Shaze weren’t whistling, they were silent, and then Steven saw why.
These things were dead... they were the animated corpses of the demons, and they weren’t alone.
A crackle of bone later, the skeletons of two dragons came leaping over George’s Torch. They landed on the salt, opened their mouths, and sprayed dark lightning from inside a swirling core of wavering, indistinct energy inside them.
“Defensio!” Steven threw up a shield spell, and the energy crackled off it. He reached out with Leeze, but he couldn’t access their cores. They hadn’t been resurrected with Animus or Morta. Inside them was Void.
Anger flooded Steven. He opened his mouth and unleashed ChromaticFury. The entire world paused; there was a moment of eerie silence and then the whomp of the energy leaving him. The crackling, blinding mixture of fire, ice, lightning, acid, and pure Animus struck the two dragons. Both were reduced to dust.
Steven didn’t feel a thing when they died, neither in his Animus nor his Morta. At least these strange things didn’t rob him of his strength. Another dragon came up from behind him, along with more undead demons and a few human skeletons. Tattered uniforms hung from the bones of the soldiers as they fired their machine guns at him. Sunlight glinted off their weapons.
The bullets bounced off Steven’s armor harmlessly.
In a splash of midnight ichor, Heridan appeared on her KillaCycle, her Morta tentacles ripping through skeletons as she raced her bike across the sand. The dragon reached out for her, and she used Transvexri, teleporting the bike and all, to escape its claws. She appeared on the other side of it, sped around, and threw a coil of darkness around its head. Then she ripped the thing’s skull off its spine.
Sabina’s voice struck Steven and he was given the rules of the game, through Quinnestri, who was in one of the buildings on the Great Salt Flats. At least they were on Earth. He knew of the Great Salt Flats—it was west of Salt Lake City on I-80.
Twelve buildings. Twelve howitzers. Three prisoners being shuffled around.
The Latina Magician was still on the Infinity Ranch, but she’d fight with them there, using her magic and holding their baby. It was kind of like working from home. Tessa was on her way, through a Magica Porta spell, with the rest of their forces.
Sabina finished with, He’s rolling dice, mi amor. Quinnestri saw dice.
Steven wasn’t sure what that meant.
As for Heridan, she hadn’t left her motorcycle—both she and the bike dripped with goo. She ripped through skeletons with her BlackBlood, teleporting herself and her bike here and there. She was a sight to see, demoned out, on the motorcycle, awash in darkness. She reached out to him. Steven, I could get here, but you need to get Aria, Nefri, and Uchiko. They are back in Wyoming.
Heridan stopped her bike just as a dozen elven warriors, skeletons in Ohkreela armor, stumbled toward her. They were armed with bows, axes, swords, and spears. Arrows snapped as they hit the shadows around her. Steven thought they were exactly like the undead he’d fought on Aqualyra when he’d gone there to wake Quinnestri. The déjà vu made him sigh. Fucking undead elves.
The Prosha lifted her hands and shouted, “Corropor!” And in seconds, the wavering balls of energy in their rib cages turned into solid black orbs. They spun. Archers shot through undead U.S. soldiers while swordsmen hacked into undead Shaze spread about in the melee.
Heridan had created a safe zone in the mob of undead around them. Steven exhaled Inferno and spun the flames into a portal.
Uchiko, Nefri, and Aria roared out on their own motorcycles. Aria launched herself off her bike, shifting into a dragon, and spit her Black Napalm onto anything bone around her. The heat struck Steven.
Nefri slid her bike to a stop, let it fall, and grabbed hold of Uchiko’s bike with BlackBlood tentacles. The Shadow Archer used the Morta to anchor herself on the back seat while the ninja drove. Nefri had her bow out, shooting skeletons with exploding arrows.
They were doing fine, even before Tessa, Mouse, the twins, Hwedo, and Zoey showed up.
Neither bullets nor Lyran swords would be able to hack through Zoey’s armor. As for Chazzie and Pru, between their machine guns and their teleportation, nothing could touch them. Hwedo attacked with the Night Lance, while Mouse fought with the Slayer Blade. The green flames on the broadsword were lost in the brilliant sunlight splashing down on the salt plain.
Tessa walked forward with her Peacekeepers. “Dammit, no dragons. And what? Void zombies? Boring. Wow, I’m super disappointed.” Her eyes glimmered pink as she powered up but soon a purplish glow mixed with her rose color. Then, she blurred with speed as she emptied both revolvers. Every round exploded with fire, cold, electricity, or like a mortar shell. Undead dragons were reduced to kindling.
Ha, someone had been mastering Bellicosia.
There was no way the army of undead was going to survive facing his Escort.
Steven deactivated his armor and took to the skies, flying over the carnage. There were twelve buildings, and like with the doors, they were numbered, one through twelve. Four were from Fortune. Four were gas stations, pulled from somewhere: a Sapp Brothers, a Loves, a Flying J, and a TA Travel Center. The last four were random buildings, from a Taco Bell to the Rawlins thrift store.
