Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

A few grays peppered her ponytail, and a few wrinkles had found their way into the skin around her eyes. But mostly she moved differently than I did. Her hips hurt, and she subtly favored her left shoulder. She was thinner, too, most likely because she was farther into the apocalypse. But also because she’d been trained.

  “Cordelia teach you how to fight?” I asked.

  She looked me up and down. “No,” she said. “Ismene’s sister.”

  Behind her, out in the storm, power rubbed against power. Energy roared along force lines. Yet in here, we were safe.

  “You are not safe, Philadelphia,” Alt-me said. “The Dragonslayer carries trauma. She’s the me to herself that I am to you.”

  What did that mean? “I don’t understand.”

  She looked upward. “You, up there, listen to this Del,” she said, then she moved. I blinked, and she was suddenly directly in front of me, a mirror to me, twitching in synchronization as if we were two entwined particles.

  Someone not with me fired a gun. Someone with Alt-me. She didn’t have time to react.

  And…

  I was on the Dragonslayer, except this wasn’t the Dragonslayer. It was an Alt-‘slayer. She was clean. Unscarred. Utilitarian, not at all like the glitzy spaceships in movies. She looked more like the images from the International Space Station than anything high-tech, except bigger. A lot bigger. “The Fates don’t always know why they do what they do,” she said.

  This was the voice who had been talking to me all this time. I am the fearless and the bold, she’d said.

  “Yes,” she responded.

  “You’re not the Dragonslayer.” She wasn’t. “Are you in orbit, too?” I asked. Or was she in alt-orbit? “There’s too much happening here for me to keep straight.”

  “You’re in a bubble of new-space. Time and space operate differently here.” Then she, too, was gone, moved beyond by the travelings of the cage.

  A boy appeared who had to be Elijah’s age. He stared at me with big, dark eyes from a face that looked so similar in shape to Nax’s I swear I was looking at the young Emperor.

  “Nax?” I asked.

  The boy inhaled. His eyes widened in shock. He reached out, then he, too, disappeared.

  A hand pushed my face into what passed for ground. I saw suited knees, and another gloved hand. Braids well in front of a pregnant belly, but I saw no face.

  “I sent my ship forward,” she said. “You interfered.” She was big, taller than I, and significantly stronger.

  “No, I….” I what? I was doing what I was told. I was following orders. I was a tool.

  Lips moved next to my ear. “You think she will listen to you?” the pregnant woman growled.

  She was correct. I had no idea what was happening, or why. My mistake was trying to help.

  “Del,” another woman said.

  My intent was to roll over. I pushed with the hand holding Stab so I could flop onto my back but I was no longer on the ground, or the ground was no longer the floor.

  Gravity jump-cut just like the ghost. I rotated up and to the side as the cage around me re-oriented, as my sense of up and down reoriented. Side to side. Back to front. And…

  There were tumblers out there, on the lock to Maria’s prison. They flipped in ways my brain and body did not—could not—comprehend. My stomach lurched and…

  I was standing, Stab pointed at Vivicus, just as we had been when the cage activated. I was back at that moment. Or perhaps that moment had come back to me.

  I had Marko-Janus at my feet, and Vivicus at the tip of my sword. Not too far away, Handsome Otter Boy wrapped his arms around Daniel, who carried the duffle with all of Leif’s weapons. Leif did the same with Nax, who carried a regular rifle.

  We were frozen in some sort of weird, old-time Rembrandt-like painting. Light burst off the duffle as if Daniel held an angelic lantern, not a bag full of death machinery. The same light flowed off Antonius’s suit. Leif’s also, though his was patchy.

  Janus’s suit, though, pulled in the light, like some sort of weak black hole.

  Lines of force moved between Vivicus’s suit and Stab’s blade. And the ring on my thumb had pretty much melded into Stab’s hilt.

  Nothing made noise. Not the small tornadoes of power around the edges of our live-action Rembrandt. Not the winds gusting out there, or the people we slid by in the multiverse. Not the power transfers. Not even our breathing.

  Yet math still crawled on my skin like I wore a snowsuit of electric ants.

