Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

whole demeanor changed. In a few seconds, he went from flustered to stone-faced. His entire expression shut down before his eyes and mouth flew open and he tracked me with what could only be described as a concentrated nuclear blast. From his face.

“Jesus Christ,” Suri whispered.

“That must have been what killed me.” But to my surprise, the feed continued.

I crashed onto Withering Rose’s back and rolled away, my armor melted and blasted beyond recognition. The fighting went to ground, but with my distant perspective on the battle, I knew I was about to lose. The air around Ororgael glitched and shivered, as if reality was trying to reject his very presence. He grasped my wrist—my left wrist—and I watched nervously as he leaned in toward me with wild, solid black eyes as his face fluxed.

“Do you see this? It’s the visual manifestation of an anti-viral program, one designed to cure anomalies like you. I can give you a fresh start, Park. So don’t worry about your friends, or the queen. Once I rid the world of squalor and bring order back into the system, they’ll be grateful.”

Ororgael’s hand liquified into a silvery goo that crawled up my arm and over my scarred shoulder, toward my face.

Increasingly apprehensive, I watched myself briefly panic, then leverage Archemi’s quick-consume feature to drink most of the liquid mana in my inventory. There was no pain, remembered or otherwise: just light, and a whirling, spinning blur as the Heart of Memory was flung away by the detonation. When the blaze cleared, all that was left of me was a star-shaped smudge of charcoal on the back of the Warsinger. But the Heart was still there, recording a much narrower and blurrier field of vision, and so was Ororgael.

“Hah...” Swaying on his feet, Ororgael slowly picked himself up from the epicenter. His feathery hair was burned away, his mirrored silver plate soot-covered and smoking. He almost seemed to be drunk, or half asleep, until the ghostly figure merged out of him. As it did, his form solidified again. He shook his head, as if awakening from hypnosis.

“Of course I can hear you,” he muttered. “Always the same shit, the same lies. But I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

He dropped his sword, then stumbled to the left a few steps. There, he planted his feet and held out his arms, craning his neck to stare up at something we couldn’t see.

The sky darkened, and a great winged shadow fell over Withering Rose.

“It’s right underneath me!” Ororgael shouted. “Get it out of there! Now!”

A mournful, bass keen boomed from overhead. Sand slithered, picking up into a cyclonic wind that picked up around the Warsinger’s body. Withering Rose began to tremble, rumbling like an earthquake and a thunderstorm all in one.

Ororgael left the spot he’d been standing, walking over to the Spear of Nine Spheres. We watched him scoop it off the ground and hold it up close to his face, as if examining the blade. Then he screamed, dropping the weapon as the Pearl of Glorious Dawn wrenched itself free from his forehead and snapped into its socket. The Spear clattered to the Warsinger’s back, then vanished as he clutched at the wound, blood pouring through his fingers.

“Fuck!” He roared. “Motherfucker! Hyperion: I’ve changed my mind. Trash this piece of garbage!”

The red sand of the Bashir Desert rose around him like a curtain, howling as the unnatural darkness around him deepened. There was an intense warping sound—and then a pure beam of absolute blackness flashed down from the sky, drawing the remaining light of day with it in an incandescent flash. The narrow beam pierced Withering Rose like an arrow from heaven, throwing up a cloud of filthy smoke. It covered everything.

The recording cut.

“FUCK!” Suri banged her fist on her knee, rising to her feet in agitation. “That absolute cunt! The Warsinger’s gone!”

“Hang on: We don’t know for sure. We have to see what happened. As soon as Karalti gets back, we’ll gear up and go.” Stomach twisting anxiously, I rolled the footage back to the point where Ororgael was ranting about his antivirus goop, and paused. Listened to it again. “What does ‘squalor’ mean? I’ve heard the word before, but I flunked English at school.”

“Uhh...” Suri stopped pacing and looked back at me. “I dunno. I never even went to school.”

“Your Majesty: ‘squalor’ means the state of being extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.” A voice as dry as dead leaves crackled through the still air of the Ducal Suite.

Suri and I both looked up to the front door. As a Greater Shade, Mehkhet the Illuminator resembled the man he’d been in life. Bald, clean-shaven, with a thin beaky face and lips pursed as tight as a cat’s butthole. He was made entirely of frigid shadows, a darkness so cold and pure that his robes trailed a cloud of frost as he hovered over to stand in front of us.

“Oh.” I gave him a little wave. “Hi, Mehkhet.”

“Good afternoon, Master.” He gave me a stiff little bow, before refocusing on Suri. “I shall have to instruct you on your diction and comprehension if you are ever to rule as your ancestress did, your Majesty. Such scholarly deprivation cannot stand.”

“Fuck dictation and comprehension,” she snapped. “How long have you been here, sticky-beaking around?”

“Not long,” he replied hollowly. “I’ve been haunting—so to speak—the ruins of the castle library since you returned. But I felt something stir the air just before, as if the name of some terrible evil had been uttered inside this tower. Capital-N Name, that is. I came to check on you out of an abundance of caution.”

“Everything’s fine.” Her eyes were stormy with mingled anger and worry as she resumed pacing. “No demons, no nothing. Just one busted Warsinger and a fuckin’ crazy idiot