Onslaught

CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE MARK OF IMPERFECTION

Ixidor sat on the highest balcony of Locus, deep in the blue sky. Here, the air was sweet and cool, and the sun was biting. The gentlest breeze, the brightest light, the best food, the safest company-solitude. Yes, his unmen were here, watchful around him, but Ixidor had come to think of them as absences rather than presences. Surrounded by his creation, Ixidor was alone.

He ate a piece of toast. The jam came from a purple fruit he had created. The tea was good too, stimulating but soporific. It excited the mind but calmed the nerves.

Ixidor suffered terribly. Even here, at the heart of his world, he was shot through with terrors. Normal men walked through an utterly alien world without fear, their minds too small to glimpse every peril. Creators dwelt in their own universes in utter terror. They knew the best and worst that awaited them, and the worst was nightmare.

Akroma was returning. She had been returning for a month-maimed, nearly killed. Ixidor's perfect protector was no longer perfect. Phage had done this. Ixidor had sensed when it had happened, for he was connected to both women-the slayer of Nivea and the bearer of Nivea's face. He had felt Akroma's defeat as phantom pain in the arm he no longer had.

Once again, Phage had marred the perfect beauty of Nivea.

In the distant sky, there came a wounded flapping, like a dove struggling for life. It labored awhile through thick blue air, then dropped down to pant on the treetops. Its weakness naturally drew the aerial jellyfish. They drifted like storm clouds toward the creature, their translucent tentacles dragging the ground. The white being saw them and knew it must fly or die. It flew. It worked toward Ixidor in his balcony.

The jam was a little too sweet. Ixidor would have to make a different fruit.

One of the jellyfish closed in. Its tentacles reached toward the fluttering figure. Stingers slapped and wrapped. They convulsed, dragging the wounded creature up toward its transparent belly.

The dove could little fly, but she could fight. Hands lashed out and grasped the tentacles. Twisting, she ripped two of the legs in half. Another followed, and a forth. The little bird tore out the legs of the giant beast, which recoiled from her, dragging its watery limbs away.

Akroma fluttered free. Yes, it was she-scarred and diminished. Her wings beat with much force but little effect. Still, she had sent the great jellyfish reeling across the sky. Akroma climbed toward the balcony.

Ixidor flung away the too-sweet toast. He left the tea to turn tepid in its cup and stood. It was only right that a creator stand to receive his greatest creation.

She wasn't great anymore. Her wings were battered and bore bald spots like those of a molting hen. Jellyfish slime covered her, and her flesh showed the hand-shaped scars of Phage's putrid touch. Worst of all, as the broken angel surged up over the balcony rail, Ixidor saw that her legs were gone. Only stumps hung down where once they had been.

On those stumps, the pathetic creature settled. She fell forward-there was no way to prevent it-into a prostrate bow before her creator. Her wings folded and shoulders shuddered. She was weeping.

Ixidor gazed at her, and tears rolled down his cheeks as well. He did not know what to feel, and so felt everything-pity and love, yes, but also revulsion, sympathy but also dread. His greatest creation was insufficient to stop an inevitable foe. Ixidor wished to take her into his arms as he would have taken Nivea, but Akroma was not she. Here was the face of Nivea without the soul of her. He wished to fling her away as he had the toast.

She spoke. "I have failed you."

Shaking his head sadly, Ixidor approached her. "No, I have failed you."

Akroma raised tearful eyes. "I have failed in the task you set me."

"No," the creator said again, cupping her jaw in his remaining hand. "I sent you to attack, but you were never to attack. You were to defend. You were my Protector-"

"Were" she echoed miserably.

"Are my Protector. How could you protect me in the faraway coliseum? Only here, in the midst of my creation, of which you are the culmination-only here can you protect me."

She lowered her face again. "How? How am I to fight for you when I am… incomplete?"

Ixidor walked toward the rail and stared out at his bright-beaming world. His eyes idly wandered the treetops. "Incomplete?" he echoed. "Surely you mock me."

"Mock you? No, Master."

"You know the stories of the war-of the monsters and how they were compleated?"

"No," she replied. "I do not know those stories."

"It doesn't matter. I will compleat you just the same." Averring his eyes, Ixidor muttered feverishly, "Could the old demon have done what he did as innocently as I?"

Akroma spoke behind him, "Already, you have sacrificed one arm to make me. Do not sacrifice another."

Ixidor did not respond, his eyes fixed on the distant trees. Something moved beneath them, something fleet and tawny. It came at his silent summons. A feline form burst from the edge of the jungle, dashed down the sandy banks, and plunged into the flood. It swam. It would take ages for the jaguar to swim the whole way.

Ixidor searched beneath the waves. He found a darting pod of dolphins and brought them to rise under the swimming cat. Amid froth and foam, they bore the beast toward Locus.