  Maria Romanova flickered in and out like a ghost, but in a more solid way, as if she danced with the forces pushing her around.

  “Del,” she said. She moved around the group in a way that suggested she was checking everyone’s vitals, and Daniel’s in particular.

  He was there, superimposed into Addy, another otter boy with a strong, tall body that had been compacted into a space that didn’t quite fit him. He was in there with her, but he wasn’t her.

  Maria leaned over Janus and peered at my face. She wore the same clothes I’d glimpsed before—old-timey semi-military garb, a flouncy blouse, and tall, laced-up boots. “I suspect he knew this would happen.” She kicked at Janus, though her foot didn’t connect, or maybe it did. I couldn’t tell. The suit seemed to be doing something to semi-block contact.

  Cordelia had told me I needed to get Maria out of here. If I got her out, everyone—everything—would leave me alone. I wouldn’t need to understand all this tumbling. Math would no longer burn. The ships would let me live my life. I could find my family.

  And maybe, this once, I could not be a simple tool. Maybe I could save one of the puppies and actually help someone. “Take Stab,” I said. “Take the ring. I carried them into your prison. We can use them to get you out.”

  “The Tsar’s ring has the data to get me out, but not the processing power,” she said.

  Stab and the ring did exactly what they’d done last time—they networked. But they weren’t the only systems pinging.

  Targeting normalization complete something said. Stab, maybe? Or that damned spaceship.

  I wiggled the ring up my thumb but kept in contact with Stab. “Put it on,” I said.

  Maria covered my hand with her own and slipped her thumb into the ring.

  “I’m going to let go of the sword,” I said. Maybe if I transferred the system to Maria, she’d be free when her prison broke open.

  Edges appeared—though not appeared so much as happened. I wasn’t looking at a threshold between spaces. It wasn’t a line in the roiling sand, or a pressure change inside a storm. It wasn’t a wall, or a bubble, or anything else that made sense.

  I swore that, for a blink of an eye, the world outside the cage flipped to a bright spring day. One with new grasses and warming air scented with wildflowers.

  Another tumbler rolled. That world fell into a haze of smoke and fire. Then cliffs and ice. A burning city. Then the expansive open command control of the Alt-‘slayer.

  The gray of new-space reappeared, except now it felt devoid of anything—no places, no things, only hard radiation and an endless void. Only the absence of hot and cold, of the touch and wind and life.

  But there was still trajectory. Acceleration. Speed. Something as big as Denver moved by us so fast I swear the void swirled behind it.

  The boy appeared again. He reached for Maria and—

  Trinzi-Bower Cage deactivating at targeted coordinates rose in unison from all four of the super-suits.

  Nax gasped first, then Daniel. Something pulled away from me—some sort of bubble-shimmer that, as it passed by my eyes, looked like the same shimmer I’d seen around Stab several times.

  “Maria!” I reached for her. I grabbed where she should have been, where she had been in relation to me when we were inside the lock tumbler.

  She—and the ring—let go of my hand.

  Janus caught my foot. “What just—”

  Vivicus looked up at the sky, and for the first time since he and the rest of the
Seraphim appeared, he looked terrified.

  “Move!” Leif yelled.

  I looked up, too.

  We weren’t outside of the Denver International Airport anymore. We were in rubble, and dusty haze, and night.

  But it wasn’t the broken concrete and steel that Leif wanted me to run from.

  Half of Blucifer had moved with us.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The big, shiny hunk of blue steel fell out of the gloom and directly toward my head.

  Antonius and Daniel dove in one direction. Leif and Nax in another. But neither Vivicus or Janus moved.

  The hooves dropped straight down, one on each side of us, two groaning, sheared-off chunks of metal. The one to our left hit first, followed quickly by the one on the right, and rang like two massive bells. I cringed, somehow avoiding being squished between two singing demon hooves.

  The left one wobbled, and thankfully rolled away from us. The right one, though, leaned in.

  Vivicus kicked it. Vick the murderer, a semi-man who’d been stabbed and was not at all at the top of his game, gave several hundred pounds of damaged statue a good, swift push with his foot.

  The right hoof rolled away.

  “You’re welcome, Denver!” he shouted.

