Lightbreaker

XX

The sword was a heavy two-handed blade, probably not all that sharp, but even a smack with its dull edge was worth avoiding. I back-pedaled and tripped over the flopping robe, which immediately wrapped itself around my left leg. Doug's first swing went over my head, whirring like the wing of a predatory bird.

Doug had no formal blade training, obvious in the way he let the weight of the sword over-extend him. He recovered clumsily, and opted for an easier downward stroke as a follow-up attack. Dragging the cloying robe with me, I rolled away from his swing.

Sparks danced on the riveted floor as the sword stuck. The force of the impact stung Doug's hands, and he struggled with his grip. While he tried to control the blade, I kicked at his knee with my robe-wrapped leg. I missed, but got close enough to confuse the robe.

The spell laid on the cloth was simple and didn't include a decision tree for target resolution. Confronted with choices, the magicked cloth partially unwrapped itself from my leg so as to greedily snare Doug's knee as well. Doug staggered back from the overly friendly robe, dragging the sword across the floor. I flushed the Chorus into my leg, momentarily deadening the liveliness of my flesh. The robe fell off my leg, sensing only Doug's retreating body as an active target. It rippled across the floor and he swung at it.

I scrambled like a monkey for the nearest statue-the rampant lion, pentacle-shaped shield in its paws. As Doug, having slain his creation, came after me, I pulled the shield free and got it up in time to block his clumsy swing. My left arm, braced along the underside of the shield, went numb. He hit the shield again, and my clumsy stance collapsed.

We were close to the edge of the circle, close to the whirling barrier of steel blades. As he swung the sword like a lunatic golfer, forcing me to lower the shield so its bottom edge touched the floor, I realized he didn't need to actually hit me with the sword. He was keeping me off-balance, forcing me to retreat from his wild swings. Forcing me back into the spinning blades. I could hear their hungry whisper behind me, the keening relentlessness of their sharp edges.

Doug knew this arena. The motif was familiar and he knew how to play to its strengths. I was playing catch-up in a game running in sudden-death overtime. I had to wrap my head around a viable strategy. Now. Another step back and I'd be diced.

Doug danced away, giving himself a little space. The wind-up for the big swing. I could move left and right, but I was running along the edge of the ring. How long could I dodge his attacks? To get some real distance, I'd have to run, dropping all pretense of defense. He would have one clear shot. Sharp blade or not, one would be enough.

He spun, bringing the sword around at his waist. Head height for me. I raised the shield and braced myself for the impact. Doug hit hard, and I held my ground by shifting the blow off to one side of the shield. The rim of the shield crossed the plane of the circle though, and with a chattering bite, the triangular blades sheared off an arm of the pentacle.

Too close. The blades tore the shield from my grip, and it clattered against the floor. Out of easy reach. I stayed low, trying to duck-walk toward it.

Doug minced about in a gangly two-step with the sword, trying to keep me off-balance with his unpredictable movements. I couldn't avoid his next strike. His blade or the blades behind me: he liked those odds. Either was fine. Though he'd prefer that I stood there and took his blade.

The Chorus tightened at the base of my neck, squeezing my spine. Two choices. Which one? They rose like a pressure wave, carrying with them a chaotic burst of insight.

Blind Fortune turns the Wheel. Tied to its rim, the vegetable kings are pulled down by its persistent cycle. The cycle of the seasons. Kings are buried by the children; the children become kings. The Wheel, always turning. The alchemical and Hermetic symbol of transformation. Death. Burial. Rebirth.

Thoth guides the newly born. Thoth, who became Hermes in Hellenic Egypt. Hermes Thrice-blessed. Hermes Trismegistus. The only vice of the soul is ignorance. Reason guides the soul; the Enlightened Mind breaks free. The body is buried, and we are reborn by digging out of this grave of flesh. Reason allows us to make choices. Not the random circumstances of fate, but informed choices.

Sword raised, Doug trotted forward to deliver the killing blow. He hesitated at the peak of his back swing, the expression on my face giving him pause.

I was smiling.

This is not a death of my choosing.