"You will have legs again, twofold," Ixidor said placidly. "And I will heal every scar on your body. New plumes, new flesh, new sword. You will be complete."

At the base of the palace, the jaguar leapt. It bounded up the round, white shoulders of stone. Tireless, the beast approached its creator. It was larger than a natural jaguar, a creature of imagination. Up five hundred feet, up a thousand it came-and two thousand and three. Its pelt gleamed with water as it leaped over the balustrade. It shook itself once, stalked slowly along the rail, and knelt dutifully at its creator's feet.

Ixidor stroked the creature's head.

Akroma watched keenly. "This great cat will bring me legs?"

"It has brought you legs," Ixidor said. "Its own. You must come and take them." The jaguar released a worried growl. "Don't fear," Ixidor purred to it. "The pain will be brief, and you will be part of a greater creature."

The angel's eyes were troubled. She stared at the docile creature, its head laid down and ears folded back. "You want me to take its legs?"

"Its legs, its body-all but neck and head."

"Why?"

Ixidor blinked. Why? It seemed almost blasphemy for her to ask.

"You lack something, and not just legs. You are an ideal creature, born of pure thought. Of course you could not battle one such as Phage, who is all flesh and flesh eating. You need a baser self, a bestial self. Here are legs for you, and a savage heart. You need them both." He drew a deep breath. "I offer them to you. Will you take them?"

Akroma rose to her hands, wings folded behind her. She crawled toward the jaguar, dragging her own severed parts behind. Reaching the beast, she set her elbows on the ground and peered at the creature. Into its backward-slanting ear, she whispered, "Forgive me."

The merciful words faded before merciless fingers. They stabbed through the creature's beautiful pelt, eight knives slicing deep. Muscles severed, and tendons snapped. White hands turned red. The creature tried to cry, but those nails sliced its larynx on their way to its spine. Her nails found a disk within and jabbed, severing the all-powerful cord. Fingertips met.

Again, the angel was weeping. Beneath her, the creature had gone limp, its life pouring across the white stone balcony.

"Off," Ixidor said quietly. "Entirely off."

Akroma twisted her hands. The head and neck of the great cat came free. She laid it reverently aside and sank down upon the red pool. "What now? How will you join us?"

Ixidor did not answer. He reached his hand down, dipping fingertips in the red. Drops jiggled as he walked away. "Creation is messy. It is painful and maddening."

He approached a wall of white stone and stood staring at it. Suddenly, he understood the old demon Yawgmoth. Whether or not he was evil to start with, the pain and madness of creation-the limitless power and limitless responsibility-had made him evil.

Idly, Ixidor lifted a finger and dragged a vertical smudge down the wall. "These things are inevitable. Every creature cries out to be saved, but who can save a creator?" He broadened the base of the line and sketched one feline leg, and another. Smearing his thumb sideways, he formed a powerful body, ending in a tail and hind legs. "Even love cannot save a creator." Two canted lines to either side made for wings, and individual drips of blood traced out the plumes-coverts, primaries, and secondaries.

Ixidor stepped back, squinting at the image before him. He raised his hand and watched the blood trace out his fingerprints and soak into his nail beds. He rubbed the red stuff across his thumb. "The more powerful the creator, the more certainly he will be trapped inside a world of his own devising."

Stepping forward, Ixidor pressed his thumb against the stone, creating a blob that would be the angel's head. It was the right size and shape, yes, but he could never capture the face of Nivea. "To create is perilous. In the end, it will kill the creator." He leaned forward to the wall and pressed his lips to the bloody head of the angel. Closing his eyes, he drew the image into himself and projected it outward onto reality.

She was there. He sensed it in his missing arm-health, strength, wholeness. He had completed her.

"Master," Akroma said behind him. "You have done it. I am once again your Protector."

Ixidor leaned against the wall, panting. He was kitten weak. He couldn't hold himself up but slid down the cold stone. His lips and face smeared the image he had drawn. It didn't matter. It had transcended its materials and taken on a life of its own. As Ixidor slumped, he turned slowly around and sat in a disheveled heap.

Before him hovered a vision-his vision made real. No scars remained on Akroma's body. She was stronger, smoother, more powerful than before. Her lower torso fused with the body of a great cat-four massive legs, a flashing tail, and wide wings. The plumes reached twice their previous span and jutted from the shoulders of the cat. In one strong arm, she bore a staff like a jagged lightning bolt, energy made solid.

Ixidor glimpsed these transformations only briefly. His eyes were drawn away instead to the angel's glorious face-the face of Nivea.

No, she was Nivea no longer. Surrounded in a mantle of flesh-part mane and part halo-Akroma's visage was more beautiful than Ixidor could have imagined. She had transcended his memories of Nivea, as every lost love grows greater in time. Her glory was almost unbearable, and the look of sadness in her eyes nearly slew him.

