There were whisperings in Teddy’s head, new voices that he’d never before heard in the chorus. “Four of them,” Teddy said. “Billy Ray, someone called Battle, Cameo. There’s someone else there, a woman. I hear Carnifex thinking about her but I can’t hear her…”
“Just one big happy family, huh?”
“They’re not happy,” Teddy said. “They don’t even like each other much. And they’re here to kill me.”
Teddy got to his feet with the staff’s help. The caverns were cool; that helped too. He could feel the tenuous connection to Bloat up in the castle, which meant that the drowning dream had been just that — another dream, a nightmare.
Something scuttled past the crossing: it looked like a dog with a baboon’s face, and it was nothing that Teddy remembered putting here. The creature gave a barking hyena-like laugh and fled. “This place is getting very strange,” the penguin commented. “Or stranger than usual, I guess. Just what is it you’re planning to do, Great White Bloat?”
“I don’t know.” That was only the truth. “See if I can convince them to go back, I guess. Or take care of them myself. Whatever I have to do.”
“Excellent,” the penguin said, skating backward around him. “It’s always good to go into these things with a definite plan. of action. All the bases covered, all those nasty little contingencies plotted out”
“Shut up.”
The penguin went silent. The obedience almost startled him out of the Outcast.
He could hear them audibly now, moving down the side corridor toward the intersection. Teddy rapped his staff against the stones: the amethyst glowed once and he willed his body to go transparent. This was nothing he’d ever done before — he wasn’t sure that it would work.
It did, with mixed results. He found that the world went slowly dark as his eyes faded. Teddy cursed — or tried to — no sounds emerged from the nonexistent mouth. He brought his eyes back into corporeality and could see again. The penguin was talking but he could hear nothing, nor could he speak when he tried to speak. Teddy sighed and brought back his entire head.
“…coming toward us,” the penguin whispered.
“Come on out,” Teddy said loudly. He tried to walk — that didn’t work either. He materialized the Outcast entirely and moved toward the intersection. “This is Governor Bloat,” he called. “I can hear you. I know your names: Billy Ray, Battle, — you want me to go on?” Teddy thought about mermen; a half dozen of them, mounted on gigantic hovering fishes. They materialized in the middle of the intersection, their lances at ready. He put another half dozen of the fantasy warriors down the corridor directly in back of the startled group. They didn’t quite look as solid as usual. Teddy frowned and decided he couldn’t worry about that now.
You aren’t Bloat, a voice thought defiantly from somewhere in the blackness of the corridor.
“I am. Did you think that I’d stay in that body if I had a choice?”
I hate this fucking place hate it…
Battle you asshole listen to him...
“My guardians in the caverns have asked you to go back,” Teddy said to the unseen intruders. “I really don’t want to kill anyone if I don’t have to. But if you insist on going on. I don’t have any choice anymore. I’ll send the Hunt.”
Teddy heard the confusion his words sowed in the group; Billy Ray’s thoughts were especially torn. Only the man’s intense loyalty toward authority figures held him. Battle was adamant, though, and his mindvoice was that of a fanatic.
Attrite the lousy bastards just get rid of them all…
Teddy could almost see them, vague shapes huddled against the rock wall twenty-five yards or so away. They’d doused the torches in the corridor; Teddy let his staff fade back into existence and trickled power through it, imaging the torches lit and guttering — they ignited with an audible whuff. “Fuck,” Billy Ray said, trying to press back against the cavern wall as the guttering light revealed them. Battle was more belligerent; he brought up his semiautomatic and sprayed Teddy’s end of the corridor.
Teddy had known that Battle was going to fire, of course. He brought power to his staff and thickened the air in front of him. Slugs whined past him and tore gory holes in the mermen and their mounts, but the bullets that would have done the same to Teddy hit gellid resistance. They slowed massively and quickly, falling like stricken bumblebees to the earth.
“I hate this goddamn place,” Battle said.
“Then leave it,” Teddy said. The crystal atop his staff blazed as he restored the mermen Battle had destroyed and bid them forward. They glided down the corridor in a wash of fishy odor and bristling spears. The intruders backed cautiously, then stopped because of the mermen behind. “Oops,” Teddy said. “Sorry,” and dismissed them. He herded Battle’s group with the advancing mermen: one step back, another.
“The fish-folk are looking kinda poorly, if I do say so,” the penguin commented at his side.
It was true; they were translucent. Teddy could see the cavern walls through them. Battle had noticed it also. He stopped, glaring at the nearest merman and spreading his chest like a baboon in heat. He flinched as the lance’s tip touched him, gritting his teeth — c’mon you bastard nightmare do your worst — and then actually smiled as the lance penetrated and came out the other side. As Teddy gaped, the merman continued its advance, walking right through Battle.
“Shit,” Battle said. “They’re just ghosts.” There was an ugly metallic ratcheting as he brought up his weapon again. Behind him, the others had followed suit.
Teddy slammed the end of the staff against the earth, pulling at the dregs of power in Bloat. There was less than he expected. The mermen dissolved into nothingness as he brought the power to bear on the intruders. “Go back!” he husked out through clenched jaws. “I order it! Drop your weapons!”
He held them in the bonds of his mind, but that was all. Their wills struggled against his. Cameo turned first, then Danny. Sweat was breaking out on the Outcast’s forehead, dripping into his eyes. Teddy blinked, shaking his head and concentrating, letting the power run from dreamtime to Bloat to him.
Battle took a step backward, the muzzle of his weapon dropping. For a second Teddy thought he’d won. He ached. The Outcast’s body was shaking as if from tremendous physical effort, but they had all turned now except Billy Ray. Teddy pushed at him, grunting.
Like any such exertion, Teddy could only push for so long. Everything gave way suddenly. In that moment he lost his connection with Bloat and his hold on Ray and the others. Gasping, Teddy knew he was going to die, knew it even as Ray’s finger curled around the trigger.
The penguin leapt between them as the weapon chattered death. Downy feathers exploded like a bursting pillow. The bird’s carcass slammed into Teddy and nearly knocked him over. Billy Ray was staring, as startled by the suicidal move as Teddy was. For a moment the tableau held as Teddy knelt down to the penguin.
“This is twice now,” the penguin gasped. Blood was drooling from the corners of its beak, the black-and-white fur was spotted with red, the skates torn from its flippers by the violence of the slugs, the abdomen a ragged moist cavity. “Fat boy, how many more times will someone have to do this before you get the idea?” It giggled, a sound very much like Bloat, and then gurgled wetly in its throat.
It died.
Teddy stared at the penguin, aghast. He couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything. The hold he had on the intruders fell apart. He heard Battle’s order before the man spoke.