Distant Star (18 page)

“That’s not really fair, is it?”
he said, pulling back his hand.

Sophie shrugged. “I’ll stay if I
want, Declan.” She glanced at her boyfriend. “But I don’t think I want to, not
really.”

“‘Phie?”

“Hush, Ethan. Declan’s right, in
his own idiotic way. We’ve no reason to be here, and we’ll most likely get in
his way.”

“But if we stay, then I won’t
have to do uni exams next week.”

I snorted. “Well, at least you’ve
got your priorities straight.”

After a long moment in silence, I
let go of Sophie’s hand and sighed.

“You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Not a chance,” she said. “Not
with what’s at stake.”

Kids.

*~*~*~*

So, just the six of us to save
the big, cruel world and all of Forget.

Or at least stop the whole mess
from slipping any closer to oblivion.

“Anyone want to back out, now’s
your chance. We’re going about as deep into Forget as you can go. To the very edge
of the Degradation.”

“This isn’t going to end well,”
Marcus said. “For any of us.”

Trust Marcus… until he gives you a reason not to.

“Chin up, sailor.”

Tales of Atlantis
sat on the coffee
table. We circled around the table and the book of short stories, written a
long time ago by the last people to see Atlantis before it fell into the seas
of chaos.

“It’s either you or Clare who’ll
have to do the diving invocation,” Marcus said. “Sophie, Ethan, and I are tied
to True Earth, not to Ascension City.”

That was true. Using a book as a
gateway, diving through the pages, meant remaining tied to the point of
origin—True Earth for Sophie, Ethan, and Marcus, which meant they
couldn’t dive again unaided. To sever their tether would be to risk falling
into the Void, slipping sideways out of existence.

Just one of the many rules of
diving across universes. You could only go one level deep. Earth to Forget.
Clare had come the other way, Forget to Earth. She was tied to Ascension City,
and I had crossed the Void through the Black Mirror, which had been forged
here.

Sophie, Marcus, Ethan—and
Aaron, who possessed not one drop of Will—would have to ride alongside
either Clare or myself.

Ethan spun the book around on the
table. “So if Atlantis was lost for so long, how come this book can get you
there?”

“It gets you close,” I said, “to
the plains the city was built upon all those millenniums ago, and the
Degradation. It’s hard to explain, but Atlantis used to be a part of
Earth—of True Earth, where all of us save Aaron were born. Atlantis
fractured, Ethan. Some travesty in the past forced the city into Forget.”

“There are theoreticians at the
Academy in the Fae Palace that believe Atlantis was, perhaps, the very
first
piece of Forget,” Aaron said and
stroked his chin. “The first realm to form and claim the nothing-space the Void
occupied. From Atlantis, all the rest of Forget formed, like an archipelago.
What we call the Story Thread. Not just worlds upon worlds tied together, but
universes upon universes.”

“And you just happened to have a
copy of this book lying around?” Clare asked, glaring at the damn thing.
“Broken quill, if Faraday knew…”

“I found it not even a week ago,
on the shores of Diablo Beach back in Perth.” I grunted. “Which tells us one
thing. Someone, perhaps even Faraday himself, wanted me back in Forget. To try
for Atlantis.”

A silence fell over the group,
and I felt cold, though the day outside was warm and bright.

“We’re diving into a trap,”
Sophie said. “But there’s no other way, is there?”

“Not to where we’re going. So
let’s get it over with.” I rolled up my sleeves and picked up
Tales of Atlantis.
“Clare, grasp the
cover. The rest of you, hold on tight to either of our arms. This will be a
bumpy ride.”

Aaron shifted his duffel bag from
one shoulder to the other. “I’ve only ever done this once before,” he said.

“It’s like riding a bike… across
a thin wire over a nightmarish chasm of horror,” I assured him.

“Chin up, sailor?” Marcus asked.

I let the Will flow down my arms
and into the thin book of old stories. “Something like that.”

We slipped along the ragged edge of
the burning page… and straight into a warzone.

SILENCE
THE GUNS: PART III

Wastelands aside,
he cannot win.
Those soulless eyes, that bloody grin.
No sword or defiance will scar,
His broken will—a distant star.

~The Historian of Future Prospect
After Madness, 2007

You were unsure which pain
was worse—the shock of
what happened or the ache for what never will.

~Simon Van Booy

Perhaps a
secret—
Or pencil in hand,
Enriched the pure leaf
Made true, after all
Scorn the fool’s last piece.

~King Morrow’s Journal (Vol. VII)

CHAPTER TWENTY

The
Perdition War

The Tome Wars had been a time of
anarchy and rampant destruction. When people capable of harnessing the powers
of creation used that power to make war, the result was always catastrophic.
Before my fall, I’d been a hero, in the cruelest sense of the word.

I’d used my strength to shatter
entire legions of Renegade’s soldiers.

I’d foiled plots and
assassination attempts against King Morrow—Faraday’s predecessor.

I’d won battles that were
hopeless, waged crusades in the face of insurmountable defeat and snatched
victory from the jaws of Oblivion. I became a figurehead for the war effort,
and as a Knight—a lord of Ascension City—I was groomed for the throne.

The penultimate battle in Reach
City, which had ended the lives of so many, so suddenly, had changed all that.
My hand had been forced at the cruel point of the Roseblade. I’d used the epic
sword to change all Forget. Atlantis was no longer a secret anymore. The myth
had been dragged screaming into the light. I’d long since attracted Morpheus
Renegade’s attention, his ire, but that night he turned his whole might against
me—the war was no longer Knights against Renegades.