"What is it?" she asked, magnificent before her disheveled creator.

He could only shake his head. "You have eclipsed her. Now, as long as you live, I can never see her again."

Ixidor waited until midnight. The Protector slept, and darkness ruled every comer of paradise. He needed darkness and solitude for what he was about to do.

Phage and Kamahl were on their way. They were bringing a conglomerate army bent on slaying the Protector. Once she was gone, they would ravage his creation and kill him as well.

In solemn silence, Ixidor stepped from the white-marble pier onto the dark barge. It lay low in inky waters. Like avatars of night, the unmen followed. They spread in a circle around him and stood, nervous sentinels. Stars sent streaks of white across the black face of the deep. The barge man's pole stirred those lines, like a stick gathering cobwebs, and the barge shoved out over the blackness.

Ixidor needed other protectors and defenders-armies of them. He needed as many as the stars in the sky.

While the craft glided before rhythmic strokes of the pole, Ixidor watched those stars. Brightly they beamed, gregarious. Even here in the midst of his creation, those patient eyes followed him-soothing, healing, sending news from distant worlds. The stars were Ixidor's peers. He could not change them, but he could fashion something beautiful from their light.

He would make disciples from their reflections.

Stepping to the edge of the barge, Ixidor knelt and peered down at the crazings of light. It was primordial energy, ready to be shaped. But how? What medium could he use to craft beams of light? He had not brought canvas or paint, clay or wood. He trailed his hand in the water, shaping the light into whorls and eddies, but the barge itself was more powerful, sending waves before and behind.

Ixidor scooped up a handful of water, the stars momentarily trapped within. Before he could transform them, they dribbled away between his fingers.

The thrust of the pole made an insistent rhythm. It entered Ixidor's knees and dragged at his whole body. It shaped the water too.

What were waves but sound? If he could shape sound, he could shape waves and the lights that lay upon them.

Ixidor lay prostrate, his hand spread across the planks. He hummed in time to the pole man. Music would be his medium. He wanted to make disciples of these points of light, so he sang a song of discipleship.

Come with me, my children.

Ride within my eyes, upon my brow.

Learn what I have known, and then

I'll learn all that you know.

Heal the heart that's broken.

Salve the flesh that dies, that's fainting now.

Drink the cup I drink, my children.

Together we will grow.

He rose and stood, chanting all the while. His voice droned, regularizing the waves. The peaks rose into a matrix of mounds; the valleys sank into cup-shapes among them. Starlight gathered on each prominence. Ixidor needed only to bring them to final focus. Stomping his foot in time with the pole strokes, he sang the final stanza.

Come with me, my children.

Come to life, my thought, my heart's desire.

Light eternal, sweet companion,

I'll be your living pyre.

With the final note, the waves around the barge achieved perfect form. Hundreds of points of light coalesced. They rose from the water. No longer were they simply reflections, but living radiance. Like will-o'-the-wisps, the newborn creatures whirled up into the air. Sparking blue-white, they curled in a scintillating cloud of orbs and orbited their creator. The sky danced with a choir of creatures-changeable stars beneath changeless ones.

Laughing, Ixidor lifted his hand and stirred the cloud of them. The sound of his gladness made the stars rejoice. "You will know what I know," he said, touching his forehead.

The creatures curled in a cyclone around Ixidor. One by one, they descended and struck his head between the eyes. The creatures sparked through his mind, learning what lay there, and issued in a laughing stream from his mouth. They flowed through him and emerged with reverent joy.

"You will read the mind of any I wish and bring their thoughts back to me. We will teach each other."

The disciples swarmed across his flesh, learning his form. They gathered around his shoulder stump and coursed along the scars there.

Ixidor watched them. His voice was heavy. "Yes, you sense the old wound, one you cannot heal, but you will heal any new wounds. You will stitch me together when I have come apart."

The barge neared shore. Three more shoves from the pole man and sand hissed on the hull. The craft ground to a halt. In a cloud of worshipers, Ixidor stepped from the gunwales. Darting lights and lurking shadows went with him. The creator walked through the cool of his world, heading for the cold desert beyond.

He had hundreds of new defenders, but Topos itself would need armies. They would arise from the clay shoulders of the ground and the choking desert sands. Ixidor smiled as he marched.

His disciples lit the caliginous wood. They seemed fairies illuminating leaf spaces and mushroom rings. They knew where he was going, for they knew his every thought. A gleaming line of the creatures stretched away through the jungle, making a highway of light.

Following it, Ixidor at last emerged on the mud flats east of Topos. There, he stopped. He crouched, breaking loose a hunk of dried clay. He considered it, turning it over in his hand. The disciples considered it as well. They spun and jittered wonderingly around its curled edges. This was something new. Ixidor had not i known how he would make his next creatures-what he would make-until now.

