I moved past the throne and
through the old gates. Last time I’d been here, I’d lost so much and gained so
little. A moment’s hesitation was all I could afford. Weary and hurting, I
climbed the last hurdle and reached the top of the staircase, the end of the
road.
Wind whistling through my hair, I
looked out at the Lost City and the miles of dead ocean, surrounded by those
impossibly tall mountains. The wall of the Degradation sizzled above it all.
I stood atop a wide and broken
plateau, gazing up at that sky strewn with heavy violet clouds that sped across
the atmosphere as fast as Willed fire. A storm of cherry blossom petals had
been swept up into the heavens. They fell like snow and choked the world.
A fetid stink of sulphur clung to
the air. The ground beneath my feet was cracked and
breathing
. Arcs of red light, like magma, burned within the stone.
The roots of the Infernal Clock splintered out from the center of the plateau.
The Clock grew on a dais that overlooked the abyss of Atlantis.
A curious place to find a crystal
rose.
“But then a rose is a rose is a
Rose,” I whispered and stepped forward toward that beautiful chasm, the end of
the road, the white flower of moment—the Infernal Clock.
All that I had done or ever did,
was to gain this moment under the burnt sky, amidst the dust and the fire and
the dew-speckled petals of Time.
To save the Story Thread.
To reignite the Infernal Works.
Above all, and most recent, to
bring Clare back to life.
Memories came to me of Tal and
the last time I was here. Always the understanding, the knowledge, the know-how
of the universe, was thrust through my mind.
Years ago, the Everlasting Lord
Oblivion had barred our path to the rose. I was alone this time. The gods outside
of creation did not seem to care that I’d made it this far again. Perhaps that
should have worried me, but my desire to see Clare remade washed all worry
away.
I could feel the Clock ticking
inside my head like a song—a terrible song of Forget, which sounded a lot
like Springsteen circa 1975.
Broken
heroes just born to run
. Or something. It ticked away, second between
second, and I understood what it was saying, singing,
screaming
.
“I hear ya…”
I touched the Infernal
Clock—perhaps the first to do so in the history of this and
any
universe—and was dashed to
pieces on a landscape of such immense size that it dwarfed distant stars and
the black space between distant stars. The truth of reality
wasn’t
distance, but size. In a shade of
a moment I was pulled and wrenched in both inner and outer space, across
galaxies of fire and within atoms of ice. I saw worlds end and begin in rage. I
saw how little humanity understood existence. We were children. Ants. Playing
with the ascending oils of creation crashing on the shores of an endless beach.
And I was not even a grain of
sand on that beach. I was not even the smallest fraction of a grain of sand on
that beach.
I wept. My irrelevance was
infinite.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Infinite Sadness
Tal wrapped her arms around my
chest as I sagged to my knees. She was a ghost of a memory and couldn’t hold my
weight. She slumped down with me and rested her head on my back. All things
being even, she had reassembled herself in record time, but then was that so
surprising, really, after everything else?
“I tried to warn you, Declan. You
were never meant to listen, though.”
“There’s so much…
nothing
. We’re dancing on a sheet of
thin ice over a precipice of… of chaos and nightmare. Always. All the time.
Even the Void is just a stretched canvas… Tal, I…”
I was wracked with harsh sobs. If
Tal hadn’t been less than smoke, my heaving chest would have shaken her loose.
“Hush now.” She giggled and the
sound was not even
close
to human
anymore, more like nails on a chalkboard.
“I don’t want to know. It’s too
much.
Take it back!
” I spat at the
Rose, the Infernal Clock, and it glittered with indifference. Tal’s laughter
was infectious. I laughed too, though the sound was indistinguishable from
garbled cries.
Time trickled on, as it does—even
in the heart of Atlantis—and I slowly came back to some semblance of
sanity. I shook away the vestiges of what the Clock had shown me. Eternity, or
something like it. A glimpse of the infinite sadness made real. A glimpse of
chaos unbound. The knowledge had almost driven me over the edge, screaming into
the blissful nothing. But no—not yet.
Work still to be done, boss
.
I may have been less than an
insignificant speck on the face of an immense and cold universe, but I still
found meaning, hidden in lost shadows and pieces of cake. I mattered to me. Tal
mattered to me, what was left of her. Sweet Clare. There were people I cared
for, people who had purpose. Sophie, Ethan, and Aaron, just to name a few.
Emily Grace, back on True Earth, to name one more.
There may have been no meaning in the very
large—existence was mindless chaos—but the Clock could not erase
meaning from the very small.
I leveled the Roseblade against the golden-green stem of the
Infernal Clock. The thud of rushed, clapping footsteps sounded behind me. A
long, harrowing cry for mercy echoed throughout my skull. I heeded it not.
“
No!
” Morpheus Renegade
screamed across the vast plateau.
I severed the spine of all that ever was, and all that ever could
be—born within those blasted, those awful, those dum-de-de-dum-dum…
distant stars.
The Clock screamed as I cut it in half.
But then the Clock would, being the complainin’ fateful
sumabitch
that it was. I needed the petals—to bring Clare
back—and severing the Clock was the only way to unmake the Degradation.
The scream rode the edge of the wind, and, for all I knew, echoed
across the vast, bountiful realms of Forget. A near-silent scream of mercy
unheeded, of regretful fury. The radiance of the petals seemed to die as my
sword passed through the fragile, timeless stem.
I caught the Clock before it fell to the barren rock, while Tal’s
terrible laughter echoed in my ears. The thorns cut my fingers and lacerated my
palm. The pain stung like all hell, but considering the crime against creation
I’d just committed, the pain was bearable.
