Break 5 | Pale

Next Chapter

The Alabaster gave the signal.

“We could come,” Horseman said, as John walked to the door that would put him on the opposite end of the stands from the corrupted spirit.  John took the choicest of the weapons his old squad had distributed among them.  He belted on some explosives and canisters.

Rifle at his back, three handguns, appropriate ammunition, knives…

John considered it, then reaffirmed his decision, telling Horseman, “Best if you don’t.  I don’t think you guys have fought this sort of thing, and it’s infected with a piece of something demonic.  Consequences get too high if you fail here.  Entire point is you all live.  I’ve fought spirits.  Not something I’m good at fighting, hard to beat if you’re in a hurry, but I think I’ll manage.”

“Hey, boyo,” Breastbiter called out.

“What?”

Breastbiter threw John a lock of red hair bound in red string.

“I don’t think I want or need this.”

“Take it anyway,” Breastbiter said. “No tricks, no traps, no special meaning intended.”

“Is this going to backfire on me?”

“It’s a bit of extra mojo, if you want it,” the goblin said.  He folded his arms.  “These things, we all have to work together to stop them.  Shouldn’t hurt or backfire too bad.  But you know, goblin shit.”

“I know goblin shit,” John told Breastbiter.

“Here,” Reid said.  “I don’t want a goblin to be a bigger man than me.  A protective charm.”

“I’m much bigger than you,” Breastbiter told him.  “Do you know why?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” Reid replied, sounding weary.

“You wear shirts.  They constrain you and inhibit vital growth!”

“Oh, we’re talking about nipples again?” Reid asked.

“Of course.  What else could we be talking about when talking about how size matters?” Breastbiter asked him.

“I don’t think I’ll dignify this conversation by continuing it.”

“Nipples, boy, nipples!  Flesh-medals that Nature herself pinned on your chest!  A badge of honor saying you were born and shit like that!  With this, we may nourish the babes, let the milk spray forth!  It can even be a gender-indiscriminate spray, with preparations!”

Ignoring him, Reid turned to John.  He opened his book and tore out a page with runework on it that looked as though it had been dripped onto paper with fine amounts of wax, standing out rather than soaking into the paper.  He reached into a pocket and pulled out a safety pin.

John glanced back at Angel and Ribs.  He wasn’t sure if Horseman remembered, but the practitioner named Dicky Leonard, the war mage who had bound them, had used a charm just like this.  Angel and Ribs had still been aware at the time Dicky had gone full throttle.

John still took it.  He pinned it to his chest.

“How many of these infected things have you fought?” Grandfather asked him.

“A couple.”

“Were they spirits?”

“No.  One human, one goblin.”

“Were they this big?”

“No,” John said, as he stepped through the door.  A push on his shoulder made him glance back.  Ribs.  He looked over at the spirit.  “No they weren’t this big.”

The contact with Ribs was a bit of a help.  Association with Blast Dogs like Black and Ribs helped the rest of them with enduring the heat and explosions of a battlefield.  A kind of blessing, a bit of luck, a bit less of a tendency to burn or get blown to shreds.  The fire at the corner of the arena was spreading now, licking up the tree, along the wall of blue-painted concrete blocks.  But even with the sturdy, mostly fireproof construction, the fire had space to spread.

The corrupt spirit that had emerged from Lauren Snyder wasted no time in breaking into a run.  Trapped in bounds, in the loop of seats that surrounded the ice rink, it had apparently realized it had company.  Tearing past and through the debris and chunks of meat, the swirling, vague mass of the creature picked those things up.  It looked like lightning striking in reverse, from ground to sky, meat becoming something shadowy and veinlike against a bright, eerie form.  Wood, metal, plastic, and broken concrete jumped up as well.  Where the shocks of material that ran up into the spirit connected, spaces were filled in.  Raw flesh mingled with concrete, blue plastic seating with wood.  They shifted to find a coherent form.

A larger branch from the tree fell, smoke streaming from its burning leaves and branches, and it fell across wooden paneling, a flurry of sparks flying up from the impact.  The paneling started to ignite.  That was spreading to his left, the spirit circled around clockwise, and approached from his right.

As it moved through the area where Cleo Aleshire and the other witch hunters had been smashed and torn apart, it picked up more flesh.

As he’d told the others, he’d been on a lot of patrols.  He’d fought spirits.  He hoped he knew what he needed to know.

Spirits didn’t have form.  They could borrow form, occupy vessels, occupy people, or occupy a space in a more abstract way.  There were few places they couldn’t go and few things that were outright impervious to spirits, but at the same time, there weren’t a lot of places outside the spirit world where they were truly at home.

Types like Edith had to make their home, more than anything, bringing the spirit world in.  The way John figured it, it was his job to empty that home.

It started and ended with Lauren Snyder, who the beast was swallowing up.  She floated in the center mass, head still shattered, spirit-stuff pouring out to add to the semi-fluid, semi-gaseous, semi-solid form.  Whether it was fluid, gas, solid, or spirit, it maintained a general theme of the animal throughout.

He waited until the corrupt spirit had rounded the corner and he had a clear shot.  Winding the red hair Breastbiter had given him around the barrel of his handgun, he fired.  His time with Toadswallow had helped here, so he knew this was a thing he could do.

The bullets penetrated the spirit and slowed as they did, as if he’d fired into gel.  The first bullets stopped short of getting to Lauren Snyder’s body inside the spirit.  He could see the goblin influence flow out, snaking through, the veins shooting out in every direction from the holes the bullets had drilled into flesh- mostly to the sides, instead of to Lauren.  Each vein expanded, and each became a tear.  The tears acted as doors, and goblins flowed out, each the size of men, fighting and tearing their way free of vague spirit-flesh.  Flesh retaliated, biting back in turn.  Where chunks were torn free, they became mist and fog, and the mist and fog transformed, still holding the ideas of the original spirit- nature, war, and violence.

He watched as some of the bits of devoured goblin became mass in the head, aimed, and fired.  The fifth bullet affected by Breastbiter’s lock of hair penetrated the brain that was forming amid the spirit-stuff, and the goblins that emerged tore it apart from the inside.

Spirits occupied vessels, most often, and they found refuge there, anchors in reality that made the rest of it more able to leverage its strengths.  So he let it forge its own vessel, veins and brain, organs-

He saw something heart-like appear, and dropped to one knee to get a lower angle, and shot through the chest of the spirit.  That was a sixth shot augmented by the hair.

It came at him, two forelimbs and a lower body that was a trail of ghost-like body and smoke that flirted with the idea of being something real.

He side-stepped down three of the large concrete stairs, so the spirit would have to flow into and through more debris that had piled up into a sort of cover.  It broke the debris apart and formed it into skin and hide, disassembling it on a conceptual level to forge its own body.  Color went one way, shape another, function a third way.

He placed another shot through the shoulder joint, shattering ‘bone’ that was forming out of wood and broken concrete.  More goblins ripped their way free around the wound.  Spiritstuff couldn’t accommodate, and the spirit’s limb became too weak to hold it up.  It crashed into stairs.  He used the opportunity to place another two shots- one to carve a way forward, drilling into spirit-flesh, and the other to follow the same course.  To Lauren Snyder.

Witch Hunter flesh picked up from the side of the arena stands bulged, blocking the way to Lauren.  Maybe the bullet might have arrived regardless, but in the bulging, the nearly straight line the bullet had carved became less straight.

He tried to tell himself that the slow process of cutting this spirit down wasn’t as much of a problem as he worried it was.  It didn’t matter that he’d been delayed, because a Faerie would account for that, would plan for it.

The trick, the catch, the benefit of going faster, was that maybe, if he was lucky, she’d make a mistake.  Maybe, if he was lucky, the girls would succeed in holding Charles back.  Or Toadswallow and the goblins would.  Or Guilherme.  Or Matthew.

Maricica couldn’t see the future.  She tried, she got an advantage and a thrill for threading a needle and anticipating things, she might even be great at it.

But if he could give his all to hurry this along, and if the people outside could give their all to slow Charles down, maybe they’d surprise.  Maybe Charles would step inside only to be told the contest was over.

If he could put on a good show, maybe he could forge an advantage, in terms of perception, in terms of making the contest more his.

Which was why he hurried to spend the bullets from Breastbiter.  Because if they contributed to the finishing blow, it would make the victory a bit more of the goblin’s.  That could be a small advantage.

He timed things, pacing them out as much as his limited patience allowed, letting the corrupted animal spirit recover enough to charge through more blockades, more wood, more seating.  Veins and strips of muscle wove their way through the spirit’s composition.

He emptied the handgun in the process, and saw as the hair slipped free, drained of color at the same time the gun was left empty.

Jamming the gun into the hip holster, he pulled a heavy off-white grenade from the belt in the reverse motion.  One of the explosives Black had given him.   He pulled the pin, and lobbed it.  It took a fair amount of arm strength to cover the distance, because the grenade was twice the weight of most.

It flared bright, and kicked up a spatter of hot white gobbets and black smoke.  The wood that the spirit had absorbed into its form ignited.  Plastic burned and turned black.  Dark smoke flowed through the interior of the spirit’s body- John could see through the thinnest parts of it to where the smoke gathered, and to where Lauren Snyder drifted, temporarily dead.

It resembled fighting a titan, a dragon, or something suitably monstrous as it tried to climb over the lip of a cliff.  He had to target the claws that came up over the edge, weaken the grip- it was possible that outright slaying his enemy here was impossible.  The further bullets traveled toward the dark shape of Lauren Snyder, the more resistance they seemed to meet.