“Magica Divinatio,” Steven roared. He searched for Quinnestri, but found Robert Stains, in the Flying J, until the man vanished. And yes, Bob Wayne was there as well, in the thrift store, but only for a minute. Then he was gone.
It was a shell game, ha, with shells exploding in random places across the map. But like before, the numbers would flash, and then one would blink, and that’s where the next exploding round would hit.
Steven watched as a tumbling steel cylinder appeared out of nowhere. The charge went sailing down to hit the fireworks stand, number seven, what was left of it. If Collidium were rolling two dice, then seven was going to be a popular target.
A thought struck Steven. If this fucker was throwing dice to decide which target to hit, that meant he’d never get to building number one, which was the Taco Bell. Two through twelve, that was all he could ever get.
Steven hooked into both Tessa’s and Heridan’s minds. Lure the undead to the Taco Bell. The shells won’t hit there. We have three people in the buildings. Maybe the twins can teleport into the buildings to get to them. Heridan, stop fighting, and use Transvexri to see if you can find them.
Little busy! the Prosha yelled back. And who cares about those people? It’s not like I’m going to care much.
Quinnestri is one of them.
So?
Steven growled. Heridan, get to the Taco Bell and have one of their pizzas. It will calm you.
Heridan appeared in a vision, the present, where she was impaling her enemies on BlackBlood spears. She stared at him, smiling, before running her tongue over her ash-gray fangs. I do love a Mexican pizza.
Steven saw the air waver in front of him. A shell appeared and hit number eight, blowing the A&W Drive-In to pieces. The restaurant had been hit once, but now it was gone completely, a splotch on the salt.
The cannons were firing from other worlds. If he could get to them, he could remove the threat of the explosions while his Escort neutralized the last of the undead. Then, this Collidium would lose interest in his little game.
Steven still had his Divination magic going. He reached out into the future, and he saw that the next shell would hit the TA Travel Plaza, number twelve. Collidium would be rolling boxcars next.
Steven breathed out Inferno in front of him and swirled it into a circle of flame. He flew through his portal spell and into another world.
He floated over a dark ocean to a white beach. There, on the sand, was a cannon, a huge piece of military equipment. He wasn’t sure what a howitzer looked like, exactly, but this beast deserved the name.
He landed. Glancing up, he saw it wasn’t night exactly, but the sun was being blocked by a huge shadow... not a moon, another planet. Collidium had set up his cannons in completely different realities, and he’d tweaked his guns in a very specific way.
A whirring piece of clockwork was built into the side of the cannon. The mechanism had runes engraved on it, Lyran runes, which emanated purple energy. In the center of the clockwork was a ball of that strange Void magic, blurring the air.
The howitzer was part American war machine and part elven magic. Steven was going to need every bit of Animus he could muster to portal to all twelve guns. Focusing on his Morta core, he sprayed the cannon with acid. In seconds, the howitzer was a puddle on the beach, all under the shadow of the star above, eclipsed by another planet.
One gun down, twelve to go.
Steven coughed out fire and flew through his Magica Porta to world after world.
One was a forest of mushrooms as tall as redwoods, with slugs the size of elephants oozing around the stinking toadstools. He destroyed the cannon and moved on.
He found himself on a frozen tundra, where the cannon had been set up in the midst of the bones of bears and seals. This had been a slaughtering ground for some tribe. There were signs of sentient life—arrowheads, a torn piece of leather, a broken pot. Steven melted the howitzer and kept on going.
He appeared on a vast plain of iron, with the milk of stars above him. Was that a starship taking off, a dented collection of blue, gray, and black plates? He wasn’t sure, and then it was gone. The metal plane where he stood seemed as endless as it was ancient. There a cannon fired, sending another shell onto the game board on the Great Salt Flats. Steven prayed it wouldn’t kill anyone. His Escort should be safe in the Taco Bell. Maybe they’d even found the prisoners by now.
Steven melted the howitzer and left. He arrived in a forest, on the side of an ocean. A cobblestone path led into a collection of webs sticking to the trees. Dark shapes, strange shapes, moved in the webs, and he wasn’t about to waste his time fighting giant spiders. The cannon was in the middle of the webs.
He breathed fire on the howitzer, melting it and making those spiders shriek. They almost sounded like pigs. His Inferno Exhalant gave him flames to portal on out of there to his next stop. He followed his Divination magic, and so far, it hadn’t failed him.
Most of the time, he used acid to melt the cannons. However, like with the spiders, he sometimes used Inferno because it also gave him the flames he needed to open another doorway.
When he got low on Animus, he drew from his Morta core, converting the energy with Leeze.
Cannon after cannon was destroyed.
One was on the cliffside of what looked to be some kind of fortress, a central citadel and four towers, all enclosed by a red wall. The cannon was set up on a green field, almost like a football field, on the side of the cape, with the ocean crashing onto the rocky shore below. Two moons were in the night sky.
