Old Reliable charged in, running down slaves in his path. He reared and kicked and bucked, tossing people in all directions. More than anything, he looked for Oakley in the battle and cleared a path to him. He nudged his master gently, let him climb on board, and then returned to the fight.
Duck'd done his part, and it'd be a while before he'd recharge his weapon. But that didn't stop him chasing a few slaves here and there. It must've been quite a sight to see, if it wasn't for the chaos of it all.
Bitnickle was an adventurer, but not much of a fighter. What she did do, though, was provide a distraction. She played clips of audio from various radio stations across Altadas, mostly from the Regime and the gang lords of the Wild North.
“Stop what you're doing,” her radio crackled. And some of the slaves stopped, because it was the voice of the Iron Emperor, whose hypnotic brogue was even more powerful than that of the Man with the Silver Mane. While the slaves were dazed, Duck waddled between them, carrying a wire in his mouth. When the slaves came out of their stupor, they tripped and tumbled on the spot. Well, when you brought toys to the battle, you could expect them to play games.
Porridge was forced to fight hand-to-hand with the slaves, and boy did he fight. He wrestled and tossed them to the ground, or he was tossed to the ground himself. All to a flurry of creative insults—but not a “plum” or “peach” in sight. At times, the Coilhunter rolled through, taking down a fighter here and there. At other times, Experiment X thundered through, taking down a dozen fighters.
By the end of it, most of the slaves lay prone, while a handful of others retreated back to their cells. It wasn't fear that made them retreat. The Man with the Silver Mane did it. He didn't need them anymore. He'd delayed the Coilhunter long enough.
“I think that should do it,” Oakley said, nodding to all the writhing, groaning bodies.
“No,” Nox said, letting the grapnels lock back into place. He looked at the stairway leading up to the higher levels. “There's still one more man to beat.”
42 – THE MAN WITH THE SILVER MANE
Porridge stayed with Old Reliable, Duck, and Bitnickle, keeping guard, while the others followed the many, winding steps up to the High Chambers, where the presence of the Man with the Silver Mane was palpable. The door was open. This time.
They entered, but they kept a safe distance. They got just close enough to see their captor's face, to see those shimmering eyes. They tried not to stare, but they couldn't help it. After all, they were still slaves. Behind the Magus was a large oval, mechanical frame, held up by ropes, held to the ground by more ropes, and fed with wires that connected to the many generators of the fortress. Further behind, there was the periodic blast of lightning off an energy collector. God only knew how that was caused, or maybe God was causing it himself.
Strangest of all, which was saying something, the Man with the Silver Mane wore a slave collar too. That unsettled the Coilhunter more than anything, because it made him wonder if this face on the poster of his mind was really the man in charge. Well, some said God was the man in charge. If he was in charge of this, then Nox'd have to gun him down too.
“Nathaniel Osley Xander,” the Man with the Silver Mane crooned. “Good old Nox. Or is it Coilhunter? I never could keep up with all your names.”
“And what's yours, Magus?”
“It's of no importance here, though I hear you call me the Man with the Silver Mane. Where's the poster for me, Coilhunter? Ah, I see. You've chiselled it on your brain.”
“Well, if I have to hand in my brain to cash you in,” Nox said, “then gimme somethin' to scoop it out.”
“How crude, Coilhunter. I see you're more brawn than brains. There are better, more cultured ways to achieve our ends. Of course, the Wild North is not the place for them, now, is it? Why, Altadas as a whole is so devoid of culture. You can save those caches in the sea and sky, but at the end of the day you're all just animals.”
“So, what, you give us dog collars?”
The Magus scoffed. “You have no idea, do you? Ah, so focused on these wars of yours. If you paid heed to the other worlds out there, you might see there are other ways. But I will educate you yet. I will feed your brain like a pig. I'll fatten it up so we can harness more from it.”
“You're makin' me hungry,” Nox said.