No, he had to weaken its grip.

He shot out another organ, without the benefit of the lock of red hair now.

It wasn’t actually on a cliff.  It was heavily spirit, of the spirit world, and the cliff’s edge in this metaphor was reality.  Every organ and every part of it that was anchored into reality was a handhold.  The more handholds it had, the easier it was to get more, to pull the bulk of itself into reality here.

But, John knew, there was a cost.  In this metaphor, the titan at the cliff’s edge still needed to expend energy to lift a hand, to get a hand settled into position at the edge, so he could pull himself up.  Actually lifting his own weight up would be a task that got harder, not easier, in proportion with his size.  Repeatedly forcing that movement, denying the ability to get over the edge…

John hoped to exhaust it.  To drain its strength by forcing it to repeatedly try to get a grip on reality and then lose that grip.

It was the same tactic the Witch Hunters had tried against the barrier around the rink.  The same thing he’d tried against Dicky Leonard back when Angel and Ribs had been bound.

More bullets.

Overwhelm whatever process was in effect.

Guns and bullets didn’t tend to work well against Others, but they were the tool he had.

He placed each shot with care, aiming for the places where it anchored itself in reality.  Places where it made itself real.

He’d been down this road before, in a lesser way, with lesser spirits.  There were two major ways this could go.  The first was that it would change tacks.  If it started pushing the spirit world into the arena, as Edith could do with her lake of black wax, he’d be forced into a more strategic game.  The fire to his left would be critical.  So would anything he could do to mar the landscape it painted around itself.

It leaped for him, with a force that suggested it had back legs it didn’t.  He had to throw himself down concrete stairs, arms around his head to shield it, because there were no great options left to him.  Up was too slow, forward put him right under it, back meant he’d get turned into a smear if it skidded too far forward.

That was the second option.  The lunge, a sudden aggression.

He lobbed a grenade underhand as he scrambled to get to his feet, turned, and ran.  The spirit flowed well past the grenade-

But the explosion was still jarring.  A sudden burst of noise, of violence, of everything that would make even a hardened predator stop what it was doing.  It was still crawling over the edge of a cliff.  It still needed to maintain some grip on things, and the explosion helped that grip to slip away.  He could see the more solid and stable parts of it splinter and fall away, mixed into roiling spirit.  It slowed down, lost track of what it was doing.

He reloaded as he backed up, closer to the fire.

The debris that the falling branch had ignited now burned high enough that fire spread to a hockey banner on the wall.  From there, it spread to others.  There were sections of a small concessions store that were pushed out of order and off to the side, and that was close enough for the sloped side to collect falling scraps of flaming banner.  Smoke began to spread from there.

The spirit found its bearings, and it began to pull itself together.

Last grenade.  John lobbed it underhand.

This was the point most spirits collapsed.

But this wasn’t just a spirit.  There was something inside it, as thin as a hair, as long as an arm, and John could feel the vibration of it deep in his chest.

The spirit that had been solid, gas, and liquid all at the same time started to boil.

And our tired, wounded creature that’s trying to climb up a cliff face and over the lip now has handholds to spare.

It probably made those same handholds in Lauren Snyder, chipping away at her body, her Self, and her soul.

If clouds could be interpreted to look like animals, this was one such cloud, but it was a storm now, high winds, the clouds so dense they blocked out light.

Standing one moment, moving as fast as a train at full speed in the next.  John was braced for it, with cover and the direction in mind, and it still felt like it came at him fast.

It stopped nearly as fast as it had moved, the detritus that was now getting more chewed up and mixed up forming into a spreading mask.

The Wolf on Avery Kelly’s path.

The Ondvarg.

Lucy, just outside.  After a fashion.

I keep fighting beasts.  Canines.  Foxes and wolves.

I wonder if the others found themselves on a track like this.

He shot, trying to stay calm even though he wasn’t, aiming for key points.

His brothers in arms were on the rink, not that far away.  They shouted but their voices didn’t reach him.

I want to win, for Lucy’s sake.  Maybe she’ll come, after she stops being mad at me.  To say hi.  To see me and the space I’ve carved out for myself as a Carmine Dog.  I want there to be one less corrupted, awful thing causing trouble in the world.

Surgically placed shots.  Holding composure-

It wasn’t slowing down as it got hurt.  It kept coming, kept bringing more into its spirit body, to get more complete, to become more of a mingling of spirit and real.

Like John was.  Except John was relatively small, in comparison.  John was backed by War.  Maybe if this had found its foothold in reality, it would be backed by Nature.

He kept shooting, scrambling back, getting perilously close to fire now.

But it wasn’t backed by Nature, and it could never be.  It wasn’t supported or made stronger.  This was backed by something that tore away at the world around it.  Not making it stronger, but making everything else weaker.  Just a piece, but a piece was all it needed to steer something as delicate as a spirit to ruin.

And, he had to remind himself, it was backed by Lauren Snyder, buried within.

The spirit swelled, and it launched another attack he wasn’t as ready for.  There was metal in its claw, though, and the paper John had pinned to his chest glowed, fluttering.

It slowed the swiping claw enough for John to duck beneath.  He could smell the distinction between the burning paper just under his nose and the fire behind him.

The swings kept coming, and he hurried back out of the way, grunting as one non-metal limb lifted him off his feet and into a concrete block wall.  Chips of the wall’s paint stuck to the red, winter-weight army jacket he was wearing as he pulled himself away, ducking low to avoid the claw with metal tips.  The paper helped to ward it off enough that John could move out of the way.  He raised his gun hand and popped off a single shot.

The deafening sound of gunfire and the effect such noise had on animals would affect the animals in this spirit… if it wasn’t currently being propelled by something scarier.

The gun still had an effect on the spirit’s body, even if it wasn’t acting like it was dying.  John’s most immediate problem was that it was getting that foothold, and pulling the bulk of itself into reality.  Smoke, dust in the air, light, and other things were feeding into it with no sign of slowing down.  Sweeping swings of its heavy forelimbs cleaved past concrete, with notches dashed away where the claw-tips had grazed.  It was heavier, stronger, and it was developing a hind body that was more coherent, with actual limbs, instead of the roiling smoke trail.

John switched guns because he couldn’t afford the time to reload.  Bullets hit something approximating flesh, now, and the spirit smoked out of the wounds, before drawing them closed.  Smoke from behind John mingled with the smoking form of the spirit, and as the clouds of smoke and spiritstuff around them got so opaque John could barely see his surroundings, the spirit’s eyes became some deeper shadow than any ordinary darkness could produce.

This was too slow and getting slower.  Even accounting for size, it felt like most spirits would have gone down after this direct an assault.

Is it drawing energy somehow from the splinter?

From Snyder?

He finished off the magazine, then holstered the gun, before unslinging the rifle from behind his back.  Part of the strapping was broken, and he guessed it was from being knocked into the wall or rolling down the stairs.

A shot between the eyes.  He couldn’t see through it enough to make out where Lauren Snyder was, but he could remember, and he used the distraction as it shook its head and regained its senses to aim for her.

Something seemed to set the corrupt spirit off, because it hit that point of desperation again.  It chose to lunge again, and it was still moving from near-standstill to train-like speed momentum, and crushing force.  Yet it also chose to spread its influence, dragging this part of reality into the spirit world, or dragging the spirit world into this part of reality.  The effect spread from where its feet met the ground.

Normally, a spirit’s assertion of its power was a painting of the environment.  Here, it was a spreading puddle of black oil.  The corners of concrete stairs eroded away beneath the thin liquid, fire dimmed, and smoke curled up from the edges, leaving smoke-patterned grooves in the wall and stairs around the edges, giving the liquid a place to flow into, exaggerating the effect.

John ducked behind a support beam, and the beast smashed it enough it bent.  Pieces of concrete rained down.

With a degree of willpower, John waded backwards into the lower parts of the open fire, where smaller bits of tree branch and bark flaked down in a steady shower.  Some landed on his head and shoulders, and he shook his head fiercely in one moment to get rid of a bit.  The smell of his own burning hair filled his nostrils.

He fired the rifle, reloaded, firing again, reloading.

It paused, hesitating at the flame’s edge.  The spreading pool of liquid didn’t extend into the flame.

He kept up the onslaught, aiming each shot carefully, and both the finger that pulled the trigger and the hand that helped keep the gun steady were burning as he stood there.

Ribs’ little boon and forward push probably helped him here.  Helped put pain aside, helped keep him steady, and helped his clothes and skin stay more intact than they otherwise would.

Half-blind in smoke, holding his breath because there was no oxygen to be had, he continued to back away, testing each footstep before trusting it, so he wouldn’t trip.  He tried to steal the time for half-second glances through smoke with watering eyes, to see if a tree branch was poised to drop on him, or if the curl of smoke from the spreading, corrupted spiritual influence was reaching to his left, or if that was ordinary smoke.

The spirit struck the support pillar it had already damaged.  More of the material from the ceiling rained down- mostly on top of the spirit.

It braved the flames, charging forward.  John didn’t have the time to shoot anymore, and focused on staying out of the way of the worst sorts of harm it could deliver, wading through fire, stepping on burning branches and flaming bits of signage.  The spirit’s spreading influence was cut off, and it either wasn’t trying or wasn’t able to establish that influence in the middle of the staggered concrete here.  The only real hazard was how much tiny, burned bark and bits of tree had collected underfoot.  John’s boots scraped with hard charcoal-like bits catching in the threads as he tried to duck, weave, and run, rifle held in one hand.

