This world wasn’t so different from the Abyss?
Yeah, sure, I’d mused something similar before. But no way was I falling into that trap.
On a lot of levels, I wasn’t falling into that trap.
The amount of shit people could pull because others bought into the idea that it was just so. Mystically and in real life.
No.
It wasn’t just so.
I wasn’t going to fall into that trap. I hadn’t, when Carl had tried to make me buy his worldview, trapping me in his way of thinking.
“Bullshit,” I said, “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”
“Things wouldn’t get lost in the dark corners so easily if it wasn’t close,” he said.
“There’s proper love here, and beauty without it being a trick. There’s harmony, and I’m not talking about Balance.”
“There are traps everywhere, and harmony is an illusion,” he said, with quiet confidence.
He believed it.
Shit on me, he truly believed that this world and the Abyss were close.
Fuck me, that took pessimism to a whole new level. To only see ugliness everywhere, to see danger?
“How do you know so little, for someone who studies the Abyss?” I asked.
“I can hardly claim to be of the Abyss, like you can, but I think you’d be surprised at just how much I know,” he said.
He raised one hand to tip his hat.
The surroundings skewed, just a little. As if everything was slightly ajar.
I could see things between the cracks. A dry, dusty, place, not so different from here. The buildings on the other side were all askew, more abstract than real. The place was bright, but it was the kind of bright that killed. That made paint peel and skin burn and plant life die. The kind of bright that bowed and broke, that left people swaddled in rags and hunched over, crawling. A radiation sun.
Was his hat his implement? Joyce had mentioned his demesne. Maybe the hat was his ticket to the abyss.
This guy was no small potatoes.
“You know stuff, huh?” I asked. “About the Abyss?”
“And this world.”
“Yeah? Do you know why your family asked me to kill you?” I asked. “Because they did.”
I saw his eyes widen a fraction.
His head turned, toward the Duchamps that were throwing out paper charms to bind the larger Other.
At his wife.
I wasn’t free to rise and go after him. In large part, I was still impaled.
But I had freed one hand.
I cast my hand out. Flinging the small body I held in one hand.
Flinging Evan.
Evan flew past him.
A push.
Crooked Hat took a step or two back, and bumped into one of the Duchamp’s husbands behind him.
“Free it!” I shouted.
Heads turned.
Focused on me, rather than Evan.
Evan flew past the Other. Its arms rattled against the wooden manacles, while papers flew free.
Escape.
There were exceptional people in this world, people who found their niche, something they were good at, who put their all into it. Some became great scientists, others became artists, or architects.
Crooked Hat had become a great cynic, it seemed, and if he was the type to carry the Abyss around with him, very literally, then did he take it home with him? Did he subject his daughters to it? Did they live in the Abyss?
Maybe someone in the chatroom had thought so, and thought they needed a way out.
Evan, I suspected, was another great sort of person. In the moment I saw him fly free of the reach of others, papers trailing in his wake, I wished I could have seen what he might have grown up to be. He’d survived the Hyena, only to get claimed by the elements. He’d found talents in that, in sheer tenacity, and resourcefulness. He’d been good enough at escaping that spirits had found a connection to him.
What could he have been, if he’d been allowed to grow up?
“Again!” I said, seeing more papers going out. The thing had broken one hand free of the railing, and swiped at the practitioners, only to get tagged by one swift Duchamp woman.
He flew by again, stripping the papers away.
The Other gripped the railing and tore it loose from its moorings. It pressed in, shoving the practitioners toward the building.
The railing flew out of its grip, slapping the ice and snow, and the Other lost its footing.
Twice freed. Each time would likely be harder than the last.
I realized it, and my ability to realize it was one of my few advantages in all this. I straddled both worlds.
The Duchamp-side Practitioners, however, realized it too. The practitioners who weren’t dealing with the now-free Other were focusing on Evan. Avoiding the third attempt.
He could slip away. It was what he did. But as a general rule, he couldn’t slip away three times in short order.
With a crowd focused on him, he was vulnerable.
If I hadn’t been thinking about his better points just a moment ago, I might not have considered our next step from the same angle. Maybe I would have fought, and trusted him to handle himself, or called him to me, so I could protect him and take the brunt of it all.
But this…
“Go, bird, save the Duchamps!” I called out, pointing at the Duchamps. I tore my upper body free of the trap of wooden spikes.
My words made for hesitation. Practitioners heard my words and didn’t attack Evan.
But Evan listened, no question.
As the Other found its bearings and pressed forward, Evan swept by. Getting the Duchamps on course. Helping them slip away.
But it was another nudge against Crooked Hat. He had to catch the railing to steady himself.
But Evan had driven him back, and he hadn’t been that far from the Other before.
I tore my lower body free as I pulled myself to my feet, and kicked Crooked Hat squarely in the side.
The Other caught his head in one hand, enclosing it.
It squeezed.
Both the head and the namesake hat were utterly crushed.
The Other smiled its too-toothy smile, raising Crooked Hat until his feet didn’t touch the ground, then shaking him, so his limp legs wobbled.
While it was distracted, I ran past.
We’d made a break of sorts in the Duchamp defensive line.
I drew the cleaver as I saw the Valkalla that the enchantress had shown me earlier. The bait. Gudbrand.
But still another target.
I flung it.
Almost automatically, without the man even looking, his shortsword came up, and knocked the cleaver aside.
The thrown weapon broke in two with the impact.
Fuck.
He’d infused his weapons and gear. Beneath a heavy leather winter coat with a fur ruff at the collar, he wore a breastplate. He had a gun strapped to one thigh, another gun in hand, and a shortsword in the other hand. His beard and hair were thick, his eyes dark beneath a furrowed brow.
The babykiller.
His eyes were on me, now, as people behind him backed up.
I saw green eyes flash just behind him.
“No!” I called out.
“Yes!” he said.
Why didn’t she listen?
Green Eyes lunged.
His sword came around. Automatic. Always parrying any incoming strike.
Green Eyes saw, and her tail moved, heading down, touching the railing. She managed to knock herself off course, hooking the railing, wounding her tail, and throwing herself down.
But distractions were distractions. Enough for me to close three or four feet, and build up speed.