"Oh, that," said Matthew. "The Matriarch told us all about it
long ago. She didn’t believe in keeping secrets from her beloved favourites. It
was a bit of an eye-opener, I’ll admit, but as Lexxy said, there’s no room for
sentimentality in a family that’s going places. We have a world to put to
rights. What are a few lives in the face of that? It’s just…the way things are."
"You can’t take the moral high ground with innocent blood on
your hands," I said.
"Watch us," said Alexandra.
"Or not, as you please," said Matthew. "It’s really up to you,
Eddie. Surrender to us and serve Manifest Destiny (after a suitable amount of
brainwashing and reprogramming, of course), or die right here and now."
I laughed in his face. "The Armourer opened the Armageddon Codex
for me. I have Oath Breaker."
Alexandra and Matthew looked at each other sharply, their
confidence shaken for the first time. This hadn’t been part of their plan. But
they still didn’t believe they could fail after coming this far, and they stared
at me haughtily.
"That wooden stick is the mighty and legendary Oath Breaker?"
said Matthew. "I don’t think so."
"You wouldn’t have the balls to use Oath Breaker," said
Alexandra.
"It’s too big, too powerful, for a little man like you."
"We have weapons," said Matthew. "Real weapons. Terrible
weapons! And the will to use them."
Alexandra held up her right hand, and suddenly there was a long
scalpel in it, shining supernaturally bright. "This is Dissector, the ultimate
scalpel created by the ultimate surgeon, Baron Von Frankenstein. It can cut
through anything, neat as you like. It can cut you open and reduce you to your
component parts with just a thought. You even touch that nasty old staff, Eddie,
and I’ll take your hand off at the wrist. Or maybe I’ll just cut your little
witch’s throat."
"You’re really starting to get on my tits," said Molly.
"You always were a vindictive soul, Alex," I said.
"And I have Dominator," said Matthew, more than a little
grandly. He snapped his fingers imperiously, and a laurel wreath fashioned from
pure silver appeared on his head. "With this, my thoughts become your thoughts,
my wishes become your wishes. I’ll enjoy seeing you kneel to me, Eddie."
"Really?" I said. "I always heard your tastes went the other
way."
"Surrender or die," Alexandra said sharply. "No more talking.
Your precious uncle Jack isn’t here to save you with his Safe Words this time."
Matthew chuckled nastily. A halo of psychic energies was already
forming around his head.
I concentrated on Alexandra, trying to reach her with the
sincerity in my voice. "Don’t do this, Alex. For old times’ sake…for what we
used to be to each other…You mustn’t do this. It’s not worthy of you or the
family."
"What do you know about the family?" she said flatly. "You
haven’t been a part of it in ten years. I don’t know that you ever were, really.
Always had to go your own way, live your own life, leaving the rest of us to
struggle on under the yoke…until we found our own way out. And how can you talk
about the family being worthy, when you know the secret of the Heart? The deal
with the Devil our ancestors made so long ago? We’re not what we thought we
were, Eddie. Never were. It was all a lie. Manifest Destiny is the only truth."
"You can’t use forbidden weapons, forbidden methods, to save the
world," I said. "You’ll destroy it, trying to make it over into what you want it
to be."
"So what?" she said. "What has the world ever done for us except
lie to us? Better to die free than to live a lie one day longer. We’re going to
make the world make sense, whether it wants to or not, whatever the price. This
is our time, our destiny, and nothing can stop us."
"Wrong, as usual," said a familiar voice behind me.
We all looked around sharply, and there behind us was the
Armourer, Uncle Jack himself, standing swaying on his own two feet. He wore a
simple breastplate of an unfamiliar crimson metal over his lab coat. Caked blood
had dried all down one side of his face from a vicious scalp wound on his bald
pate. He nodded briefly to me and Molly, and then grinned nastily at Matthew and
Alexandra. And as they stood there gaping at him, he spoke two Safe Words in a
language I didn’t even recognise, and Dissector vanished from Alexandra’s hand
as Dominator vanished from Matthew’s brow. They both jumped, startled, and
looked at the Armourer with wide, wild eyes.
"I thought you were dead!" Alexandra said loudly. "Damn you, why
aren’t you dead?"
The Armourer sniffed loudly. "I was a field agent for twenty
years, remember? I don’t die that easily, girl."