The paper from Reid Musser burned.

It didn’t relent, and one bad guess about where it might be charging off to saw it come right for him.  He let himself step onto a destroyed bit of stairway, and skidded down it on his back, feet out below him, down to the base of the rink.

The spirit followed, but the descent was hard for a four-legged beast.  John had to scramble to get out of the way before the spiritual influence could chase after it- a thin tide of that corroding spiritstuff that hit the hard, painted barrier surrounding the rink, and splashed up to the arcane barrier the Judges had put up to protect other contestants.

John backed up, and on the other side, behind magically secured plexiglass, Horseman kept pace with him.  Staring hard.

I do realize what’s wrong, John thought.  Besides the fact this thing is mean, unstoppable, and inexhaustible.

He’d ‘talked’ with Horseman about it once, before.  John hadn’t had a mouth or eyes, then, but they’d shared one another’s company and Horseman had carried the conversation for both of them, as natural as anything.

Dogs of War weren’t necessarily super-soldiers.  Horseman was, but that was an archetype he’d grown into.  John might have been something exceptional now, but he’d picked up something different through the killings of various practitioners.  All of that was beside the point: their primary advantage in war was that they didn’t die like real soldiers did.  They came back.

So long as they could hold back from being reckless, the fact they knew they could try something and then put that knowledge into action made them very dangerous.  No fear slowed them down, their guns didn’t waver when another man’s might.  They were what soldiers were sold as, amid national fervor and whatever else it took to get a young adult to leave everything and try their hand at fighting the young men of other countries.  Real soldiers got spooked, real soldiers decided they didn’t want to kill another human being and aimed high.  Much of what the army, many armies tried to do was to drill in a willingness to shoot without aiming high.  In some ways, that was harder than participating in a firefight.

That was the advantage John brought into a fight, one of the first advantages he’d had in this world, before he’d had eyes and a mouth.  Before he’d had a proper name.

He’d only been Carnivore.

He didn’t have that advantage anymore.  He cared about dying.  He cared about losing.  People depended on him.  Kennet.  The three children.

And his enemy in this moment?  His enemy had that advantage he’d lost.  It almost wanted to die.

Horseman shouted something, pointing.

With the way they’d circled around the stands, a full circle for the spirit, a half circle for John, they were almost back at Lauren Snyder’s starting point.  John took stairs two at a time to ascend them, skin prickling as burned flesh slowly healed.  He aimed and shot at the spirit’s ankles as it prowled upward, trying to slow it down.  It barely mattered.  It had too much of a foothold in reality.

Fire extended along the wall above John, having already burned away banners.  Boards that lined the wall and the shop all burned now, and some fire had spread out into the lower area, where people might’ve once stood in line.

A third of the Arena burned.

High ground.  With the way the spirit-stuff spread beneath Lauren Snyder’s spirit, it flowed downhill.  Putting himself higher meant he didn’t have to worry about it much.

Another shot, another reload.  He tried to make each count.

Come on, come on…

How dumb was it?

He moved closer to the shop, bringing the rifle to his shoulder to pop off a quick shot.

The beast lunged, and John was prepared for it.  Feet shifted to an angle, and he pushed himself into a quick run down the stairs with little heed for what his situation would be when he was further down.  As it happened, he was able to grab a bit of railing.  The same railing that kept spectators from falling down into the pathway that led from the front door to the rink and the seats closest to the ice.

The spirit crashed into the burning concessions shop.  John quickly reloaded, then fired off another shot, reloaded, fired.  Each shot was aimed at Lauren Snyder.

More bullets.

The spirit turned to face John, and more of the shop collapsed around it.  The act of turning speared it at several points.  It breathed hard, shifting footing, and charred wood that speared it made sucking sounds as it pulled out of wounds.  Spirit stuff flowed, filling in gaps, flowed to mend skin, to build up protection, horns, drawing on the spirit’s theme of animals in general.

It hunkered there, poised, tense, fire burning along one side of its body, flesh and spiritstuff boiling through one another while the spirit held a vague but mostly solid  quadruped shape.  John’s eyes darted around, looking for places he might go, cover he might take.  He sniffed, nose running from the smoke, and his every breath had a burr to it.

Down into the hallway, under the railing?

From there… where?

The spirit’s head and shoulders dipped.

It began to give way, drawing back into itself.  The matter it had gathered up to build up a physical body fell away.

It all drew back into a central point- the gap in Lauren Snyder’s head.

John shifted his footing, aiming.

She looked far worse for wear as the spirit crawled back into her.  Her head pieced itself together around the spirit as it folded in, and a brief flash of light sealed it, doing away with most signs of injury- only blood and bruising around one eye.  Her shoulders drew together, and a hand covered all of her face except for one bloodshot eye.

“Ahhghh,” she rasped.  “Always hurts worse than the time before.”

“Don’t move,” John warned her.

She looked up.  “The soldier?  Not the horror?”

“Yes.  You were shot by one of the Witch Hunters.”

“You didn’t breathe the smoke?  Spiritstuff?  You didn’t walk in the dark pools?”

“Didn’t let it bite you?  Or scratch?”

“No.  I was careful.  I am going to shoot you now, Lauren Snyder.”

“Bullets on their own won’t do it.  We’ll go through this in a cycle until you run out of bullets.”

“I thought I’d shoot it until it ran out of power.”

“You can’t.  I mean, it got you this far, I guess, but you can’t.  There’s way too much power.”

“What’s the power source?”

“Made a deal with a goddess back when I was fourteen, to serve her as a devout, to access a conduit of her power.  Her power is my power.  When things went wrong, that spike of darkness in Manu, my familiar… it stuck through some fundamental part of me and nailed something in.  Can’t close the gate, can’t break off the relationship to my goddess, much as she wants me to- she despises me now.  The darkness will leech off that power until my goddess dies.  I’m not sure it stops then, either.  It might keep the door open to… the universe, I guess.”

“Why did it retreat?” John asked.

“Manu is still a spirit, still feels, still doesn’t want to die.  So it falls back if it starts getting too drained.  If I die, Manu comes out, if Manu dies, I come out, but beneath it all, feeding it all, that flow of divine power that’s been forced to constantly flow.  Keeps us alive, even if it doesn’t keep me very strong or well.  I think it’d be satisfied to leave me withered, broken, and immobile, so long as it could keep drinking from the well.  I’m hoping to avoid that.”

“How do I kill you?”

Lauren Snyder dropped her hand away from her face.  Her eye was no longer bloodshot.  “I don’t think it’s possible.  I was hoping whoever I ended up against would have a way.  The horror seemed like a good bet, they’re resistant, they could dislodge the splinter enough that I stay dead enough to qualify for the contest.  Probably not forever, though.”

“He died rather than fight you,” John noted.

“Oh.  Um…” Lauren looked stunned.  She turned, and she opened her mouth to call out, before coughing at the smoke.  Her shout was strangled, “Alabaster!?”

“Yes, Lauren Snyder?”

“I can’t concede, right?”

“We’ve established this.  No, you cannot concede in entirety any more than a binding could encircle you in entirety.  Chalk cannot draw a full circle, and neither can Law.”

“Do you have a ten-count?  If we say one contestant is unable to fight for a pre-decided amount of time, they lose?”

“Not in the way you mean.”

“Can we make up that rule, then?”

“If the majority of remaining contestants agree?” the Aurum Coil announced, rising higher.  “That’s one agreement.  Two for… one against.”

John hadn’t made the decision.

If he agreed to this, it hurt him, it cost him options that he was keeping in the back of his mind.  If it came down to it, the support beam had been damaged, and others could be blown up.  If he brought down a portion of the Arena, he could survive amid the rubble in a way Reid Musser and Charles Abrams couldn’t.  Even Breastbiter might struggle.

It could decide a final confrontation.

But only if there was no way to come to a draw, no way he could be counted as the loser by some catch in the wording.

He looked at Lauren Snyder.

I keep fighting wolves and I keep hurting people I’d rather protect.  Young women, no less.

“Three agree, one against.  If one contestant is unable to fight or declare themselves willing to continue for a long enough span of time, the match in question may be called,” the Aurum Coil called out, voice filling the Arena.  “How long?”

“Five minutes,” the Sable Prince told them.

“You’re all cowards!” Breastbiter called out.  “If I had my way, the only way to lose would be dying!  No wimpy concession, no wimpy countdown from five hundred seconds!”

“Three hundred,” Reid said, “a minute is sixty seconds, five minutes is three hundred seconds.”

“Maybe it is for you, the way you get on with a girl, kid,” Breastbiter said.  “I don’t need to shorten how long a minute is to pad my numbers with the ladyfolk.  Or menfolk.  I’m gender indiscriminate.”

Reid sighed.

“I heard that sigh.  That’s psychological warfare at work, bitch-nips,” Breastbiter hissed.  Other goblins laughed and mocked.

John looked at Lauren.

“Five minutes?” she asked.  “Might get tough.”

John quickly reloaded his handguns, and checked the rifle.  It wasn’t just that the strap was loose, but the part of the housing it connected to had come ajar.

“Gun!” John called out, hand extended, shrugging off the strap and tossing the gun away.

“You chose to do without your subordinates,” the Sable Prince told him.