"What are you laughing at?" The tip of the sword, raised over his head, trembled slightly.

"Something said to me recently," I said. "Ex lux et vita."

The Chorus erupted in a flash of visible light. Doug recoiled from the starburst, and the sword wobbled in his hands. I kicked his kneecap, connecting this time, and he went down, the joint of his leg bending at an obtuse angle.

He bellowed like a gored wildebeest, hands going to his shattered kneecap. The etheric strands streaming from his head thickened like fire hoses filling with water.

Energy. Channeled energy.

Doug was connected to lines of force, and these conduits were feeding him power. At the other end of the strands were his buddies, the sorcerers sitting in the bleachers. Doug was getting help from the sidelines.

He snapped his leg forward, and a spurt of violet energy around his kneecap popped the joint back into place. The magick nimbus brightened about his head as he near-levitated to his feet. Blood-stained tears-quivering tracks of pink luminescence-spread from the corners of his eye sockets. He interlaced his fingertips, and a storm brewed in the hollow of his hands.

Lightning. I needed a ground, something elemental to hide behind. I scrambled for the damaged shield. The pentacle was the suit of earth, and even with one arm missing, it was my best protection.

A tempest blossomed like a midnight flower between his palms, and with a ragged noise, the storm spat a jagged cable of lightning. The discharge struck the center of the shield, the pentacle attracting the lightning. The shield grew hot against my arm, but most of the energy was dispersed by the earthly ground of the symbol. A shower of crackling sparks, the bitter smell of scorched ozone in their wake, cascaded from the shield.

Doug coalesced energy for another bolt, the force lines pulsating around his head. I had to break his concentration. The weather flower was a volatile construct, difficult to control. I charged, the hot shield raised, and I plowed into him with all the grace of an out-of-control semi truck. The tempest popped, a pressure wave pounding my ears.

We went down in a confusion of limbs. Beneath me, Doug reached around the edge of the shield. A web of electricity danced between his fingers, weather still storming in his hand. He strained to touch my face.

I tucked in my chin and shoved his hand away with the shield. His arm hit the Wheel, sparks erupting from his fingertips. I smacked his unprotected face with the hot shield, eliciting a cry of surprise. I got both forearms behind the shield, ignoring the searing burn of heated metal-it was hotter on the front-and firmly pressed the star-inscribed disk against Doug's face.

He bucked me off, a violent rodeo-worthy undulation. The shield stayed, stuck to his flesh. With a scream that was more outrage than pain, he pulled the pentacle off his burned flesh. The star's outline was livid on his skin; his left eyelid was melted into the socket, a fused tab of burned meat hiding the ruin of his eye.

"That looks like it hurts." I fed him a smug grin as well.

He had too much accessible energy. I couldn't beat him by magick alone. I had to keep hurting him, keep goading him so he reacted without thinking. A course chosen by my Will, not his. Antagonizing him would keep it physical, down in the brutal animal arena. Down where I knew a few tricks.

Doug threw the shield away and scrambled for his sword. I needed a weapon, so I ran across the arena to the eagle statue. It held a long staff-the symbol of fire. In response to the heated touch of the Chorus, the bird blessed me with the metal stick.

Unlike Doug, I had experience with weapons. As he tried to hit me with the sword, I parried his clumsy attacks and responded with sharp taps: one to the thigh, one to the kidney, one to the back of the head. After the third shot, his enthusiasm for straight weapons combat flagged. As I banged aside his half-hearted swing with the long wand, he let go of the sword. He caught the end of the wand as I tried to jab him in the stomach with it.

Halo glowing, he shattered the staff with an exhalation of power. I had already let go of the wand so instead of losing a hand, I was just peppered with shrapnel. Blood stippled my stomach, and I could feel the acidic bite of metal under my skin.

I tried to steady myself, and my foot slipped off the base of the eagle statue. Doug, seizing the opportunity, came in close and pounded me in the stomach with an energized fist. Something moved unnaturally in my gut and I choked on a wet cough. "How about that?" he snarled. "Does that hurt?" His burned flesh was vivid, and his remaining eye was filled with burst blood vessels. The lines streaming across his cheek were more blood than tears.

