by Aaron Crash
“Skilled.” Collidium smiled.
“Skilled,” Steven agreed.
“Well,” the lost king said, “I guess I don’t need some of these pawns, now do I?” With a whirl of his blades, he cut the head off Robert Stains. His head thunked to the floor as the corpse spewed blood onto the felt.
Collidium went to stab Rhakshor Khat in the chest.
Steven flung out a hand. “Magica Defensio!”
Collidium’s Glaive skittered off the black shield with a screech. Steven flicked his hand and drove the force field into the elf king, driving him into the wall face-first. The elf turned, blood dripping from his nose. He grinned before whirling and vanishing into the sheetrock.
Steven raced across the room and through the door and into another reality. He had the Night Lance, though, and that was going to make all the difference between life and death.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
QUINNESTRI RACED THROUGH the portal Sabina created. The elf queen joined Tessa in the back lounge of the Ameristar casino. Both their bodies glowed purple, though the barista’s color was more of a lavender than true violet. Aria was there, her Animus Daggers crackling with black lightning. Hwedo had shifted into a Homo Draconis, her scales a dark eggplant color.
The three wives were by the bar. Across the room, another collection of Homo Draconi stood in the tatters of their clothing. They’d torn right through their suits and saris, and by the look of them, they were mostly female but there was a bearded man among them. That would be Aria’s estranged brother, Godha.
Quinn noticed something odd: Nefri, Uchiko, and the rest of the wives had been right behind her, but they weren’t there.
A man fell out of the far wall, and he staggered back. The wall was undamaged, but he’d phased right through it. The man was in boots, jeans, and a dirty shirt with a name tag stitched on the front. Lucky. He turned, and he was holding the Glaive. He had the Net across his shoulder and the Sack on his side.
He staggered back, grinning, and he turned. When he saw her, he raised his hand and greeted her in ancient elvish. “Hail and be good, my queen. Hail and live long.”
“I will not say the same thing to you, Foris Foranna,” she spat.
His smile cracked through his beard. “Steven prefers Collidium. I like all my names, Quinnie. Just as I like being lots of different people. I’m all around, fighting Steven, some of his wives, and we’re spread all across the Stair. Hopefully we won’t meet a man who isn’t there.”
It was clear this thing was the enemy. Blurring with her Bellicosia speed, Tessa unholstered her twin revolvers and fired. Inside the closed room, the explosions were deafening. The bullets passed right through Foranna and struck the wall behind him. She’d narrowly missed hitting one of the dragon women across the way.
“What is the meaning of this?” Godha, a dark orange dragon man, roared. Someone was pounding on the door near him and yelling in a language Quinn didn’t know—Hindi, Marathi, or Mewari.
Foranna flung the Net of Stars, and it expanded out until it filled the room. It struck the Indian Dragonsouls, and they were caught in the webbing. Quinn saw that it was closing in on them, pulling them all together and slowly crushing them.
At the same time, Foranna danced forward, digging into the bag at his side and scattering a handful of the contents onto the black-and-white area rug. Pink and blue tentacles, fuzzy and cottony, grew from the seeds. One reached out and took hold of Hwedo. She tore off the tentacle easily, but another, thicker one snaked around her arm. This one held her. She tried to claw it away, but her talon got stuck in the sticky fibers of the tendril.
A sweet smell filled the room.
“Holy crap,” Tessa breathed. “I think that shit is cotton candy.”
Aria shifted into her partial form, daggers flashing even as BlackBlood tentacles rose from her back. She met Foris Foranna, and they engaged blows. His Glaive flashed off the Animus daggers, and when he got close to lopping her head off, Aria deflected the attack with her liquid Morta.
Still, Foranna was so fast, so quick, that he was able to get through her defense, not enough to spear her or cut her, but enough to hit her. He drove the shaft into Aria’s face, dropping her to the ground.
Hwedo finally used her IonClaws to slice through the cottony tentacles in a stink of melted sugar. She took a few steps, and more coils reached for her. She must’ve triggered SerpentGrace because her movements sped up, and she continued to hack through the forest of cotton candy tentacles with her shining talons.