John stared the man in the black suit with the onyx black eyes down.

“Allow it,” Lauren said.  “Please.”

“There’s a consensus,” the Alabaster said, and it almost felt like she was saying it to the Sable Prince, to settle a disagreement that had never happened.

Angel threw another rifle to John.  He caught it without needing to move his hand.

The fire continued to burn around them.  Continued to spread.  It crackled, and only cracks in the wall and ceiling let the smoke out, keeping it from becoming impossible to see inside.  Maybe that was something the Judges had done or allowed.

“Reid,” Lauren said.  “It was nice meeting you.  Maybe it sounds weird, but I wish we’d met a long time ago, living under different circumstances.”

“So do I,” he answered.  “It doesn’t sound weird to me.”

She turned to John.  “So?”

“I need to put you down and keep you down?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I can do that with bullets or blades.  The way I understand it, if the spirit says it wants to live and keep fighting, whatever language it speaks, the count resumes.  Bullets or blades would leave too many opportunities.”

Sweat rolled down John’s face.  The red army jacket he wore wasn’t warm or cool, but the rest of him was.  The interior of the building was hot enough it singed the nostrils and it was getting hotter.  Smoke made it impossible to see the far half of the Arena from where he stood.

“Okay, so not bullets or blades.  I won’t fight you, whatever you decide,” she told him.

John looked at the corner of the building, where the tree still burned.

She looked as well, then she exhaled softly.  “Spooky.”

“I know.”

“Support me while we walk over?”

“Don’t want to fall and die, when I’m not in position.  I really did plan on explaining, but-”

“You got shot.  Don’t worry,” John said.

He led her to the edge of the open fire.  The wood had burned enough it had broken into chunks, and each chunk blazed.  Smoke rolled off and made the visibility next to nothing.  Still, the hole in the wall was the biggest opening and the pressure difference seemed to make it suck out the largest volume of it.  Much of the smoke flowed away from them.

Lauren Snyder coughed violently all the same.

“Don’t let it get you,” she said.  She coughed again, eyes shut so she didn’t have to have them open in the smoke.  “I don’t know how long it takes to die of oxygen deprivation-”

“You might be on your way.”

She clutched at his sleeve, trying to speak through coughs, “but if you wait it out, let me take my time dying, that’s less time you have to deal with Manu.”

“I’m not that cruel.”

“Pragmatic,” she told him.

“I’m not that pragmatic,” he said, surveying the surroundings.  Trying not to think-

Trying not to think about Yalda.  About the pragmatic conversations beforehand.

He decided on a plan.  He gripped her arm more firmly.  “I’m sorry it came to this.”

“Believe me, I’m so much more sorry,” she said.  She looked up at him, shielding her eyes with one gaunt hand, and she looked momentarily surprised by his expression.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“You’re very kind.  I didn’t expect that.”

“Messages?  Words?”

“I wish there was any other way.  Any way I could live.  But I decided this the moment I walked through the door.  Finish it.”

He pressed the gun to the bottom of her chin, and angled it before shooting twice in quick succession, to do as much damage to her brain as he could.  Spirit-stuff started boiling out immediately, already as angry as before.

She was shockingly light as he lifted her, heaving her body with a two-handed toss toward the corner of the building.

Striding through flame, flesh burning, he kicked down a section of trunk.  It fell across her.

The spirit emerged, and John hurried to back away, muscles failing, pulling the rifle around, aiming, and firing.

The spirit writhed in fire, and it didn’t have a body around itself.  It retreated.

John shot the moment Lauren Snyder jerked back to life.

Like a bad dream.  Not that he’d ever truly dreamed.  He didn’t sleep.

But he’d watched movies.  He’d played games.  He’d seen them represented.

He gunned down the spirit as it tried to find something in its immediate area to absorb.  He backed away as it boiled out with more tainted spiritstuff, as if it thought it could quench fire.

It wasn’t that strong, or that kind of spirit.  Small mercies.

Lauren Snyder jerked awake, voice ragged.

So it went.

Reliving some grotesque mimicry of the worst moment in his existence over and over again, licked by fire.

She’d been so concerned about the test, about the fact that so many contestants weren’t in this to win.  And as she’d voiced that, he’d dug for that drive to move forward, to protect Kennet.

Which had put him at a disadvantage he wasn’t used to, against the spirit.  The spirit was willing to give its all, not even caring if it died or lost.  John cared enough that it made him hesitate to put his life on the line.  More than normal.

Maybe she had been worried John and the other contestants would back out like the horror had.  If they didn’t care enough, if they were here to serve some general purpose… why would they fight something that could ruin them in a way that went far beyond mere death?

The Judges cast three long shadows over Lauren Snyder, as they stood on either side of John.

He worked, conserving bullets.  One bullet to shoot away a branch the spirit wanted to absorb, another to brain it, as it drew in a chunk of Lauren Snyder to try to form a physical brain in the midst of its spirit body.  Maybe it wanted to think enough to communicate.

“That’ll do,” the Sable Prince said.

John waded out of the fire, flesh seared deep, clothes burning but not burning away.  He walked down concrete, surrounded by thick smoke, eyes unfocused, jaw set.

Behind him, Lauren Snyder was unmade.

Reid Musser adjusted bandages around his face, facing down at the ice while he adjusted ones behind his head.  As he worked on ones around his eye, he used an extended knuckle to wipe at the base of the eye socket.

“Had me worried,” Grandfather said, clapping a hand on John’s shoulder.

“Thought the splinter inside it was propping it up, but it’d still run out of reserves,” John replied, looking back in the direction where Lauren Snyder had been laid to rest.  “It didn’t.  Might’ve been impossible if she’d fought me at all.”

“That sort of finish was more Fubar’s sort of job,” Miles said.

“Heck yeah,” Fubar cut in.

“Fubar wouldn’t have been that kind,” Grandfather said.  “John tried to be merciful about it, seemed like.  That’s harder.”

John nodded once, eyes focusing on nothing in particular as he settled back with his group.  He closed those eyes.

“Really went and grew up on us, huh, John?” Horseman asked.  “I was prepared to tell some of our rookies off if they weren’t listening to you.  If you were more a symbolic leader, whatever.  But you’ve come further than any of us.”

“For better or worse,” John replied.

“That’s the way it goes, isn’t it?” Horseman asked.

When John didn’t reply, Horseman resumed pacing, pausing to exchange remarks with Mark and Elvis.

John rested for a moment with his eyes closed.  When that got too stressful, accumulated stresses and impatience building up, he opened his eyes, checking to see where things stood.

The fire had been put on hold, the flames moving but not consuming.  John hoped that extended to things beyond the fire itself.  The Judges held the splinter between them.  It was terribly thin, and long.  They apparently didn’t want to be disturbed, or they wanted to preserve the spirit of the contest enough that they were putting things on hold.

“What do you do with something like that?” Angel asked, leaning against the boards at the rink’s perimeter.

“Put it-” Reid Musser started.  He stopped, then said, “somewhere deep, somewhere stable.  Far away, where it won’t interact with anything.”

The Sable Prince created a square of darkness in the floor.  All three Judges worked to position the sliver above the door, then dropped it.

“Bully for you then, isn’t it, soldier boy?” Breastbiter asked.  “That’s the sort of job waiting for us if we take the position.  Cleaning up waste, and not in the fun way.”

“Mmm.”

“Your jacket is more red than it was,” Horseman murmured.

John looked at his sleeve.  His jacket had collected some soot and smoke, but it was undeniable that the parts of it that had been protected by creases were a striking red.

“Bully for you indeed,” Horseman added.

“We may continue,” the Alabaster announced.  “Lauren Snyder is unmade, consigned to oblivion, and that is far better than what was waiting for her, after the infection took hold.  Her familiar has been interred in the same manner, and the fragment has been removed.  Thank you for your assistance, John Stiles.”

“We can continue now.”

“Eh?” Breastbiter asked.  “Musser, boy.  You’re the only one who hasn’t fought.”

Reid Musser looked back in the direction of the worst of the fire, where the tree was burning away.

“If you’re going to delay, I can fight Breastbiter in the meantime,” John told Reid.

“You’re injured,” Angel commented.

“How do you follow up on something like that?” Reid asked, looking back in the direction of Lauren.  “What do you say or do?  Everything in comparison seems petty.”

“Except tits and nips,” Breastbiter added.

“Fuck off!  Fuck you!” Reid raised his voice.

“You want to fight?  You want to swear?  Let’s take it out there,” Breastbiter told him.

“Don’t disrespect that kind of death with your stupid- stupid- everything.  She got dealt the worst- the worst hand, she dealt with it the best way.  That matters more than anything I’ve done in my life, everything I’ve done in my life put together.  So don’t fuck around.  Not after that.”

“Reid,” John said.

“Fuck- what?”

“If you want to respect what she did, the way to do it is to fight, win, and make it matter when you’re Judge.  But if you delay, if you waste time, then there’s a much greater chance Charles Abrams comes in and takes the throne.  A man who didn’t even see what happened.”

“The Judges would remember, at least.”

“Judges don’t talk about the contests.  Makes it easier to change things in little ways,” John told Reid.  “And I don’t think they care enough to do much in memory of her.”

“I would do something,” the Alabaster said.  “Planting a flower.  Those I’ve taken under sanctuary tend to the flowers.”

“That’s not enough, a human being deserves more than a flower in a hidden garden,” Reid said.  He looked back at John.  “The way you brought people in.  Could they go and say-?”

