Mirrorworld (42 page)

Marcus had to giggle, a concession that threw off the wild spin he was currently rotating though, and left an opening through which an orc blade promptly snuck. Wildly dodging, Marcus felt the cold steel barely miss his skin and instead tear through his flailing jacket, and then his momentum bought him around again, and embedded the point of the scythe’s blade in his attacker’s skull.

Marcus watched in horror as the lights went out in the orc’s eyes, and it fell back off the blade and collapsed into a big, dead heap on the floor. The air around him grew heavy, and Death materialised, casually knocking aside two more orcs who had been attempting to capture Marcus in a pincer movement for the last minute or so.

“What the hell, Marcus?” Death said angrily. “I really do
not
have time for this. A lot of people are about to die and I need to be everywhere at once. Stop bloody killing things!”

And then he was gone. Marcus stood in stupefied amazement as his two attackers regrouped to dive at him, and were both promptly skewered by the Assassin, who danced past at that moment. Marcus snapped out of his stupor as the orcs slumped to the floor, and dived back into the fray, whirling his scythe about himself with a renewed emphasis on nonlethal blows. These few moments of activity passed in a blur, until the last orc was thrown to the floor by a potent swing from Musk’s flailing fist, and wisely decided to not get up. With the immediate threat passed, Marcus sagged against his scythe, fighting the burn of exertion that came calling in its wake. The Assassin was wiping his long blade clean, seemingly unfazed, while Musk was fashioning a tourniquet for a wound on his arm that was leaking quite badly. Lucin was staring blankly at the knife he’d procured from somewhere and successfully covered in blood, a million mental miles away from Kendra, who stood next to him with her head in her hands. Marcus lurched over to her, kicking away the feebly flailing hands of a particularly dedicated orc as he did so.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Fine, fine,” she murmured, rubbing her forehead. “Never used my Talent this much before. It’s making my head do some strange things. Right now, for instance, everything is purple.”

“Is that bad? That seems pretty normal for you..”

Kendra chuckled and smiled. “You’re such a smooth talker, Marcus. I’ll be fine a while longer.”

“Good,” Musk said loudly, “now can we move on before we’re found again?”

They made their way upwards through the castle, dizzying themselves on spiral staircases and running into battalions of orcs twice more. As they rallied in the wake of the second fight, the Assassin made to move off in a direction other than the one they’d been heading in, much to Musk’s surprise.

“I’m going my own way,” the Assassin said, in response to the muscular man’s demands that he explain what the hell he was doing. “It’s wise for us to split up. No offence, but I’m equally as deadly as the lot of you combined, and kind of the only one who absolutely has to make it to the wizard. So forgive me if I use you as a distraction. Or don’t. Bye!” With a cheeky wave, he vanished down a side passage before Musk could even frame a scathing retort.

“I really hate that man,” he said, to no-one in particular. “Fine! Let him run. We keep going!”

To Marcus, it seemed that because they were moving at quite a speed, their enemies, already disoriented at being attacked from inside their own castle, were having trouble keeping up; when they did stumble across roving bands, the orcs always seemed surprised to see them. Occasional echoes of clashing steel nearby suggested that the Assassin, wherever he was heading to, was meeting resistance too, and that would likely serve to confuse their antagonists further. Nonetheless, there was really only one place that they could be going, and it wouldn’t take a particularly smart mind to figure out where that would be, and just go on ahead to meet them there.

It was in the next room that they met this smart mind.

The room opened up from yet another long, dingy corridor into a wider antechamber of sorts. Meticulously decorated with shiny trinkets and bright tapestries, the room had also large windows that opened out onto impressive views of the plateau, but yet appeared to be a mere precursor to whatever greater space lay beyond the large set of double doors that were built into the far wall. A gasping nod from Lucin served to inform the group that they were in the right place: Keithus awaited beyond these doors. Unfortunately, the wizard appeared to have left a sizeable statue in the way; a rough, humanoid shape, carved from stone and mountainous crags, stood blocking their passage.

“Troll!” Musk hissed, as the statue blinked and straightened up. A grin split the creature’s face, displaying several layers of pointed, efficient-looking stalagmite and stalactite teeth.

