A hundred thousand diseases issued from the old god, every fever and blight and growth that had ever vexed mankind, and none of them could touch Dead Boy. Diseases were for the living. Thwarted, the magic recoiled and turned back upon its sender. Lord Pestilence screamed and howled horribly as the diseases took hold in him, all at once, eating him alive. Cursed to know at last all the pain and horror he’d spent lifetimes imposing on others. His leathery skin cracked and bubbled, and finally ran away like watery mud. He fell apart, bit by bit, crying out like an animal now as the diseases turned his insides to soup, and his bones cracked apart into shards and splinters, and finally dust. In the end, there was nothing left of that old god Lord Pestilence but a grinning misshapen skull. Dead Boy stamped it into pieces, just to be sure.
“It’s not easy being dead,” he said solemnly. “But sometimes it does have its advantages.”
I moved to another mirror, and ordered it to show me Larry Oblivion. The dead detective, the post-mortem private eye. I’d heard a lot about him, most of it uncanny or unsettling, but I’d never met him in my own time. Only in the future, as one of my Enemies. And now there he was in the mirror before me, and looking very different. He looked… so much more alive. He strode purposefully down a smoke-streaked street, looking fine and sharp and so stylish with his Gucci suit, his manicured hands and his razor-cut hair. He had the look of a man who always travelled first class, and didn’t have a care in the world. Except for being some kind of zombie. I never did get the full story about that.
A crowd of minor godlings with animal heads and inhuman appetites broke off from raping and feasting on the running people, and spread out to block his path. Blood dripped thickly from their clawed hands and furry mouths. And Larry Oblivion disappeared. Vanished into thin air, gone in the blink of an eye. I didn’t know he could do that. Neither did the godlings, apparently, as they heaved themselves about, this way and that, stamping their hoofed feet on the ground. They weren’t used to being cheated of their prey.
Blood flew abruptly on the air, gushing from a severed throat, and one of the godlings crashed to the ground, kicking spasmodically as its life-blood flowed away. More and more of the godlings cried out as they were attacked by something none of them could see, striking impossibly quickly, killing them with contemptuous ease. One by one they fell, old gods brought down by a more recent power. The dead detective, Larry Oblivion.
At first I thought he must be using some kind of invisibility, but the mirror said otherwise. It would have been able to see through that. So I got the mirror to slow the image right down, and sure enough there was Larry Oblivion, moving too quickly for the eye to follow. He was here, there, and everywhere, come and gone in a moment, appearing out of nowhere to strike down an unsuspecting godling with a shimmering silver blade and already disappearing before his victim hit the ground. He flickered on and off, only present for such small fractions of time that even the mirror had trouble keeping up with him. I’m getting such a headache, it complained, but I drove it ruthlessly on. I needed to know what was happening.
In the end all the godlings were dead, and Larry Oblivion appeared out of nowhere next to the bodies, looking as immaculate and stylish as ever, with not one hair out of place. He’d moved so quickly there wasn’t even a single drop of blood on his Gucci suit. But he was holding a Faerie wand. I smiled, satisfied. A lot of things about the mysterious Larry Oblivion and his impossible exploits made sense now. He’d been using the wand to bring Time to a halt, while he kept moving. Very useful little toy, that. Of course no-one ever suspected, because wands were so passé, these days. Everyone had just assumed he had a gift like mine, or his brother Tommy’s.
And then Larry looked up sharply from adjusting his silk tie, as something far worse than a pack of minor godlings came crashing down the street towards him with murder on its mind. It was thirty feet tall if it was an inch, a giant mechanical apparatus stamping down the street on giant multijointed steel legs. It was all bits and pieces pressed into use and held together by unknown forces, all kinds of metal revolving around glowing sources of power. Everything about it shouted brute force. It was roughly humanoid, with mismatched arms and legs and a bulging brass head with two huge eyes that glowed red as hellfire. It had a long jagged slit for a mouth, its rising and falling edges sharper than any teeth.
It swung down the street with long ungainly steps, swaying from side to side, stamping the living and the dead to pulp under its heavy steel feet. Its long arms ended in fists as big as wrecking balls, and it struck out casually at every building it passed, smashing through stone and brick with equal ease. The ground shook with its every step. I had no idea what it was, god or construct or some mechanical ideal run by an animating spirit. The Spirit of Crap Robots Past, perhaps.
Certainly Larry Oblivion didn’t look at all impressed by the huge clunky thing as it tramped and crashed its way down the street towards him. Everyone else hurried to get out of its path, at least partly because it didn’t look too steady on its flat steel feet, but Larry just shot his immaculate white cuffs, brushed an invisible fleck of dust from one shoulder, and stood his ground. He waited until the huge construct was practically on top of him, then he gestured almost negligently with his wand, and disappeared. The massive contraption reared back, roaring like a deep bass steam whistle, swivelling its great brass head back and forth in search of its elusive prey.
A blur of motion surrounded the metal thing, swift glimpses of something appearing and disappearing too fast to be tracked, then bits of the construct began flying off in all directions. It took Larry Oblivion less than five minutes to dismantle the metal construct and reduce it to its component parts. Larry reappeared next to the detached brass head and kicked it down the street like an oversized football. I’m pretty sure people would have cheered, if there’d been anybody left to witness it.
Larry checked his suit carefully for signs of stress, then continued down the street.
The next mirror showed me King of Skin, slouching down a wide thoroughfare in all his sleazy glory, looking proud and potent and confident. His eyes were bright with a terrible aspect as he sallied forth, undoing probabilities and spreading nightmares through the power of his awful glamour. Even through the distance of the mirror, I still couldn’t stand to look at King of Skin directly. These were his glory days, and he was still a Power to be reckoned with. Even following his progress out of the corner of my eye was almost too much to bear. Look at him for too long and I started to see… unbearable things. When King of Skin walked abroad, wrapped in his glamour, everyone saw what they feared most, and his power reworked probability to make those nightmares real, and solid. No man can stand to face his own nightmares, made flesh and blood. Hideous things manifested around King of Skin as he slouched along, the dreadful King with his dreadful Court.
He went where he would in the besieged city, surrounded by awful shapes, rich with terrible significance for those who saw them, like the monsters we see in the dark bedrooms of our childhood. They reared and roared and swaggered in the night, attacking everything within reach, broken free at last from the restraints of unreality. King of Skin went where he pleased, and all the Powers and Forces and Beings of Lilith’s court ran screaming from him. King of Skin smiled and sniggered and continued on his way.
Until someone dropped a building on him, from a safe distance. He disappeared under a mountain of rubble, and although I watched the mirror for a long time, I didn’t see him again.