It was Knights and Renegades
against Declan Hale.

And I’d won, damn it, at a cost
so great that there were too many dead to bury.

When the war came down to that
last, awful night, the choice had been either Reach City or the very linchpin
that held Forget together. I’d chosen to save Forget, for the greater good.
And for her…
One day I might even come
to terms with that.

My companions and I came spinning
out of the Void under a hail of Will fire and clouds of thick, choking smoke.

The Plains of Perdition were
ablaze with war.

Tales of Atlantis
had spat us out on the
edge of a vast field cradled between two valleys that reached a single point in
the distance. That point intersected with a monumental purple dome of light,
atop a long grassy ridge.

The Degradation.

Arcs of multi-colored light,
sizzling beams of energy designed to kill, cut through the air. A large battle
was being waged before the Degradation, upon the Plains. At a quick glance, I
saw the heavy cloaks of the Knights clashing against the darker uniforms of a
Renegade army. The conflict was sweeping toward us and burning large swaths of
the valley in its wake.

“Looks like Faraday’s precious
alliance is over,” I said, pooling Will into my palms and readying both
offensive and defensive enchantments. “Look at all those poor bastards.”

“This is…” Ethan’s eyes bulged.
“This is insane! Is that a
dragon
?”

“Sure is, chief.” I slapped him
on the back with my glowing hand. “Welcome to paradise.”

The thing about Will, and the
realms we traversed using Will, was that damn near anything and everything
could be brought from one world to the next. Creatures, such as dragons, could
be transported across realms. The black market trade on such exotic animals had
flourished during the Tome Wars, which was half the reason why the war had been
so devastating and why the Knights had done all they could to protect Ascension
City and True Earth from the Renegades.

A war of Will fought along the
Story Thread could only end in madness.

Men and women, clad in bloody
armor, fought in no discernable formations. Narrow beams of fire and hot
lightning rocketed back and forth through the air while shields of Will flared
to life and deflected or dispersed most of the attacks. The beams they missed
engulfed Knights and Renegades alike.

I saw a velociraptor tear out a
man’s throat.

A band of tiny creatures, that
resembled a group of leprechauns, flew through the air and left trails of
golden sparks in its wake along the edge of the battle. Each spark liquefied
armor and flesh.

Ethan’s dragon breathed jets of
flame across a unit of Knights. They emerged unscathed under an emerald shield
of Will.

Something that looked as if it
belonged to Lovecraft’s mad Arab pulled its enormous weight across the ground,
all tentacles and porous skin, leaving a deep furrow in its wake full of
bubbling acid.

Clare was at my side. “They’re
slaughtering each other.”

“What else is new?” I sighed. “We
have to reach the shell of the Degradation—if we’re not already too late.
The Queen’s had my blood for days. She and her blasted husband already may have
used it to get through. Come on.”

The group set off at a jog, Aaron
huffing and puffing at the rear, along the outskirts of the battle.

“We’ll take a half day to even
reach the shell if we stick to the edges,” Marcus observed. “This is foolish,
Declan.”

“I’m open to suggestions here.”

“We—”

A ten-foot lance of white ice
struck the ground in front of us and exploded in a thousand deadly shards. I
reacted almost instantly, as fast as thought. A wall of superheated flame burst
to life between my group and the ice, melting the deadly projectiles as they
flew through the wall and soaked us in a harmless spray of warm water.

The battle had turned.

Trouble in our road.

Hordes of travesties and
war-raged soldiers threatened to overwhelm us. Clare, Marcus, and
myself—the most experienced, the veterans—kept up a steady flux of
mostly defensive Will work. A cacophony of charmed light doused flames,
absorbed lightning, and melted steel.

We were good. The best, once upon
a time—at the start of all the great stories, yes, yes—but there
was only so much we could do against the immense tide of warring Knights and
Renegades.

A wave of concussive force from
behind sent us all reeling head over heels across the ground. The group was
split, and the tide washed in, separating Clare and me from the others.

I watched as Marcus deflected a
Renegade soldier’s fiery sword blow to save Ethan’s life. Sophie snarled and
sent a bolt of sizzling energy into the man’s chest plate—frying his
insides. Her snarl turned into a surprised gape as she realized what she’d
done.

“Marc, Aaron!”

Marcus glared at me over the
heads of the soldiers between us and swung around to find Aaron, who was being
attacked by a spider grown to about the size of a Mini Cooper.

Aaron swung his duffel bag of
supplies in the creature’s face, and its long, gore-spattered fangs sunk into
the material and tore it apart. The contents of the bag sprayed across the
field.

“No!” Aaron yelled, and dived
beneath the giant spider.

The battle intensified, and the
last glimpse I had of my friends was Marcus pulling Ethan away by the scruff of
his shirt—as Clare pulled me away by mine.

“We have to punch through—”

“We have to run!” she yelled,
above the noise and the heat and the smoke. “Or we’ll die trapped!”

She was right. Reaching Atlantis
was coming down to the wire, and the Renegades had to be stopped, no matter the
cost, or the danger. Marcus and the others had made their decision to come
here. They would live or die by that.

“Okay.”

Cut off from the others, Clare
ran point, and I covered her. We managed to stay on course for the Degradation,
but only just. The rise and fall of the battle’s tide had forced us more to the
west, alongside a scraggly tree line alight with purple flames.

As we ran, I tried to keep track
of the battle between the Knights and the Renegades behind me. We were on the
outskirts of the conflict now, jumping over the dead and the dying. One of them
reached out and grasped the cuff of my trousers, pulling me to the ground.

“Help… me…”