Authors: Joe Ducie
The world seemed to be moving in
slow motion as I fought the energy pressed against me and raised Myth above my
head. The skin on my arms stretched and tore under the strain, and my lips were
drawn back from my teeth far enough to split in the corners of my mouth.
I tasted blood.
I
wanted
blood.
Slowly, achingly, Myth fell, and the
crystal tip dug a furrow along Scion’s brow and down the bridge of his nose.
Blood, crimson and hot, flowed in rivulets down his face. I was hurling my
might, forged not only in Atlantis five years ago, but in the heart of the
Infernal Clock, against the Everlasting—
and I was winning
.
“An eye for an eye, Scion,” I
whispered. A cold and wholly suffocating anger gripped me, and I punctured the
Everlasting’s eye. I turned the Creation Knife slowly and carved a gooey, grey
mess from his socket.
Scion screamed, and his power
failed. Time sped back up, and I jerked forward, bringing Scion down with me
atop his form, which merged from young to old as fast as I could blink. Here I was,
once again, plunged into the blood and filth of the Knights Infernal. And hell,
I was no believer in fate or destiny, but perhaps that needed to change. In
that moment, I glimpsed a pattern so intricate and complex that even a glimpse
was maddening. I saw myself at the heart of a bright web, my life stretching
out in concentric ripples from the center. Everything I had ever done, from
Atlantis to the Tome Wars, had been so I could lose my shadow, gain a painful
measure of immortality from the Infernal Clock, all so I could retrieve Myth
and have a fighting chance here, now—tonight.
Then the glimpse was gone, the
details too absurd, and I was back in the fight.
Myth thrummed in my hand, demanding
more,
desiring
an end to this ghastly business.
Scion squirmed, weak, in my grip
around his throat. “We’ve an account to settle, you and I,” he rasped. “My
Brothers and Sisters will see to that. There is no world, no corner of the
Story Thread you can hide,
Knight
.”
“You’ll find me just up the road at Paddy’s,
asshole.”
Once it’s rebuilt.
“Wednesday night’s steak night.”
I drove Myth into Scion’s chest with
a cry, and a shockwave of pure energy—from the knife, not from the god—sent me
spinning away. I rolled across the stone and right over the edge of the tower
but spun onto my stomach in the last few feet and grasped the rough edge with
the tips of my fingers, only just preventing a fall.
Scion shrieked, and Myth, stuck in
his heart, shone with white light, a beacon as bright as the dawn against the
night sky. The Younger God
faded
, his skin split, and red fire burned in
place of his blood. His flesh blackened and turned to ash, and the ash to dust,
which swirled on the air, absorbed into the light of Myth—the Creation Knife.
“Wasn’t so hard...” I groaned and
pulled myself back up onto the plateau. The stone felt like sponge against my
back and, for a brief moment, flickered as if it were nothing more than crystal
illusion.
With Scion’s ascension stopped, the
tower was fading—back into whatever abyss Scion and Emissary had pulled it
from. I’d thwarted the Everlasting beachhead, but at a cost almost
indistinguishable from defeat.
With no time to catch my breath, I
crawled to one knee and then staggered to my feet. I grabbed Myth as I limped
past the heart of the plateau and shoved the knife under my belt. Work to be
done, wars to be fought, and the knife would be needed again, I was sure.
I scooped up Annie—poor, sweet
Annie—and ran to the tower’s edge, out over the precipice overlooking the coast
and the sand dunes. From this height, I could even glimpse Riverwood Plaza up
the hill, as dawn broke in the east. It had been a
long
night. But there
was little time for sightseeing.
With a quick thought, I invoked a
minor levitation enchantment just as the stone beneath my feet faded into
nothing. Whatever it was and wherever it had come from, with Scion bested and
Emissary dead at the bottom of the ocean, the tower’s grip to the reality of
True Earth buckled.
