Instead, he just smiled. “Welcome, Merciless, to the end of everything!”
Well, he was confident.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WAR AGAINST THE GODS
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” I said, looking around the coliseum. “Very Space Rome meets New Jersey.”
Entropicus’ eyes bore into my soul. “Clever quips and disrespect will not save you, Gary Karkofsky. I have seen your entire history from birth until death. You act as if you are the hero in a grand adventure. That you will always land on your feet and the world will bend to your needs and victory will always be yours in the end. That is not this story, though.”
“I think he’s calling you a Gary Stu….err, Gary,” Cindy said.
I pointed Caliburn at him, threateningly. “You don’t know me, Auntie Puss, which I apologize for being a lame comeback but there’s only so many variations on a guy with a skull for a head I can make. Any person who knows me knows I’m measured by my failures far more than I am by my successes. I get smacked around by superheroes, I lose my friends, and every time I save the city or world it’s only after things have completely gone to hell. I am, in fact, actually, awful at this superhero and supervillain thing.”
Jane leaned over to G. “Why are we trusting him with this again?”
“Search me,” G said. “I am way out of my genre here. If we were going after international criminals or terrorists, then I’d be in charge but this is beyond me.”
I ignored the two. “The thing, I’ve always had people I could lean on to carry me through the battles against the various bad guys I’ve faced over the years. First it was Cloak, then it was Diabloman, and a half-dozen other super-talented people who I tricked into thinking I actually knew what the hell I was doing.”
“Does that include us?” Cindy asked Mandy.
“Yes,” Mandy said, looking at the Hellazons with shame and regret in her eyes.
“Super,” Cindy said. “The world makes sense again.”
“In fact, I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said, pointing at Entropicus. “It’s complete and utter lunacy to have trusted me with the responsibility of defeating the Lord of Evil. The guy the Devil prays to. The Supreme High Dingy Doo of Damnation. The—”
“We get it, Gary,” Gabrielle said.
“But tell me, Entropicus,” I said, walking forward and pointing at him. “Do you think that makes me less dangerous or more dangerous?”
“Less,” Entropicus said.
I paused. “Yeah, you got me there.”
“I also know why you ramble, equivocate, and speak nonsense,” Entropicus said, leaning his head over onto his hand with a bored expression on the remains of his face. “You think taunts and insults will buy you time as well as confuse your enemies. That it will give you a few extra seconds to attack or come up with solutions that will allow you and your companions to survive. You play the part of the fool and the court jester to hide you are an above-average, but not exceptional, tactician.”
“That’s…not entirely true.”
Entropicus leaned forward. “However, I know the truth. The reason you have won so many times in the past is the fact you have never been the underdog. The weakling. The David versus the Goliath. The Reaper’s Cloak has always provided you a vast array of flexible powers useful in virtually any situation you have found yourself. Your opponents have included zombies, powerless criminals, and yourself. You have never actually faced someone who wields power greater than yourself. Instead, you pretend to fight opponents stronger than you in order to disguise the fact you are a child plucking the wings off insects with the power of the gods.”
“You’re not wrong,” I admitted. “I’m usually scared shitless whenever I’m fighting the various people I encounter. This despite the fact I can shoot fire out of my hands and ice among other cool powers. Making Star Wars references is sort of my way of trying not to scream like a little girl whenever I’m encountering people like you.”
“Hey, some little girls are tough!” Cindy said. “Like our daughter! Who, I point out has rescued you too.”
“But if I’m a bully picking on those weaker than themselves, what are you?”
“A god,” Entropicus said.
Dammit. That backfired. “Well, you’re right. I am a stage magician with lovely assistants like G and Cassius here. Everything I do is sleight of hand. I’m not the Nightwalker or the Trenchcoat Magician who has a rabbit to pull out of his hat or pigeons up my sleeve for every occasion, though. I’m still going to win this fight, though.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it’d be a pretty crappy ending otherwise.”
