The God Wheel

by Brian Clopper

Lorna threw three spheres at our attackers as she pulled me back behind our gods.

  The deities instinctively knew to defend us.

  Lorna said, “I’ve got two left. “ She glanced at her satchel and then mine.

  I fumbled through the contents of my own bag. “Six, possibly seven.”

  The possessed kept coming at us.

  “There are too many. We need to get to the queen faster.” She held up her bracelet. “You and I can do this.”

  I eyed Mitch and Vardislek. They were working in tandem to disperse a dense mob. Many on the attack seemed to be adapting to the arrival of the exiles and their weapons. I watched two of the possessed dodge a swarm net, while another wrestled a stun rod from a goddess with quills poking from her back. The deity let go of the weapon and spun around, smacking her quills against her attacker. I was grateful she didn’t try to impale but rather used them to batter.

  “Maybe we should take Yolla or Kni, at least,” I said.

  She eyed the gods in question. Both were in the thick of the fight. “It would take either of them too long to make it to us. We’d run out of spheres before they got here.”

  To cement that notion, she threw her last two spheres at a shrieking possessed rushing us from behind. The woman froze in mid leap, the no-go sphere not caring that she was defying gravity in its midst.

  “Now, Felix!” She pressed my hand against her bracelet, which was starting to glow.

  We appeared inside a museum, one I had visited more than once in my childhood and knew well. An elephant took up the center of the large rotunda. The Museum of Natural History.

  It was empty from what I could tell.

  Lorna gasped and pointed to the building’s entrance, a line of doors to our right. The Entropy Queen stood looking out one of the doors.

  We tiptoed toward the villainess.

  The queen moved her arms about, dancing her fingers in the air and pointing at times, clearly directing her army through some sort of mental commands. The intense degree of focus she employed was evident in the fact that she didn’t register our approach or detect our arrival. Portals made a slight noise when they came and went.

  We dashed off to the right, hiding behind a column.

  I whispered, “What do we do?” I held up a no-go sphere. “Use these?”

  I didn’t think that was a long-term solution, but maybe tossing one after another could keep her immobilized for a good ten minutes.

  “For starters, but maybe there’s a weapon around here.”

  I understood what she was getting at. “But what are the odds one of the exhibit halls nearby has an ancient sword or mace on display? I think we’re in the wrong museum for that.” My eyes darted toward the stuffed elephant and its tusks. “And I doubt we could get her to impale herself on those.”

  She grinned. “Yeah, stupid idea. Too Hollywood to work in the real world.”

  I filed away my pachyderm-piercing scenario in the same wishful thinking file.

  The Entropy Queen huffed and drew her arms suddenly down to her sides. She froze and then moved her head slowly left and then right.

  She had caught our scent or something. I pictured her having a mental alarm web stretching outward from her position. She probably had us dead to rights, maybe even able to summon a visual without making eye contact with her prey.

  The queen tensed. Seconds later, five possessed crashed through the glass doors she faced.

  One fell to the ground with a large shard of glass sticking from her forehead. She flopped about twice and then went still.

  I let out a gasp.

  The remaining possessed twitched and swiveled their heads to and fro, trying to suss out the location of the gasp.

  The two biggest marched forward, while the others flanked their queen, who spun slowly around.

  She walked forward, and her entourage mirrored her advance.

  Lorna drew closer. We both inched away, keeping the column between us and the advancing enemy.

  The queen walked right up to the elephant and scanned the room. I ducked my head back when she grew close to peering at our hiding place.

  All in black, her hood was down, but a dark mask covered her entire face and clung tightly to her skull. I had no idea if she was bald or had hair. Two almond-shaped slits allowed her to see. She stared into space, her gaze cold and vacant.

  “Very interesting. You are different than the others, touched by your celestials with such immediacy.” Her voice dropped. “Could you be those prophesied to bring about my end?”

  I heard the shuffling of heavy feet drawing closer. Had to be the possessed, the big goons.

