The blue-eyed creatures took the fallen Olympians next, growing larger and stronger on the ashes of the dead and injured. The husk of the Hydra turned to powder in seconds. And when there was nothing else left, they turned hungrily toward Zeus and Odin. Odin scrambled back toward the open gateway, but the reapers drew in their great breath, and the collective force pulled him back toward their ranks, his feet skidding and sliding in the sand. Then he, too, shattered into a pillar of sifting ash and was taken on the current of their breath and consumed by the reapers of the gulch.
Zeus sighed. He was glad Athena hadn’t shown up. not that he thought they would spare her. They would get her soon enough, and Aphrodite, too, and all the rest. But at least Athena wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing Zeus’ failure.
It was the last thought he had before he flaked away to dust and was devoured by the reapers.
The Stranger peeked out of the cave, gun barrel first. The reapers had ingested every single creature in sight, living or dead, and now they stood in an eerily quiet group under the hot desert sun. They had grown in the short time since they’d left the cave, that much was obvious. Each reaper had more than doubled in size, and their eyes glowed steadily brighter now, even in the blazing light of the sun. The Stranger had watched in horrified disbelief as the herd ingested the gods and monsters in a matter of seconds. To say he wasn’t eager to pass through would be a bit of an understatement. But he had to get to the other children. He had to get them out of Reaper’s Gulch before the reapers found them.
He had a few options. He could take his chances creeping around them and hope that whatever had compelled them to leave him untouched in the cave would continue to save him out there in the open. Or he could rush out with his gun blazing. If he was lucky, he could probably take out a couple dozen of them before they could draw their deadly breath, and maybe that would be enough to scare them off. Or he could walk right in, hands up, and take his chances on their mercy while Polly ran to the other children and led them out of the desert.
None of the options was particularly good.
He was still weighing the pros and cons of each when Polly marched out of the cave and into the light, hands planted firmly on her hips. “Good job, army,” she declared, nodding approvingly.
The Stranger’s heart dropped into his stomach. “No!” he yelled.
Without thinking, he ran out and stepped between the girl and the reapers to shield her from their breath. But there was no need. The reapers turned gently toward her and, as a group, fell to one knee. “Huuuuuggh,” hissed the largest reaper from the back of the pack. Guttural though it was, there was no mistaking it. It was a sound of honor.
She was, after all, the one who had lowered the vines down into their canyon, allowing them to climb up and escape.
“Huuuuuggh,” the entire assembly of reapers groaned.
Polly nodded, pleased. “Now,” she commanded, “build me a castle.”
The reapers exchanged uncomfortable glances. A few of them shrugged their bony, gray shoulders. They stood from where they knelt, brushed the sand from their knees, and shook their heads at the princess. Then they turned and marched down the hill into the town of New Olympus, where there were other gods to punish and more justice to be had.
“It’s too hot to have a kingdom here anyway,” Polly decided, watching them go. She looked up at the Stranger. “I’m glad I found you, but where’s everyone else? Are they still lost?”
The Stranger couldn’t help but smile.
An Interlude
He stands in a room that is coated with thick dust and netted with a century’s worth of cobwebs. He has not entered this chamber for a long time.
The walls are roughly-hewn stone, charred gray and sifted with black, like all the walls in the castle, but the dust gives them a ghostly pallor, and the water in the fountain in the center of the room seems to glow with the reflection.
The Royal crosses to the pool and wonders with whom he last connected through these waters. He cannot remember, but it does not matter.
It has been a very long time.
The Whispering Room is adjacent to the dungeon, and he can hear the echoes of his prisoner’s quiet sobs through the stone. He has not yet decided what to do with his guest. He has some ideas, but it’s possible the children may be venturing toward the Pinch in order to beg the Royal for the prisoner’s release. And that would change things.
The children. The Royal sours at the very thought. Their presence was a great disturbance when they were several infinities away from his seat of power. But, unfathomably, they have found doors, and through the incompetency of the Norseman, they are now about to walk through his portal and approach the Pinch Rim wall.
Now they are more than a disturbance. Now they are a threat. This is why he has unlocked the Whispering Room for the first time in eons. It is why he now reaches down into the fountain’s pool and cups its clear, sparkling water into his hands.