Trusting to my restored Will, to the
soft halo of light clinging to my shoes, I stepped off the tower as it
popped
out of existence and a clap of air rushed in to claim the space it had so
recently occupied. High above the gentle swell, my levitation charm slowed my
descent, and I didn’t so much fall as drift lightly, back and forth, as if I
were a feather on a light breeze.
I landed on my knees in the shallow
swash, on the edge of a wide, semi-circular groove left in the sand by Scion’s
tower. Foamy seawater rushed into the groove, a good six feet deep. I lowered
Annie into the water but kept a hand under her back, holding her close, and
wished on the first rays of sunlight and the daystar that she would live again.
I don’t know how long I sat there in
the surf, holding Annie close and telling her everything about my life up until
about three days ago, when we’d met in the cool, early-morning mist at Kings
Park. I couldn’t stop brushing her dark, wet hair back from her face. The swash
from the sea had soaked us both, and her legs swung lifeless in the shallow
water, back and forth.
Another friend I’d failed to save.
Another girl who had died for me.
For my resolve. Easy to blame the machinations of the Everlasting, but no one
ever said I had to play—to act. I could’ve just sat back and sipped scotch
these last few days, tipped a glass to the end of the world. At least then I
never would have… come to care for Annie Brie.
“And just beyond the mountains, the
city of Farvale is built within the forests bordering Lake Delgado. I took Tal
there once, and we drank this cheap, awful vodka for the first time. It was
like a white whiskey, I suppose.” So long ago it seemed, but only eight short
years. I’d been sixteen-nearly-seventeen. “She kissed me on the cheek.”
Dawn had well and truly broken over
the eastern horizon at my back, scattering thin rays of cool light across the
ocean. Soon, not even the deep gouge in the sand where Scion’s tower had
manifested would remain. Water washed away everything, given enough time, and
the ocean was calm now. At some sort of hard-fought peace that never lasted
long.
“Annie, I…”
Had it only been three days since
I’d met this woman? Three days, yes, and never mind the spare change and
uncertain time in the Dream Worlds. Broken quill, three days was a new record
to love them and leave them, wasn’t it? All the fear of the last few days had
culminated in this—my young detective and I alone on Diablo Beach in the
gentle, timeless surf.
We saw some wonders, Annie, you and I…
I could almost hear Emissary
cackling, but his score was settled. My brand was gone, naught but a mess of
dead eschar. In the end I had won, but the cost… the
sheer cost.
Broken
quill—and dragon’s fire aside—but I was running out of room and chalk to tally
that particular board.
I could see well in the early light.
A corner of cream parchment poked out of the inner pocket of Annie’s burned and
bloody jacket. The parchment looked rich, thick and creamy, something the
Knights might have used... I frowned and removed a sodden envelope.
The ink on the front had run, but I
could still see that it was addressed to me. Someone, a woman, had pressed her
lips against the parchment and left a kiss in dark red lipstick. The envelope
was heavy and deformed. Not a letter then. I turned it over and saw a familiar
wax seal—a gauntleted fist over an open tome, crowned by three stars.
The house crest of the Renegades.
...Detective Brie. I found your
jacket, honey.
Emily had slipped the envelope into Annie’s pocket in the ruins of the Atlas Lexicon.
Had to be, but why...?
I broke the seal, tired but curious,
and spilled the contents onto my palm.
Struck with dawn light, glinting as
if it were a diamond, a single crystal rose petal rested in my hand. Traveling
on the winds of time and memory, from an unfathomable distance, the soliloquy
of the gears at the heart of creation turning in perfect, endless harmony
reached my ears, and ground what was left of my soul to dust and less than
dust.
In my hand I held one of the petals
of the Infernal Clock, stolen in Atlantis after I’d severed the Clock with the
Roseblade and Emily had kicked me from the summit of that palace—to my somewhat
timely death.
“Oh, Em...” I whispered. “That’s
just cruel.”
I had a choice to make.