  Lorna whipped around the column, pulling three no-go spheres from my bag at the same time. I tried to yank her back behind our cover, but she was already out of reach.

  Foolishly, I charged out into the open as well.

  I palmed two spheres, but kept them hidden behind my back.

  Lorna tossed one, immobilizing the largest possessed.

  The other rushed us, executing a dive that would take me out if I let him finish his trajectory.

  I barely got my sphere out in time. He froze inches from me, splayed out in mid-air. It saddened me to see he was a cop.

  The woman to the left of the queen raced forward, her eyes charging up for a lethal attack.

  I scrambled across the tiled floor toward the queen. I reached back with my arm, holding the sphere loosely. I had a clean shot of the villainess. If I froze her, the possessed threat would be put on hold, or at least I thought that to be likely.

  Lorna succeeded in trapping the third possessed in a stasis bubble but had used her last two spheres in the process.

  I hurled my sphere at the Entropy Queen. It sailed across the rotunda and hit her square in the chest as the only other possessed still mobile trained her eyes on Lorna. Her eyes ignited, and she sent the beams toward Lorna.

  She ducked behind a column. The beams cut deep into the stone.

  The possessed stalked toward Lorna, playing her eyebeams left and right, carving destruction into the architecture of the rotunda.

  I glanced at the queen. She floated in the stasis bubble but moved freely. She said, “It spoke of two against me. I wonder what happens if I make it one or zero. Doubt the prophecy would come true then.”

  It really sucked that even the baddie got a peek at the prophecy. I only hoped she hadn’t perused it in its entirety. If she had, maybe she would’ve picked a different location to mount her first attack. Of course, for all I knew, she had. Maybe the prophecy had detailed the showdown as happening in LA or Dallas and moving it here had already doomed Lorna and me. I didn’t think it would be that simple a fix on her part. If I’d learned anything since my god wheel had been revealed to me, matters cosmic and magical were always downright intricate.

  While the queen wasn’t making an effort to slip free of the stasis, it was clear she wasn’t outright frozen and still had control of her army.

  Although maybe the control wasn’t perfect. While the possessed still projected her eyebeams, she seemed to be moving spastically and without the most concrete direction.

  The column Lorna cowered behind was missing large chunks.

  The beam again darted across the column, cleaving free another upper section. Lorna dove out of the way of the falling debris and into the open again.

  The queen saw this. Her own eyes lit up, and twin beams stabbed out of the bubble.

  I screamed.

  Lorna jumped to her feet and gawked at the queen.

  The beams hit her in the torso, and she disintegrated. Her portal bracelet, however, didn’t. It clattered to the ground.

  The possessed swung her head toward the sound of my scream. I scrambled out of the way, throwing my last two spheres at my attacker. Both missed.

  The possessed’s movements were still very jerky, something I was convinced I had caused by trapping the queen in stasis. Although, trapped may be too strong of a word.

  The
queen laughed.

  I dodged left only feet away from the possessed. Her eyebeams gouged the floor right behind me. I jumped on her back. Since being stuck in the bubble, her soldier had yet to shut off her eye beams. Time to take advantage of that.

  I hooked one arm around the woman’s neck and pressed the other against her lower back. I kneed the back of her legs to further destabilize her. I yanked her head up and right, sending the beams of destruction cutting across the rotunda and into the legs of the elephant. The pachyderm crashed to the floor, its head and tusks knocking into the queen but not sending her out of her stasis bubble.

  The possessed kicked at me and tried to reach back and gouge at my eyes. I thrashed my head about to avoid her nails. I used my arm against her lower back to pin her right arm.

  I shoved her head down and toward the queen.

  The Entropy Queen saw what I intended and howled as she moved in slow motion to free herself from her prison.

  The beams hit the bubble and penetrated it. They melted her face.

  She burned for only a second because that was all the time it took for the bubble to collapse, sending the queen to the ground. The possessed’s eyebeams cut out, and the puppet went limp.