He spit upon the shard and rubbed his thumb across it, creating mud. It was a minuscule portion, a fingerprint or two, nothing more. It would be enough.

Ixidor raised his thumb, like an artist judging dimension. Instead of squinting his eyes, though, he held them wide open and smeared the mud across first his left cornea and then his right. It was painful, of course, but creation was not true unless it was painful. Keeping his eyes open, Ixidor stared out across the mud flats. He hadn't enough spittle to turn all of it to mud, but he had enough vision to. As far as he could see, it all seemed mud.

As tears traced minute tracks down his eyes, the brown curtain rippled and folded. Columns washed clear. Other columns formed into twisted figures of clay.

Ixidor wished desperately to blink, but if he did, his new creatures would be washed away before they could take full form. Gritty tears streamed down his cheeks.

They were solidifying, these clay men-with long arms and legs, round heads and hairless bodies, attenuated figures, and faces that looked as if they had been drawn in mud by a child. They showed no muscular definition, none of the angles that told of a skeleton. Still, they were solid now, as much as they would become. He wanted them to remain somewhat amorphous. They were creations in progress, pupae that could transform instantly into new forms.

"My putty people," Ixidor breathed reverently, his face dark with tears. He blinked at last, clearing away every lingering stain on his vision. There they stood in their thousands, like identical and featureless statues, stretching away to the horizon. "My putty people."

Ixidor opened his arm and walked into a forest of gray folk. expressionless and unmoving but undeniably alive. They watched him with eyes like holes eroded through mud. Approaching the first of the putty people, Ixidor wrapped his arm around the thing.

Stiffly, it returned the gesture, keeping one hand at its side while circling the other in an awkward embrace. As soon as it touched Ixidor's skin and his silk robe, colors bled onto its gray skin. With color came texture, contour and shadow. Sleeves grew out of the arm and a robe out of the body. The arm that had remained at the creature's side fused with it, leaving a gray outline for a moment. Hair jagged from the thing's head. Its face clenched and rippled, as if molded by some unseen hand and formed a jutting jaw, ravaged cheeks, and haunted eyes. The transformation was complete.

Ixidor released his hold and stepped back. It was as though he stared into a looking glass. "Come see," Ixidor said to his disciples.

They rioted down around the simulacrum and probed it. Outwardly the beast was identical to its creator, but when the disciples tried to sink through its forehead and read its thoughts, they found only dead clay beneath.

Ixidor smiled. "These new creatures are flesh wandering free of thought. You, my disciples, are thought free of flesh. Together, you will serve me, body and mind. Just as you can duplicate the minds of those who come against me, these folk will duplicate the bodies. Our foes will fight themselves." Staring fixedly at the creature, Ixidor said, "Return."

Color melted away. Line eroded. The figure resumed its smooth shapelessness.

Ixidor strode through the forest of putty people. "Remain here." Rank on rank, the men of clay stood. To Ixidor's glowing disciples, he said "Onward."

The disciples followed. They bobbed in his wake, washing the army in an eerie blue light. Lit that way, the putty people seemed gaunt headstones in a graveyard. Soon enough, they would stand above the dead of Krosan and the Cabal.

Ixidor walked in nervous silence. He was making monsters. It wasn't that such terrors were new to his mind. It was only that he had never before created something simply to kill.

In their monotonous thousands, the army of putty people at last gave way to true desert-endless sands. His next creatures would be craggy like sand crystals.

Ixidor stomped. Dust rolled up in a coiling ring around his foot. It seemed a jellyfish bubbling up through the air. Ixidor needed no more jellyfish, but the forms of the sea gave him inspiration.

Ixidor leaped out on the sand, grabbing a handful of it. He spun and hurled it high. From a dense dust cloud, long lines trailed down. Not pausing, Ixidor whirled and grasped more grit. He flung it up beside the first cloud and moved onward. It was a dance, yes-a dance of exorcism. He was casting horrors out of his mind onto thin air.

Not so thin anymore. Each cloud of dust formed into a body of thick carapace. Each trailing wisp became a chitinous leg. Tall and gangly, twice the height of a man, the things seemed huge spiders. They were, in fact, leggy crabs. Each limb-and some of the beasts had ten or twenty-ended in a deadly spike. Those legs alone could skewer countless invaders. The claws beneath the body, though-long and sharp like shears-would literally cut the foes to pieces.

Ixidor danced, throwing sand and bringing horrors to life. Disciples spun about him in a blue-white cloak. He would make as many crab folk as he had putty people. He would go on dancing his terror until dawn. Sand was getting in his eyes, blinding him, but it didn't matter. His breath moaned in a hoarse half-music. That was fine too.

Let dance and music and vision bring into being a whole host of nightmares.

When Phage came, and Kamahl, and their armies, they would pay in blood for invading Topos.

There is no more dangerous being than a creator hiding in his own mind.