I spat in that bloodshot eye, the Chorus igniting the spittle as it left my mouth. His eye collapsed in a gush of hot steam, and he retreated. His pain confused him, and unable to see, he tripped over his own feet.

Grimacing against the molten pain in my stomach, I staggered along the rim of the Arena to the bull statue. Vis, I told the Chorus. Give me strength. They lit my hands as I reached up and tore off the two-foot-long curved horns of the statue.

By the time I returned to him, Doug had incanted an udjat eye-a floating sigil on his forehead giving him rudimentary sight. He turned his head like a mole questing for a scent, and when he turned in my direction, I caught him under the chin with one of the horns. The uppercut knocked him back down and, as he tried to get up, I kicked him in the ribs. He rolled away from the blow, sprawling onto his back.

"Compunge." The Chorus flowed into the curved horn, and I stabbed him high on the left hip with the magicked tip. The horn, sharpened and shaped by the Chorus, slid through bone and flesh until it struck the metal plate beneath his body. I leaned against it, and the horn slid into the floor until it was firmly planted in the plate. He curled forward around the metal spike. A bug protecting its belly.

I clobbered him on the forehead with the other horn, knocking him flat. Before he could curl up again, I put the second spike through his right shoulder. As the metal horn ground through cartilage and bone into the floor, he howled like a tortured animal.

"Do you yield?" I shouted at him, making sure the Hollow Men could hear my question over his agonized cries.

Energy sparked off his head and the udjat eye spun madly in the center of his forehead. He moaned around the spikes. All the magickal opiates in the world weren't going to blot out the pain.

I repeated the question, and he found the wherewithal to form a response. "Never!"

The Prince of Swords. Unable to see anything but his singular goal. Unable to realize his forward motion had been arrested. Incapable of knowing when to stop.

I retrieved his discarded sword. As my hand closed around the hilt, I fell back into memory, and was flush again with the fury that had led me to the bridge in Paris, to the duel with Antoine. Tied to that was the black rage that had nearly pushed my hand through Kat's chest. Blind idealism. Slavish devotion. The crippled Prince. The hubris of a mind so precise in its tunnel vision that it was unable to see beyond the pinprick of its immediate goal. No Will. No Reason. Just unrestrained passion.

"We are all your princes," I whispered to the sword. Antoine. Doug. Myself. Slaves to the point, fanatics who walk the edge.

Our hands. What we do. It is all written there.

My choice, now.

Doug screamed as he twisted against the horns. I rolled him forward with my calf and put my foot against his tailbone, elevating his right leg. "You're not afraid to lose your body, are you, Doug?" I asked. "You're on the rise. You can deal with this."

The Chorus sharpened the blade as I brought the sword down on his right leg, just below the knee. The blade went through, slicing off his calf and foot. His leg jerked, showering the deck with blood.

I swept up the piece of twitching meat and hurled it at the audience of Hollow Men. The severed leg hit the barrier of blades and vaporized into a spray of bone, blood, and flesh. The Hollow Men in the front row recoiled, and those connected to Doug channeled their outrage through the conduits, pumping the pinned man full of energy and adrenaline.

Doug, full of animalistic howls, was still lucid enough to fight back. His right hand scrabbled on the deck, struggling to reach my foot. I swept the blade down on his wrist. He tried to jerk his hand back, but his arm was pinned beneath the edge of the blade. Almost.

"This is for Gerald Summers. That old sack of meat you used and threw away." I twisted the blade, feeling it cut through bone and muscle. "Nothing more than a cheap coat, was he? Something to wear once and discard. Nobody cared what happened to it. Right?" The blade sheared through the ligaments at the end of his wrist.

A contorted mask, Doug's face was a riot of uncontrolled expressions. Neural networks overloaded with pain were being blocked off while the Ego retreated to the core of etheric power still flowing into the damaged flesh. Through this opacity of pain, Doug started to use the conduits to heal himself. To fight his way back into control of his body. Pain is transitory. Eventually, the spirit extracts obedience from the flesh. Flesh can be remade.

