Chapter Thirty-Six

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It seemed like Shadow had stepped up out of absolutely nowhere. But it hadn’t, nothing of the sort. I knew that, because as soon as I saw it, I realized that I’d been seeing it. Shadow hadn’t been invisible, hadn’t even been behind a veil. It was more like I just…hadn’t registered it as important. It was like I’d known that it was there, but its presence didn’t register as significant enough to even pay attention to.

Which was an impression that didn’t change as it moved, and that may have been the strangest thing I’d experienced all month, which was saying things. There was a little bit of anxiety as I suddenly realized it was there, and then a little bit of hope as I parsed what I was seeing.

But both emotions felt…muted, washed out. There was no real force behind them; I felt apathetic in a way that was obviously, deeply unnatural, and that fact should itself have been disturbing, but it wasn’t. It didn’t seem important.

I was literally watching the whole time, observed Shadow step up behind the creature with a knife, knew what it was better than anyone else in the room, and still barely noticed. I was guessing my attacker didn’t have a clue it was there until Shadow had already laid its throat open to the bone. Even watching it do that just…didn’t feel like it was a big deal.

Blood poured out over its hands. There was some already there; this clearly was not the first person Shadow had killed today, and there was blood on its hands, splashed on its face, staining its shirt. The blood was the only spot of color on it, lending the stereotypically goth look an awful sort of authenticity. I hadn’t noticed Shadow being involved in the fighting, but then again, as it had just demonstrated I probably wouldn’t have.

It reached down and offered me a hand up. I took it, feeling glad that it had used the hand not currently holding a knife, in much the same way I might be glad that the cook at a restaurant got my order right. It had no real weight to it.

I managed not to shiver; I didn’t want to make it feel like it had upset the closest thing it had to a friend in this world. Oddly enough, that felt important. Shadow’s immediate presence and actions didn’t register, but how I felt about it as a person still had meaning. On the whole, it was a deeply strange experience.

“Thanks,” I said, stretching my shoulder where I’d just gotten hit. Not really injured, I thought, but it was achy, and I didn’t need anything making me slower right now.

“No problem,” Shadow said, like it genuinely wasn’t. I didn’t think that impression was the product of that strange, unnatural apathy. It just didn’t care about this, felt that saving my ass again was no big deal.

I collected Thorn, looking around. The fight looked…mostly pretty well in hand. The only point of actual conflict was around the throne at this point.

Unfortunately, that part of the fight was kinda important, and it wasn’t going well. Ekaterina and two of her people were still up, but all of them were bloodied. They were facing up against a group of four, all of them Sidhe. One was holding off both of her followers with no apparent difficulty, while two others were fighting Ekaterina, and both looked like they’d taken some hits in the process.

The maenad was an interesting fighter, now that I had the chance to observe her clearly. She fought like an angry cat, frenzied aggression at a frenetic pace. So did the other maenad who was still up, but that was as far as the resemblance went. Ekaterina was good enough to do that, and also still manage to look skilled and graceful; she was slipping aside from attacks, parrying occasionally in between cuts. She had a bronze kopis in one hand, and a long steel dagger in the other, and both had spilled their share of blood today.

I was vaguely glad, as I started towards that side of the room, that I hadn’t tried to fight her, way back when we first met all of twelve days ago. She’d have taken me down in a few seconds if we hadn’t run for it.

Unsurprisingly, the last of the Sidhe was standing back from the fighting, keeping the rest between him and Ekaterina. I’d already known who that was, but it was polite of the jackass to carry a sword which looked like it was literally made out of gold, to remove any ambiguity that might have otherwise remained.

Lily had vanished at some point; I wasn’t sure when, or where she’d gone, didn’t have time to wonder. Up ahead, the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Ekaterina was still holding her own, but two on one was wearing on her; she was bleeding, and her movements were getting clumsy. And meanwhile, the other Sidhe was handling his two-on-one fight seemingly effortlessly. I did not like the implications one bit.

We had done an enormous amount to even the numbers by now. But I was getting the impression that had been more or less expected. Cormac was the kind of guy to put his weakest soldiers on the front line, letting them die for the sake of tiring out the enemy. These four were probably the most dangerous of the bunch by a fair margin.

“God damn,” I said, once I was close enough to be heard. “Even now, you sit back and watch other people fight. Are you seriously that much of a coward, or did we just catch you in the middle of jacking off and you’re into getting cucked?”

I wasn’t sure whether that insult would land or not, but apparently he either knew what being cucked meant or could infer from my general tone, because Cormac jerked like I’d hit him. I couldn’t see his face behind the helmet (gilded, naturally), but I was pretty sure he didn’t look happy.