  I stumbled back from Janus. “Stay there!” I yelled. Stab had gone inert. No vibrating in my hand, or talking, or even the parallax weirdness that had allowed me to see Maria.

  I’d given her the ring and she wasn’t here. Maybe she’d gotten out. Maybe that kid had grabbed her. Or maybe she was still trapped.

  I didn’t know and it crawled on my skin like ants.

  We made it worse, I thought. I made it worse. All that tumbling and bumbling and rolling and falling horse hooves and me being used had accomplished nothing. We weren’t safe. Maria wasn’t safe. I wasn’t safe.

  Janus hadn’t moved from his spot on the ground. “Nice that the enthraller’s boost lasted long enough to get us where we needed to be.”

  That healer had made sure the punishments Maria’s prison slapped me with wouldn’t kill me. I was pretty sure of that.

  “Your boyfriend should have trusted his Judicial High Commander.” Janus rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck. “The Dragonslayer noticing new-space activity around the Tokyo Spike comes when I am finished.” He yelled the final words.

  Vivicus laughed and pointed at a glow on the horizon. “It’s still there!” He offered Janus his hand. “This is too delicious. What did you do?”

  Janus sniffed at the air and made a disgusted face. “Instead of opening a problematic incursion, I hijacked an anomaly your mother left for me a century ago.”

  He’d hijacked Maria’s prison to… do what? We’d moved, that was obvious. “Did she get out? Maria?” Why did I ask Janus? My head swam. What just happened?

  Maria wasn’t the only person I’d seen inside that “anomaly.”

  Janus shrugged. “Don’t care. I had other, more important targeting to guide.”

  Stars were just barely visible through the thick haze. We were on a huge pile of rubble—my footing wasn’t secure—in a barely-visible canyon, or a street lined with what used to be tall buildings. In one direction, a red glow suggested a fire. In the other, total darkness.

  The haze smelled of dust, electrical fires, and rotting things. I coughed and my eyes watered. I leaned against a large piece of rubble with Stab’s hilt between my palm and the rubble’s cold concrete surface, then rubbed at my nose hoping to block some of the stink with my other hand.

  We were in one of the invaded zones. We had to be.

  Janus finally grasped Vivicus’s hand. He jumped up to a squat and looped the strap of his stolen military rifle over his shoulder.

  Vivicus smirked. “My glove.” He pointed to the rubble between us.

  Janus snatched what looked like the glove of one of the super-suits off the rubble. “Hmm…” He tossed it at Vivicus. “My sword.”

  He stretched out his hand to me.

  Cordelia’s people had used me to get to Maria. And Janus had maneuvered whatever Maria’s prison was made out of to transport us to the remains of Tokyo.

  Because he said Tokyo. We were in the first city hit.

  “I’m going to throw up,” I said.

  Janus pointed at a glow on the horizon. “Over there,” he said, “is one of their terraforming spikes.” He extended his hand again for Stab. “I need my sword to destroy it.”

  For the first time since Vivicus had showed up outside my parents’ house shouting about arresting me, his dumbass smugness evaporated. For a split second, fear danced across his modeling-clay face. “Weren’t you listening?” he yelled. “No—”

  “This timeline is inconsequential!” Janus shouted. He spread his hands and fingers again like I was a bucking horse. “Give me the Midnight Blade,” he said. “I will take it there,” he nodded over his shoulder. “Use it to download the targeting data the Dragonslayer needs to keep this,” now he waved his hands through the haze, “from happening in the first place.”

  He was going to go back in time and start the war, just like the dragon said.

  “All of it, Philadelphia. The Incursion. All the smaller incursions. The ship talking to you. The abuse. The pain. Not just for you, but for everyone.” He stepped closer. “Do you know how many people the first ballistic drops murdered?” He nodded over his shoulder. “Vick?”

  “In our timeline, thirty-eight million in the Tokyo area alone.” Vivicus still looked frightened. “The Japanese military pulled out less than two hundred thousand refugees.” He pointed north. “They held Hokkaido—the north island—until the fimbulwinter—the post-shock death-winter after the invasion—killed everyone left.”