“That’s as far as you go, Viaggiatori,” the troll said. “No-one passes this point!” It roared wordlessly, and a wall in the corridor that they’d just run down split open, revealing a secret passage full of orcs who streamed out and surrounded the group. “Many congratulations for having gotten this far,” the troll continued, savouring the sudden inversion of fortunes. “I certainly didn’t see this coming. For humans, you have done very well. But this is the end for you, unless you think you can stand against me
and
my army?” It cracked its knuckles for emphasis, an action that shook the room.

Marcus glanced at his comrades. They were critically outnumbered, but a blast from Kendra’s talent might serve to even the sides somewhat, if she still had it in her. Would that work on a troll, though? Marcus looked back at the living wall of rock, his every senses screaming out against the fact that it existed and was waiting patiently for them to make a move before flattening them.

Musk stepped forwards, his fists blossoming in size. “Stay out of the way, guys. I’ve got the troll. Cover my back.”

“Oho?” the troll boomed, “the little man thinks that he can stand against me? Alone?”

“Yes,” Musk said proudly. “I’ve yet to meet a rock I couldn’t smash.”

“Quite the mouth on you, little man,” the troll jeered. “Well, I am Kimberlite, queen of trolls, and I’ll shatter you to pieces.” The troll pounced with the terrifying speed of a time-lapsed glacier; Musk barely had time to yell “Kendra!” before the creature was on him, and he had to leap backwards to avoid a hefty blow. Kendra obliged to clap her hands once more, and Marcus once again felt the shockwave blow through him. As the surrounding orcs trembled and lost their balance, Marcus set at them in a frenzy, aware that without the Assassin, with Musk otherwise engaged, and with Kendra sagging under the weight of exertion, it was only Lucin and himself against the entire horde.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried; he’d barely turned to engage his first orc when Kimberlite came crashing past him, propelled by the force of a blow from Musk, smashing into at least five orcs and sending them all flying, screaming in pain. Marcus dodged around the troll’s flailing limbs as it righted itself, quested around with its hands for something to throw, found an orc, and flung it in Musk’s direction. The other man, advancing on Kimberlite, ducked, just in time to take her follow-up uppercut on the chin and be thrown into the air himself. Musk made use of this opportunity, however, to flip over and bring both fists down hard on the troll’s head, knocking her back once more. Musk landed on the shoulders of an orc that had just turned to swing a blade at Kendra, knocked it out with a casual kick, hopped down to the ground, then ran after the troll again.

For her part, Kendra had quickly regained her balance, and span through the crowd with an elegance that far surpassed Lucin’s swift and brutal stabbings and Marcus’s barely-controlled scythe-flailing. She had shrugged out from her sleeves two short daggers, and their points were leading her dance through their adversaries, slicing them in some very unfortunate places as she passed. Marcus would have been impressed if he hadn’t been so busy keeping himself alive.

“You fight well, little man,” Kimberlite told Musk as she threw him through a priceless table. “It’s brave of you to come at me with fists, and impressive that your blows even sting a little. But,” she added, looming over him as he lay groaning atop the remnants of the table, “I have you now.” She bought a fist around like the dawn of time to smash into Musk’s stomach, just as he rose up from feinted windedness, his body being pulled along behind his own fist as it strove to meet hers. With a force of impact heavy enough to shake every stone of the castle’s foundations, their fists met, and the resultant shockwave blew apart the melee around them. Marcus was lifted from his feet and slammed back-first into the far wall of the antechamber, and had barely managed to grab some breath back when Kendra came flying out of the storm of forms and grabbed hold of him so tightly, to avoid being blown away, that he almost asphyxiated on the spot. Taking huge gulps of air, Marcus watched over her head as the wave passed over them and the dust cleared, revealing a room full of broken furniture, bodies rolling around on the ground, and a frozen tableau of Musk and Kimberlite. The troll loomed over the man, who was on one knee in her shadow, their fists still held knuckle-to-knuckle at the point of impact. As Marcus watched, their eyes moved to meet each other’s, and Marcus could have sworn he saw them both grin slightly before they both toppled over backwards.