“You dare speak to me so?” he snarled, somehow managing to be clearly audible despite the distance and the helmet.

“Why do people keep asking me that?” I wondered aloud, continuing to move closer. “Like, obviously the answer is yes, given that I just did.” I was grinning, and I was guessing that would piss him off even more.

Capinera and Saori were on either side of me, both limping but still up and fighting. Shadow was still around somewhere, too, though I didn’t bother trying to keep close track of it. This actually wasn’t the product of that supernatural apathy; I just didn’t think paying attention to it through that barrier was worth the distraction right now.

Cormac’s attention was fixed on me, though. Or, well, sort of. I couldn’t see exactly where he was looking. But I was pretty sure he was looking at Thorn, and I could feel a spike of avarice in the emotional resonance of the room, strong enough to feel it through the rage-terror-pain-triumph miasma of a large-scale fight.

Ekaterina wanted the sword, I was sure of that; not enough to outweigh her desire for vengeance, and I was confident she’d keep that promise if we both survived this, but she wanted Thorn. Cormac, though, was lusting after it with an intensity that surprised me. I wasn’t sure how metaphorical that was, either; it was hard to tell, but it felt stark enough and personal enough that I thought it might really have a sexual element. It wouldn’t really surprise me if this guy got off thinking about wealth, at this point, and Thorn represented one hell of a prize.

The other three fae, though, were continuing to fight, and now that I was closer I could see details. And I didn’t like them.

The two currently fighting Ekaterina were winning. The maenad was quick enough to dodge the worst of it, and crazy enough not to care about the rest. But she had lost the dagger now, and that arm was hanging useless at her side, broken or otherwise disabled. She took a hand off in return, but simple arithmetic suggested that they could afford a one-to-one trade of arms better than she could. They knew it, too, and they both had nasty grins as they pressed that advantage, forcing her back.

Despite this, it was the other guy that I was far more troubled by. He looked…different. Superficially, there was nothing special about him; he was barely my height, making him smaller than average for a human male, and wearing simple leather. He didn’t even have a helmet on, and as a result I could see his face. He looked…bored.

He was presently holding off Ekaterina’s two closest and most dangerous followers at once, and he looked bored. And it looked like he could back that up, too. He had a short, simple sword in hand, something like a Roman gladius, and that suited the rest of his style; he moved exactly as much as necessary, with no excess, no flourishes. He let strikes pass within half an inch of him, or deflected them by just a few degrees. He wasn’t even using his other hand.

He also had what looked like a heavy rifle on his back, and he burned with a tightly contained sort of power, something cold, silvery, and dispassionate as a scalpel’s blade. I was pretty fucking sure I was looking at the guy who’d almost shot me all these times, and I didn’t like that one little bit.

As I watched, the man who had been accompanying Ekaterina back in her hideout and seemed to be in her inner circle advanced. He was clearly trying to close distance with the Sidhe assassin and get inside his reach. It backfired instantly. The Sidhe swept the man’s foot out from under him, which was harder than people generally thought, and he started to fall.

As he was falling, tumbling forward out of control, the Sidhe assassin’s blade flicked down and slit his throat. As the target was falling, in the middle of that chaotic motion, he was still capable of a strike that precise, slitting a throat from just under the ear to the center of the neck. It reinforced the impression I’d gotten of a surgical theatre, really, because generally only surgeons made incisions that precise.

He didn’t press the advantage, didn’t move his feet beyond the slight movements required to continue fighting. But the message was clear; if we tried to move past him, it would go badly for us.

I couldn’t do anything there, and I knew it. I had no illusions about that reality. It didn’t matter that Thorn could probably hurt him; I’d never land a hit to begin with, not even a glancing one. I was just too completely outmatched in skill. I stepped towards the other side instead, where Ekaterina was giving ground fast.

They should have known better, really, should have followed the other guy’s example. Breaking formation like that was a terrible idea. They were too aggressive, too eager for a decisive victory. And while Ekaterina was definitely giving ground because she was unable to hold it, that didn’t mean it was the only reason she was giving ground.

Saori landed a shot on one of them. It wasn’t much; the bullet just grazed her, really. The silver armor didn’t even look to have been pierced. But it was a jarring impact, unexpected and probably painful just from the blunt impact. It was enough to make her flinch.

In the moment she did, Ekaterina reversed her movement, lashing out with her good arm towards the woman’s face on the same side.

The Sidhe dodged it, of course. Ekaterina just did not have the position and force to land a solid hit, even with that distraction.