“I would speak with the dentist,” he whispers to the water, his voice gravelly and raw. His throat burns from the exertion it has made over these last few days. He flings his hands into the air, tossing the water. It leaps into a fine spray, and at its zenith, the collection of droplets solidifies and holds, millions of tiny, crystalline molecules forming a suspended chandelier. The Royal steps back and tilts his face up to the floating sheet of water. Light shoots through the surface, light that becomes color. There is the sound of static, and then the colors begin to take shape. The shapes arrange themselves into the form of the dentist, Dr. Mandrill, his mouth twisted into a sneer. He is in his office. The Royal has caught him searching through a file cabinet.
“Your Majesty,” the dentist says, his tone sharp.
“The children near the wall,” the Royal says coldly. “You have failed.”
“Not yet, I haven’t,” the dentist mutters.
“Your ruffian army has failed. Your fairy is destroyed. You have failed.”
On the other end of the connection, the dentist slams a fist down on the cabinet. “I didn’t count on the imaginary creature,” the dentist grumbles. “The one with the crown. He was an unexpected obstacle.”
“I have given you all the tools you need to neutralize any obstacle,” the Royal growls.
The dentist speaks again, his voice choked with frustration. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Your Majesty. But you’re wasting my time.”
“You forget your place,” the Royal says through clenched teeth. He decides that regardless of the output, the dentist will suffer for his insolence. If he actually manages to stop the children, the Royal may let him live.
“My place is here, with the children in my chair,” the dentist snaps back. “And if you’ll let me focus–” He trails off and finds what he is looking for in the back of some long-forgotten filing cabinet. He holds it up with a declaration of triumph. It is a thin, flat disk, shining and black like a real-world vinyl record. But a thin, grayish spiral twists within this black disk. The spiraling is no illusion. The Royal has seen such an object before. The gray line is actually rotating within the static black disk, spiraling off to some tiny, infinite speck in the center.
The dentist holds the disk up for the Royal to see. “Now, if I have your leave?” he says with no small amount of sarcasm. The Royal nods. The dentist opens another drawer and removes a stick of dynamite, then he turns on his heel and carries the disk and the dynamite back through the door in his wall, heading toward the black-and-white motel in the distance, where he will pass through the Writer’s Bloc, blow the wooden door to Reaper’s Gulch to bits, and pick up the trail of the children and their cowhand.
The Royal waves his hand, and the droplets of water go dark. They become heavy liquid once again, and they splash back down into the pool below. He turns his back on the fountain and crosses back to the door of the Whispering Room. The dentist will try again,
and that is good. The children are close now, and the Royal has seen their faces. They are grotesque to him. They are the only real-world children he has ever seen, and they are repulsive. He will give the dentist one last chance. If he fails again, all the worse for him, and the Royal will destroy the children himself.
In the meantime, he will return to his prison cells. Roark has sharpened his master’s tools, and the Royal wishes to practice his technique on the prisoner before it’s the dentist’s turn on the table.
-
The IF series will conclude in Part VI: Broken
-
A Note From the Author
If you’re enjoying the IF series, I would greatly appreciate if you could take a few seconds to leave reviews for the books on Amazon! The more reviews a book has, the more marketing opportunities it has. Just tap here to go to the IF series page, where you can leave reviews for the books.
Also, if you like IF, you may enjoy some of my other books, especially Apocalypticon and Na Akua! I hope you’ll check them out!
About the Author
Clayton Smith is a Midwestern writer who once erroneously referred to himself as a national treasure. He has been described as “too tall to live,” which hardly seems fair.
His work includes the novels Apocalypticon, Post-Apocalypticon, Anomaly Flats, Na Akua, and Mabel Gray and the Wizard Who Swallowed the Sun; the plays Death and McCootie and The Depths; and the short story collections It Came from Anomaly Flats and Pants on Fire: A Collection of Lies. Some of his short stories have appeared in such publications as Canyon Voices, Write City Magazine, and Dumb White Husband.
Clayton would like very much to hear from you. You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as @claytonsaurus.
Colemine, the Prince Page 7