“Oh, back to basics with you, I see. I should've known when I let you return.”
“Let me? I didn't see many open doors.”
“We closed them so you would open them.”
“Why not just let me in then? Why make me fight?”
“Isn't it obvious? It's the fight that does it, Nox. It's the emotion of it all. It's fuel. It's energy. Those collars aren't to make you slaves. No. They're harnesses, to harness that raw passion inside of you. The electricity is just one source of power. To open this portal, I needed every source I could find. Did you not realise that humans are the most potent source of all?”
“And here I was thinking they were just people,” Nox said.
“For a toymaker, you have so little imagination.”
“Is that so, huh? Well, I can imagine you dead.”
“And that's all it'll be, Coilhunter. A figment of your imagination.”
“It ends here. This prison of yours. This fantasy.”
“It's not a fantasy,” the Man with the Silver Mane said. “I'll make a believer out of you yet.”
The Magus shocked him. Nox grunted and fell to one knee.
“Each time you fear, each time you anger, each time you hurt, you generate more of that power.”
Nox gritted his teeth behind his mask. He tried not to show his fear, or his anger, or his pain. He tried to bury it all deep down inside him, where he buried his love for his family, where the Man with the Silver Mane would never find it.
But he found it.
“So much buried emotion,” the Magus said. “You've stored it all in you like a battery. There's so much power there, if we can just release it.”
“Let him go,” Oakley said, stepping forward.
The Magus shocked him too, and he fell. Experiment X backed off.
“And you,” the Magus said, turning his gaze on Oakley. “Not quite so deep, but still buried. Men's emotions are like dynamite, all wrapped up in neat little cylinders, just waiting for someone to light the fuse.”
“So, what are we, batteries or explosives?” Nox asked.
“Both. In the grand scheme of things, they all generate the necessary power. Even now you are generating it.” There was a manic glee in his eyes. “I shall harness it. I shall harness you all!”
“Even with a bullet in your head?”
Nox fired, but the bullet pinged off an energy shield around the Magus.
“Go on,” the Man with the Silver Mane said. “Power me further.”
But the Coilhunter refrained. There was no point wasting bullets. That Magus might've lost his magic when he came to Altadas, but he hadn't lost his mind. He'd created new things that mimicked the magic of old. He wielded science like a wand.
For Nox and his companions, this was a moment of quandary. Here they were, at the pinnacle of the world, at the doorstep of defeating their captor. But the question was: if fighting him only made him stronger, then how would they defeat him?
43 – PROMISED PORTALS
Well, the Coilhunter had a hunch.
Nox took a box of matches from his belt and rolled it between his fingers. Instantly he could see the Man with the Silver Mane's eyes light up. Nox struck a match.
“What?” the Magus asked. “You want to light the fuse yourself?”
Nox smiled. “You'd light it with electricity. But I've got a different spark here, and I know you fear it.”
The Magus guffawed loudly. “I do not fear a flame.”
“What about a fire?”
The Magus said n
othing.
Nox took a step forward with that burning match. The Magus took a step back.
“Tell me you're not afraid,” Nox said.
The Magus zapped him. “I'm not afraid,” he growled.
Nox struggled back up and took another step forward, lighting another match. The Magus shrank back again and jolted him.
“I'm not afraid.”
And again Nox fought forward, fighting through the pain. If the Magus truly knew him, he should've known that he would fight through anything. He'd already fought through the fire before. Now it was time to bring back the flame.
“You're only feeding me,” the Magus warned. “The portal will be ready soon.”
And that might've been true, but the Coilhunter wanted to feed him something a little hot. He wasn't sure what it was about the fire that overcame him. That was an energy source too, but he didn't use it. He feared it.
And Nox kept pushing forward.
So, the Man with the Silver Mane set his eyes upon Experiment X, who baulked in his presence. X might've had its own anger burning deep inside it, but it also had fear. More than anything or anyone, it knew what the Magus could do, what it had done. It knew it could not resist him. It knew it had to fight too.