She could, however, force the fae woman to put herself even further off-balance to dodge. Capinera was keeping the other one occupied, and these two had advanced a few critical steps out of position. Their more skilled colleague wasn’t in position to cover her flank. And so, there wasn’t really much stopping me from stepping in on that flank instead.

I was not a skilled swordswoman. But I knew the basics, was pretty familiar with smaller blades, and honestly, this was a pretty basic maneuver with how far out of position the Sidhe warrior had put herself. I just had to step up and strike, a simple overhand thrust with Thorn.

She was quick enough to dodge away from that too, but only to a limited degree. I didn’t stab her through center of mass like I’d wanted, and her armor was of high enough quality to actually put up a little resistance to Thorn’s edge, which further reduced the damage. But I got a solid hit on her left flank, and when she pulled back she was losing a lot of blood. She was moving awkwardly, too, her left arm jerking spastically.

After a moment, I realized she must have taken a decent shock through the blade. There was vivid emerald-green lightning flickering over Thorn’s whole length, though it was bright enough in this room that it wasn’t terribly obvious. Apparently the Sidhe were susceptible to it, which I hadn’t been sure of and still wasn’t sure would always be the case.

Definitely worked on this one, though, and while she was still alive, she was in full retreat. Capinera was still keeping the other busy, and Saori had dropped the rifle in favor of her wakizashi as she joined in on that. It was pretty obvious they would be able to handle that faerie now that they had a numerical advantage.

We were, to some degree, winning. But in reality, it was probably closer to a stalemate. The Sidhe assassin who smelled like silver was definitely the most dangerous of the whole group, and he was untouched. As I was recovering my balance, I watched him take out the last maenad still in the fight aside from Ekaterina, removing her leg just below the knee. As she was falling, he was already moving, taking a single half-step to the side and bringing his sword around to catch Shadow as it tried to slip past while he was distracted. It didn’t look like he’d cut it badly if at all, but he definitely sent it sprawling on the floor. It also confirmed he wasn’t going to be fooled by that supernatural apathy, which wasn’t surprising but was definitely a problem.

So, we’d taken out almost all of them, which was pretty impressive considering we’d been outnumbered by over two-to-one at the start of this bloodbath. But we were in rough shape after having done so; it was pretty much down to me, my personal friends, and Ekaterina still up and fighting, and all of us had significant injuries. Cormac hadn’t even gotten involved himself, and I could feel him gathering up power now, working some kind of magic that smelled like grass in the sunlight and sounded like a screaming cat.

His…assassin? Bodyguard? I honestly had no idea what to call this guy at this point, and wasn’t at all sure what his stake in all this was. But he hadn’t taken a hit yet, and I was pretty sure that if he didn’t let us past we were not going to be reaching the fae nobleman behind him. Said nobleman’s armor was definitely too heavy for Saori to be able to realistically get a bullet through it, too, which negated our main option at range.

To my side, the others were wrapping up the rest of the fight. I ignored that completely; they had it well in hand, and it wasn’t important anyway. It was hard to focus, hard to think clearly. In addition to being dissociated as hell and emotions running high from the fighting, I still had adrenaline going hard. But there was another element to it, one I didn’t fully understand, a sort of need to keep going. It reminded me a bit of my occasional bouts of clinical mania, the restless need to be moving I experienced then. And much like those, I could push it down, but it was a struggle.

Abruptly, I realized I still had Thorn in hand. I could feel the euphoria, the gleeful urge to keep going, to keep fighting. I hadn’t noticed it much while actually doing so, but now that I was trying to stop and think, it felt overwhelming. So did the magic pouring out of it; the smell of blood was lost in the very real bloodbath, but there was also a heavy scent of flowers that wasn’t real, and I could feel shivers up my spine as strongly as any tactile synesthesia I’d ever had.

How long had I been holding it, now? I had no way of guessing, with how strangely time was dilated at the moment, how slow everything felt. But it had been a while, and this feeling had been building the whole time, getting stronger. I couldn’t even feel the pain of my injuries, which weren’t terribly extensive but should at least have been noticeable.

I needed to think right now more than we needed another blade. I moved to sheathe the sword, and then saw the emerald lightning dancing over its surface. The blade caught the light like a mirror, and it was a captivating display. And then, abruptly, I had a thought.

Epiphanic thought patterns are notoriously unreliable, but sometimes the thinking had already happened, and the ideas just needed to be clicked into place together. And the dissociated, manic state I was in was fantastic for that. Flight of ideas, as the clinical term went, flowing through ideas following loose connections at breakneck speed.

