Forty-Four
Alzimyth is no longer smiling.
Star is still for a long moment. Then he climbs back to his feet, shuddering, like a human waking up from a nightmare. One of his legs is torn away, and another hangs limp and broken, but it’s a relief to see him move like himself again.
Are you all right?
[Assessment: yes, apart from incidental damage. I apologize for the lapse.]
No need for that. Whatever that thing was, it got into your head.
[Disagreement: I do not possess such an appendage.] He gives a little shiver, metal clattering. [But I concur that the experience was… unprecedented. And decidedly unpleasant.]
It’s over. I speak aloud, raising my voice for the others. “It’s over!”
The barrier field flickers and sparks all along its length, badly damaged by Bug Zapper.
Behind it everyone is staring at us. Ky has a broad grin, one arm raised in triumph, and even among the Council there are some cautious smiles, though Devon Dreikin looks sour.
Hisham is downright beaming. Somi is on his feet, a fierce smile on his face, while Spike hides her grin.
Quech, of course, looks like he just swallowed something vile.
And Alzimyth just stares, as though he can’t comprehend what just happened.
“That’s not… possible.” The knight shakes his head, not angry as much as confused. “You…”
“I believe the, um, match is decided,” Hisham says, bustling over to Alzimyth. “Taj Fara is the victor of the Ascent, yes? By the terms you and he agreed.”
“He’s… he can’t…”
“Star and I beat your champion,” I shout. “So fuck off back to wherever you came from and let my family go!”
Now comes the anger, flowing in like a dam has suddenly broken. Alzimyth turns from me to the Council. Most of the members are muttering approvingly, and even the guards have joined in, save Quech. Looking from one face to another, the knight realizes he stands alone.
“Fine,” he mutters. “Taj Fara is the victor of the Ascent.” His cheek twitches. “But I do not extend my pardon to the criminals. Execute them.”
“What?” Hisham steps in Alzimyth’s face, drawing himself up to his full if diminutive height. “Have you no decency, sir? No honor? Everyone heard you give your word!”
“I don’t keep my word to vermin. Get out of my way, old man.”
He shoves Hisham, and the Council Secretary sits down heavily in the wet earth, more startled than hurt. Alzimyth gives a deep sigh.
“Fine. I promised to show mercy.” He glances at Quech with an ugly gleam in his eye. “Only kill one of them.”
“Which?” Quech growls.
“Do I look like I care?”
The big man hefts his spear and looks at Spike. “Little bitch has been nothing but trouble.”
I’d felt frozen in place, unable to believe what I was hearing. Now, suddenly, everything starts to happen at once:
Quech raises his spear.
“Guards!” Hisham shouts, recovering from his shock. “Arbiters, um, stop him!” But the Specials are surprised themselves, and too far away.
Spike looks up, eyes very wide, too startled to flee.
Ky starts to run, her sword snapping out, the pieces clicking into place in slow motion, snick snick snick.
Star surges forward and hits the barrier field, strobing energy crackling around his forelimbs. More of his sigils pop, but he shoves with everything he’s got, and sparks fountain from the chain at the barrier’s base.
Quech lunges forward. Spike closes her eyes. Ky is steps behind him, but too slow, too slow—
Somi’s big body sails between the descending spear and the skinny girl.
The spear goes into his belly, and he drags it down as he crashes to his knees.
It punches all the way through him, all of Quech’s weight behind it, and Spike’s eyes snap open to focus on a bloody spearpoint emerging from Somi’s back, stopped only centimeters from her face.
I scream.
Ky’s blade flickers, distant light gleaming off its cold, perfect arc, outlined in the air for one frozen moment.
I keep screaming.
Quech’s head hits the ground with a thump and rolls away.
I keep screaming.
Star hits the barrier again. It’s finally lost too many sigils and the whole thing shatters in a fresh spray of sparks.
Star crashes free, broken and battered but heading straight for Alzimyth.
Kill him! I send, even as the scream still tears at my throat.
Kill him kill him kill him, and it merges with Star’s own thoughts as he raises his bladed limbs to slash the knight apart.
“Oh dear,” Alzimyth proclaims, as though to an unseen audience. “Clearly self-defense.”
The air above him moves. It twists in a way that makes me want to claw at my eyes, and in between blinks there’s something there that wasn’t there before.
It’s enormous, three meters high, a mountain of metal and glass and shimmering energy.
A runic, but a runic unlike anything I’d ever imagined, sleek and smooth and translucent in places as though it isn’t fully real.
It has a birdlike shape, wings folded tight at its sides, two legs with massive talons digging furrows in the ground, a sleek, almost featureless head with no eyes or ears but only a squat four-sided beak.
It leans forward, and that beak splays open to reveal inky blackness, shot through with sparks of brilliant white light.
The sparks grow and grow, merging into a ball of actinic white light suspended between the four triangular sections.
A high-pitched whine shivers down the octaves, from falcon’s shriek to subsonic rumble.
The ball distends, snapping forward into a beam of energy so intense I feel it searing my retinas.
Star skids to a halt, and his shield-arm comes up.
The beam washes over him, and even against that light I can see the burst of sparks as Ekkeban’s precious green RESIST shatters.
Every other sigil in Star’s body seems to burst at once, and his carapace goes from battered plates to yellow-white molten metal in an instant, sloughing away like sopping paper.
Behind him, the beam carves into the hillside, detonating the ground in an explosion of steam and dirt.
I can barely tell when the light dies away because a solid purple afterimage floats in my vision.
The bird-runic’s beak closes, and it straightens up.
Alzimyth is already moving, taking hold of a handle on the runic’s hindquarters to swing himself up onto its back.
Once he’s aboard, the runic leaps, powerful legs propelling the whole vast bulk of it into the air.
Its wings snap out, half metal and half glowing energy fields, and it beats them once.
A downdraft slams into us and everyone staggers.
That single motion sends bird and knight hurtling into the sky so fast the air rumbles like thunder with their passing.
Star!
I can barely see. My throat is raw. The place where Star was standing is nothing but steaming mud and molten metal, radiating hot like the open door to a furnace. I try to push forward, looking for a flash of ruby sigil, looking for anything.
Star’s core is indestructible. Of course it is. If it wasn’t, I could never send him into battle. That ruby THINK has been battered, hammered, slashed, crushed, and subjected to every other abuse dozens of constructs can devise.
But there’s indestructible, and then there’s that. I feel like a hand has clenched around my heart.
Star!
[…]
[Damage assessment: ow.]
I sink to my knees, crying with relief, heedless of the burns from the bubbling mud. Then I catch a glimpse of Spike through the shimmering smoke and surge to my feet again. It takes me a few moments to circle the burn scar and make it to where she and Ky are sitting beside Somi.
Quech’s headless corpse lies before them, a puddle of gore forming around its cleanly sliced neck. Everyone is misted with blood. Somi lies on his back, staring upward, the spear jutting from his round belly like a butterfly collector’s pin. Spike sits behind him, her hands tangled in his hair.
I crash down beside Somi. His eyes are wide, and a trickle of blood runs from his mouth down his cheek. At the sight of me he gives a weak smile.
“Look, Taj.” His eyes are fixed upward again. “The stars.”
I look up. The purple has drained from the sky, leaving only black.
As the afterimage of that horrible light begins to fade away, I can see tiny pinpricks, high and cold and shimmering.
Just a few, at first. Then more and more, too many to count, too many to imagine, like someone had spilled a bag of diamond dust across the blackest velvet.
“The stars,” I agree, holding his hand.
“They’re beautiful,” my brother says, and dies with a soft sigh.