  I dropped the woman and rushed over to where Lorna had last been standing. I fell to my knees and scooped up her bracelet. There was nothing left of her, no pile of ash or dust. Nothing.

  The queen stood. I eyed the threesome still stuck in stasis. They wouldn’t be for much longer. The possessed on the loose rose and lurched toward me.

  The Entropy Queen clawed at her face. Her mask had been burned away as well as a good portion of her face and scalp.

  I stared at her twisted, blackened flesh and muscle, spotting patches of white where the damage had been extensive enough to expose bone. Some of her teeth stood revealed as well.

  She stopped a few feet from me and dropped her hands away from her face.

  “Look at me!” she shouted.

  I hadn’t pulled my gaze away from her.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I checked on the possessed. She had stopped and stood swaying, awaiting orders. Her eyes only glowed faintly. Maybe she needed time to recharge. Was the queen stalling so the others could work their way free and this one could gather her energy for another assault? For that matter, why not summon more of her army from the Mall? Of course, maybe our confrontation had dealt a blow to her concentration. It would be nice to know if the army outside was in disarray simply because their queen was indisposed at the moment. The dread gaining purchase in the pit of my stomach didn’t instill confidence in that theory.

  The queen smiled. It was a lunatic’s grin, mostly due to how I could glimpse so many of her teeth, roots and all. “You are nothing.”

  I stared. Something was happening to her face.

  The darkened and pitted flesh around her eyes lightened and began expanding, slowly reestablishing the contours of her cheeks. The rejuvenation continued with rebuilding her brow. New cartilage and tissue wormed down and out to restore her nose. Next, her flesh stitched itself back together along her mandible. Her lips filled in, growing red but staying conspicuously thin. Faint color returned to her skin. Long strands of blond hair inched from her bald scalp, their numbers multiplying astonishingly fast. Her ears were the last to rebuild, growing not human, but long and pointy. It took me a few seconds of seeing her appearance completely refreshed to recognize her. Herena’s memory. The Entropy Queen was the dragon that had tricked the goddess out of her elven body. I was looking at Herena’s former self.

  I did my best to hide that I had guessed her identity. Something told me she wouldn’t like me knowing it.

  “Why are you doing all this?” I asked. I somehow didn’t think I could stall with humor like I had with Big Ernie. It wasn’t to my advantage to overstay my welcome. The second she went for my jugular, whether that meant actually snatching at me with her hands or utilizing her eye beams, I would skedaddle.

  “Chaos and madness are my fuel, simple man.” She lazily lowered her eyelids to half mast, an expression that made me think she was growing bored.

  Not much time before she zaps me.

  “You will not succeed,” she said. “Your prophecy is dead. You are without your other. Was she your soulmate? Did the two of you entertain such hubris that you believed you could carve out a future for yourselves?” There was such scorn to her voice. “Prophecy or no, my victory was never in doubt. You are nothing, a mortal playing on too lofty a stage.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t count me out. I’ve been known to pull out a surprise from a sleeve or two.”

  “Then let’s deny you the need for sleeves, shall we?” She tensed and her eyes sparked yellow.

  I triggered a portal with my ring. The small rift appeared to my right, and I vaulted through it.

  The queen howled but didn’t have time to dole out any retaliation.

  I dropped out of the portal and onto the floor of my god wheel cave. I closed the portal before anything could force its way through and curled up into a ball.

  I began to sob.

  I was alone.

  Lorna was gone.

  Chapter 23

  Dark Cloud Rising

  I wallowed for a long time, crying and punching the cold stone floor until my knuckles bled.

  Lorna.

  Her death played over and over in my head. I watched the bracelet fall. And fall. And fall.

  I coughed until I dry heaved.

  Next to me was the god wheel, this cosmic device that tethered so much celestial might to me and yet couldn’t help save her.

  I thought of what transpired back in the real world for the moment. The Entropy Queen was free to run rampant. She’d invalidated the prophecy. She would visit chaos to every part of the world.