Marcus carefully extricated himself from Kendra, and picked his way over towards Musk. As he passed a pile of orcs it fell apart, revealing Lucin underneath, who struggled to his feet with a grunt.

“Nice knife skills there, lady,” the short man said to Kendra. “You didn’t think of making use of them until now?”

“Nah, I thought about it,” Kendra said with unsteady cheer, “but I thought it better to fully expend my more marketable resource before getting down and stealing your kills.”

Lucin muttered something unspeakable, but Marcus didn’t hear him, as he’d made it to Musk and discovered that the man was unconscious. Thankfully, so was Kimberlite, but that didn’t change the fact that the leader of the expedition had been inconvenienced.

“You alright?” Kendra asked, coming over and attempting to use his shoulder as an arm-rest.

“I guess,” Marcus said, “but we’re another man down.”

“Now what?” Lucin asked, dusting himself off. “We three amigos carry on?” His tone of voice betrayed his opinion of that idea.

“We have to,” Marcus said with a sigh, retracting the blade of his scythe. “If he was awake he’d be telling us to quit dillydallying and get the hell on with it. Keithus is right on the other side of that door. We can’t not go through.”

“Okay,” Lucin said exasperatedly, “first, dillydallying isn’t a word. Second – he’s unconscious! You’re in charge now, Marcus, and we don’t have to do shit. Say the word, and we run. You really think the three of us stand a chance against the wizard? Let’s get out of here, right now. You can come back later if you really like, but I’d honestly prefer you to not order
me
to. Yes?”

“Damnit Lucin,
shut up!
” Marcus growled. “We don’t get another shot at this. We’re right here, and on the other side of that door is a man with some sort of unknown connection to me. I
have
to go through, if not to stop him, then at least to find out what it is. And dillydallying is
totally
a word.”

Lucin sighed, and threw up his hands. “You know, I only ever told you about that stupid second-in-command thing because I thought you had sense enough to not walk us into situations like this. But no, you had to go and swap your self-preservation for some sort of heroic delusion. Well, fine. Let’s do it. Let’s go and be heroes and get ourselves killed, because that’s what will happen.”

“I really hope that’s not the case,” Marcus said, reaching for the door handles. It wasn’t the most poetic rallying cry in the universe, but it would have to do.

The doors cracked open, revealing a large hall beyond, lit by flaring torches and as lavishly decorated as the room they’d just wrecked. The ceiling rose high above, populated with mighty chandeliers and a surrealist fresco that put Marcus in mind of a church and badly reflected the deep purples and reds of the hall’s long carpet. The religious feel was further compounded by the stained glass windows that lined the sides of the hall, featuring all sorts of Mirrorworld iconography that Marcus had no time to take in. At the far end of the room, where there may have once been an altar, steps now led up to a raised dais that was the base of a throne, and sat on the throne..

“Well, come on in,” Keithus said cheerfully. “We have
so
much to discuss.”

Keithus in the flesh was nowhere near as terrifying as the nightmarish vision that had been Marcus’s only sight of him so far. In his dreams this form had laughed and taunted him just as it had the lady whose mind he’d inherited it from, and it was kind of disappointing to now come face to face with the wizard’s true self, and observe that he was very definitely human.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t strike an imposing figure, though. As he rose from his throne and strode down the steps towards Marcus’s assembled group with devastating self-confidence, Marcus was struck by how very similar to himself the wizard looked. The only major difference was the hair; Marcus’s darkening mop was anathema to the long, dirty blonde hair that fell about Keithus’s face, held in position only by his purple pointy hat. This concession to wizardry was the only thing Keithus had in common with the wizards Marcus had seen in Portruss; where they had been portly sometimes to the point of having their own orbital tug, and tended to rock huge bushy beards, Keithus was of a similar build to Marcus, slightly too slim than appeared healthy, and
his
wizardly beard was but a small, scraggly goatee. While Keithus did wear a robe, he wore it slung about a shirt and trousers in a way that spookily mimicked Marcus’s preferred means of wearing his long jacket. The wizard even had a long staff, although it was far more gnarled and ornate than Marcus’s smoothly unassuming stick with a blade on the end, and the glowing tip suggested that it contained many magics.