Reality Falling (The Book Wielder Saga 2) (25 page)

What was now being dubbed ‘the war for reality’ was taking a turn for the worse for the forces of the Omni. To the Archmage’s abhorrence, the back-stabbing mutt Kaine had killed one of his prized pets Kitaria Catawowski, and then joined the Trinity of Old. Omniosis had enjoyed dealing with the crazy Mage Kat thoroughly. He enjoyed her devoted psychotic lunacy and sociopathic views on those beneath her, qualities and beliefs that he held close to his own merged hearts, and her death had enraged him greatly. What enflamed his fury even more was that the members of the Shadow Circle hadn’t dealt with the Dogs of War’s treachery in any semblance of an acceptable way; they had just let them go.

To make matters even worse, another one of his corrupted kindred, the Spider Demon Hespianne, had just met her end at the hands of Veronica and the twin witches’ servant Alice Eve. Omniosis had watched the whole thing through her eyes, and he had really thought that it was the end for the troublesome Vampire – that was, until he saw the Lord Inquisitor. The odds of the two meeting were astronomical but it had still happened nonetheless. Despite the bad luck, the incident had yielded one good thing in his fortune. His two foes would now be travelling together, and he had a pretty good idea where they would be heading too. He would make them suffer immensely for trying to interfere with his plans and for attempting to pry Winston, his tool of ascension, away from him when he was so damn close.

Regardless of the recent misfortune, the Archmage was currently in a very good mood. What his many enemies failed to grasp was that he was just two mergers away from being a demigod, and if he absorbed the source of magic successfully then he would practically be an actual god. All the petty matters of territories and shifting allegiances wouldn’t mean a damn thing. He thought he might be a little bit generous to ‘Queen’ Azalea, as she had just handed him the continent of Tropica on a silver plate, but apart from that minor act of kindness, the rest of the world would bow to him and accept their places as subservient slaves or die slow and horrible deaths.

Omniosis pondered the world he would build when the enormously overwhelming power was all his. Reality itself would be his plaything, and like an artist he could style it however he wished. It wouldn’t matter that he wasn’t a precious Book Wielder, or that he was unable to use the quill artefact; the fabric of the universe would be his to shape into his vision of perfection. He considered creating more Archmages, modified to be far more loyal and less independent of course, but creating complex sentient life was an extremely difficult task, even with the source of magic at his disposal. There was a way he could do it, a tricky and very dangerous way even for a god to perform, and he’d been toying with the idea of it for countless centuries. If he could find a way to summon the access shaft to gain entry into the Creator’s Mantle in the heart of the planet, deep inside Mydia’s fiery core, he would be able to make and manipulate life as easily as he could with everything else.

The doors to his throne room swung open and Winston and Lewis walked in, interrupting Omniosis’ thoughts. They had both dressed themselves smartly in the black pinstripe suits of the Shadow Circle after their action-packed encounter in Industria.

“Winston and Lewis,” Omniosis began in his kind distorted voice. “Welcome back! I am truly sorry for your loss Winston; just know that we’re doing everything we can to find your beloved wife Veronica.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are,” Winston said, trying to sound completely genuine. “Thank you.”

“We shouldn’t have let her out of the city,” Lewis added sadly. “I thought she would be safe with the patrol I sent to watch her.”

“Don’t worry about,” Winston said firmly. “I’m going to start looking for her soon, after I call the Shadow Circle captains together for a talk. They deserve to hear the news about Lucius officially and I want to assure them that the gang is in safe hands with me, and you Omniosis,” he added as an afterthought.

“Oh, there’s no time for that Winston!” Omniosis said in a happy tone. “Queen Azalea of Tropica has agreed to let us merge the city without any resistance!” The Archmage remembered that he was talking about his wife and added more concern to his voice. “After a quick and easy merger, finding your wife and punishing those who took her will be child’s play for me. Wouldn’t that be simpler that searching aimlessly yourself, Winston?”

“And don’t worry about the gang,” Lewis said with a friendly smile. “I’ll make sure they’re keeping in line, man.”

Winston looked puzzled. “Why would Queen Azalea just let us in when she’s done so much to keep us out?”