Experiment X bounded up after the Coilhunter and pinned him to the ground.
“No!” Oakley shouted, but the Magus zapped him too. “Fight it! Fight him!”
“Enough of your games, Coilhunter,” the Magus said. “Let me show you what I can do.”
He showed him an image in his mind of another portal. Nox gazed through it, and there, on the other side—just an arm stretch away—was his family. There she was, beloved Emma. There she was, little gentle Ambrose. And there he was, little wild Aaron. Not tombstones. Not cracked earth. There they were in the flesh.
For a moment, for a lifetime, Nox held his breath. It was their lifetimes, so he didn't hold it for long. The gunslinger in him faded, and he found the husband, found the father. He wanted to run to them, wanted to pick them up, wanted to hold them in his arms. For so many nights, all he held were his guns. No matter how tightly he gripped them, it didn't help him let go of the pain.
“It's … not real,” he said.
“It's as real as you want it to be.”
“Is that all your portal is, then? A lie?”
“No,” the Man with the Silver Mane said. “It's very much the truth.”
“But this,” Nox said, “this image you show me. It's just a mirage.”
“And will you not quench your thirst in this oasis?”
“But it's a lie.”
“Everything is a lie, if you look at it a certain way. And everything's the truth, if you look at it from another. That's what the Magi learn, that all is a paradox, that everything is and isn't. Won't you look at your family and see them alive? If they walk this earth again with you, what would you do?”
Nox was caught up in the thought of it. He imagined holding their hands, kissing their cheeks, and hugging them tight. He imagined telling them he loved them, that they meant more to him than anything in this world or any other. He imagined showing them his love, spending every waking moment with them, and dreaming of them in his sleep.
He imagined.
“It's not real,” he repeated. He'd honed his mind for this, even though he didn't want to accept it. He trained with the mirages of the desert. Early on, he'd thought he'd seen his family in the distance, but the closer he got, the farther away they seemed. He was chasing phantoms, like he was once chasing ghosts with Taberah Cotten of the Resistance. He had to let them go.
“Give in to it,” the Magus said. “For once, just stop fighting and give in to your ideal version of the truth. You will find peace.”
But Nox was more lucid now. The anger rooted him back in the moment.
“And what about this world?” he asked. “What about peace here?”
The Magus scoffed. “There will never be peace.”
“Well, you're right there,” Nox said. “Not with people like you.”
“I'm not the one fighting, Coilhunter. You are. And what a pretty war you've raged. Do you think you will ever allow peace to happen? The hunt, the kill, the battle—it's everything you live for. It's the only thing you live for. You don't even live for them anymore.”
That was enough to cause the dynamite to explode. Nox roared and fought with Experiment X. They struggled and they screamed. The room buzzed with the subtle energy of the fight.
“Yes,” the Magus said. “It's happening.”
Inside the oval frame, the portal opened. It was a swirling blueish-white energy, like a different kind of electricity, like perhaps the kind that crackled across the skies of the Magus' homeworld. Through that strange looking-glass, all eyes could see a different place, a place of green fields, a place of rivers and rain.
So different to Altadas. So different to the Wild North.
No wonder he wanted to go back there.
44 – GOING HOME
“I'm going home,” the Man with the Silver Mane said softly. Soft enough that maybe he didn't quite believe it.
He took an unsteady step forward, like a child learning to walk—like a child preparing to run to his mother's arms. There was an unlocked innocence in him now, devoid of all his adult machinations, devoid of all his scheming, all his manipulation and torture. In the moment of it all, he was made anew.
“Home,” he repeated, even softer. All the power and menace of his voice was gone. All the grit dissolved into a calm and tender resonance. In the word he spoke, and the way he said it, was the memory of his mother, the warmth of the hearth, and the feeling of having a place in the world. Who wouldn't want that? Who wouldn't yearn for that? Who wouldn't find any way possible to make it true?
