Toru had seen it as well. They exchanged a glance. “Fortune smiles upon us.”
“Let’s end this fucker.”
They went through the door. Sullivan put the sights on the Chairman and opened fire. Bullets stitched him through the torso in bright red splashes. Toru was right behind, and he fired his Power, leaping over Sullivan, screaming his battle cry.
“TOKUGAWA!”
There were Iron Guard all around. They reacted immediately and Sullivan was hit with more bullets than he could count and more forms of magic than he knew what to do with. The BAR was torn from his grasp, but without pause Sullivan drew his pistol and kept shooting as he pushed forward.
The Chairman didn’t so much as flinch as the bullets tore through him, he simply turned, his lips curling up in a snarl as he prepared to Travel out of Toru’s way.
Sullivan hit him with every bit of gravity he could muster. Every ounce of magic he could wring from his body, his spells, or drag from the Power itself was thrown into that burst. Any lesser being would have been flattened like a tin can being stamped by a heavy boot. The excess magic which bled off instantly killed three other Iron Guard.
But the Pathfinder had made Saito’s new body incredibly tough. Fifty extra earths’ worth of gravity hit flesh, but Saito didn’t die, even as a circle of cracks spread around his feet and marble was churned to dust. He tried to Travel away, but even somebody with that much magic couldn’t teleport weight equivalent to a fully loaded freight train.
Sullivan bellowed as the magic threatened to rip him apart, but he was not letting that bastard get away. Even with the new spell on his back, there was only so much one body could channel. The new spell began to smoke and his flesh sizzled like bacon hitting a hot pan.
The Chairman raised his hands as if he was pushing back against the gravity. Sullivan felt the magic recoil back against him. He roared.
Toru was struck in mid-air by another Brute, and the two crashed at the Chairman’s feet. Toru rolled over, slamming the other Iron Guard in the face with his fist. Blood flew. A powerful Mover blasted Toru away. He hit a pillar hard enough to shatter it and came right back up. An Iron Guard got in the way of Toru’s tetsubo and died, and then another, blood flew as a ninja appeared and drove his sword through a gaping hole in Toru’s armor.
Dosan Saito’s eyes narrowed as he pushed back against the gravity. They both knew, one second after that pull let up, he would escape, and the harvest would continue.
You ain’t getting away. Sullivan concentrated. He had nothing left to give. He couldn’t push any harder. Keeping this up was taking inhuman focus. An Iron Guard slammed a rifle butt over Sullivan’s head and the wood stock shattered. Another came from behind and hamstrung him with a sword. Sullivan went to his knees in a shower of blood.
Constant as gravity… Fuck you, Jake Sullivan don’t quit that easy.
Toru flung off the other Iron Guards and swung right over Sullivan’s head, and the ninja who’d nearly cut Sullivan’s leg off was torn in half.
Something changed. The light seemed to brighten. Beams showed between the floating dust and blood and gunsmoke, cutting as clean as the sword which had just pierced his flesh. It was like the light was coming from heaven, and it brought truth with it as the Traveler aimed Fuller’s ray beam at the city.
There was a horrific thing bonded to the fake Chairman. It could be seen clear as day, hanging there. It screeched as the light scorched through it. That was the real Pathfinder, and it knew that it was done for.
The Iron Guards stopped struggling. They cried out in shocked disbelief as they saw the reality of what they’d been fighting and dying for. There were other monsters there too, pretending to be Iron Guards, and they were revealed for what they really were. They were just sponges, collecting up the magical energy as the real Iron Guards died around them.
Exposed, the monsters fell on the Iron Guards, ripping them apart with terrible savagery. Every inch of the vast marble room was quickly covered in blood.
But the Iron Guards were no longer trying to kill Toru. The unstoppable force came off the floor, the tetsubo was rising. Sullivan saw it coming. Dosan Saito and the Pathfinder didn’t.
“TOKUGAWA!”
Sullivan cut his Power and collapsed.
Toru smashed the club down onto Saito’s shoulder. Half the bones in Saito’s body exploded. He struck again. Defined by the light, the Pathfinder was vulnerable. The Pathfinder shrieked as it was compressed into pulp. Tentacles ripped from Saito’s eyes and ears in bright sprays of red. Toru smashed the legs out from under Saito and he hit the floor, totally pulverized.
The Pathfinder was crawling away, leaving a trail of black ooze. Sullivan dragged himself forward, leaving a trail of red blood. He reached the monster and lifted one steel arm. It screeched in frustration. Sullivan channeled everything he had left into a single pinpoint of terrible gravity and brought his fist down like the finger of God and he smashed it through the Earth.
The center of the Pathfinder collapsed. The outer edges of the creature blew up like a balloon before it burst beneath the terrible pressure.
The Pathfinder was dead.
Sullivan lay there, bleeding. The spell on his back had been burned out, forever extinguished, pushed too far. His body wasn’t far behind. Toru took a few halting steps, and then fell, blood drizzling down his arms from several deep wounds.
Saito was still breathing, barely. Blood was coming out of his mouth with every breath. Toru had utterly destroyed the man, and Sullivan had destroyed the Pathfinder.
The Iron Guard were occupied battling the monsters. It was as if the three dying men were alone.
“That was for my father,” Toru spat. “I reclaim my honor, traitor.”
Saito went first. He rattled out one last gurgling breath, and was gone.
But the Pathfinder had been a spiteful beast, and it had prepared one final spell of revenge. A glowing line appeared in the air over the splattered creature, and it quickly drew itself into an elaborate kanji floating in the air. Sullivan could not read it, but he could feel chaotic energy building.
“Boomer,” Toru said with tired resignation.
Sullivan opened his hand and examined the bloody paper duck.
A few seconds later the mansion exploded.
Chapter 23
Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.