“She must know that we’re going to win!” Lewis said enthusiastically.

“More or less,” Omniosis agreed. “Azalea and I made a deal. We get to take Tropica without any fuss, and she gets to keep her title and some powers over the continent of Tropica. She also wants her city looking just as pretty after you merge it as it does now,” he chuckled.

Winston frowned. His many doubts were growing by the second. “Surely it can’t be that clear-cut? Something else must be going on for her to have such a massive change of heart.”

“Maybe,” the Archmage began, “but we are going to snap this opportunity up with all due haste. Now, off you go.”

And before Winston knew it, he was being ushered through a black portal that the Archmage had opened not far from where he was standing.

“After Tropica is ours, I’ll bring you back for the finale. Good luck Winston!” Omniosis added, as he pushed the reluctant Book Wielder through the human-sized interstice.

Winston was shoved out into what appeared to be the top room in another tower. It was a stylish throne room with two large windows running along either side of it, and in the far corners were beautifully carved white columns. One end of the room had a set of metal sliding doors, and at the other end was a white and beige stone bench-style throne at the top of a set of grey marble steps. Running along the floor in-between them was a pink carpet with a white and gold border, and guards in fancy ceremonial power armour stood completely still either side of it. The whole place was filled with pretty flowers wherever they could be grown.

A gorgeous pink haired woman in a translucent regal purple dress was sitting with her bare legs folded atop the throne. She had a well-toned and curvy figure that was easily visible underneath her almost see-through dress, and her skin was pale but looked silky smooth and inviting. She was wearing expensive silver jewellery on her arms, fingers, ankles and toes, there were real flowers woven into her thick wavy hair. One of her eyes was blue but the other was a strange shade of bright magenta.

“Winston Reynolds?” she asked in a sweet yet formal voice.

“That’s me,” he replied with his trademark catchphrase. “You must be Queen Azalea.”

“Good guess,” she joked. “Thank you for arriving so quickly.”

“I didn’t get much of a choice,” he replied dryly.

“Yes, well the Archmage is in quite a hurry to get this over with. Isn’t he?”

Winston hesitated before replying. “Why did you do it? Why did you let him have Tropica so easily? You could have held us back better than anywhere else.”

Azalea pointed to her magenta eye. “I’m a half-Mage. I don’t have much in the way of power compared to the rest of you Supernaturals, but what I do have is the sight, the ability to see what will and must happen before it happens. I define myself as a Conduit of Fate, someone who carries out its divine will. It’s a complicated gift to define and explain but I believe you have your own experience of the phenomenon?”

Winston nodded. “My wife Veronica gets little snippets and instinctual nudges occasionally.”

“And you don’t?” Azalea asked curiously.

Winston thought about it for a moment. “I guess so, but I can’t tell if it’s just delusions of grandeur though.”

Azalea chuckled sweetly. “You’re sweet, funny, and handsome Winston Reynolds. I can see why Veronica likes you so much.”

“You know her?” Winston asked puzzled.

Azalea pointed to her eye again. “Only from what I’ve seen, and let me tell you that you’re a very lucky man to have a wife like her.”

“I don’t think I’m that lucky, I may never get to see her again,” Winston said sadly.

“Oh, don’t worry, you will,” Azalea said with a pleasant smile. “The Archmage needs you to complete his empowerment, and he needs Veronica to make sure you play along.”

Winston thought it might come to blackmail if he didn’t keep playing along. Any lingering hope that the Archmage was on his side was quickly fading. “What should I do? I feel so lost,” he admitted honestly.

Azalea sighed sympathetically. “You know that merging the worlds is right, and I know the merger is right. The magic needs to be returned to the world; that is Fate’s will. What happens to all of us playing along is another story. Play your part, and that is the only advice I can give you I’m afraid, but I do have the feeling that everything will work out for the best Winston. I really mean it.”

Winston took a moment to take it in and finally spoke. “Let’s get this over with then.”

“The Archmage said that you should speak to the Commodore first. He said that the Alternative would appreciate hearing the change of plans from you personally, and I want to make sure that there is absolutely no bloodshed after the merger is complete.”