“I see it,” he whispered. Tears flooded his face, a mirror of the rivers in the world he saw, where there were green pastures, and green forests—where there was magic. But then maybe life was magic. There was so much life there.
He stepped closer to the portal, so close to home now. There was something kind of beautiful about it, about someone so long stranded finally getting to see their home again, finally getting to return to what they must've thought was unreturnable. He was the real Lostlander, and now he'd been found. Now he was going home.
Except the Coilhunter was there.
Nox dragged himself onwards, finger by finger, inch by inch, until he could reach out towards the nearest rope. He struck a match and let it burn. The fire snaked its way up towards the portal, where something sparked, and the entire frame went ablaze. The flames licked the swirling mass, so that to pass through one would mean passing through the other.
“No!” the Magus screamed. He tried to move towards the portal, but backed away instead. Inside him was the battle between hope and fear, that same battle that so many faced, played out so forcefully now.
The flames engulfed the portal, and the shimmering doorway flickered. It wasn't clear which would fade first, the fire or the portal.
Nox couldn't afford to wait.
He took a capsule from his belt and slammed it against Experiment X's ear. It was a sound charge, which sent an ear-rending boom into the creature's brain. It stumbled off him, giving him just enough time to hit the smoke button on his guitar. He vanished into the haze, which was common for the Coilhunter, but this time he tried something new. He took the guitar off and swung it to the side, snapping a lever behind the neck. When the guitar skidded to a halt, the body swung open and up popped a scarecrow in the image of the Coilhunter. It didn't quite do him justice, but in the smog it looked like him just fine.
As X bounded after the fake Coilhunter, the real Nox charged towards the Man with the Silver Mane, casting smoke canisters in all directions. He knew he couldn't penetrate the energy shield around the Magus, couldn't shoot or punch him, couldn't
even move him. But he could goad him with fire.
Mid-run, Nox swept his coat off and set it ablaze. He swung it by the Magus, who backed away in terror. He should've known he was safe inside his shield, that the flames couldn't hurt him, but fear is a terrible thing. Fear consumes and crumbles. Fear is the magician that makes a million horrible mirages. Fear is what destroys lives, what kills futures, what makes strong folk weak. And Fear was another name they gave the Coilhunter.
The Man with the Silver Mane backed away, hands held out, warding off that frightening fire. He was a broken man, whose silver hair now faded to grey, whose gemstone eyes now turned to the glistening eyes of the lost and the hopeless.
Again the Coilhunter flashed the flames at him, even as it consumed his coat and threatened to consume him too. He ushered the Magus away, back, another step, another yard, another footfall, even as the lightning flashed behind him.
Then Experiment X came back into the fight, holding the severed scarecrow head. He ran for the Coilhunter, but Oakley charged into his path, blocking the way.
“No!” Oakley shouted. “I gave you a chance!”
“Move!” X roared. “Or I move you!”
“You wanted to be free! This is how! Give this a chance.”
X struggled with its thoughts, and then struggled with the electrical lash of the Man with the Silver Mane. It had endured so much. Could it not endure just a little longer?
And then, with one final sweep of the burning rag, the Coilhunter pushed that opposing king into place. It wasn't just checkmate. This was where the crown tumbled by its own hand. The lightning struck again, and this time it struck the shield around the Magus. The blast was like a bomb, and it would've killed him were it not for that shield. It didn't kill him, but it broke the shell around him.
With his defences gone, and with the fire in Nox's hand now charred to embers, the Man with the Silver Mane made one last-ditch effort to run towards the portal. The flames there were fading too, and though the portal itself flickered, the doorway still held for now.
But just as the Magus placed his hand through the shimmering portal, just as he was about to be free of this world of exile, there was a sound like bouncing springs. He looked down, and he saw the Coilhunter's grapnel around his left ankle.
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