  Janus glanced down the side of the rubble as if he heard something I did not. “How many humans were left in your timeline when you came through, Vick?” he asked.

  “Less than a billion,” Vick answered.

  “One eighth of our world,” Janus said. “How much of the ecosystem had gone extinct?”

  “We’d lost pretty much everything,” Vivicus said. “Just horses, dogs, and chickens left.”

  Janus inched closer again. “This is why you brought me the Dragonslayer. It’s my job to fix this. It’s always been my job. In every iteration, it’s my job. You’ve done your part. Rest. I’ll take it from here.”

  My breathing was too shallow. The clarity of the enthralling had snapped at the same time we manifested on the rubble. The acrid air here made my eyes and my already-scratchy throat burn. None of which helped my confusion.

  What had Stab done to me inside Maria’s prison? She’d connected me to alternates. My self, the ship… I hadn’t needed to talk to Alt-me. I hadn’t needed more ship-voices. I just wanted to go home.

  And Stab—or the damned Dragonslayer—showing me myself, and its selves, and that woman, and the kid…

  That kid reached for Maria. Not me. Maria.

  Don’t panic, I thought.

  Where were Leif and Nax? Daniel and Antonius? Maybe Leif could get me home. “Let me go home,” I muttered.

  Janus peered at my eyes. “Well, now,” he said. “Incursions, dragons, hellhounds, dead old ladies, and this is what finally breaks you.” He nodded twice and leaned so close I felt his breath. “Good for you for lasting this long, Del Parrish. I’m impressed. Your mind won’t survive another break. Mark my future-seeing words.”

  Break? The world was dead. Did I see Alt-me because I was about to become crazy like her?

  “Give me the sword, Del,” he said.

  I set Stab on the rubble. “Take her.” If I didn’t hand her over, he’d kill me. If I didn’t rest, if I didn’t curl into a ball and whimper, everything else would kill me. What remained of Tokyo would probably kill me anyway.

  Was this a post-reaction to the enthralling? Did it matter? Everyone and everything had been destroyed.

  I unhooked her scabbard and dropped that, too.

  His eyes narrowed. I
stepped back.

  Janus snatched Stab and her scabbard and stumbled back like a dog protecting a pork shank.

  “Hurry—” Someone invisible lifted Vivicus into the air and slammed him down into the rubble.

  “Leif!” I yelled.

  It could be Antonius. Or it could be an invisible dragon.

  A super-suited palm appeared just above Vivicus’s face and fired a blindingly brilliant flash of white light.

  Vivicus swore. Janus and I both shielded our eyes. And somewhere nearby, one of the Seraphim guns whined as if powering up.

  I ducked—but so did Janus. The bullet whizzed by his ear and away into the shadows.

  Vivicus coughed. Janus vanished—and the rubble under my feet shifted. An invisible hand grabbed my shoulder and I was suddenly, utterly off balance. I tripped.

  My back hit a node or a knob or something else pokey on Blucifer’s fallen hoof. Pain shot up my spine. No scream would leave my throat. No wail or call for help. Just a gasp.

  A fist hit my face and my other cheek slammed into the hoof. My lip split and the hot, metallic flavor of blood hit my tongue.

  Janus flopped onto me.

  “Get off me!” I screamed.

  He coughed and was off me before I could push him away.

  The Seraphim rifle whined again just as another burst of light filled the space between the hooves. I squinted, more because I didn’t want to watch Vivicus kill me than because of the light.

  A pop echoed between the metal, followed immediately by the sound of a bullet ricocheting off the other hoof.

  Somewhere nearby, Janus grunted. I thought Vivicus managed to land a kick to the other Seraphim’s gut because someone invisible rolled down the pile of rubble.

  “Move!” Janus said.

  I just sat where I was. I sat there, pain throbbing up my spine and hot blood in my mouth, finally realizing that this really was the end of the world.

  The planet had been murdered and my feeble attempts at keeping her alive hadn’t done jack shit. If anything, I’d followed the wrong life-saving advice and caused more damage than if I’d simply sat my butt down on the pavement at Paradise Homes.

  Thirty-eight million people had died where I was sitting right now. Maybe humans should start the war.