Hope had commented on the development of personal ability, and it seemed insightful. I could see fur on my hand, and I’d already put together that there was a common thread in the moments where that had happened recently and those where it had not. As I’d told Saori, it wasn’t really conscious; but I was starting to suspect it was more volitional than it used to be, because it seemed like it hadn’t been happening when humans might see and make my life awkward, and that was too convenient for it to be chance. I thought about how it felt to call Thorn, a sort of focused intention. I remembered a passage of text about how gods were lies, highlighted by a goddess.

I remembered that. I remembered Alice talking about how Thorn’s magic was too intricate for her to understand, saying that the sixth spell on it might be making it harmful just to be around. I remembered talking to Saori, before my first trip to another world, about all the ways it might go wrong. I thought about Melissa’s blank smile as she peeled someone’s skin off, and how the snow had glittered in the streetlights during the first night of this mess. I’d almost gotten killed then, had possibly been closer to dying than in any of the subsequent attempts, and that had just been an ordinary girl with a sword. She couldn’t have lasted five seconds in a fight with any of the people I’d killed tonight. I remembered Raincloud asking me about love and a dream where it tasted like blood. I thought about how uncomfortable I felt watching werewolves changing, thought about how they reacted to silver, something so much worse than simple pain. Remembered Audgrim telling me that my abilities were unusual, and watching his body falling to the grass.

I couldn’t have explained the connections between all these ideas, not really. I couldn’t put it into words. But it felt like I flowed through all of them, and it only took a few seconds for me to assemble them into a single, complex thoughtform. The focal point was an action, one that was terrifying and would have felt impossible just days ago, but it was simple, and was really just an extension of things I had done before. I might never be able to put the whole thought into words, but in that moment, I could understand it, and it only took seconds for me to go from the first observation to implementation.

Dropping my filters right now was such a profoundly foolish idea that normally I wouldn’t have even considered it, but right now I needed the precision. I tried to keep them partially in place, to attenuate the flood enough that I didn’t just start seizing. But there was a factor I hadn’t accounted for.

I’d never done this while holding Thorn before. I wasn’t ready for it. The vivid, overpowering sensations always made me feel high, and when that collided with the existing manic euphoria, the two seemed to feed into each other, and catapulted me further into that oversaturated world than I was ready for, much further. The fact that its own magic was overpowering even with my filters in place didn’t help at all, either.

I wasn’t unconscious. I wasn’t even falling down seizing, though I wasn’t sure how; I’d never been this far gone and still conscious before. But I couldn’t perceive reality at all. It was wholly obscured by my sense of the magic in that room. Thorn’s power pulsed through me so strongly it felt like how other people described being electrocuted. Everything was beautiful. There were dark flames painted over everything, with the scents of wolf and fox and spice and flowers mingling in it. I could feel silver-scalpel light spreading in fractal patterns like fractured glass on every side, and taste blackberry wine mixed with ashes and claws and steel resolve. The room was so bright, so colorful, seven kinds of green and seventeen shades of scarlet. I could hear the storm all around, howling wind through singing leaves and the constant, rolling sound of thunder, and my skin was full of silver claws with more lightning on it than fur, it was everywhere, arcing from me like a Tesla coil made of emeralds.

Everything was so fucking beautiful I could barely hold myself together, barely remember who I was through the joy of the moment. Every breath I took painted the world with a a bloody crimson mist. And strangely enough, it was exactly the overpowering euphoria that provided enough of an anchor to maintain consciousness. There was no fear, no agitation or anger, not that I could tell. Just a simple, raw sort of joy so deep it verged on madness.

And because of that, I could focus. It was such a strong anchor, and such a clearly directed one, and that direction was pointed straight towards the reason I’d made this mistake. Because through the chaos, through the noise, I could also feel the keystone I was trying to focus on. Cormac was assembling his spell; I could feel it, could feel how the grass-fire-gold magic was flowing into patterns. It was strong, and it couldn’t have been a tenth as long as it felt, because he hadn’t quite finished yet. The patterns were incomplete.

I focused on them, waiting, not even breathing so that it didn’t distract me. I waited for the patterns of the spell to be almost complete, the last possible moment before the spell went from abstract energy to concrete effect, and then I concentrated, focusing intention through the storm. It was the same kind of thought that called Thorn to me, just focused outward instead, pushing.

I could just barely see a bolt of emerald-green lightning, starting at the tip of my sword and arcing out towards the Sidhe nobleman. I could see the golden magic he was holding collapse into noise.

That was exactly how long I could withstand the flood. The instant that the magic I’d been concentrating on was falling into chaos, I barely felt myself doing the same before the world went away.

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