“Okay, I’ll cross over and see him now,” Winston replied.

“Omniosis said that someone would be waiting for you on the other side.”

“I’ll see you soon then, I guess,” Winston said bravely.

Azalea nodded. “I’ll see you when you get back, Winston Reynolds.”

Winston set his book up in the centre of the room, placed his hands upon the pages, and held his breath as the throne room spun into a nauseating blur of motion and blending colours.

The area he’d reappeared in was terrible condition, maybe more so than any other part of the Gloom he’d seen so far. Winston had expected the Commodore to be set up at the top of the Gloom equivalent of Azalea’s tower, but instead he was standing in an empty and half destroyed room. The floors, ceilings and walls were bare dark concrete, and there were entire sections missing. There was a tiny bit of light trickling in from the world outside and his glowing book in the centre of the room, but definitely not enough considering the deteriorated state of the place, so Winston quickly summoned a glowing orb of mage light. Precariously, he made his way to one of the many holes in the wall to look at the Gloom reflection of Tropica City, and he looked out in terrified awe at the bleak city around him.

Underneath the hazy dark purple Gloom sky, the city was full of dark, unattractive bare concrete towers, devoid of any decoration. The only windows to speak of were damaged patches of disrepair where the concrete had fallen away completely, similar to the one that Winston was looking out of. In some places, rickety wooden scaffolds had been erected up the sides in some vain attempt to secure the broken old towers, and little glimmers of witchlight and fire could be seen in some places, indicating that there were indeed some Alternative residents unfortunate enough to live within the wrecked city.

“Oh, Azalea is going to love it when I merge this with her Tropica,” Winston muttered out loud.

“Winston: bringer of chocolates and candies, is that you?” a harsh sounding voice asked from behind him.

Winston turned to see an Alt poking her head through a hole in the floor. She was dressed smartly in a dark green military officer’s greatcoat and cap, and had angry looking brows stitched above her glossy black puppet eyes.

“That’s me, I guess,” Winston replied. “Where’s the Commodore?”

The Alt officer tutted rudely. “Well, he wouldn’t be slumming it in this dive, if that’s what you’re thinking. This is Toiler Town, where we let the Slaves rest for a bit. When we’re kind enough to let them rest, that is. His brilliance, the Commodore, is in his Manor in the centre of Slaver’s Basin. I am Captain Erin by the way, thank you for asking.”

“Oh, sorry,” Winston replied apologetically.

“It’s fine,” she huffed back. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything on you? Sweets, sodas, chocolate, or a nice bloody steak?”

Winston could see that he was getting off to a bad start. “No, sorry, I didn’t get time to-”

“It’s fine!” Erin replied angrily. “Come on, you better follow me.”

Erin’s head bobbed down so Winton dubiously made his way across the intact parts of the floor to where he’d last seen her. Looking down, he could see a ladder made of dark damp wood that reached two floors down into the dark, and the Alt officer was climbing down it fearlessly; a significantly brave act considering the ladder look ready to snap into pieces. With a long sigh, Winston lowered himself onto it and began carefully climbing down. Stairs in the Gloom were bad enough, let alone half-rotten ladders.

Unfortunately for Winston, there were a lot more ladders after the first one. After every few floors they would reach the bottom of one, walk through some dingy damaged rooms until they found another large hole in the floor, navigate down another hazardous creaky excuse for a ladder, and then they would repeat the process all over again. Huddled in the corners of some of the rooms were miserable looking Slave Alts who were dressed in dirty shabby clothing, and they looked at Erin fearfully as she passed by. The journey down the building was very slow-going, and Winston thought he was going to slip and fall several times by the time they had reached the ground floor.

