Caedes slammed against the wall, spitting blood. The bear in the glasses roared. It was blocking their path, wearing a dirty lab coat and tilley hat, and carrying a staff.
The staff itself was etched with weird, twisted glyphs of distinctly unpleasant sort, and created the same impression in Caedes as did looking at Yaaroghkh when the elf was in his more comprehensible moods. It was glowing with a violet light, strands of qi floating off it and into the air, a glow that was matched in the bear’s glasses.
Caedes moved, and winced as he felt one of his ribs crack. He put one hand over the offending bone, pumping qi into his body and fixing the injury. The bear watched him, and whistled.
“I must say, I’m impressed,” he said, his voice a deep baritone. “I knew you were resistant to the strands of Fate, but I had no clue you had mastered them so fully. And at only the Seventh Circuit, too. To think you wouldn’t heal yourself, but undo the injury.”
Caedes barred his teeth in a rictus grin - a truly hideous sight, for his mouth was filled with blood. “It’s something I learned a long, long time ago. They told me I had no spiritual roots, but I refused to accept I couldn’t cultivate. So I wandered, standing firm through countless hardships as I searched, and dug in ancient caves and strange libraries…”
“And you found that,” the bear said, genuinely impressed. Even he had never found that, its reputation purely legendary.
“Yes, I found that - that technique, long passed down in the most unhallowed halls of the deep dark where even ‘light and dark’ themselves cease to be. I was given it by Jevyenyerai the Great Wyrm, Vermiform Weaver of Flesh, himself; but I will not speak of it in great detail, lest its blasphemous nature blast the mind of the readers to abject smithereens.”
“An excellent decision,” the bear affirmed.
There was a slurping noise from the fey abomination whose sight could annihilate even the hardiest of minds, as he drank his apple cider from a sippy cup.
Caedes raised one hand in a claw of triumph, a wild look in his eyes. “But of course you know the problem I then confronted, for that is first and foremost a form of surgery, which requires that the one performing it has access to their own qi. And that, I did not.”
The bear’s glasses flashed as he underwent a realisation, and he started to convulse. As he bent over, frothing, Yaaroghkh pulled out his box of cookies. He noted sadly that he had but few cookies remaining, then noshed down on one, taking care to savour the flavour. (Which was a truly horrifying sight, for his cheeks were rotting and revealed everything of his jawline and multihued tongue.)
“I see you figured out what I did,” Caedes said, somewhat melancholically, “and much faster than it took me. I had to go a’rambling amid benighted and abyssopelagic depths, crossing vast antelucan regions in my quest for the answer. Weary, tired, pained, still I continued. With bell and candle I sought out the adumbral children of Jevyenyerai, tracking down Jaq-Mahveyel in her lonely halls under the rain, and in spheres of pure void communing with Jais Icthearni, the First Vampire.”
From down below there was a great crash and a hollering, as the unicorn ran helter skelter through Human Resources, the goblin king in hot pursuit. The bear said nothing, enraptured by the story.
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“And then I met Anaxcrescor, Who Was Once Man, and made my request…and he chortled at me, cackling and laughing and rolling over in mirth. When at last he had restrained himself one line he told me, before he returned to his experiments in viscous swamps best left unexplored. ‘Pay no heed to the delusion of causality,’ he said, and returned his hollow eyes to what he held in bony, tarry hands; but I saw him no more, for he had ceased to be.”
Caedes face was feverish, his tone unhealthily excited, as he continued his narration. The bear was starting to float, the throes of ecstasy causing his qi to go haywire.
“I saw him no more, but no more did I need to see him, for I had the answer to my quest: what I sought was outside causality, and thus that I did not have it was no bother, for if I would have it yet then I would have it always. In other words, there was no need to fix or undo anything; for never had it happened in the first place.”
Caedes paused his story, finding himself lacking that most important need of all mankind, a mouthful of rum. Having acquired this necessity of man - and seeing that the bear was in no position to speak, for his flying, glowing form had begun to spin rapidly on its axis - he finished the story.
“I performed the surgery upon myself, secure in the knowledge that the qi I did not have would do that which I sought, and from the seed of my body created a tree where no roots had grown. So no, I'm not resistant to the strings of Fate - for Fate is an old friend, and I play the strings of her guitar with her.”
The bear’s glasses fractured with the force of the glow encompassing him, as the frenzies of enlightenment passed and he entered the state of realisation. He held his head in his paws, ursine eyes wide with wonder. “Oh, how could I have been so stupid? Demonic cultivation - the quest for ultimate power - was never about taking from others at all. There was never a need to, for power was never something that could be taken. I thought I’d held Fate in the palm of my paw, when all this time it was Fate that held me.”
Yaaroghkh nodded approvingly, letting Caedes have his moment, and scanned through his copy of One Hundred Finest Cookies of 2023: All About Shortbread (he had the edition with glossy, high-definition photographs). Sure, it was well over a century out of date, but you know what they say about cookies: they keep.
“I thank you greatly for having instructed this humble one. I would have liked to conclude our fight, but I see now this project was an error before ever it had begun. Consequently I ask your forgiveness, for I must away, to ruminate upon and absorb what I have learned.”
And before Caedes could say anything, the bear’s form turned into smoke and drifted away. Yaaroghkh pocketed his cookie guide with a sigh, wiping the drool from his mouth.
“I’ll have to follow up with him later. Work work work. Hopefully he learned something worthwhile; it will be most unfortunate for him if he’s still on the Naughty List when I track him down.”
He turned to face the final staircase, which led up into a cavernous, abyssal door set high into the wall.
“So it’s time,” he said, and began to walk up the stairs, Caedes following behind him.
***
At the top of the stairs, facing an altar stained with blood, was Old Nick. The ancient and powerful demonic cultivator was sitting on a throne which bore no less blood than did the altar, his hands steepled, and contemplated the orb before him.
Judy was dead, as was Mirabelle. They had joined Albert, Isabella, Ilsa, and Ray in a fate of unknown ignominy. His foes had convinced his spirit beast to fly away and cultivate the irrealities of causality, and his secretary to accept a spontaneous proposal. His regular employees were scattered to the wind, their battle against the goblins taken to the streets, and when he tried to look in upon Merida he felt only a powerful, pained sense of fear.
Old Nick felt no fear. Depression, maybe, and a sense of anxiety at seeing his great project on the verge of collapse. But no fear. He had fought in a thousand wars, survived political upheavals and the collapse of empires, and had cross blades with the Loch Ness Monster himself. Sure, he hadn’t won, but he had survived; and as he saw that indescribable monstrosity - which claimed, of all things, to be an elf! - and the mortal demonic cultivator coming up the stairs towards him, his body was consumed with rage at their arrogance.
How dare they threaten him. They were courting death, and by all the Grim Reapers in Sheol he’d be glad to bring it.
The elf stood at the door, reaching out for the knob.
“So it’s time,” Old Nick said, and gathered his robes.