Steven destroyed the howitzer and flew on.
He was getting tired, dizzy, and dangerously low on power. But returning to Gaia Alpha would only rob him of more time, and any one of the shells might kill one of the prisoners. Even Robert Stains didn’t deserve a fate like that.
Nine cannons destroyed, ten, eleven. One world was definitely Aqualyra. He recognized the carnivorous trees and the flying animals.
Another world had a temple with tall statues of dragons. Steven thought it might be the Alpheros homeworld. It was pretty, with clear blue skies, fresh air, and fields of flowers around the vast structure his ancestors very well might have come from.
That was number eleven, and he swore he’d go back there, to really explore the place.
The last world was a mistake. The last world nearly killed him. It was a blasted wasteland, with lightning crackling through clouds weeping a cold drizzle. Steven felt how wrong the place was, a place of death, where pools of pale mud burbled and bubbled near stone pillars. Steven thought they might be covered with moss, but then, nothing green could live here. Sulphur saturated the air. From the distance came the screams of something alive and sentient. Tortured howls. The ground split in front of him. Human skulls bubbled out from the crack, one after another, like chunky bone vomit.
Lightning flashed. The pillars weren’t pillars, but statues—of what, Steven couldn’t see, but the angles weren’t right, and this whole place didn’t seem real. Or it was too real. More screams and pleas. “Help me!”
A cloaked figure stood next to the last howitzer. This cloaked figure was tall, ten feet if not fifteen, lean, impossibly so. It had hands, but too many fingers, six, seven, eight? Insects crawled out of the mottled skin of its decaying flesh, long flies with whirring wings.
Steven had to stop and wonder... was this Collidium?
Steven was in his True Form, and he moved forward. He didn’t know what this thing or the flies it birthed was, but he didn’t have time to chat. He had one last bit of Animus in him, enough to melt the cannon and to open one last portal to get home.
The cloaked figure didn’t speak but it did reach out with its mind, a terrible vast mind, an infinite intelligence. This thing was like Zothora. This thing was something basic and awful and primary.
Creator Destructor.
That was the thought that hit Steven. Still seeing with his Divination magic, he knew that this thing wasn’t Collidium. And if he wasn’t careful, the Creator Destructor would follow him back to Gaia Alpha.
Steven was quick; he flew over and slathered the cannon in flames. The cloaked figure was gone. To where? Steven didn’t know, but he counted himself lucky.
The air was thick with insects, a foot long and growing fast. The flies clustered around him, and Steven knew he couldn’t bring even one of those things back with him.
He turned human, flung out his hands, and opened a hole in the universe leading from the blasted place back to the Great Salt Flats.
Small now, the flies were easy to see, and they came for him, but he was quicker. He leapt through and shut the portal behind him.
He was on salt. He looked up, breathing hard. He knew what was coming.
Tessa did too. “Hey, someone catch Steven. He’s about to go bye-bye.”
Steven staggered, empty, so empty of everything, an
d troubled. Why were there things like Zothora on the Stair? Or this Creator Destructor? Was rot really at the heart of all life? Did it all end in sickness and death? If so, shouldn’t those things be what were worshipped in the end?
The Taco Bell was only the building not marked by the shelling. He’d been right about that. Heridan held Quinnestri—the elf queen had survived Collidium’s latest game. Why had this lost king put his cannon near the Creator Destructor? What was the point of that?
Steven closed his eyes and tried to speak, to tell them he was all right, but he couldn’t. And then he was falling, and the BlackBlood tentacles that caught him were soft, so soft.
And then he was gone to the world, only he wasn’t.
He leaned against the bar at George’s Torch, only it wasn’t on the Great Salt Flats. It wasn’t even on I-80, which cut through Wyoming. No, it was someplace else, another world. There were many worlds on the Stair. Yes, death, sickness, sorrow, those were a part of the deal. So was life, love, and the promise each second offered.
Every second was a world, and every world could be wonderful.
Blue snow fell outside, onto a crystalline landscape, mostly liquid, but there was enough ice to rest the bar on. The air was frigid. The bar’s heater thrummed and clanked, pumping hot air into the place. The red of the cotton candy case looked like blood. The clowns were It-inspired demons, and those balloons looked like they could explode at any minute. The cotton candy itself looked like it had been shit out by the giant spiders Steven had torched on his mission. Why had they squealed like pigs? Had he smelled barbecued pork?
Bob Wayne didn’t have his burger nor his beer, but he did have a cup of coffee. He slid another one over to Steven.
“It’s not Tessa’s,” the Texan Ronin drawled, “but it’ll do, pilgrim.”
Steven caught hold of an intuitive thought. “We’re on Titan. I mean, the moon, Titan.”
“Which is why we’re drinking coffee.” Wayne raised his cup.
Steven clinked his cup against Wayne’s. It had to be a dream, so he could have a sip of coffee without worrying about poison. Or maybe it wasn’t a dream.