Winston followed Erin out of the empty space where the building’s front doors should have been and onto the quiet streets of Toiler Town. A classic black open-topped state car was waiting for them by the ‘entrance’, complete with a driver Alt in a fancy black uniform. Erin and Winston both sat down on the luxurious white leather seats in the back, and without a single word uttered, they were off. Winston cancelled his mage light orb and looked around as they travelled. Unsurprisingly, the city looked just as desolate from the ground as it did from way up high. There were no visible Alternatives except for groups of the Commodore’s troops, whose marching feet echoed around the dark looming ruins that constituted as slave quarters. Winston assumed that all of the other Alts who would have been part of the diversionary attack force on Tropica must have moved to Slaver’s Basin or returned to wherever they called home. In between the buildings, Winston sometimes got a glance at the rancid black Gloom Sea, and the occasionally flash of a gargantuan tendril from Flesh Mountain slamming against the water on the horizon and stirring up the tides.

The driver put his foot down, and before Winston knew it, towering ruined buildings were replaced with sky obscuring tropical trees and fauna with massive leaves of contrasting light and dark colours. The spaces between the packed trees were pitch black, and bright eyes watched them eagerly as the state car drove past. Every now and then, they would pass by a clearing that gave Winston a good view of slave Alts toiling in crop plantations under the cruel whip of their masters.

Both Erin and the driver sat in total and very awkward silence, which gave Winston a lot of time to grill himself harshly over the choices he had made. He took a slight bit of comfort from Queen Azalea’s strange words, but his stomach churned with guilt and worry every time he thought of Veronica, which was most of the time.

They continued north along the bumpy and poorly maintained road for a long time before they passed a rusty signpost with ‘Slaver’s Basin – dead ahead’ written on it. They took the next turning and branched eastwards until a massive spiked palisade wall came into view, and Winston guessed that they had arrived where Calousha Crater would be in the real world. Little multi-coloured lights were strung along the top of the pointed wooden stakes, and a neon sign with ‘Slaver’s Basin’ hung above a heavily manned wooden gate at the end of the road.

“Welcome to the Basin,” Erin muttered in Winston’s direction.

The troops armed with what appeared to be long musket rifles shouted to each other, and soon the gate lifted open to grant them entry to the city within. Winston had never seen anything like it.

The city was set into the massive craterous space. Houses of all descriptions were propped up on wooden stilts to accommodate for the steep incline, and neon lights and signs made the whole place glow with illumination. There were shops, bars, and clubs in-between fancy housing, and slaves ran around the network of wooden platforms frantically under the command of their well-dressed owners and ruthless slave drivers. Everything, except for the slave Alts, was in perfect condition. Winston had never seen somewhere in the Gloom looking in such good form, and then he remembered Kelpbeard’s story about the Demon that the Commodore apparently kept under his manor to keep his possessions looking clean and tidy, and figured that it must be true.

The road continued onwards past the gate, down the steep inner slope of the basin, and underneath several wooden bridges connecting the plentiful wooden scaffolds, platforms and walkways together. At the very centre of the basin was a circular wall made of well laid concrete blocks and topped with coiled razor wire. Surrounding it were wooden guard towers and outposts made with mounds of sandbags piled atop each other, and the road lead straight to its solid iron gates. The troops there saluted Erin and allowed the state car entrance to the manor grounds within.

The road became a gravel driveway and the scene inside the walls was a completely different story to the militarised barricade outside them. The Commodore’s extravagant manor, which looked just as fancy (if not more so) than some of the places Winston had seen in the real world, was situated in the dead centre of the inner wall. The space in-between was occupied by freshly mown green lawns, pretty flower bushes, and big stone fountains and ponds, although those were still filled with the Gloom’s horrific black water. The circular patch of luxury was so real that Winston had to keep reminding himself that he was actually still within the Gloom.

The state car pulled up to the front of the manor and Erin got out. “Wait here for us,” she said sternly to the driver, who nodded nervously in return.

Winston got out of the car and hurried after Erin before she got mad at him for dawdling. She knocked on the polished front door and then almost knocked a butler Alt off their feet when she chose to slam the door open herself.

“Sorry,” Winston said to the butler guiltily as he stepped inside after the Alt officer.

“Don’t apologize to him,” Erin snapped. “He’s beneath you,”

“Just out of interest,” Winston began quite angrily, “how are the slaves chosen out of everyone else here?”

Erin glanced at him with a puzzled look on her stern face.

“What made them slaves, and what made you an officer? How is the difference decided?” Winston elaborated.