  My mind seized up, overwhelmed. To jolt it back into any sort of activity, I again turned to thoughts of Lorna.

  The eyebeams.

  Disintegration.

  Only her bracelet survived.

  I pressed on the jewelry, attempting to crush it, deal it some sort of lasting damage. It wasn’t fair that it had made it through intact.

  I shuddered, picturing the ghoulish face of the Entropy Queen, vividly playing back how she had restored her wicked appearance.

  My mind returned to Lorna. I couldn’t pull out of my thought spiral. She was here with me one second, gone the next.

  Instant misery.

  It was the image of her younger self thanking me for fetching her beach ball that broke me from my pity party.

  I couldn’t stay tucked away here while the world burned. I stood and stared at my wheel.

  I didn’t even register myself reaching out and giving it a spin. Only when the god appeared before me did I recall summoning him.

  Dark Cloud didn’t say a word. The Native American god took in a slow breath and then exhaled.

  Jeans, red short, boots, and a ponytail. His look hadn’t changed. Deities must save a lot on dry cleaning. One outfit per celestial. Weird.

  “You are troubled,” he said.

  “No, really? What are you, the god of obvious, foregone conclusions?”

  “The ache inside tells you what I am. Look there and you will know me.”

  Oh, great. The ultimate cryptic ninny. I stared at the ceiling, as if I could send a withering look to the powers that be. Just what I needed.

  I closed my eyes and fumed silently. What did this guy want?

  My stomach was in knots. I felt nauseous. And, if I was being honest, clammy and feverish. I knew I wasn’t coming down with the flu or some cosmic malady because I had been exposed to the Entropy Queen.

  My heart hurt. My head throbbed. I just didn’t want to do anything but feel awful.

  Then it hit me.

  I opened my eyes. “The god of sadness?”

  “Despair. Little more refined ring to it, don’t you think?”

  I wanted to lash out at the god. I was certain that he had intended to
inflict sarcasm with his response. I didn’t snap at him. The deities, as much as they were their own entities, were reflections of their host. Every one of my pantheon had a certain flair for the rambunctious, a desire to slide in a snarky comment from time to time. That had to be my influence. Lorna’s pantheon emulated her dry wit as well. In some respects, our pantheons were incredibly similar. Although, I was glad not to have a Vardislek in my crew. While I didn’t know Xexxer and Lorfu well, I definitely didn’t think they could be any worse than the god of portents.

  His omen played through my head. Something about a death and a do over.

  Before I could dwell any further on the portent, Mitch appeared.

  Dark Cloud, surprisingly, didn’t go away. I gave them both a look.

  “What the . . . ?”

  Mitch said, “When Lorna’s deities disappeared from my side, I knew. I’m so sorry.” The god surprised me and pulled me in, delivering a quick bear hug.

  “Where did the rest of her pantheon go? Did they die, too?” I could barely choke out my second question.

  He shook his head. “No, they just got forced back to the Dominion.”

  Dark Cloud intruded on my personal space, situating himself in the narrow gap between Mitch and me. It was very uncomfortable. Spread out, guys. I know it’s tight in this cave but how about drifting off to a different corner? Ha, not that this place has corners.

  Dark Cloud put his hand to my chest. “You were close to something just a second ago, before Mitch returned. What were you thinking about? There was a fire in your eyes, Felix.”

  Despite feeling like the god was way too close for comfort, I didn’t brush away his hand or retreat. I closed my eyes and thought back to the portent.

  Do over?

  “Did you figure out a way to defeat the Entropy Queen?” Mitch asked.

  The memory of Herena switching bodies with the dragon and being trapped in the cave filtered into my head.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Dark Cloud said, “Uncover what you want to happen next.”

  Mitch said, “Hey, that’s sort of my thing. I’m his god of progress. I should be asking him what the next step should be, don’t you think?”

  Part of me was beginning to appreciate the one-god-at-a-time rule. While Dark Cloud wasn’t thrown by sharing me, Mitch sure was.