“All summons and would-be lieutenants are sworn to secrecy,” John said.

Reid shook his head.

John continued, “Fight, that’s your way.  If you want to fight me, if you keep it clean and fast, I’ll do something for her if I become Judge.  If you don’t want to fight, say it now, so we can move on.”

“I never-” Reid started.  “I never had anything.”

John started walking toward the door that led off of the rink, glancing at Breastbiter.

“Wait,” Reid said.  “Wait.  If the Judges won’t respect her, they won’t care about what I have to say.  Just hear me out, I’ll- I’ll make things faster.  Talk to me?”

“I don’t see how you could make this faster,” John said.

“I swear.  I swear on it.  I’ll… just help me out.  Hear me?”

John paused.  Grandfather met his eyes, looking pretty unhappy.

Yeah.  Reid was not that far a leap from the sort of practitioner that had bound them.

But John stopped, and he faced Reid.

“I feel like everything I ever got in life, it’s- it’s my dad’s.  Even goals.  Dreams.  Even the ideas about the world.”

“What about your cousin?” John asked.

“I didn’t have her.  She was- she is my father’s pawn.  I- I wish she’d done more to fit in with the family, done something to use her assets, to play along.”

“And if she had, wouldn’t she have ended up like you?  Never having had anything?”

“Coming out here, I feel like the connections to the family are cut, and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You’re about to face a life or death fight for the Carmine Throne.  If you win, I guess you’re meant to support your family in a passive way.  If you lose, you disappear and only a few people will hold onto your memory,” John told him.

“Depends what you did for or to them,” Horseman added.

“I was talking to Lauren and I realized I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with a girl or a woman that was just me and her. If my family wasn’t there, or if they weren’t part of the reason I was talking to them, then they were still there in- strategy.”

Reid looked at John, the one unbandaged eye wide and surrounded by ragged, torn eyelid.  Blood and staining crept along the bandages without finding any permanent purchase.  Smoke curled around them.

“Sounds right,” John said.  “You were a soldier.  They called the shots, decided where you’d go, what you’d do.”

“I fooled around with a girl and I called family first, to check it was okay.” Reid spoke the words like he was in a daze.

Breastbiter leaned over, asking, “Was it at least a ‘hey mom, I’m about to pork that girl from the party last week, thought I’d double check and you’d be the person who’d know if she and I are related or not?  Or maybe your dad boned her too and you wanted to check about any disease?”

“It wasn’t either of those,” Reid said, sounding lost.  “I had familiars, implements, I thought- more than the next guy, right?  Better.  But they weren’t really mine.”

“Sometimes that’s the way it goes,” John told him.  “You did your duty, I think you did it for the wrong people, but now you need to make your peace with that.”

“I’m trying to think- was there anything?  Did I do anything that was mine?”

“Move forward, try to win, and do something for a girl you met, that your family didn’t make you meet,” John said.  “Which means fighting.  That’s how you get something that’s yours.”

“But… on the throne, will what I do be mine, or the throne’s?”

“From what I was told about the Carmine Beast, she didn’t feel she had much impact, and she felt she was a slave to the role,” John answered.

Reid’s eye widened, surrounded in the Abyss-touched bandages on one side of his face.  He sounded nothing like he looked as he said, “I’ve got cousins, Raquel, some others, some are little kids, will they feel like this?”

“Probably,” Breastbiter said.

“I don’t want- I don’t want that,” Reid said, turning around to face the Judges.  “Can I have an hour?  A bit of time?  We could postpone all this.”

“No,” John said.  “I don’t think you can.”

“But if I- I could talk to my dad.  I could tell him to stop Charles Abrams.  Maybe if I did, would you agree to just let me go, say a few words to my cousin?”

“There is one exit, Reid Musser,” the Sable Prince told him.  “The throne.”

“But- what if- just if you’d give me the one hour?  I could go, talk to them, then come back, we could wrap up.”

“No,” the Aurum Coil said.

“Fifteen minutes?  They’re just outside.  They’re- I could go and be back before John and Breastbiter are done.”

There was no reply.

“Five?” he asked.

“That would contradict the pledge you made to John Stiles, to buy his listening ear,” the Sable Prince said.  “That you’d hurry these proceedings along.”

“I-” Reid started.  He looked at John.  “When my face was carved up, I didn’t even get my own grieving.  I was sitting there, feeling sorry for myself, and my father- he said crying wouldn’t be becoming of a Musser.  So I did my best.  I made that my focus.  I think- I think the fact I was crying before he said that, it’s why he took me to the Abyss.  To harden me up.”

“I’m sorry,” John told Reid.  “I am.  I’m… also aware that this preoccupation you have with having something of your own right now?  I know you preyed on others.  You took their precious things.  Perhaps there’s justice in what you’re feeling right now.”

“In my- me never having existed at all, for all I’ve mattered?”

“You hurt people,” John told Reid.  “Maybe your cousin will be kind enough to remember you in a good way, but most… they won’t be growing flowers for you, in hidden gardens or real ones.  That’s the stain you’ve left on the world.  Now, the little sympathy I’ve extended you is wearing thin.  You made a promise to make this fast.  I could call you forsworn.”

Reid lifted his head.  He looked at the Judges.  “Would I get to leave if I were forsworn?”

The Aurum Coil shook his head, smiling a little.  “No.”

“Oh,” Reid Musser said.  “Oh.  Alright.”

He looked over at where Lauren Snyder had died.  “I- I wasn’t in love with her.  But the conversation was mine and hers, right?  I would’ve liked to have her for a friend.”

“Reid,” John said.  “I will call you forsworn if you don’t hurry this along.  And as we fight, if you delay, if you hold back, if you hide, if you postpone in any way, I’ll use that.  More important things are happening.  Things that impact your cousin and many other individuals.”

Reid nodded, a small and quick movement.  He turned, heading to the gate.

“Soldier,” Reid said.

John exhaled, small and forceful.

“You should get to shoot him soon,” Horseman murmured.

“Soldier,” Reid called out.  “Can you do me a favor?”

“Haven’t I already?”

“If you survive, if this is my loss?  Can you tell Raquel something?”

“If you don’t hurry this along, I’m inclined to promptly forswear you and mislead her about how you went out.”

“Tell her- I hope she puts in some effort and appeals to someone suitable for the family, someone kind to her, and marries them.  That will elevate her station enough she- she can maybe have something of her own.  I want her to have something of her own.”

“I think she’s more likely to find happiness and find something of her own if she leaves the family entirely,” John called out.

Reid stared across the rink at him, then nodded, as if to himself.

John let the last of his squad through, then slammed the little wooden door to the rink.

“Jesus Christ on cheese crackers,” Fubar muttered.

John sighed.

He and his squad stepped out onto the stands.  They had to sort out guns and things for a moment.

Reid, alone, paged through the little book that had hung from his waist by a chain.  He began tearing out pages, all of which he held.

John and his squad got sorted, then faced Reid, looking past plexiglass and smoke.  Reid was only a silhouette.

Other silhouettes began to rise.  John wasn’t unfamiliar with this sort of thing.  They were the province of some old families.

He could identify them by the way they stood, the shapes of faces, and the colors they wore.  That there was a theme, a commonality.  One that tied them to Reid and Abraham Musser.

Mussers.  Mussers of past generations, crystallized echoes, or a bit of Animus, a bit of history forming its own patterns.  Some held whips, others held muskets.  They’d fought for a long time.  And of course, some were practitioners.  As they rose up out of the ground, some had to move away from the swelling fire at one side of the building.

John triple-checked his rifle was in working order.

Reid Musser called Blackhorne, and surprisingly, Blackhorne answered.  He said something, Blackhorne responded.

I know what he’s probably asking.  But they should be sworn to secrecy about the proceedings, much in the same way as those who came on foot were.

Reid’s movement was violent.  A lashing out, a frustrated, angry movement, as he pulled out a chain.

It was heavy, blacker than even Blackhorne’s dark silhouette, and it broke concrete as it draped out over the steps around Reid’s silhouette.

And chains ripped their way out of ceiling, wall, floor, and other surroundings.  Some came from fire and they came out hot enough that they glowed white in the midst of smoke.  He moved his hand roughly a foot, holding the tail end of chain, and chains all around the arena shifted, sawing, tore, pulled up concrete.

“He’s not coughing,” Angel murmured.  “The heat of the fire doesn’t bother him.”

“It’s the Abyss-hardening,” John said.  “It’s fine.  He hamstrung himself.  He’d be stronger sending his summoned Others forward, but I can have him meet me.”

“Good enough,” Horseman said.

“Support me.  I need to get close enough to shout to him.”

His fellow soldiers fanned out, finding positions where they could deal with various angles.  Elvis slipped away, leaving an annoying gap that Mark had to fill.

John moved, circling around, counter-clockwise, passing through the corner of the arena opposite the fire.

Reid remained where he was.  He turned his wrist at a right angle, and chains moved, forming a barrier in front of him.

John led the way, knowing the risk, knowing he could weather some of these tricks better than the rookies like Mark or Joe.

“Reid Musser!” he shouted.

Reid turned his head, staring at John past the curtain of chains, not moving otherwise, not responding.

“You swore to hurry this.  You pledged that!  Come forward, instead of making me come to you!”

Reid Musser didn’t come forward.

The summoned highlights of the Musser bloodline turned to face John.  Some readied weapons.

