Authors: Joe Ducie
“He’ll be working, I know, but he
needs to see I was home,” she said. “Forty-five minutes, Declan, and I’ll be
back. After a shower and a change of clothes—just you have a kebab waiting for
me.” She tried for a smile, but the tears kind of made it tragically beautiful
instead of funny.
“Emissary will be looking for
you—for us.”
A pale shadow of doubt covered her
face. “Risks worth taking, you know?”
“Aye, I do.” I shifted Tia in my
arms. She was in the featherweight division, but it was an awkward bag of
feathers. “Be safe, Annie Brie.”
“Don’t go saving the world without
me.”
With a bit of fancy footwork and a
careful distribution of the load—I threw Tia over my shoulder—I managed to get
into my bookshop without setting off the ward enchantments. Barred from my Will
as I was, I had to wonder if the wards would even recognize me as a threat.
Still, I only attracted a few mildly concerned stares from shoppers in the
plaza. God bless the willful ignorance of the huddled masses.
Through the mazes and warrens of old
books, up the spiral staircase, and I deposited Tia in my bedroom on my bed,
which I rarely slept in, preferring instead to black out in front of the
typewriter downstairs. The sun was sinking just above the horizon now, about an
hour before sunset, out of the west-facing window above my workbench. I sat
stroking Tia’s hair for a moment, wishing her well and thinking about regret
and death.
Gathering a clean set of clothes, I
retired to the shower to wash away the grime and blood of this latest campaign.
*~*~*~*
Annie was late.
And, of course, perhaps rightly. I
feared the worst.
Sitting in my writing alcove, hair
still damp from the shower, I sipped at a glass of scotch and watched the
street for any sign of trouble. This sitting around business was rather
anticlimactic after the battle at the Lexicon. The new shirt and pants felt
good, free of blood, sweat, and dirt, but the eye patch itched, and my
Will-reinforced waistcoat felt all too heavy. I’d strapped my sword belt on
again, too, as half a sword was better than no sword.
“Where are you, Annie...?”
As far as I knew, Vrail, Garn, and
Dessan had died for me, distracting Emissary, and Tia was exhausted beyond
comatose... Was it my crippled fate to outlive and outlast the best people I’ve
ever known? “Tal,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
Now that was a sad song stuck on
repeat. So was the amber liquid turning cloudy in my glass. I took a deep
breath and, with a sense of long overdue finality, tossed back the scotch with
the same old and tired well-practiced flick. Then I stood up and collected the
half-empty bottles scattered about my alcove and front counter.
I knocked aside a few hundred books
and retrieved a cardboard box. The bottles clanked and clinked as I filled the box,
soldiers standing to attention. Swallowing hard, I retrieved the fancy stuff
from behind the counter. A bottle of Glenfiddich 30, not yet opened. Here I
almost hesitated, but my newfound resolve won out.
I climbed the spiral staircase to
the second floor with a heavy heart, bypassed my bedroom and the unconscious
Tia, passed the sealed washroom which held the Black Mirror—a path through the
Void—and rested the box of bottles on the windowsill at the end of the hallway.
The window looked out on the alley behind my shop. I unclasped the lock and
swung it open. I could smell the ocean on the air and could see a glittering
band of coast just five minutes away, shining in the last of the day’s sun.
“Farewell, old friends,” I muttered and
thought the sentiment quite melodramatic.
I heaved the box of scotch bottles
out of the window and watched it sail to the ground. The bottles fled the box
as it arced through the air, and as the first struck the asphalt below and
shattered, a cacophony of similar sharp resonance rained down upon the
alleyway.
The scotch formed a tiny puddle and
drained into the gutter, spoiled and ruined, and by god, I still wanted to go
down and salvage some of the liquor. A shadow fell across the alleyway. With a
sigh that was some parts regret to a few parts content, I gazed back out toward
the horizon.
At some point in the last fifteen
seconds, a monolithic tower—at least a half-mile tall—had snapped into
existence down on Diablo Beach.
I blinked, licked my lips, and
rubbed at my good eye just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
Nope.
Definitely a tower—a spire, really,
of some shiny black stone. Crenellations and turrets circled the wide, flat
foundations and spiraled up to twin pillars separated by a flat plateau. Crimson
sparks, red lightning, forked between the pillars, and clouds overhead seemed
to swirl as if being pulled down a drain.
The tower blocked the setting sun,
cutting bright beams of light to either side of the impressive structure—light
that seemed to warp and absorb into the stone of the tower.
“Now, that shouldn’t be...” I
muttered and decided it might have been prudent to save one bottle of scotch. I
could go cold turkey tomorrow after whatever dread legions and Everlasting
mischief burst forth from the otherworldly tower.
I had no doubt I was looking at
something out of Forget, forcing its way into the real world—the True
Earth—against every law I’d ever been taught. This broke more than just the
laws of the Knights, as well. Universal concepts once held infallible had been
shattered. The dragon’s insane laugh echoed through my mind...
“Spill enough blood, and the walls
of reality begin to crack. What, perchance, may slip through then, hmm? You’ll
see soon.”
I had a strange feeling Emissary had
put the Creation Knife to dire use.
Putting all my many and varied
imagined fears to rest, Annie let herself into the shop as I ran down the
spiral staircase, sober as a bird and still seeing impossible towers of somewhat
expected evil.
“Did you see it?” I asked, panting
hard.
She frowned, bemused. “See what? And
where’s my kebab?”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her up
the stairs, to the window where I’d disposed of my scotch. The sun had sunk
even lower now, bordering the horizon, and painted the sky a bruised-purple
azure. But the half a mile of raw black tower could still be quite clearly
seen.