Tessa had her guns, but she didn’t dare shoot for fear of hitting her friends or the Indian Dragonsouls being crushed in the Net of Stars across the room. They had to get to those people before they were crushed to death. Godha and the others couldn’t cut through the net with their claws, nor would it burn or freeze. The webbing constricted further, and a dragon woman screamed. It would be a horrible way to die.
Quinn didn’t have the same power she’d had on the Battle World. Much of that had come from her connection to her people. However, she was far from powerless.
With axes in hand, she went after Foranna, and he was forced backward, keeping her kavs out of him by his speed and the whirling Glaive. She tried to use Tide sorcery to hit him with water, or her Spark magic to burn him, and yet he merely extinguished her magic with a yellow-toothed grin.
“Uh, I think we might have a problem!” Tessa yelled. “I knew the aquariums weren’t going to survive us, but I didn’t think fish sticks were on the menu.”
In the water tanks around them, the fish were growing, merging, until the scales and the fins and the mouths and eyes and meat pushed the water out of the top. The merged fish thing continued to grow. The glass creaked, cracked, then shattered. The fish blob rolled out like lava onto the floor. The entire room was about to be filled with the ever-growing flesh.
“But I wanted fries with that,” Tessa complained. “Let’s see if I can dispel this shit. Magica Incanto!”
Nothing happened.
“Uh-oh,” the barista breathed. “I was worried about killing the fish, and now it looks like the fish will kill us!”
Aria spat out a string of black fluid that sizzled as it hit the blob and the floor near where the Indian Dragonsouls were caught in the net. The smoking acid ate through the webbing, as the Dragonsouls fought to free themselves.
Aria had mastered her Toxicity Exhalant, and it had saved her family. Quinn was happy for her. Aria went to breathe more acid onto the fish, to stop them from growing, but a tangle of pink and blue tentacles grabbed her, trapping her arms closing her mouth. The original fluff had been easy to pull apart, but not the coils of the more mature confection.
Foris Foranna cackled laughter. “Oh, this is a game, all right. This is a fight.” He lashed out with his Glaive.
Quinn blocked the attack and drew up her Flesh magic, to transform the room into something more friendly. She’d created the arena in the Horror Mother’s nest... she must be able to replace the fish flesh with rock from the mountains outside. Or even the strange drywall material the humans used for their homes.
She felt her energy leave her, and Foranna laughed. “No, I’ll use that, my queen. Not that you were ever a queen. Oh, and thanks for telling Vandrus Dree not to cut my throat. That would have been very embarrassing for me.”
Using his strange magic, Foranna blasted Quinn back into the scaly wall of growing flesh. He followed up by trying to open her belly with the Day Glaive. The blade crackled across the armor of her Bellicosia protection.
The walls were gone, replaced by the stink of fish scales. Eyes blinked at them, fins waved pathetically, and it was awful and strange. Still, the blob continued to grow around them, shrinking the room.
The fish flesh grew over Quinn’s arms. She grimaced at the feel of the liquid fish on her skin. Then the scales hardened. She was trapped.
Foranna brought his Glaive around to cleave her skull.
A purple flash later, and the villai
n was sent sprawling. Had Hwedo been able to break free from the cotton candy tentacles?
No, it was Tessa. She had used her Bellicosia speed to knock Foranna down, and now, she was standing over him, her revolver gleaming like a falling star.
“This is where you lose your fucking game.” Tessa had one Peacekeeper pointed at the man. In her other hand was a piece of the cotton candy, pink and fluffy.
Foranna’s eyes widened.
Tessa chewed a bit and then pulled the trigger.
Instead of an explosion, a little stream of something yellow left Tessa’s gun barrel.
Foranna caught the stream in his mouth and swallowed. “I know some people don’t like Mountain Dew, but I love it, so delicious and invigorating. Sorry, your HeartStrike was never going to work on me.”
He stuck out a hand. By force of will, he threw Tessa back into Hwedo. Both were snared by the cotton candy tentacles, which were growing too fast to cut. Both of their mouths were wrapped with the stuff, which meant Tessa couldn’t cast spells. That meant no Magica Porta to get them out of the stinking, shrinking room.