The ground began to shake. Torrents of liquid flame burst forth
through the dust across the harsh horizon, setting alight the blizzard of
blossom petals. The sky ignited—a million
million
petals caught alight. The rose was heavier than it should
have been—
worlds heavier, boss
.
It shook in my grasp, in its death throes. I quickly sheathed the Roseblade to
hold the Clock steady with both hands.
It was over and I had won. But
the cost, as always, was a defeated victory. With Atlantis’s power source
severed, the Degradation would disperse, there was that, and the Story Thread
would recover, given enough time.
“You… you utter fool.”
I turned and stared at Morpheus
Renegade. He was ashen and shaking, stumbling toward me with arms outstretched.
Foamy blood and spit oozed from his mouth and ran down his chin. He was
insane—I could sense it, smell it on him as if it were a disease. Perhaps
I hadn’t beaten him here, after all.
“You touched it, didn’t you?” I
asked, gesturing with the Infernal Clock. “It drove you mad.”
“Do you know what you’ve done?
What you’ve unmade?
” He drew a long,
thin rapier from the sheath at his belt. His once-shiny armor was splattered
with gore and coated in slick dust.
I raised a glowing palm. “Stop.”
His sword shimmered and thick
coils of dark flame spun around the metal, narrowing to a slender point. “You
think to command
me,
Hale? This is my
city—that is
my
prize.
Give it to me!
”
He thrust his blade forward and a
ball of crackling energy burst across the space between us. I waved my hand and
deflected the bolt skywards, into the fray above. The burnt orange sky was
tearing itself apart now, and glimpses of fresh blue firmament were seeping in.
Atlantis was falling through time, as the Degradation died.
Renegade and I fought, moving
back and forth across the plateau. In one hand, I held the Infernal Clock and
in the other, a pool of luminescent smoke.
In my mind, there was only one
thought, one urge:
Kill.
Clare’s dried blood on my hands
and in my clothes drove that urge.
I embraced it.
Renegade moved in close, swinging
his slim sword and howling for my head. He closed the gap between us, making it
next to impossible to fire off a shot of Will, as all my time was used to weave
between his deadly blows. A large man, but old, Renegade used his size to force
me toward the edge of the plateau.
I tried to redraw the Roseblade,
but was too slow.
Renegade’s hand closed around my
arm, and he pulled me harshly to the side as he reached for the crystal rose. I
slammed my fist into his face, cracking my knuckles, and we separated. His
blade cut a thin line through my shirt and across my chest. A line of blood
blossomed through the fabric.
“Ha!” Renegade roared, sensing an
advantage.
I ducked low as he swung in
again, and I slammed the pommel of the Roseblade against his leg as I drew the
crystal sword, dropping him onto one knee against the stone. He whipped his
sword around, aiming for my neck, but I lunged back a step.
Our blades caught—the
Roseblade cut through his weapon like a hot knife through butter.
His rapier shattered, and
Renegade was left holding a hilt attached to a few inches of warped steel. He
looked stunned.
I sensed
my
advantage—
Tal giggled.
—and drove the Roseblade
through his chest plate and into his heart.
The enchanted sword slipped
through the king with little resistance. I snarled, breathing hard, and forced
the cool crystal to the hilt into his chest. Two feet of bloody blade thrust
from his spine. Renegade fell back with me atop of him, driving us both down
onto the plateau. The Roseblade cut through the stone and pinned him to the
tower.
His arm, still clutching his
ruined rapier, jerked up and pierced my belly with three inches of blunt,
melted steel.
Oh.
A torrent of hot pain blossomed,
like so many roses unfurling, and ran up my side.
Shit.
“That was for Clare…” I groaned,
rolling off Renegade and pulling his broken rapier, embedded in my gut, with
me.
I struggled a bit with the blade,
but that only turned the stinging pain into something sharper, so I stopped.
I stood but immediately fell to
my knees, as men pierced by swords are wont to do.
A glimmer of satisfaction seemed
to shine in Morpheus Renegade’s eyes, and then nothing shone there, save the
reflected bursts from the reality storm bombarding the city.
Grinning like a lunatic, Renegade
died first, pierced upon the Roseblade atop the highest point of the highest
tower in the Lost City of Atlantis.
“Good riddance,” I said and
yanked his sword from my stomach with a cry that sent me reeling away across
the plateau in blinding agony.
Wounded but still clutching the
crystal rose, I watched Tal’s ghostly form approach me. Her smile was gentle
and sure. Vicious rips in the very seams of reality crackled like lightning
across the sky and through the burning ash fall. I was heading full circle
toward death, the puzzle all but complete.
Tal half-caught me and
half-dropped me on the very edge of the Infernal Clock’s ruined dais. I could
see down over the edge, into the sharp vortexes—the reality storms. I was
catching glimpses into the Void. Perhaps there would be nothing left, once the
Degradation dispersed completely, and Atlantis was thrust back into proper
time, onto the Plains of Perdition. That was a happy thought.
“Here you are at the end, Declan.
Was it as good for you as it was for me?”
Her pale hands found their way to
my side, attempting to stem the flow from the sword wound. My blood seeped
through
her flesh, slow but steady. I
couldn’t look into her crimson orbs.
“Did you want this to happen?”
Lord Oblivion smiled through
Tal’s eyes. “Now you’re catching on.”
I moaned and closed my eyes,
still clutching the Clock which was supposed to grant eternal life. So why was
I dying slowly with nothing but the shade of a lover and one of the Everlasting
for company?
“Have I done more harm than good
here today?” I asked the unseen god.