“Reid Musser, for the second time, I warn you, you swore an oath, I’m willing to call out to the Judges below us and have them make a decision on that oath, if you make me fight through your summons!”

Reid didn’t move, only staring John down.

“Give the order,” one Musser said.  He was more echo than Animus.  Vague, blurry at the edges, but what wasn’t blurry was sharp and adorned in gold.  “Child, descendant, you have to command us, by the terms of the summoning.”

John slowed.

He looked at Reid Musser, saw the young man’s hands shaking, as he held the book in one hand and a chain in another.

John gave a wide berth to the summoned family members, and circled around the chain curtain.

Reid nodded.

“Grandfather?” John asked.

“What do you need?”

“If I make it, I’ll try to pass a message to Raquel Musser.  Urging her to get away.  I’ll tell her it’s what her cousin wanted.”

“Please,” Reid said.

“I’ll do something about Lauren Snyder as well.  To let people know she made a sacrifice to facilitate the splinter being buried.  She was dropped off, it looked like.  Perhaps I’ll try to find those people who brought her here, to let them know how it went.”

Reid nodded, swallowing.

“If I don’t make it, Grandfather, do you think you could do something appropriate, while holding to the promise made to keep proceedings secret?”

“Why me?”

“You might just be the most compassionate member in our group.”

“We’re a real bunch of assholes, then, huh?” Grandfather asked.

“You know it,” Fubar rejoined, from the background.

“That works,” Reid Musser told John, nodding quickly.

John drew his revolver, rifle held in his other hand, then put a bullet in the young man’s head, then followed up with two quick shots to the body.

Reid Musser’s summons dissipated before he slumped to the side, flopped forward, his face slamming into the concrete stair a few levels below.

The chain slapped against ground, and scarred hands reached out of cracks in the concrete to haul it beneath, reclaiming it.

Leaving only Reid on the stairs.

“I suppose that keeps his oath, speeds this along,” Horseman said.

John sighed.

“No fight in him?” Ribs rasped.

John shook his head.  “Realized what taking the throne meant, I think.”

Breastbiter pushed his way through the door John had slammed only a minute ago, taking up residence on that side of the Arena.  He was followed by his crowd of goblins.

John was glad he’d used the red string early, so the spirit could kill them.  Less soldiers for the goblin.

Leaving John and his squad to stand with fire at their backs.  Black clapped a gloved hand on John’s shoulder, and it helped.  An imperceptible difference that built up, compounded itself.

The Aurum Coil slithered up through the door, up the stands, holding up one finger, signaling a wait.

He picked up Reid Musser’s body and carried him down to the rink.

No contestants waited there.  Only Judges.

Made fire easier to bear, easier to see in, easier to breathe.

“It’s all so fucked up, isn’t it?” Breastbiter raised his voice.  He had a good sense of acoustics.

“Yep,” John answered.

“Not enough fighting in this fight to the death!  What do you say?  You and me, stripped down to our undies, mine’ve got red hearts.  Oil ourselves up, get a good grip on each other’s nipples, twist until one of us caves!”

Goblins cheered.

“I won’t play you at your game, Breastbiter!” John called out.  “I’m not an idiot!”

“Too bad!  Gets you thinking, doesn’t it?” Breastbiter called out.  “Everything on the line, gotta look at everyone who fought, makes you fuckin’ reflect!”

“Yeah!”

“You think they rigged it!?” the goblin asked.  “Shoehorned in the poor face fucker?  Tweaked the universe so the kid would come?”

“No idea!  Might be the sort of thing where you come up with some fancy answers no matter what!”

Fire crackled.  Something collapsed behind John.  He trusted his brothers and sisters to watch his back, in case he needed to get clear of anything that was falling down.

Breastbiter called out, “Life or death situation, throw in a few grisly deaths, noble sacrifices, pathetic kids!?”

“Something like that!” John shouted.

“Got me thinking, you know?  Like watching this shit’s got me more prepared to be a Judge!?”

“Might have to think on that one!” John shouted across the rink and Arena.  His voice echoed in the open space.  “Not sure what lesson Ondvarg was meant to teach me.  Or Faceful.”

“Pain hurts!?  Know what you’re getting into!?”

“Cagerattler set up the test.  Seems to be asking, do we really want this?  The others- Brotherhood?  Sacrifice?  Legacy?”

“What kind of fucking boring life are you leading, John Stiles?  Shit, man, I came into this thinking I’m going to saw off part of that throne, gonna have some chicks with huge ta-tas stand there, massage my head, trade off, handle it in shifts.  Or some heavy dudes with serious moobs, you know?  I’m talking-”

“Gender indiscriminate!” John called out, as Breastbiter said it.

“Yeah!” Breastbiter laughed out the word.  “Shit, man!  Thought I’d get free, set something like that up!  But now, seeing everything I’ve seen tonight?  This is some elevated shit!  If this is to teach me how important the job is, message fuckin’ received!  I’m not talking boring shit like legacy and brotherhood and sacrifice but still!”

“Yeah!”

“So I’m gonna say!  You were saying there was serious stuff coming.  Your forsworn asshole hasn’t arrived.  While we wait for Reid Musser to get dissolved into nothing, I’m going to offer you a deal!”

“He’s dissolved,” the Sable told them.  “You may begin.”

“Let’s hear it first,” John told Breastbiter.

“Concede.  Go out into the black oblivion, call it now.  I think I’d be a pretty good Carmine!  It’s all about fighting and fuckin’, right?  The rush?  The wild stuff?  Name your terms, tell me what you want, you call it quits, contest ends, asshole doesn’t get to play.”

“Be nice to the humans?  No harassment, no killing, lets get that down to a minimum.”

“More fuckin’, less fighting?”

“In that direction, but I’d need something more firm.”

“What else?  Let’s hear it out, figure out what’s negotiable.”

“Kennet.  They’re trying to do something better, something where Others and practitioners, there’s a better relationship.  Wild, older.”

“I like wild!”

“Peaceful.  There’s some pretty cool goblins there, Breastbiter.  A guy with a plan.  Hear ’em out, if they need a Judge?  Help ’em out?”

“That sounds pretty doable.”

“John,” Horseman said, quiet.

“My war buddies?  Treat ’em well?”

“Course.  They look like the sorta guys we want to keep around!”

“John,” Grandfather said.  “It sounds like you’re giving up.”

“No.  Just…” John looked back at the door.  “Keeping options open.  Breastbiter?”

“Yeah!?”

“This goblin queen you’re scared of!”

“Redcap queen!”

“What happens if she comes this way?”

“I back her.  That’s the deal.  She lets me go, lets me try this, I back her.”

“Non-negotiable?”

“Non-negotiable, soldier.”

“That’s non-negotiable for me too, Biter.  She sounds like bad news.”

“You have no idea.  But that’s a problem for five or ten years from now, you know?”

John nodded to himself.

“Non-negotiable?” Breastbiter asked.

“Yeah.”

“Then we fight?”

“Yeah.  I guess we do.”

The goblin raised a hand, pointing.

And the lesser goblins scattered.  Big ones came straight for John’s group.

“Ready,” John murmured.

His old brothers in arms got ready.  All of them sorted, Doe by Horseman, who was front and center, Angel to his left, Grandfather behind him… so it went.  Black and Ribs in the wings, Black preparing, Ribs ready to be all-out aggressive, pouring fire onto this battlefield.

The goblins moved, and they moved fast.  Breastbiter followed, moving more carefully, keeping to cover.  A burly pitbull of a goblin lurking behind, grinning excitedly.

“Biter!” John bellowed.

The goblin made momentary eye contact as he advanced to better cover.  It wasn’t the original cover that had been laid out with this battlefield- much of that had been demolished.  It was cover that now existed because damage had been done, because chains had torn through parts of the ceiling, because rubble had been churned up by hands, because grenades had blown up piles of seating, rearranging them.

“What do you want, soldier boy!?”

“If you’re right, and there’s some profound lesson we’re supposed to take away from each fight, what are we teaching each other?”

“Hate to break it to you, soldier, but I don’t think you’re the smartest knife in the drawer, if you can’t see it!  You’ve got your bullshit morals like legacy, power of love, looking both ways before you cross the street, whatever, and you can’t see what we are!?”

“‘Fraid not, Biter!”

“Something every boy oughta come to terms with before they become a man!  You’re overdue to learn it!”

“Tell me!”

“Your final life lesson’s going to be about what the back half of a goblin’s ballbag smells like!  Universal fuckin’ lesson, soldier!  Right there between the power of friendship and coming to terms with death!”

“Profound!”

Breastbiter laughed.

“Can I defect?” Fubar asked.

“No you may not,” John told him.

Mark picked off one of the smaller goblins.

He had been birthed by War herself, and he had the unique position of being able to relate to both Guilherme’s sort and the goblins like Toadswallow and Bluntmunch.  He’d won their respect and they’d earned his.  Now he kept what he’d learned from the association in mind.

The talk about meaning and definitions came from a pretty Faerie place.  There was always a story being told, everyone had their own tale, and if he was smart about it, then he could catch where Breastbiter’s story was taking him and get out ahead of it.

Goblins had their own techniques.  It wasn’t only chaos, and it was profound in its way, even if it probably didn’t tie to the lessons John and Breastbiter had been openly theorizing about.  Coup and claim.  The act of asserting control by the little moves, the little insults, the individual hits and blows, whether physical blows or blows to pride.

That was what goblins excelled at, in a contest where practice crossed practice or Other crossed Other on a battlefield.