"We have other weapons," said Matthew too loudly. "There’s a
whole army on its way here, armed to the teeth!"
"See this breastplate?" said the Armourer. "This is the
Juggernaut Jumpsuit. Yes, that one, from the Codex. Bring on your weapons and
your army. It won’t do you any good. Eddie, you go on, boy. You’ve got work to
do."
"Listen," said Alexandra. "Hear those running feet? That’s our
reinforcements. Dozens of them. You can’t stop us all, old man."
And that was when the ghost of old Jacob Drood appeared. Out of
his chapel at last, for the first time he looked truly frightening. We all
shrank back from him as he manifested on the air before us in a rush of air cold
as death itself. He didn’t look like a grumpy old ancestor anymore; he looked
like what he was: a dead man hanging on to existence through a terrible act of
will. A stark, spectral figure, more a presence than a person, his face was all
hollows and shadows, his eyes burning with unearthly fires. Just looking at him
froze the blood in my veins and closed a cold hand around my heart. We were in
the presence of death now, stark and awful and utterly unrelenting.
Time for me to take a hand, said the ghost of old Jacob, in a
harsh and terrible voice that resonated inside my head. This is what I’ve been
waiting for all these years. Even though I often forgot for years at a time,
still I hung on, just for this. Bring on your army, Matthew and Alexandra, and I
will show them all the awful things I’ve learned to do since I died. He looked
at me, and I flinched away despite myself. Go to the Heart, Eddie. That’s where
all the answers are. And do…what you have to do.
Jacob and the Armourer headed towards Matthew and Alexandra, and
they backed quickly away, leaving open the way to the Sanctity’s door. Molly and
I hurried forward. A door to our right burst open, and a whole crowd of armoured
Droods rushed in. They saw the Armourer and the terrible ghost of old Jacob, and
they stumbled to a halt. Molly and I opened the door to the Sanctity and ran
through, pulling the door shut behind us.
And as the door closed, the screaming began.
Standing there in the Sanctity, with the door slamming shut
behind me, I felt like a vandal breaking into a cathedral. The Heart blazed
before me, shining like the sun, so bright I had to force myself to look at it.
A single massive, magnificent diamond, so big it filled most of the huge chamber
my family had built to contain and protect it all those centuries ago. Just
standing in the presence of the Heart took my breath away, made me feel small
and insignificant in its presence. But I didn’t believe that anymore. I knew
better now. I glared into the light, refusing to look away or bow my head, even
as the simmering light seemed to blaze right through me, seeing everything in my
mind and in my soul.
The feeling of awe snapped off just like that. The light was
just as bright, the Heart was just as huge, but its presence wasn’t overpowering
anymore. It was just a really big diamond. I heard Molly make a soft, relaxed
sound at my side as she felt the sudden change too, and I started guiltily as I
realised I’d forgotten she was even there. The Heart’s presence could do that to
you. Molly and I advanced slowly on the Heart until we were almost close enough
to touch it. The curving side of the diamond rose up before us like a
multifaceted cliff face, but there was no trace of our reflections. The light
blazing from inside the Heart overpowered everything else. I could feel the
light on my skin, crawling slightly, like I had dived into an icy cold pond. And
for the first time I got the impression that the Heart knew I was there, knew
why I had come, and that it was looking directly at me.
"Hello, Eddie," said the Heart. Its voice was warm and friendly,
male and female, and it seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Normally I take
great pains to maintain a suitably spiritual and refined atmosphere in here,
manipulating the emotions of all who come before me, so as to keep everyone in a
properly respectful attitude. But there’s no point with you, is there? You know
my little secret, and you came here for the truth. Poor boy. As if your little
mind could contain or appreciate all my truths."
"You can talk?" I said. A bit obvious, I know, but I was
honestly shocked. The Heart had never spoken to any Drood that I knew of, not
since it made the original bargain with my Druid ancestors.
"Are you really so surprised to find that I’m a living, thinking
thing?" said the Heart. "Not all intelligence is based in meat."
"Did you really come here from another dimension?" said Molly,
just to make it clear she wasn’t being left out of anything.
"From a higher dimension," said the Heart. "What can I say; I
always did have a thing for slumming."
"Why have you never spoken before?" I said.