"Show me your magick trick, then." I raised the gory sword. "Let's see what you can do without your flesh." I drove the steel sword through the center of his skull, burying the point in the floor.

Doug's spirit-a glistening, twisting shape of diaphanous energy-erupted from his corpse. In this pure form, I could See energy pumping along the extruded veins of the conduits, pouring power into the maelstrom of Doug's sparkling spirit.

I knew what he had to be planning. There was only one viable body on the platform. He had reached the rank of Initiate Ascendant within the group. He knew how to body-jack. He was going to try to possess me. His psychoanimist trick of taking over a body.

I laughed at him. "You have no idea how fucking stupid a plan that is," I said, and spiked him with the Chorus.

His spirit convulsed, shrinking to a dense clot of white-tipped will-o'-wisps. The ravenous Chorus tore at this spirit mass, shredding the outer layers. Doug swirled like an emergent galaxy, throwing off spiral arms of gossamer light. I could taste his panic. He knew. Lightbreaker. I was going to devour him.

I survived the dark night in the forest because I listened to the Qliphoth, because I welcomed the hunger into my heart. I survived because I learned how to break spirits and take their light.

Doug tried to fend off the Chorus, but they were already inside him, nipping through the veils of his soul. He cried out, but I was the only one who heard him. He started to beg, his voice keening in my head; he whimpered for mercy; I ignored all of it.

The Chorus devoured Doug and, in an orgiastic rush, I felt his essence pour into me. Faster and faster, the jumbled collection of Doug's sense data and memory associations gushed into my head. Most of it would vanish quickly, chunks and blocks of memory dissolving into random noise and color; but, for this instant, his entire life was mine. All the sensory details of his existence were there: I witnessed what Doug had seen; heard what he heard; tasted the meals he could remember eating; knew the scents that made him think of his mother. I held his doubts, his dreams, and his errors. I knew his dirty little secrets; I knew why he had been left behind. I knew why he had come to my cell and dragged me to this duel. I was Doug.

This was the promise given and then taken away: Doug had been grudgingly granted the rank of Initiate Ascendant, but he had not been Anointed. The biting betrayal in Doug's heart was that only the Anointed were allowed to participate in the Great Work sponsored by Bernard and Julian.

Bernard's theurgic mirror had a greater purpose than just storage. The ibis-hounds were takwin, artificial creatures made by the device, but they weren't the sole function of the device. The spirit creatures harvested souls for a purpose, a purpose which Doug had been denied.

The Chorus rippled and snarled under my skin, rampant chimerae resplendent with fiery halos, in response to the discovery of this knowledge within Doug's fading history. Settle it, they growled. In their teeth, they held the conduit threads, those open pathways feeding Doug. Channels straight into the magickal cores of the other sorcerers. Open fucking doorways. I could barely hold them in check.

"Gentlemen," I Whispered to the assembled host of Hollow Men, my voice an unavoidable serpentine hiss in their ears. "Doug is gone. His rank was worthless, and I have broken him."

I stepped away from the blood-spattered corpse, my hands held casually at my sides. "I have no quarrel with any of you. But, should you wish to take umbrage at my departure from this Arena, now is the time." I gave the soul threads a slight tug. Several of the Hollow Men jerked at my touch. "See through me if you can. See through me and know that I will do to you what I did to him. Know that I walk out of here. Now."

The Chorus poured themselves down one of the threads, fiery lions burning through the mystic wire. They ignited the organs of the Hollow Man on the other end. Setting fire to his heart, his liver, his lungs, his stomach-all of it, burning with phosphorescent heat. A tongue of flame shot out of his mouth as he screamed, setting his hood on fire.

The others reacted, equal parts panic and incantations. The fire spread; first one, then another soul igniting when touched by the incandescent spark of my Will. The blaze became a conflagration, a pyre of burning flesh and hot metal. The chamber burst finally, unable to hold the light and heat any longer.

Mahapralaya.

This is the way the world ends.