Entropicus looked down. “Do you wish to know my story, Merciless, before you die?”
“I’d like to buy myself a few more minutes of not dying so, please.”
Jane elbowed me for that line.
“What? It’s true,” I admitted.
Entropicus sat back in his chair, amused to once more have the floor. About the only weakness I’d been able to find in him so far was pride and I was going to try to exploit that for everything I could. Still, I was genuinely surprised by the next words that came out of his lips. “I am…was… Cain.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“The First Murderer. The Third Sinner,” Entropicus said, repeating various titles. “The Marked One.”
“Huh, I thought you were fictional,” I said, genuinely stunned that was true.
“I am,” Entropicus said, his voice full of disgust. “There was no Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, or Paradise Lost. It was all the metaphor of your people. However, the Primals brought me forth as a primeval avatar of evil when they desired to make the universe more interesting. I was created from the story of a homicidal farmer guilty of fratricide to be the scapegoat for humanity’s endless capacity for horrors. The nature of violence all came from me and even if it wasn’t true, because people believed in it, it became true. I was shunned and hated wherever I dwelled until I decided to make the fear generated into a tool.”
“That is a raw deal,” I admitted.
“It is more than a raw deal,” Entropicus said, his voice like venom. “It is foul nature of my reality that I was created as nothing more than stock villain in the pantomime of humanity’s mythology. You cloak yourself in the mantle of the villain but have warped the narrative around you that people consider you the hero. For me, I have been predestined to make wrong what mankind makes right because that is my place.”
“You could try being…I dunno, not evil?”
“Would that I could,” Entropicus said, sounding almost sad. “My vision stretches across a thousand realities and I am left with the knowledge no story is ever allowed to drift too far from its original purpose. Each time I have sought a different path to become a better person or even express my free will from the role predestined, I am brought hurtling back to the awful thing I have become. My family is destroyed, my kingdoms laid waste to, or my kindnesses turned to ash. The Primals do not wish me to be anything other than Death’s scourge on the living so a villain I must be until I escape it this day.”
“By destroying reality?” I asked, trying to figure out the logic.
“By remaking reality,” Entropicus said, his voice a low whisper. “My curse is not only limited to myself, you see, but for heroes as well as monsters. The decent are punished along with the vile because it makes a more amusing tale that way. We are the amusements to the gods and never allowed to stop rolling Sisphysus’ boulder up the hill it continually rolls down. King Arthur’s kingdom is never allowed to stand but must always succumb to Mordred’s treachery. Robin Hood will never triumph because John will always become King when his brother passes. The Earth will only be saved by its messiah at the end of the world.”
“Yeah, happy endings never last because everyone eventually dies,” I said, unimpressed with his completely batshit view of the world. “What kind of moron has the hubris to think th
ey can just reboot reality?”
Everyone looked at me, but I made a zip it gesture to them.
“The universe is an absurd place and one that does not deserve to exist in its current state,” Entropicus said. “The gods hide from humanity and science continually finds itself rebuffed from the secrets of the universe it promised to reveal. But most of all, the reason that it does not deserve to exist is the horrors of the abyss.”
“The abyss?”
Entropicus stretched out his hand to Abaddon. “This place, just one of the many like it, where souls are continually tormented for all eternity. Where the guilty are punished by having their own crimes done against them, repeatedly, for all eternity. It is a monstrous thing and worse than oblivion as it makes the righteous infinitely worse than the damned.”
I stared up at him. “What have you done with Diabloman’s soul?”
“Allow me to show you,” Entropicus said, snapping his fingers.
What I saw was a vision of a horrific prison of a million souls held in individual cages over a vast abyss. In the center of it, suspended by four chains pulling his arms in four directions was Diabloman, naked, without his mask, and having blood drip into his eyes. I tried not to look at his face, which he’d never shown me, but I caught a glimpse of the sad middle aged man underneath.
Tortured, forever.