Use the petal and bring back Annie—the
obvious choice, but Emily in her timeless splendor knew that.
Had she known
this would happen?
Or I could use the petal on someone
else.
Tal...
No, she was truly lost. But Clare Valentine? Sweet Clare,
who had died and died hard for me on the Plains of Perdition, torn apart by a
ravenous horde of the undead. I knew where to find her body. I dug around in my
pocket and retrieved the crumpled and torn photo Sophie had taken of Annie and
me at the tavern, just those three short days ago. The young detective sat
straight and proper on her stool, offering the camera a small, polite smile—
as
you do around new people
—and there I sat, cider in hand, a stupid smirk on
my face. The resemblance to Scion was, for a moment, so uncanny that I
suspected some trick.
But no, it was just me.
Hell, I could keep the petal for
myself. In my line of work, being killed before my time was a damn certainty,
and I had more enemies than the next
ten
Knights combined. I’d already
cheated death once. But Clare... with her ever-changing eyes and pixie beauty
hadn’t deserved her death. She cared for me, and I didn’t want to be exiled and
alone anymore.
Only so much comfort in dregs of
scotch and stale digestive biscuits, after all.
Bringing Clare back was the right
thing to do.
So I placed the petal in Annie’s
palm, sliced from the star iron sword, and closed her fist around it. The
razor-sharp edges pierced her lifeless skin. Cupping her hand in mine, I poured
a furnace of Will into the petal and cheated death once again. That scythe-wielding
bastard would just have to deal with it.
“Exiled and alone...” I muttered.
“Well, exiled no more.”
And we were all of us alone,
clinging to a rock spinning through the star-strewn darkness and trying
desperately to
matter
. To make some sort of everlasting mark, however
true or awful that mark may be. Spinning endlessly alone—until we’re not alone,
and we stumble into someone else trying to mark the chaos, and we cling tighter
to that person than we ever have to the world itself. That spark in another,
that resonation of the soul—a counterpoint in the dark—was more real and more
important than the earth beneath our feet.
Annie and I had spun together across
worlds and universes and dreams. But the chaos had swallowed her whole,
absorbed her warmth, and scattered us apart as easily as we had spun,
intoxicated, together.
She deserved a second chance, as did
Clare, but one injustice at a time was the best I could do.
Some small amount of time, no more
than a few minutes, marched idly past, and a touch of warmth and color returned
to Annie’s skin. The blow to the head which had killed her faded away. Her
eyes, which I had closed, fluttered, and her brow creased in a tiny frown
against the early morning light.
“Declan?” Annie struggled to sit up,
found she couldn’t, and fell back down into my arms. “Declan… what happened?”
“You bumped your head, sweet thing.
But you’re okay now.”
“Oh…” Annie held her palm against
her forehead. From what I remember of the experience, coming back to life hurt
beyond words. “Oh my, that’s what happened. Why are we in the ocean?”
“Good question.” With a great deal
of care, I stood and helped Annie to her feet. She managed it, keeping an arm
slung around my shoulders. Two ragged immortals, now, barely able to stand.
“Would you join me for breakfast, Annie?”
“I…” She frowned. “Did we win? We
did, didn’t we?”
“Emissary’s dead. Rotting on the
ocean floor. Scion is... gone. We won enough. For now.”
“Good.” Annie found her feet a
little better. I held my forearm out for her to grasp. Her hand was warm
against my arm. Warm and alive. She clung to it as if the world were not real,
as though she were a traveler setting foot on distant shores after a long
journey. “That’s good. In that case, I’m thinking bacon and egg muffins, and pancakes
with syrup. Oh, and hash browns with coffee. Can we get that? Please?” Her
stomach grumbled.
I found a smile after all, a little
further down the road from tired and lonely. Sand crunched underfoot as we
walked away from the sea. “Honey, you had me at bacon. But you’ll have to pay—a
dragon ate my wallet.”
*~*~*~*
The End of