That made this a fight where, on an abstract level between John and Breastbiter, the one who could keep his head up highest won.

So John did something less tactically sound, and stepped away from cover, stood tall, and fired his rifle at Breastbiter’s cover.  He trusted his team to gun down goblins who turned and went straight for him.

Breastbiter still had the one lock of hair.  If he could get past that, he was fairly sure the win was his.  For the time being, if he could keep the goblin down, that counted.

Two bald goblins with bloody handprints on their scalp came tearing out of the smoke, straight for him.  Bullets from the flanks didn’t stop them.  John held his ground.

A claymore set by Black detonated, blasting one of the two goblins dead on.  The other stopped in his tracks.

John jumped the other one.  Twenty feet separated them, but John could run down the stands, throwing himself forward.

The burly goblin caught him around the chest, baring teeth, but was forced to let go of one side of John’s chest to catch the wrist of the hand that held a combat knife.  The lopsided catch and John’s downward momentum meant the goblin half-turned from the impact of the catch.  His back was put to John’s group, and a bullet to the cranium and upper chest ended him.

John cut the goblin’s throat as it fell.

Soaked in the goblin’s blood, the brute falling, the smoke from the claymore mingling with the smoke elsewhere, John faced the greater cohort of goblins.  His soldiers continued to lay down suppressive fire.

Breastbiter laughed.

John had practiced for this in little ways, dealing with goblin pranks, the back and forth of dealing with Bluntmunch, Toadswallow, and even Gashwad.

If he could put Breastbiter down, if he could have a critical moment where he got to stand taller…

It meant Breastbiter’s sway of his own group faltered.  Breastbiter had to do something.

John glanced to one side as the Alabaster stepped off the rink.  Her light shone, clear, through smoke.

As she went to the door.

There it was.  He wasn’t surprised.  Fae had a sense for timing.

And goblins like Breastbiter had a sense for the contests of dominance.

“Hey, soldier!”

“The last contestant arrived, Breastbiter,” John called out.  He grabbed his rifle strap and fired the rifle from the hip at one larger goblin, his other hand still holding the knife.  “He’s stealing your moment.”

A bit of drama, showing off, establishing dominance, denying Breastbiter the same.

“Him?” Breastbiter asked, stepping out of the smoke.  His eyes glowed faintly in the haze of red-tinged smoke.  “A scrawny, forsworn old man.”

Breastbiter had the lock of red hair under his nose, worn as a mustache.  He flexed, muscles popping out from under other muscles, to exaggerate his bulk.

“Would’ve been nice to have him come here, ready to deal with me, now that I’ve mopped up some of the tricky candidates, only to have to deal with you instead.  But the redcap queen stuff… too bad.  Can’t accept that.”

“I think you’re going to have to accept some of it, soldier boy,” Breastbiter told him.  He licked the mustache off his lower lip, catching it on his tongue, then drew it into his mouth, swallowing it.  “Non-optional.”

“Figured.”

“How about, when I’m done with you, I tear his nips off, suck his blood out through the raw holes left behind?”

“When you and I are done, the only thing you’ll be sucking is the back half of your own ballsack.”

Breastbiter chuckled, then grunted.

He hunched over, his back swelling, back muscles expanding and swelling.

A hand reached up against skin, stretching it translucent.  Then others.

Charles Abrams was down here, watching.  Wrapped in fur.

“I’d pay attention,” Breastbiter growled.  “Say ‘mommy’.”

The back-skin split, and human-sized goblins tumbled out, slick with amniotic fluids.  Others swelled into existence at Breastbiter’s back, quickly filling the void.

“Sorry, Breastbiter,” John said.  “This is me and him.  You’re in the way at this point.”

Thin wood paneling that had once bounded some kind of back office had been piled up in one corner, and as the fire weakened it, it collapsed.  The contents cascaded down the stairs, along with a tide of smoke, sparks, and burning bits of furniture.  A filing cabinet practically exploded, casting smoking papers out into the air.  Some caught aflame.

Most of it in Breastbiter’s direction.

Breastbiter was hidden from view.

He chose that moment to lunge.  John stabbed a reaching mitt of a hand through the palm with a combat knife, and was carried off his feet, back through the flaming remnants of the concessions shop, which had spilled down over the stands.  Past his own team.

Making this a one-on-one fight helped discount the advantage Breastbiter had in the long-term.  Goblins could tough out a lot of the common stab wounds and gunshots.  They stayed down when they were killed, but getting that far was its own problem.  John’s soldiers could get back up, but in this tug of war of territory, of claim, of one-upmanship and standing, John knew how easy it would be to lose ground and then have it forever lost.  There would be replacement goblins.  Breastbiter would be birthing a pair every minute or so, at this rate.  The wounded could be dragged off, or goblins would take up residence and keep it, with stink, with spikes, with something.

But goblins respected the one-on-one fight.  Their loyalty was contingent on respect, and if Breastbiter needed their help, then he didn’t have their respect.

A cyclical thing.

Which meant John had to deal with a muscular goblin and whatever goblins had been born of the red hair’s power recently enough that they didn’t care about all that.

He fought with the combat knife.  His shoes skidded on concrete as Breastbiter bent low, smoke rolling around them.  Muscular arms groped out of the large goblin’s back.  One caught Breastbiter around the throat, providing leverage for the naked, hairless brute of a goblin to haul himself out of Breastbiter’s swollen, bulging back.  Another hand caught Breastbiter’s arm, and the goblin heaved himself forward and out, toward John.  John had to pull away to avoid letting the goblin grab his knife hand.

The brute slopped out and forward with a sucking sound, tumbling down two stairs, before he found his senses.

Around him, his team was shooting.  They gunned down goblins who might’ve thought to interfere, and kept this a one-on-one fight.

John managed to slash Breastbiter across the collarbone, in one quick slash, then hurried to deliver a swift kick at the side of the recently birthed goblin’s neck.  It was slick enough it slid down a few steps on its belly.

Doe stabbed it.

Two more goblins were being born out of Breastbiter’s back.

“What’s the profound lesson you’re meant to teach me, soldier?” the goblin asked.

“I think it’s something you’re supposed to figure out, more than something you’re taught, but I can get you started.  This isn’t your power, biter,” John told his foe.  “It’s something borrowed.  It’s her power.”

“You brought a gun to a fistfight.  That’s a bitch move, soldier.”

Breastbiter lunged.  John stabbed the goblin through the wrist, and Breastbiter didn’t seem to care.  The blade dragged a line from the back of the wrist to the elbow, and the goblin caught John at the collar.

John drew his gun and fired it through Breastbiter’s wounded arm, twice, thrice-

He was jerked in close.  Breastbitter smiled, even as groping hands emerging from his own back pulled at his ear and the side of his face, trying to find handholds to get out from his back.

Doe had been grabbed by two, dragged down stairs.  Another naked, fluid-slick goblin was being set on fire by Ribs.  The fact that Breastbiter had plowed through into their midst and was spawning large goblins was making their formation fall apart.  Smaller goblins were getting in closer.

John empted the gun into Breastbiter’s arm, doing enough damage that when he slammed his arm against the inside of Breastbiter’s, bone grated against bone.

But he was still held firm enough that Breastbiter could reach under his shirt, reach up, and grab him by one nipple.  The goblin smiled.

A second smack against the inside of the arm broke the wrist.  Bone grated against bone again, and something fell out of alignment, wrist-bones sliding past one another.  Breastbiter lost his grip on John’s coat.

Only the pinch of flesh between two goblin fingers remained.  Breastbiter pulled John off his feet with enough force that the skin of his chest almost tore.

John could see the goblin’s intent.  A channeling of power- the arms of goblins at Breastbiter’s back overlapped, reached, supported shoulder and arm.

For catapult-like strength.

He intended to hurl John by one nipple, into the thickest mass of goblins who’d been pinned down by gunfire.

John would be torn to shreds.

But John had the gun in hand.  It all came down to where he placed the two remaining bullets.

Coup and claim.  The insults of a well placed blow to ego, body, or both.  The mechanics of taking.

He could get his coup, but Breastbiter would get a pyrrhic victory.

No, instead, John aimed the gun at his distended left nipple and the fingers that gripped it, and fired.

In the doing, he clipped his own flesh and he took two of Breastbiter’s fingers.  He was freed.  He landed on his back just beneath the hunched-over goblin.  Two goblins in the process of being birth slopped down on either side of him.

The second bullet he placed through Breastbiter’s left nipple.

He could have done both, but he would’ve been flung.

Instead, he used the knife to impale the right one, and he held it there.  The newly birthed goblins on either side of him grabbed him.  Breastbiter loomed, almost like he’d fall on top of John.  Fire surrounded them.

Gunfire from multiple directions caught Breastbiter.

Coup and claim.  It was a one-on-one fight, but in the moment he’d gotten Breastbiter in such a signature way, he’d decided the fight in a way that meant none of Breastbiter’s goblins would cry unfair or fly into a rage.  It was still his victory.

He planted a foot on Breastbiter’s stomach, and heaved, kicking Breastbiter back and backward.

Angel brought a machete down on the neck of one of the goblins that was holding John’s side.  She let go of the handle, and John grabbed it, swinging it in a full arc to get the goblin brute to his left across the face.

There was a whole snail-trail of birthed goblin brutes left in the course Breastbiter had charged, and those had to be dealt with, but the fight was more or less over.

