The god’s fist struck with a crack, but it didn’t hit Hawk. And that crack came with more than just Kali’Mar’s fist. It came with a rush of wind carrying the scent of lilacs and jasmine. Hawk’s eyes were open as she faced down her death, and she saw the remaining dewdrops tremble, the pale leaves of the surrounding trees rustling in defiance of the fire and smoke now billowing around them. And the Shadowmaster stood there, his face (Alex’s face) grim and determined, and his hand wrapped tight about Kali’Mar’s aborted blow.
“Hello,” the Shadow whispered, and then bashed his head into Kali’Mar’s.
Gulping for air, for tears, for life, Hawk crawled until her back was against the milk crystal walls. In them, she felt heat and a throbbing of power. For what, or to what, she had no idea. She looked back to the fight, her heart in her throat, and watched the two beings before her fight.
They seemed matched, blow for blow. Kali’Mar struck with lightning, again and again, Jovian blasts that lashed the ground, the trees, the milk-crystal walls, bringing more and more detritus down to the ground. Only the crystal was unblemished, absorbing each strike with unflinching perfection. The winds whipped around them both, Kali’Mar’s hot and stinking breath combatting with the Shadow’s clearer, cleaner air. She caught the flavors of this metaphysical war on the edge of each breath. Now it came to sear her lungs. Now it ebbed to something cooler, sweeter, but just the lightest breath before it was back to the heat, the stink of burned flesh, the taste of ash on wind.
Now there was no space for words. Hawk was an unknown quality to Kali’Mar, but the Shadow…he knew the Shadow. This fight came with the glory of long practiced grudges, fists meeting each other in air. The Shadow got the occasional blow in, bringing heat and blood to Kali’mar’s lips. But he also absorbed more than his fair share of Kali’Mar’s power. It slammed through his be-shadowed body with electric pulse. It did not seem to impact him beyond a few scratches, but after one particularly devastating blow the whole of his substance suddenly seemed more translucent, less present than it ought to be.
And she’d seen that biological behavior before. With the Ape Archetype in the Bronx Zoo, when her Orb was hit by a bullet and her body dissolved around her. These things could be killed, but she realized that might only apply to Alex, and the Shadow was Alex, was the only being guaranteed to have an orb—guaranteed to be killable, according to Hawk’s plan.
Maybe Kali’Mar could not be killed.
The only way to test it was to move, to act, to take the sword up again and…the sword. She needed it, the milk-crystal blade made from the same substance as these walls, and it was across the whole battle from her, closer to Kaiser than it was to Hawk.
She started to try to make her way across to it, crawling on hands and knees, but Kali’mar spotted her. He flung his hand up and out and let it crash across the ground, an electric whip curling from every finger tip to lash the ground and burn the moss, and rip the starlike glimmer from its home. It nearly killed Hawk in an instant, and she leapt back.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you!” He shouted, which in his world of lies and counter lies meant he had forgotten about her entirely. Well, she could keep going then, split his focus in two and keep him off his feet. Watching him, not the blade, she continued her forward momentum, retreating only at the last second. And yes, she lost ground more than she gained it. She was being forced backward once more, back towards the impervious walls.
But for every foothold she lost, the Shadow gained. His claws laced forward, ripping with most delicate precision, and Kali’Mar’s lifted arms were bloodied, his powers, his lightning, all tinted with red. And Shadow spoke for the first time in this war, Alex’s voice but not at all his humor. “You’ve let a bit of the claret flow, my friend,” he hissed. “Maybe you should let the girl go…and that useless sack of skin you stole. That you can give up, too.”
“You think I would surrender?” And in his royal voice was every shade of indignation. “You think I would bow? Especially to such as you? Low down snake. Do you know what a shadow is? It’s nothing. It’s the place where light is not. You are nothing. I am in the right.”
“No. You’re nothing!” Hawk shouted from the sidelines, dragging his divine attention back to her—and away from the claws and teeth and hate the Shadow seemed to vibrate with.
“Why! Because I was a teacher, once?!”
“Because you walked away from being a teacher! You betrayed your students, you stole them from their families. You had a calling so much higher than anything you can imagine and you betrayed that calling. That’s what will make you small, forever. You’re no God. You’re just a wanna-be who—”
He abandoned his battle with the Shadow and flung himself at the wall, at Hawk, and brought both his fists down, clenched together, at the spot that she had been. She’d dodged, lucky enough that only a shred of her chemise was caught in the cacophony that followed. The blow split the ground. It shattered the crystalline wall, sending a burst of its pulsating energy arching through the world, physics reacting as it should at last. Huge fragments of milk crystal fell all around them, each fragment narrow and razor sharp.
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And Hawk got an idea.
“Fight him, Shadow!” She called…because that would mean she was abdicating the fight. People who intend to harm you, in human logic, don’t stand at the side and cry for your opponent. And at his core, whatever else he was, Kali’mar was still a human being. He still thought the way Hawk did, still fell into the same moral pits and logical fallacies.
And no one expected an attack to come from the sidelines.
She crawled through the stinking wind to the fragments of crystal beside the wall. It had fractured in huge, angular fragments, along lines of flow. It had quartz-like structures everywhere, and yet here it broke in layers…she shoved this curiosity to the back of her mind, and was merely thankful that it broke so smoothly, cleanly, and blade-like.