“Each drop of blood is filled with the essence of regret,” Entropicus said, whispering his next words. “He’ll experience all the worst moments of his life over and over again for eternity. A fitting punishment for the world’s worst murderer, wouldn’t you say?”
“You were the one behind his destruction of the old universe,” I said, staring up at him. “Just like you’ve been behind most of my troubles, haven’t you? You wrote The Book of Midnight so you brought the Great Beasts to my world, you created vampires, and you were probably behind Merciful too.”
“Your doppelganger was his own man,” Entropicus said, chuckling. “But I do know a secret about his actions. A secret that will break you and leave you without the will to fight on. A secret that will end this sad display of defiance by showing you that everything you loved, everything you fought for, was a lie. Do you know what that secret is?”
“I do,” I said, looking up at him.
“Oh?” Entropicus said, looking surprised. “What do you believe it is?”
I looked back at Mandy. “It took me a while to figure out?”
“Gary, don’t believe anything he tells you,” Mandy started to say.
“It’s too late,” I said, looking at her with a sad expression on my face. “I’m sorry, though, for what it’s worth. I don’t think you started as a bad person.”
“Gary, what are you talking about?” Cindy asked.
I looked at her. “That’s the secret Entropicus was holding back as the one-two punch of tonight’s proceeding: she’s not our Mandy.”
For a coliseum full of screaming fans, the next few seconds were surprisingly silent.
“Hahahahaha,” Entropicus burst out laughing and it wasn’t the smug humor of a Dark Lord but the kind of giddy laughter of someone who had just heard the funniest joke of his life.
Cindy pulled away in disgusted horror. “You monster!”
Mandy didn’t deny it, though. “I may not be your Mandy but I am a Mandy. All of her memories and thoughts were given to me when I came here. Everything we had was true.”
“Lady, I wouldn’t believe you if you presented me a signed affidavit that water was wet,” I said, looking back at her. “How?”
“Merciful gave me your wife’s body in exchange for spying on you. I chose to stand with the side of the angels, though. I had a lot of experience resisting the darkness in my life.” Mandy looked at me with a sad expression on her face. “Besides, I liked you Gary, you were funny and sweet. If you weren’t so in love with the memory of your wife and your flying doll, we would have been fine together. I didn’t even mind you screwing your psychotic henchwoman.”
“Mandy died for me!” Cindy pulled out a sword from her picnic basket. “Wait, a damn minute, I wasn’t even mentioned in the list of obstructions?”
“I object to the term flying doll,” Gabrielle said. “Even if I have a bunch of dolls made of me and can fly.”
“Eh.” Mandy shrugged. I decided in that moment to name her Fake Mandy. It felt childish and stupid given the monumental nature of her betrayal.
“So my wife has been dead all along,” I said, realizing all of my efforts to bring her back had been for nothing. “You could have told me. If you cared for me in the slightest, you would have.”
Fake Mandy looked down. “I tried. Many times, I tried to tell you the truth. That I wasn’t who you thought I was. I spent centuries with variations of you in the future. I told you then. We fell in love then. But there was always pain. Beyond pain. Every time I told you, you felt betrayed.”
“BECAUSE I WAS BETRAYED!” I shouted. I’d let her drink my blood, have sex, and more. I felt…soiled.
“We even had children,” Fake Mandy said. “The children your Mandy never wanted to have.”
“Like hell!” I snapped.
“Yeah, he has enough of disgusting things!” Cindy added.
I glared at Cindy. “Stop helping.”
“Death would have told you if she wasn’t Mandy!” Gabrielle said, looking at me. “Right? I mean, she—”
“Death is not kind,” Entropicus said, sounding almost sympathetic. “She takes on the form of the person you most love and the people you trust the most but she is not human. She has never been human or anything approaching such. Instead, the Lady of Endings is a force of nature. I learned the lesson you learned long ago: do not trust the gods.”