Foranna stood. “Sometimes you eat the candy, and sometimes the candy eats you. Strange, a human, adept at brewing coffee, could use both Lyran magic and Alpherian skills. This is a very interesting game.” He looked up at the ceiling as the expanding scales covered the lights above.
Quinn, still caught in the wall, was pressed forward. The dragons in the net hadn’t been able to escape, though the acid had opened some of the strands. Godha was pushed into the acid, and he roared in pain.
“You know,” Foranna said, “I’m fighting the little blonde with the big sword in another reality, another Blackhawk, Colorado. This Mouse person is good, and that damn cloak, every time I’m close to cutting her head off, it saves her. And I have to keep ducking those bullets from those pink twins. Aren’t they fun? And smart. You know, some men don’t like smart women, and that’s a shame. Smart people are a lot more interesting than dumb ones, regardless of sex. The werebear, for example, not the sharpest tool in the shed, but she is big, and that armor? Those claws? Damn. Have to avoid her. Oh, arrows too? Shit. From the dark elf. She reminds me of Vandrus Dree... who was a pain in my ass! And then, there’s this medieval chain weapon by that fast one, who is hard to hit and hard to see. Oops, more BlackBlood tentacles, which aren’t as nice as cotton candy ones. These Morta creatures are a surprise. To think, Heridan was simply one of Stefan Drokharis’s Magicians, and now, she is so much more.”
He paused and sighed happily. “How could I ever say no to such a game as this?”
Foranna, this version of him, disappeared as they were all pushed closer and closer to be encased in the fish innards.
Tessa couldn’t talk, so it was up to Quinnestri to provide the quip. But nothing funny came to mind. That seemed like a shame.
It was Aria who stepped up. She spit out a mouthful of the cotton candy and ruefully looked at the awful wall closing in on them.
She grinned wearily. “And to think, if we survive this, I’ll probably never want to eat tandoori fish ever again.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THE DOOR FROM THE POKER room led to a bridge spanning a cavern far underground.
To Steven, it was one of the most beautiful, amazing, strange places he’d ever seen. It was alien, and yet, it was familiar because he’d seen The Lord of the Rings movies. You couldn’t live with Tessa Ann Ross without a great deal of Tolkien in your life.
The walls of the cavern had been carved into vast friezes of dwarven kings, five hundred feet tall if not a thousand. They were serious figures, bearded, holding war hammers, axes, or thick-bladed swords. Above, rooms glittered with light from houses built into the rock. Below were the cathedrals, spires, and castles of a vast city, where figures moved, talking, shouting, and laughing. Machinery cranked out black smoke. Steven smelled coal burning, meat cooking, and the sweeter smells of bread baking.
The fragrances drifted up to the bridge where he stood. Ornate, a dozen feet wide and a thousand feet long, the bridge was well supported—even some of the skyscrapers below melded into the magnificent structure.
Collidium, as an armored elf king, stood with his Glaive, Net, and Sack twenty feet in front of Steven.
“I’m doing well against your wives, Steven,” the lost king said. “I really didn’t want to fight you all at the same time. That would’ve been difficult, to say the least, and I plan on winning this. Come, let us end this.” He grinned. “Now that sounded very dramatic.”
“Is this one of the worlds you created?” Steven asked.
“Do you mean seeded?” Collidium asked. “Yes. Setting up the game board. A push here, a pull there, to get things just right, and to see what kind of heroes I can forge.”
Steven, gripping the Night Lance, thickened his skin with DarkArmor, fueled his movement with SerpentGrace, and then used both DragonStrength and ShadowStrength to increase his power. Leaching energy from Collidium worked, and he let out a gasp as Steven stole some of his strength.
He reached into the thing with Leeze, to pull more energy, but no, Collidium wasn’t a creature of Animus or Morta. He was a creature of Void. The neutral energy filled the strange elf, and yet, he’d had Animus at one point, Steven could sense it.
Steven didn’t aim the long blade of his spear at the elf king. Instead, Steven struck the ground in front of Collidium using the true power of the Night Lance, which was not to kill, but to reveal the truth. It was the weapon of the scholar after all.