Annie gazed out of the window, down
at the alley strewn with shattered scotch bottles, and offered me her most
disapproving frown. “Did you do that?’
“Did I...? Annie, you’re not seeing
the bigger picture here—look!” I gestured down to the coast. “See anything
strange? A black spire of purely concentrated evil that I doubt even our proton
packs will be able to pierce?”
“Ghostbusters is a great movie,” she
said, staring out at the horizon. Her eyes scanned the coast, flickering right
past the tower and jumping back. “There’s... Well, something doesn’t look
right. Like, the shadows are off, or something. Can’t quite place—”
She honestly can’t see it... Why?
I moved behind her and grasped the
sides of her head, pointing her face directly at the tower.
“Declan, what are you—”
“Look,” I said. “Just look.”
Annie looked. Annie saw. Annie
screamed.
“Yeah, that’s better,” I muttered, removing
my hands from her ears.
“How could I not see
that
?”
she whispered furiously. “My god, what is it?”
I moved back around to her side and
gazed into her eyes, just to confirm something I already suspected. Sure enough,
her jade-green eyes were a healthy shade of purple.
“How come you could see it?” Annie
asked. “Even now... my eyes want to slip to either side of it as if it isn’t
there. I’m having trouble focusing on it. Christ, Declan, what is it?”
I shrugged. “If I had to guess,
we’re looking at the beginning of Scion’s so-called ascension. We’re looking at
the first Everlasting beachhead.” A few days ago, I’d predicted that the
Knights abandoning True Earth could spark something as severe as World War
Three, but that would almost be welcome in place of what had appeared down on
Diablo Beach. “As for why I could see it—I might be barred from my power, but I
am Willful—I am of Forget and Ascension City. I am a
Knight
! You’ve
traveled across universes, Annie, so you see creation differently now. But
you’re still new to this—which is why I had to point the tower out to you. But
now you see...”
“Yes, I see.”
As the sun finally dipped below the
horizon, I grinned and grasped the hilt of my broken sword. “You see them, and
they see you. What say we wander on down to the beach and meet the new
neighbors?”
*~*~*~*
Whatever magic of fractured reality
had brought the tower to True Earth and hidden it in plain sight, the people
who drove along the coast road, even the people who walked along the beach
paths, seemed to sense something out of place. They walked hurriedly away from
the structure, shoulders hunched, staring at one another and up at the sky with
deep mistrust.
I kept hold of Annie’s hand as we
walked from the red-stone path along the coast and into the sand dunes above
Diablo Beach. Her skin in contact with mine seemed to make it easier for her to
keep the tower in her mind and in her sight. It reared up above us now,
piercing the sky, and a cool wind whistled around the crenellated stonework.
The beach was deserted.
The base of the tower was about a
quarter mile across, not only resting on the beach but also stretching out into
the water for a few hundred feet. Large waves of foamy-dark seawater crashed
against the tower, and the wind whipped the spray along the beach, dousing
Annie and me in cool, stinging droplets.
A set of black stairs led up the
base of the tower, and inside—nothing but darkness. I drew my sword and gave
Annie an encouraging smile.
“What’s the bet we head inside and
those doors close ominously behind us?”
“You’ve read too many creepy
stories,” she said.
“Sweet thing, I’ve
lived
them.”
Alone, tired, and still craving
kebabs, Annie and I came to a stop just before the steep set of steps leading
up into the tower.
“Want to run away?” I asked.
“Yes, please.”
“So do I. Come on, let’s see what we
see.”
The steps felt...
insubstantial
might be the right word. They didn’t feel real. Hard and strong, forged from
the strength of ages but only half there. That didn’t make much sense, but I
felt as if—at any moment—the stone beneath my shoes could simply fall away,
disappear, or swallow me whole. Annie swayed, unsteady, on the solid
foundations, so I guessed she sensed the same thing.
I climbed the staircase and stood on
the large, arched doorway of the tower. After a moment’s hesitation, I touched
the stone frame, and a shock rippled up my arm. Not painful, not really, but
similar to licking a battery—or a burst of static electricity. I could taste
blood on the air. My fingers came away covered in rusty-red flakes from the
stone.
“Is that...”
“Cemented in blood,” I muttered,
feeling something besides trepidation and fatigue in my chest. Something...
angry. “Live for love, Annie. Let’s be about our dark and dreary business.”
We crossed the threshold, and all
light failed. The darkness swept us up in cloaks of moonless midnight and, yes,
the stone doors closed ominously at our backs.
“We’re trapped inside with...
whatever we find,” Annie said.
“No,” I whispered. “Whatever we find
is trapped inside with
us
.”
*~*~*~*
Torches of pale, almost pointless
light flared to weak radiance on the walls every ten feet or so. The tower was
unfurnished and felt like a skeleton stripped of organs and flesh—incomplete,
cold, and altogether unhomely.
Had the events of the last three
days really been building to this? So far, I was not impressed with the
supposed power of the Everlasting.
The tower spiraled inexorably up
.
No windows, no slits in the stonework, provided a glimpse of the world just
outside. For all that mattered now, the uneven yet sturdy steps leading up to
the summit of the tower was our world. Time passed… I wasn’t sure how much, but
minutes certainly bled into hours. A long night was passing unseen beyond these
dark walls. The only sound was our hard breathing from the ascent and the clip
of our heels on the stone. The silence was deafening—and deep, as if Annie and
I were alone in this empty, cold tower. But the tower didn’t feel empty.
The muscles in my legs were shaking
from the exertion when we, at long last, reached the summit of the tower, under
a sky strewn with stars familiar… and alien. Crackles of crimson lightning
scored the space between the twin pillars that rose around the tower’s apex,
resembling a crown. Two worlds were bleeding into one...