It wasn’t going to be the smooth, beautiful work that the Shadow had given her (Alex, her heart screamed, and NO, she ruthlessly silenced it.) but she found a three foot long section. There was just nowhere for her to grab, nowhere to hold onto. And now she had only vague memories to sustain her, because she’d only ever seen someone doing this once. As a child, in one of her mother’s frequent trips to quasi-hippy communes. The so-called “Indian guide” had been the usual plate of pigheaded nonsense, but one of the guys doing cooking was actually Pawnee, and he’d taken the time to show this sensible little girl how to make arrowheads.
She grabbed a promising looking piece of rock that was not milk-crystal, and began thumping it hard against one end of the three-foot fragment. She didn’t have a hope in hell of sharpening this thing—something glimpsed half-heartedly at twelve wasn’t going to give her a master’s skill—but she might be able to dull it down into a handle. All she had to do was break it just right. Bang, chip, Bang, chip, bang, chip. Little flecks of white, falling to her feet like snow.
Then the Shadow fell. He took a shot from Kali’mar, directly to the neck, and Hawk knew that damaged the precious, fragile, necessary orb in the back of his head. Kali’Mar knew how to kill him, alright, same as any other member of his Pantheon.
And Hawk was gambling now, oh yes she was. She didn’t have time for any more chipping and drilling and shaping. She had to make do with what she had. Which was three feet of rock with a slightly dulled end. She could grab it. She could hold it. Could she swing it?
And it wasn’t just Alex, or whatever was left of Alex. Kali’Mar strode around his body, smirking. “Do you know what I will do when you are dead? I will invade the world above. The God-world, as you idiots call it. I’ll show them. I’ll drink them all dry, until there’s nothing left but ash and dust. I will drink of them as I will drink of you. I will blot out your name in the God-world. But first…”
He started to turn to Hawk, and she saw it in his eyes: he was going to hurt her. He was going to do it not because she was any kind of a good opponent, but because killing her would hurt the Shadow. Even now, even here, she wasn’t that important. She was just leverage for these bestial gods.
Her chance was running through her fingers.
She picked up her weapon, slung the heavy thing over her shoulder, and swung it like a two-by-four, its chance-sharpened edge catching him full in the back of the neck.
She caught his voice, too, mid-word. He said “Huah!” as the air was forced out of him. She tried to wrench the block of crystal out of his head, and couldn’t. At first it was only blood pouring from around the sword. But then she saw it—a few drops of pale, milk white fluid.
She considered offering Kali’Mar mercy. She considered ways she could try to undo what she had just done. He’d be a useful tool against the rest of his pantheon. But she realized that she’d have to say she was sorry, that she’d made a mistake, and that things did not need to be this way.
And she didn’t believe a word of it.
“Do…” Kali’Mar started to say, “Do you know—” pale fluids leaked from his lips. He dropped to his knees, in a mixture of fluids, both his own and Shadow’s.
“What I’m doing?” She said, and smiled even though she felt no warmth inside. “Yes. I’m killing you.” And she wrenched at the blade. His voice rose in agony, and lightning rose with it. It danced along the length of the blade, ripping through her hands. Now it burned. Maybe the lightning was stronger, or the sword she’d shaped was weaker. Blisters formed on palm and wrist, protections lessened. The screams she did not dare voice collected, clogging and thick, at the back of her throat.
But this blade was hers. And she continued to wrench it back and forth, back and forth, fruitlessly, because it was what she had to work with.
Then another pair of hands joined hers. The Shadow, battered and bruised, that strange milky fluid dripping from wounds on his hands, his arms, his face, still stood up beside her. “Do you want help?” he asked.
“Yes,” She said, and allowed his hands to join hers. His grip trembled, and she did not feel his strength surpassed hers.
“Don’t do it!” Kali’Mar wailed.
“Do you know what you’ve struck?” Shadow whispered, to Hawk.
“Yes,” She breathed.
“Then hold,” he whispered. “And bear down”
And that’s what she did. Instead of trying to wrench the makeshift blade clear out of his head, she pushed down with it, and the Shadow did too. She could imagine it clearly, the pearlescent orb with the blade through it…she’d struck it, surely she had. Pearl-colored fluids were dripping from his every wound now, as the Ape had done when she bled out. Surely that meant she had struck home. And now, instead of trying to rip it out, she angled the weapon hard, inside Kali’Mar’s head, the way one would attempt to shuck an oyster.
“Stop!” wailed the would-be-god, and the world around them was nothing but lightning now, a strobe so powerful it was continual. “Please! Stop! It HuuuuUUUUURRRRRRT—”
And with the elongated “hurt” there came a high and terrible cracking sound. Hawk remembered hearing the subharmonics of this sound only once, and she hadn’t registered its importance. The high tone shivered across every bone, every nerve ending ripped raw in its passage. It was the sound of an Archetype’s Orb breaking.
And then Kali’Mar melted. She didn’t even get a chance to look at his face, though from the way his body twisted he did feel a moment of pain (and that made her heart lurch; she’d been profoundly sure the Ape was good. Now she knew the Ape had also been in pain). The majority of his substance went into the star-moss, where it absorbed slowly, as if the ground itself were reluctant to drink the foul legacy Kali’Mar left behind.
I’m going to have to learn his real name, she thought. So I can call him by it every chance I get. She turned to the shadow to manage a quip…and instead found him looking fixedly at the end of the makeshift sword. Because there, stuck to the tip, was Kali’mar’s Orb.