"I have," said the Heart. "But only to the ruling Matriarch of
your tribe. By long tradition, each Matriarch has to agree to continue our
long-standing bargain. Bind her family to me, body and soul. And in return, I
grant you all just a little of my power. I speak to you only now, Eddie, because
you carry Oath Breaker. Nasty little thing. I’ve been trying to persuade your
family to get rid of it for generations."
"Because it could destroy you," said Molly.
"Of course," said the Heart.
"Why did you come here?" I said harshly. I was so close to
answers now, I could barely stand it. I wanted to know everything. I’d come so
far, lost so much, and I could feel Death herself tapping on my shoulder as the
strange matter moved through me…but whatever happened here, I was to determined
to know the truth at last. "You were on the run, weren’t you? Being chased
across the dimensions by something that scared you. So what did you do, that you
had to download yourself into this small, primitive dimension?"
"I was just having a little fun," said the Heart. Its voice had
changed subtly. It still sounded warm and friendly and ingratiating, but
underneath it sounded like it enjoyed pulling the wings off flies, or stamping
on butterflies, just because it could. "I like to play. And if sometimes I play
a little too roughly and break my toys, well…there are always more toys."
"Toys?" I said. "Is that all we are to you?"
"What else could you be? Such limited, short-lived things; you
flicker in and out so fast I can hardly keep track of you. I have lived for
millennia!"
"And you can’t think of anything better to do than play with
toys?" said Molly.
"To be loved and worshipped and obeyed without question," said
the Heart happily. "What could be more important than that?"
"And if your toys ever dare to rebel?" I said.
"Then I crush them," said the Heart. "Toys must know their
place. That’s why I allowed you in here, Eddie. I made you what you are. I gave
you the gift of my golden collar, and you wore it for years like the good little
doggie you are. But it’s still my collar."
The torc around my neck burned icy cold as the golden living
metal swept over and around me in a moment, even though I hadn’t called it. The
armour enclosed me like a prison cell, insulating me from the world and holding
me helpless within. I said the activating Words again and again, but nothing
happened. I strained my arms and legs against the encasing metal, but the armour
held me still. I wasn’t in control anymore. The Heart was. I was just a gleaming
golden puppet now, with a man trapped inside it.
"Kill the woman," the Heart said happily, greedily, and the
armour moved to obey, advancing on Molly despite everything I could do to stop
it.
Molly called out to me as the armour closed in on her, but she
couldn’t hear my answer. And since the Heart took up most of the space in the
Sanctity, there wasn’t really anywhere for her to go. She backed away around the
perimeter of the great chamber, trying to keep a safe distance between her and
the advancing armour. There were two exits out of the Sanctity, but she had to
know the armour would be upon her before she could even open a door. I was
screaming the activating Words now, and screaming at Molly to get away, but none
of it got past the featureless golden mask that covered my face.
Molly realised she couldn’t reach me and stood her ground. Her
face became calm and coldly resolved. She conjured up a roaring storm wind that
came howling in out of nowhere, sweeping the air before it like a battering ram.
It tried to pick me up and blow me away, but my armour grew heavy spikes out of
the bottom of its golden feet and anchored itself to the wooden floor. The wind
battered harmlessly against my golden exterior, failed to find any purchase, and
dropped away to nothing. The armour took a step forward.
Molly conjured up handfuls of hellfire and threw them at me.
Flames from the deepest part of the Pit, designed to sear both body and soul,
and still they couldn’t touch me through the golden armour. The flames scoured
and blackened the floor around me, and the air shimmered in a vicious heat haze,
but I felt nothing. The armour took a step forward.
Monsters appeared out of nowhere to block my path. Huge, awful
creatures, with armoured hides and lashing barbed tentacles and wide snapping
mouths full of razor teeth. But the armour walked right through the illusions to
get to Molly. She backed away, dismissing the illusions with a wave of her hand,
and conjured up a bottomless pit between her and me. The effort brought beads of
sweat to her face. The armour leaped easily over the gap to stand before her,
propelled by the unnatural strength of its armoured legs. Molly called up a
shimmering screen of pure magic to stand between her and me. It snapped and
crackled on the air, supported by her iron will. The armour placed a single
golden hand against the screen and pushed slowly, remorselessly, with all the
armour’s boundless strength behind it.