The explosion rocked Collidium back and it threw them off the dwarf bridge and into another reality, a casino place, like the Ameristar in Blackhawk but not quite. This casino had a boiling lava fountain in the middle of old-fashioned slot machines with the levers and the spinning wheels inside. The heat and violence of the magma was kept back by a static force field fueled by Animus. There were no walls in this place, but magical windows that showed the trees, cliffs, and mountaintops of the Colorado town while keeping the inside comfortable.
All the normal gamblers had fled, and only Steven’s wives remained: Mouse, Zoey, the twins, Uchiko, Nefri, and Heridan. They surrounded a silver-gowned woman, with white-blonde hair, the spitting image of Felicia. She too had the Glaive, the Net, and the Sack.
The elf king version of Collidium staggered back into the woman, and they merged, until only the king remained. Steven didn’t pause. He couldn’t let the lost king use his Glaive, Net, or Sack.
“Heridan,” Steven called out. “Get back to the Infinity Ranch. Get Sabina to retrieve the rest of you.”
“Where are we, Steven-dono?” Uchiko called out. Dono was an honorific, meaning lord.
Collidium answered. “Gaia fucking Omicron? Ha, you’re going to run out of Greek letters, Stevie.” He lifted the Glaive. Steven had to keep the lost king on the run so he couldn’t use the Net of Stars or the Sack of Seeds.
Steven hacked into the floor again. Another explosion and he’d cut them into a room with fish walls, actual fish walls, and Quinnestri hung in one, half-consumed.
Again, the elf king stumbled back from the blow and into his backwoods body. Collidium merged with Frank Sport/George Roy Hooker, until only the golden armor of the gray-haired Lyran warrior remained.
Steven needed to get rid of both the fluffy pastel-colored tentacles and the fish walls. The Night Lance might be able to do that. He had an idea. It would be risky, but he had to try.
He found a dark thread that led out into the main casino, and that was where he went, using Transvexri to vanish in a splash of Morta. He immediately shifted into his True Form. His thirty-foot-long black body smashed through the slot machines and sent people screaming.
This was going to be a public relations nightmare, and it would probably cost him tens of millions of dollars. Well, that’s why God created the Bud Novaks of the world. His lawyer would take care of everything. Wasn’t that what rich people did?
Steven inhaled. He accessed the ultimate
Alpherian Exhalant, RealityFire. He couldn’t use anything else or he’d burn the people inside, kill them with smoke, or cover them with acid. No, this was the safest way, safe for them, supremely dangerous for Steven.
Every time he used RealityFire, he risked burning his core to cinders. Or tearing open reality itself, which would bleed. And that blood might draw leeches, things he didn’t want to consider.
He remembered where his friends had been... Quinn trapped in the fish wall to his left, Aria, Tessa, and Hwedo caught in the tentacles on the right, and Rhakshor Khat’s son and wives in the back of the room.
The front part should be clear, except for Collidium. And if the lost king was unmade by RealityFire? They could only get so lucky. Steven tucked that idea away to use later.
All of creation went silent. Icharaam’s Crown, hidden in his scales, grew white-hot, and it was agony, but he kept his focus. A thought hit him—that fish stuff might not stop growing until it swamped the world.
The power of Collidium was truly impressive.
Good thing Steven had some mojo of his own. A thin beam of light left his mouth and it thickened, growing stronger, brighter, and everything stopped as he unmade the walls, both the drywall, the paneling, the struts, and then the fish flesh beyond as well as the cotton candy.
Collidium wasn’t there, Steven knew, because he would’ve felt the building blocks that made up the entity. Pity, Steven would’ve liked to know his enemy at a cellular level.
Instead of creating, Steven merely deleted—the wall, the fish, the tentacles, all were gone, though he kept the floor. The back end of the casino had a gaping hole in it now. Aria, Tessa, and Hwedo escaped from the ruined room as the walls sagged inward.
Collidium danced forward to avoid being swamped by his merged fish thing.
Steven had used up every bit of his Animus to free his friends, but Tessa had plenty of power inside her. She knew he had a better chance of ending Collidium than she did.