“Who are you?” Gabrielle asked Fake Mandy, her expression containing several reactions. There was shock, horror, confusion, but also something else. Gabrielle was looking like she was trying to see the face of a friend in Fake Mandy’s. I had a sneaking suspicion who Fake Mandy’s real identity was but that didn’t matter right now.
None of this mattered.
I almost collapsed but I held myself up. “Let’s put a pin in the whole identity crisis thing.”
“A pin in it?” Cindy asked, staring at me. “Are you serious? This imposter has been—”
“I know what she’s been doing,” I said, staring at her. “Probably everything she’s told us has been a lie: from being from the future to caring about us.”
“It’s hasn’t been,” Fake Mandy said, her voice almost wistful. “I reminded you, I sided with you against Merciful. I helped you fight against my master and I’ve done my best to return to the old ways of heroism. You have no idea how exhausting it was pretending to be her every moment of every day. I could never quite achieve a perfect union with her memories but—”
“Lady, just shut the hell up,” Jane said, speaking for all of us. “Nobody cares about what you have to say now.”
“Thank you, Jane,” I said, deciding she was permanently on my Hanukah list.
Fake Mandy looked down. “He killed me, Gary. I can’t forgive him for that.”
“Then how can we forgive you?” I said, not expecting an answer.
“I’m rethinking coming to this universe if this is the kind of thing you guys have to deal with,” G said. “I’ve had to deal with imposters pretending to be the people I loved before and it’s a nightmare no matter where it is.”
“Yeah, we can deal with it now,” Cindy said, stepping forward with her fire ax. “Decapitation, last time I checked, was a good way of dealing with vampires.”
Gabrielle stopped her with her arm. “Let’s find out more before we act rashly.”
“Gabby, all we do is act rashly!” Cindy snapped. “It’s sort of our thing.”
“Maybe that has to stop,” Guinevere said, looking over at Mandy. “Did you know who she was, Cassius?”
“Yes,” Cassius said. “I know who she really is. That is why she approached me. That doesn
’t mean I approve of what she does. A man who has lost his wife will believe anything if it means he can speak to her, hold her, or be with her again. It is the ultimate lie.”
“And I fell for it,” I said.
“We all did,” Cindy said.
Fake Mandy didn’t respond for a moment then said, “This is what Entropicus wants.”
“The Devil has got it right,” Cindy said. “Mandy, the real Mandy, died for me. A person who mattered gave their life up for me and you took her life and made it something awful! Lady, you are worse than Entropicus!”
“No she’s not,” I said.
“Gary—” Cindy started to say.
“We have bigger things to worry about,” I said, looking at Entropicus. “I still have a multiverse to save.”
“You would continue to serve Death’s wishes even knowing how she manipulated you?” Entropicus asked.
I felt empty, bereft of purpose and sucker punched in the soul. This, of course, was exactly what Entropicus had been hoping for. I understood why he wanted me to be the last participant in the tournament now. It hadn’t just been because he wanted to spite Death or the rules prevented him from killing me outright. No, he wanted to break my faith in her and make sure she was nothing more than an enemy when I fought Entropicus. The last insult to his former master. Unfortunately, he’d made one small error—he’d given me something to hit.
“I’m not so supremely selfish as to want to endanger everything to get back at someone who wronged me. Are you?”
Entropicus’ silence spoke volumes.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said, rolling my neck around with some basic yoga. “Let’s get this over with.”
Entropicus stood up and slowly descended the stairs. “So be it.”
Now I just had to kill Abaddon’s god.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ROUND ONE: FIGHT!
Entropicus stood across me, the throne looming in the background. My associates were off to one side, met by the Hellazons who were prepared to take the fight to them should they try to save me. They were also there for the purposes of slaying us all should we manage to beat Entropicus. I had no doubt he would rather lose the tournament than die as he only had to win once in order to end everything. He wouldn’t get another chance.
Tournament of Supervillainy Page 21