John found his feet  He pulled the machete out of the one goblin’s face, turned, and looked down at Breastbiter.

The goblin’s back still bulged, but the goblins there weren’t strong enough to pull themselves free, so it looked more like he had many arms and one leg sticking out of his back.

“You might’ve done better without the lock of hair, this time.”

“Guess that’s the lesson?” the goblin asked.

“Maybe,” John said, frowning, breathing hard.  His chest hurt.

“Hey, soldier boy?” Breastbiter asked.

“Yeah?”

“Your jacket turned green again.”

John was slick with blood and amniotic fluid, to the point it was pretty damn hard to tell.

But sure enough.  His jacket had turned red when he’d laid a claim to the throne.

The Sable Prince approached.  John turned, walking away.  Breastbiter’s hand dropped away.

The haze from smoke was enough that John couldn’t even see Charles.  He focused on his team in the moment.

“Your guy arrived,” Grandfather said.

“Yep.”

“Good showing.”

“Thanks.”

“How bad is it, that he showed up?”

“I don’t know.  But just about everyone seemed to think it was a worst case scenario.  Guess we’ll see?”

He walked down the stairs toward the rink entrance.  Time for a final conversation with Charles?

“John!”

John, his old war buddies gathered in a half circle around him, turned to look at the door.

The Alabaster stood in the hallway.  Charles stood at the rink’s edge, visible only because the smoke wouldn’t extend that far in.

Avery was at the door.

“Take this, use it.  Find a way, before Charles takes the Choir!”

The Choir?

John stepped forward, hands out, as Avery prepared to throw.

He saw the ring on the chain.

And a dark shape swept past.

Just behind her.

The look on her face said it all.  That the ring had been important, somehow.

She stepped away, turning, chasing, and the door swung closed.

“Your jacket is green,” Angel said.

“Breastbiter mentioned,” John said.

“What’s with you and these practitioner kids with agonized looks on their faces, John?” Grandfather asked.

John turned his back to the door.  He approached the rink, and Charles stepped away from the entrance.

“Remember what I said about me shooting Yalda?” John asked.  He rubbed at his chest as it healed from the graze of the gunshot wound and the tearing and bruising of being tugged around.

“I don’t think we could forget,” Grandfather said.

When it came to the group, Grandfather was good enough at sounding disappointed in someone that the rest of the group was willing to let him do the talking, apparently.

“Yeah.  Got too strong, too messy,” John said, as he stepped onto the bloody ice.  He breathed in, and it was good to take a breath where the air was clear of smoke.  “Started hurting the innocents.  Wasn’t what she wanted.  I’ve heard arguments I should’ve taken her far from here, but I don’t think that’s what she wanted either.”

“I hear you.  I don’t like it, but I hear you,” Grandfather said.

“Tonight, seeing what we’ve seen, the look on the face of that guy inside Cagerattler?  Lauren Snyder?  Kid Musser, even?” John asked.  “It’s like they’re rubbing my nose in it.  Or maybe it’s an illustration, bit of a hint for the rest of you.  What it took, what it cost, what it felt like.”

Grandfather didn’t have a reply anymore.  He only nodded.

“I put that girl to rest, despite what you’d asked of me.  Despite what I wanted of myself.  Despite a lot of things.  And this man?  Charles Abrams, who I protected, who I helped, who I was never anything but civil to?”

Charles Abrams didn’t flinch as John met his eyes.

“Dug her up, used her for power, and brewed a killing ritual that ended a few hundred lives.  With her at the center.  The Choir.”

The soldiers all turned to look at Charles.  There was enough hostility that the skin of John’s back and arms prickled from it.

“A Choir?” Angel asked.  “Songbird liked to sing.”

“Yeah.  You connected those dots faster than I did.  Because I didn’t think the people I counted among my friends were capable of something that ugly.”

“It wasn’t the intent,” Charles said.

“You used her!” John raised his voice.  “You might’ve wanted a different result, but you still dredged her up!  You still used her for your own selfish ends!”

“I was a man on the edge.  The way it got twisted, that was happening to every part of my life.  Again, it wasn’t the intent, I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“It was the result, wasn’t it?  And according to Avery Kelly, ten years after, you’re happy to take that result and use it?” John asked, his voice hard.

“Not happy,” Charles answered.

“When I talked to Edith about this?  When the girls revealed what was happening?  I was heartbroken, I’ll admit that.”

“Yeah, th-”

“Shut up,” John cut Charles off.  “Don’t you dare talk.  Because you?  Doing this?  You want to use her against me?  I’m past heartbreak.  I’m pissed.”

“Again, not happy, and I don’t want to, but-”

“Shut the fuck up, oathbreaker,” John hissed, stepping in closer.

The Aurum Coil flowed between them.  John was forced to step back as the centipede’s body slid between himself and Charles, the sharp-tipped limbs carving a groove into the ice.

“I gave you mercy.  I was decent to you.  That forswearing?  Sure sounded like bullshit.  But we took you into our collective home, our sanctuary, and you repay us with this?”

Charles remained silent.

“You have no right,” John told him.  “No shame.  You might not have deserved that forswearing, but you’ve gone out of your way to be a miserable enough fucker that yeah, you deserved everything you got and worse.”

“Breastbiter has been disposed of,” the Sable Prince declared.  “The goblins have been returned to the Warrens.”

Fire burned around them.  The rink, though, was faintly cold.

Charles reached beneath the furs he wore wrapped around himself like a blanket, and pulled out a gray-black doll.  Cloth and twine.

John could hear the singing now, faint.

The first waifs appeared at one side of the stands.

Charles’ hair and beard were taking on a deeper red coloring.  His eyes too.  The furs were blood-slick.

“The final round,” the Alabaster declared.  “Would each group go to their side?”

“I’m not done with him,” John growled.

“Whatever you have to say or do, it can be taken out there,” the Aurum Coil told him.

John shook his head.

When he turned, he could see his brothers and sisters in arms.

He could see their anger.

“What are we in for?” Angel asked.

“Those children?  They’re like us.  They get back up after they’re knocked down.  Faster than we do.”

“Weaker, aren’t they?” Horseman asked.

“Some.  They bite.  And there’s a lot of them.”

There were thirty now.

But with each passing second, more were standing up, or fading into existence.

Forty-five.

John walked to the doorway, and stepped off the rink, into the stands.  The fire burned.

If there was a series of lessons to be painted in the series of fights, maybe it was something that prepared him and elevated him to the point he was ready to take the mantle of Judge.  Whatever the Ondvarg had been intended to impart – what had the Ondvarg wanted?  Survival?  Faceful had been innocent.  Something to test if he was ready.  Something that raised the question of brotherhood and if he was willing to bring people he loved to a losing fight.  Lauren had been about the noble sacrifice.  Reid had raised the idea of legacy, of family.  Breastbiter had been… violence?

Different aspects of John, of being a Dog of War, brought to a place where a light could be shone on it.

But there were other lessons to be learned here.

John turned around.

There were easily a hundred and fifty waifs on the other side of the Arena.

“I don’t think we have enough bullets,” Joe said, quiet.

“We have knives and righteous fucking fury,” Grandfather growled.

John nodded.

There was another interpretation, and it took each of the encounters thus far and confronted John with hard truths.

Ondvarg had hurt those closest to it, devouring them for a fight it couldn’t win.  Faceful had been hurt and destroyed out of the naivety that had brought him here.  The Witch Hunters outclassed, brought here by anger and hate and destroyed for it, despite their solidarity.  Those who died in noble sacrifice were dead at the end of the day.  Duty could be a bitter thing.  Violence brought those who perpetrated it low.

Two hundred and fifty waifs now.  The singing filled the Arena.  Witnesses gathered.

John Stiles felt less like a soldier and more like a man than he ever had.

And Charles wore the red that had disappeared from John’s coat.  Marking him as closest to the Carmine throne.  Just because he wore the furs.

“Charles!” he called out.  Smoke swirled around him.

Charles’ voice was faint.  “What?”

“You haven’t earned this!”

Charles was silent.

“You haven’t fought your way through this contest!  You haven’t learned the lessons or witnessed what others went through!  You haven’t grown as a man!”

Burning wood popped.  Three of the four walls had fire licking them.

“You haven’t earned the red you’re wearing by any real sacrifice on your part!”

Charles adjusted his grip on the furs he wore loosely around him.

“You don’t deserve your fucking righteous anger, when you’ve done so much worse than people you hate!  You’re a traitor at heart, a worm of a man who turned on friends and allies, you bit the hand that showed you hospitality!”

“Maybe!” Charles answered.  He coughed.

“You don’t deserve this!”

Charles looked down at the doll.  He flicked it in a direction, and roughly half of the three hundred waifs started to storm their way around one end of the stands, circling the rink.

“Shit,” Horseman whispered.

Another flick sent the rest around.

“That’s been my fucking point all along!” Charles called out, voice hoarse from the smoke, shouting, and ill-health.  He lowered his voice, but John still caught the words.  “It’s a broken, unfair system.”

John’s soldiers started shooting.  Fubar met the first wave of children with a knife in one hand and a machete in the other.  He cut four down before the rest pulled him off his feet.

“And I’ll exploit that fucked up system,” Charles roared, to be heard of the singing and gunfire.  “If it means I can gut it!”

The first waif got past John’s group, and he caught it by the shoulder, hurling the small boy down the stands.

Then the second, third, fourth, and fifth ones reached him.

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter