Marjut had done what she did in every world: she went to ground.
The world was an ecumenopolis, a city that had spread to cover the entire planet, and she hated it with a burning passion. The buildings were mostly timber framed, but the wood they were made of was created through magic, trees that sprang up overnight and were cut down having hardly seen the light of a single day. Every large building of any civic importance was marble, made using a separate magic, drafted in inks before being called into the world.
There was greenery, they weren’t complete monsters, but it was in the form of parks and the occasional quay, a useful, manufactured nature that was tourism in all but name. People liked green spaces, they liked nature, but they didn’t like it for its own sake. They included all the signifiers of nature with none of the content, a facade of nature, a few toweringly tall trees whose roots were hidden under the paving stones, or flower boxes hanging from windows.
There was, so far as Marjut could tell, not a single forest in the entire world, not a true forest.
Humanity was, of course, the culprit, as they seemed to be the culprit across all worlds, but it was also an ancient place, and one that was steeped in nine different kinds of magic. There were no farms, because people could grow plants from a seed in a lazy afternoon, have a crop of tomatoes from a planter box in their house, or grow wheat from a community plot to be taken to the local miller. It meant that land was a thousand times more productive than it had ever been on any world, which in turn meant that what was necessary for human survival was just a few pots of earth in every home rather than a hectare of crops. Not that the monocultures that farmers on most worlds ended up with were all that much better.
Of course, nature was pernicious in its own way, a crone who could not be killed, only beaten and left for dead, and the people of this world struggled with all the usual problems of mold, pestilence, plagues, and ‘vermin’.
Marjut found herself at home among them.
She lived down in the city sewers, which were impossibly vast and little understood even by the resident engineers tasked with maintaining them. The original builders were long dead, their maps yellowed and faded. The world-spanning city was enormous, and had storm drains rather than rivers, the entire ‘inconvenient’ water cycle thrust below the streets, out of sight. At least there was no electricity, and little in the way of worked metals. They were all vegan as well, a rarity, which she appreciated, even if it was too little to sway her to their side.
Learning the magic of growth was slow-going, as was often the case, but she didn’t think that this was the world’s Power. There were many magics available, and the portals had never failed to give her something that was useful in combat.
The portals had also never failed to give her a reason to be there.
After a month in the sewers, Marjut had learned the ways of the city, and was ready to fight against it. All she wanted was a foothold for nature to return in all its glory, the crippled crone rejuvenated into a fair maiden. She wanted to leave the world with a proper ecosystem, something the people could live in harmony with instead of this grotesquely twisted thing they had in its place. Of course, in her view, having people live within it wasn’t entirely a requirement.
Eventually a tenth magic, a forbidden one, a magic of plagues, of insects and rats was revealed to her. The Rat King found her and taught her directly, and she had been grateful, as much as his unwanted advances had rankled her. He spoke with yellowed teeth and clacked his claws against the brickwork of the sewers, eyes shining the dark, and she was his pupil, taking in everything that he said. His cloak of moving rats was unnerving, but mostly because she was never sure how the rats were holding onto each other. His company was a price worth paying though.
When he was done being her teacher, she killed him. She’d kept her other powers secret from him, and his perception of her helplessness must have been what drove him in the first place. She had seen in his eyes and heard in the stories of him that he liked to twist and corrupt, especially when it came to young women, who he saw as paragons of innocence. He’d had the wrong read on her, because she had presented him with a false front. That worked against men more often than she could ever have expected.
Once her execution of the Rat King was complete, she set about her plan of attack. The key, as she’d learned in other worlds, was that whatever she did needed to be complete, something that would never be undone. If she merely destroyed a district and forced everyone to evacuate to elsewhere, they would be back within months, working at the ‘problem’, taming nature once again. Change was a difficult thing at the highest levels, and as much as she naturally favored splashy solutions — had favored them even before the first portal — she was beginning to see that time was as much an enemy as the people were. Time should, by rights, have favored nature over man, but man and his machinations were pernicious.
Her experiments took her further than the Rat King had ever gone, down untrod roads of rot and ruin. Cooking the pandemic didn’t turn out to be that difficult, but it wasn’t enough to spread a sickness that would kill people, it had to have a permanent effect. It needed to create a crater that they would never crawl back out of.
She was a week away when He arrived.
The enemy world hopper made himself known right away. He explained everything in an interview to one of the major newspapers, which was printed and reprinted endlessly, along with a grinning picture of him, done with an artist’s sketch rather than a photograph, as they had no such technology in the vast city.
He had long curling locks of golden hair and broad shoulders, a smile that showed off fine white teeth and a twinkle in his eye that almost seemed like an invitation.
He made it known that he was looking for her. He wanted to fight her, though of course she had no special interest in any of that.
He said his name was Jeff.
She read the newspapers with some eagerness, stealing them from newsstands or scooping them up when they were tossed in the trash. He was too late to stop her, and possibly too late to find her. They could fight once the work was done and the city had begun to die. Then she would battle him, unleashing her powers against his, and he would die, like the others. She had been gathering her armies, the rats and the beetles, roaches and bees, the magic of this world mixing well with the magic of the one just before.
Jeff was casual and confident, at least according to the papers, a womanizer who didn’t seem to have to work very hard to get them in his bed. Every time he was in the papers, which was very often and almost always on the front page, he was mentioned as muscular, as if it was such a vital part of his presence that to not put it to print was tantamount to blasphemy. She hated him immediately, but there was also something that drew her to him, at least from the quotes that they printed and the antics that he got up to. She lived in the sewers without shame, and he did the same, but among their high society.
The pandemic would spread best at a large gathering, which would make it difficult to contain. The city had all kinds of festivals, spread throughout its many stadiums, arenas, and fairgrounds, but she waited for the mother of them all, the Feast of Flowers, which would see people streaming in from the entire world, filling a single borough with hundreds of thousands of travelers.
The plague came up from the sewers, carried on the backs of rats, clinging to the wings of roaches. They didn’t come as a wave, though that was well within Marjut’s power. Instead, it was a series of isolated incidents, a bite on a woman’s leg here, a fly landing in a punch bowl there. She hadn’t quite had her fill of dramatics in the previous worlds, but she had learned when it was appropriate and when it was not.
Three days into the festival, she stood on top of one of the tall marble-clad buildings that this neighborhood was famous for. The wind was in her hair, and the smell of flowers wafted up from below. They had grown and bloomed in a day and were then quickly cut, no true nature, which took away from the beauty, but she tried to take what she could. This city would die, if not to the very last person, though it was unlikely that she’d live to see it.
Jeff came up through a hatch. She’d heard him coming, had seen him through the eyes of a small mouse she’d stationed in the stairwell. She was waiting for him, and ready to leap from the building if it came to that. No mere fall could hurt her, though from what the papers had said, Jeff could.
“Hey, I’m Jeff,” he said with a wave to her.
“You’re too late,” she said. “Even if you’ve finally found me, even if you’ve seen the signs, you’re too late. They’re as good as dead.” She turned around to face him.
He was handsome, classically so, with a chiseled jaw and a clean-shaven face — or perhaps simply hairless, as there was no sign of stubble. His smile touched his eyes, which were green and brilliant. His teeth were white and perfect. He was bare-chested, with his golden locks cascading down over his shoulders. The papers were right to point out his musculature. He was sculpted and toned, the curve of every individual muscle obvious beneath his skin. Aside from the loose pants he was wearing, he might have been a rugged animal, and he was even barefoot, like she was, with no worry for dirt or cuts.
“You’re not going to give me your name?” he asked.
She stared at him. “No.” He kept the smile up. “You have a plan to stop it?”
“Stop what?” he asked. “The plague?” He laughed. “Nah. I’m done with this place anyway.” He looked out over the city. “And a plague means it’ll be easier to take what I need when I go to the next place.” He stepped closer to her, and the potted plants on the rooftop garden shook and rattled as they stirred to her command. Thorny vines and succulent poisons were waiting for him if he came any closer.
“Then why are you here?” asked Marjut.
“Just a chat, I guess,” said Jeff. When he shrugged, he rolled his shoulders, showing off the muscles as they moved beneath his skin. “First world I did, I just absolutely splattered the guy, you know? Never really knew what he was about. Fun way to do it, I guess, but not something I needed to do more than once.”
“You want to know me?” asked Marjut.
“Eh,” said Jeff with a shrug. “I could kill you right here and now, I guess, but that would be … not personal, you know? It’s like a one-night stand, you barely know the other person, it’s just bodies smashing against each other. A little fun, but not what I’m after.”
“What are you after?” asked Marjut.
“Fun,” said Jeff. He blinked at her. “I just said that, didn’t I?”
“Fun,” she repeated. She cast her hand out to the city. “Within three days, as the revelers return to their neighborhoods, the city will begin to perish. They will lock themselves in their houses, afraid to go out, and even that won’t be enough. The rats and mice will eat the bodies, the maggots will feed on decaying flesh, and nature will regain its rightful place.”
“And that’s what’s in it for you?” asked Jeff. “The melodrama?”
She blinked at him. “Humanity is a scourge on this world. This place is anathema to nature, and has smothered it as best it can. The trees live only to serve as shade or wood. The parks are a thin veneer of plants, only what these people find beautiful.”
“It’s the melodrama or the deaths,” said Jeff. “You like killing people, that’s fine, though a bit boring if you ask me. But liking the melodrama, the big speeches about how they’re a festering plague, that I can get behind.”
“They are a festering plague,” said Marjut. “But the way to deal with a plague like this is with a plague of my own.”
Jeff laughed. “See, this I can work with.”
“You agree?” asked Marjut. She was feeling off-balance. She had met the others who crossed the worlds, and they had always opposed her. He seemed unconcerned that the death of humanity was imminent. She supposed that he had some way to protect himself from the plague, but she’d never met someone who could shrug off deaths of this magnitude.
“Nah, I don’t agree,” said Jeff. “But I’ve got some stuff to steal, and it’ll be easier once everyone’s dead.” He smiled at her. “And then I’m going to kill you.”
Marjut’s face darkened. “Do you overestimate yourself or underestimate me?”
His eyes brightened. “You want to do the first bout now? I’d let you live. But you were prepared to jump off the roof, it seems to me. Just so you know, I’m faster than you, and I’m a great tracker. If you start pulling out all the stops, I might not be able to help myself. So we can do a little bit of a spar here, if you want, but I’d kind of prefer to have it all at the end. It feels more satisfying that way, this big build-up before the climax.”
She found him charming, in spite of herself. He was handsome, muscular, animalistic, and he was straightforward, without the pretensions that she had seen so often in others. She had seen his antics in the papers, the women draped on his arm, the performances he’d given to the crowds, showing off his abilities. He’d joined one of the sports teams and single-handedly set records, which the papers had seemed to find quite annoying and unsportsmanlike. He was strong and fast and had a host of powers, a number at least equal to her own.
He had said that he was going to kill her, but the way that he said it was attractively forthright, almost roguish.
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“You’ll watch this city die and sleep soundly,” she said. There was a part of her that still didn’t believe it.
“Do you think I didn’t know what you were up to?” he asked. “Why do you think I let it get this far?”
She was silent. She had no idea what to think. If he didn’t object, if he was perfectly willing to watch the world die … “You would let millions perish for whatever it is you’re planning on stealing?”
He leaned in slightly, and the potted vines reacted to him until she quelled them. “I would let millions perish even if I didn’t have something to steal.” He straightened up and took a breath, looking out over the city beyond the rooftop. “There’s something about it all crumbling down that I like too, you know.”
“You do?” she asked.
“I think it’s the idea that I’m the last to see this,” said Jeff. “It’s the same feeling you get from looking at a painting renowned for its beauty and burning it right after. There’s a thrill that comes from walking through the city, knowing what’s coming for them, knowing that I waltzed at the last party the Bal Bernanos will ever host.”
“Is there,” she said. Her voice held a note of wonder. He was fascinating. She had only ever met those who were obsessed with humanity, those who considered themselves heroes and her a villain.
“How many people have you killed?” asked Jeff. He was still as affable as he’d been since the moment he stepped onto the roof. He was a monster, absolutely, he had no ethos, no driving goal, but she was drawn to him all the same.
“Millions,” she said. Her voice was almost a whisper.
“Oh, with the plagues and stuff,” he said. “Sure. I meant more … personally.”
“Twenty-six,” she said.
“One hundred and thirty-two for me,” he said. “I think, anyway. When I started this, world hopping, I wasn’t really keeping track. I didn’t start keeping track until I was in prison.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” he asked back. “Why do I ask?”
“Yes,” she said.
There was a feeling from him, even with his golden locks and easy smile, that he could explode into violence at any moment. She was ready for it, had been ready for it, but she was willing to risk standing there to hear him speak.
“We’re the only ones who understand each other,” said Jeff. He looked her up and down. “There’s this whole wide world, and you’re the only one I could talk to about any of this, at least if I wanted to do it without lies. You’ve been reading the papers. I spew all kinds of things to the reporters, fanciful tales, but it’s not real. If I told them the truth, they’d try to have me drawn and quartered, and that was another of those things that I don’t need to try more than once.”
“You were drawn and quartered?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “They tried.” He beamed at her. “Having a whole city gunning for you, it’s really not to my tastes. The first hour or two it’s fun, fighting off all comers, seeing what they have, but after that it gets tedious. You understand that, right?”
“I do,” she said. “I’ve been chased, attacked, hounded by the law.”
“See?” he asked. “This is a densely packed world, lots of people, and you’re the only one I have anything in common with. Don’t get me wrong, I like being a foreigner and getting that sort of treatment, but it’s nothing like sitting down to talk with someone like me.”
“We’re not alike,” said Marjut. “I don’t do this for fun.”
“Bah,” said Jeff. “Sure you do. It’s fun, isn’t it?”
“I have a purpose, moving between worlds,” she replied. “I bring nature in my wake. I defend it.”
“Come on,” said Jeff. “Admit that it’s fun, being cock of the walk, getting new powers, showing off, doing whatever the hell you want.”
“I don’t do it because it’s fun,” she said.
He pointed at her, and for the first time since he’d set foot on the rooftop, frowned. “Just say you enjoy it. You like being special, being powerful, you like the struggle, the fight, the victory. I like those things, I revel in them, I don’t judge, I just want you to say to me that I’m right, because I am right.”
She frowned at him. She had faced down other world hoppers before, and while her heart had begun to race, she wasn’t about to bow to him or show fear. “What are you seeking?” she asked. “Absolution?”
He rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. “I just want to have fun. Would it be so bad to have someone as a conspirator?”
“You’re lonely,” she said.
“I love being a world hopper,” said Jeff, placing a hand on his bare chest. “You love it too, don’t you?”
“I love the opportunity to do the work, to bring —” but she was interrupted as he stepped forward.
“No,” he said. “No, you don’t act like someone slogging through it for the greater good. Why lie to me? Why lie to yourself?”
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, of course, even if she really believed what he was saying was true. ‘Joy’ was not the right word for what she felt. Satisfaction, perhaps, and upon first seeing the world, a profound disquiet. But she had never felt ‘cock of the walk’, never reveled in what she was doing. She had never looked forward to the battles with other world hoppers, who were always trying to stop her. She had instead felt pride at besting them, or annoyance at the occasional temporary loss. Most were infuriating to speak with. She was finding Jeff more infuriating by the second.
“Leave, now,” said Marjut. “Go be a thief, or whatever you want to do in this dying world.”
“It’s not going to work, you know,” he said. “The plague. You’ll kill ninety-nine percent of them maybe, if you did it right, and they’ll just swarm back over the city a generation from now, happy and healthy, conquering it all again, cutting away the vines that have grown up on the buildings, clearing out the grass that’s come up between the cobblestones.”
“You say that only to hurt me,” said Marjut, though she of course worried that he was right, that this was a temporary solution and nothing more, washed away by time as humanity reclaimed its ground.
“When I want to hurt you, you’ll know it,” said Jeff.
He turned and went back the way he came, and she watched him through the eyes of every animal and insect.
~~~~
Jeff whistled as he made his way through the city.
Marjut didn’t seem like she’d be much of a problem, which was a disappointment. He had no issue playing the villain when he ran up against someone playing the hero, but when it was a villain, there was less of a way to make it fun. He could have tried to stop her, he supposed, or maybe figured out how to worm his way into her confidence.
Unless he was mistaking the signs, she was kind of into him. He’d never slept with an enemy world hopper before, and as soon as the thought occurred to him, he put it on his list of things to do. Maybe not with her, queen of rats and roaches, though she was surprisingly pretty for someone who spent her time lurking in the sewers. But the world hoppers were, by definition, amazing, and he figured that the more worlds someone went through, the more likely they were to pick up something that let them look like the best version of themselves.
He figured he had a few days before it all started breaking down, which meant that he had quite a bit of time to get things done. He’d sampled the women of this world early on, and while he was never quite done sampling, it held none of the exotic promise that it once had. The food of this world was awful, with no meat to speak of, and he had already decided that he’d go without until he’d opened the portal.
He had taken in their arts and culture, strolling through a museum and finding little to catch his eye, sitting through a terrible play with a ravishing lead actress. He’d done their parties and balls, which hadn’t been difficult to secure invites to, and he astounded people with his displays of might. All that was fun, if a bit stock by this point. He wasn’t sure he would ever get tired of it, filled with ennui like his last opponent had suggested he would, but there was no novelty anymore, only the pleasure of their gasps of disbelief and the way they draped themselves on him.
He was Jeff, the legend, and had been for two full years now, across five worlds.
So with all that having been taken care of, he was ready to see what the fighting in this world was like.
Jeff didn’t particularly enjoy killing on its own. He had once been put in prison and spoken to a true psychopath who described joy in seeing the life slip out of someone, pleasure in knowing that a life had been ended. Jeff had never really felt that, and was a bit sad that this avenue was cut off from him.
He enjoyed the fighting. He liked punching a man so hard he flew. He liked bouncing between five different guards and disabling them all before the first could even draw his sword. He liked the motion, the action, the impacts, whether it was against the rank and file or someone with true power who took grit and cunning to murder. And sure, when you kicked a man so hard he went spiraling through the air and snapped his back against a pillar this usually killed that man, but the killing wasn’t the point, it would have been just as satisfying if the man ended up in a hospital or was cured a moment later by a wizard’s injection.
This world was on the weaker end, perhaps because they didn’t eat meat. They had a whole bunch of magic systems, but almost none of them were geared toward combat. There were magics for growing, for building, for cleaning, but none for burning people to a crisp.
Still, he wasn’t entirely sure that he could take them all on and win. What he wanted were small fights, ones that were contained, so he found a fort by the river, bought a nice large cloak, and then dropped in at night. He rang the alarm bell himself and waited until there was a gathering of a dozen in the courtyard, then dropped down and began his fun.
Oh, he set rules for himself, of course he did, it would have been over too quickly if he’d pushed himself to his limits. He fought one-handed, with only a small dagger, and used none of his other powers. He liked a good knife fight, even if it was against men with swords.
Halfway through, he grew bored with the knife and tossed it to the side, using his fists and feet instead. It was more visceral that way, though a bit more difficult, and more open to the sort of ridiculous moves that he preferred using when he wasn’t being serious. He picked one of the guards up and swung him into the others, letting out a laugh as he did it.
The fun was over before it ended though, and he stomped on the badly wounded so as to not leave any witnesses. He had three days, more or less, until they all started dying.
He washed himself in the river, then made his way back to the hotel room a wealthy duke had secured for him, and found a woman laying there naked. He didn’t remember her name, and when he woke her, had other things on his mind besides asking.
~~~
Marjut watched the city as the people died. Nature would make its reclamations, in time, but she would see none of it. Even with a month’s time, everything would simply look dead. Eventually though, the sewers would fill, soil would settle on the streets, and the grasses and trees would take over, wedging themselves into the cracks in the stone. The wood would be rotted away and the buildings would crumble, and eventually they would be buried. When the sewers clogged, some of the streets would turn into rivers, and fish in the lakes of the parks or the fountains of the plazas would swim free. Eventually, if there were no people, evolution would take hold and allow the fauna that this world had none of, grazing animals and predators and a whole ecosystem that works on its own.
That was beyond her lifetime though, and certainly well beyond her time in this world. She had done what she could, and could only hope that the return of people, if it happened, would be achingly slow. She’d made the plague so it would live on in the rats, a reservoir of death, but people were tenacious.
“Heya,” said Jeff.
She turned to him, whipping around to face him. This time, she had neither heard nor seen him, not with her entire army of ears and eyes. He had simply appeared behind her.
“Jeff,” she said.
“Marjut,” he nodded.
“I never told you my name,” she said. “I’ve never told anyone my name, not in this whole world.”
“Oops,” he said with a smile and a shrug.
“You’ve come here to kill me,” she said.
“Yup,” said Jeff. “Unless you want to just slit your own throat.”
“You would want that?” she asked.
“It would be novel, at least,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never seen someone kill themselves to get out of a fight. My guess is that the portal would open and you might have a chance to go through. Then maybe in the next world you’d get saved. I’m not sure, really.”
He squared up, still smiling at her. He was, as before, shirtless and barefoot. He was going to kill her, and still she found something attractive in him.
When he approached her, the vines leapt from their pots, and almost faster than her eye could see, he had a spear in hand, twirling around him, cutting through them. She had seen, only for a second, row upon row of weaponry behind him, a different place overlapping with the rooftop for just a moment. The spear was all that remained when the eyeblink had passed, an ornate piece of equipment with a head as large as his face, gilt scrollwork down the long handle and adorning even the wide, sharp edges.
The vines were severed in a moment, falling dead to the ground, and he smiled at her.
“Did you think that would work?” he asked.
“It was worth a try,” she replied. “I’ve killed better men with less.” She took a step back toward the edge of the roof.
“Better than me?” he asked, smiling.
She stepped off the edge of the building, moving fast. She liked her perch, and had been using it for weeks, but it wasn’t the killbox she’d set up for him. That was three blocks away, in an abandoned theater that was to be renovated. She twisted as she fell, putting her back to the ground, waiting for the embrace of the earth. She had a view of Jeff, leaping off the building, fearless, following after.
It was just what she’d wanted, but she was worried nothing she had would be enough.
~~~~
Jeff enjoyed the battle, as he enjoyed most battles. Fighting another world hopper was always a matter of seeing what they could do, and while he’d had eyes on Marjut for a while, she hadn’t yet revealed all her powers to him. There were surprises along the way, and that had its thrills, gouts of fire and a body that twisted and warped in unexpected ways. It was no wonder she was so pretty if she could change her body around.
She seemed surprised when the swarm of bees she sent after him was halted in midair. They buzzed, hovering and uncertain, as the theater burned down around them.
“What is that?” she demanded. It was cute, as though she had any right to demand anything from him.
“A little trick I learned from the Rat King,” he replied.
“I killed the Rat King,” said Marjut.
“I know,” said Jeff.
“I killed him before you ever arrived here,” said Marjut.
“I know that too,” said Jeff.
“Then how did you —” she began.
He chose that as his moment. He moved in with the spear at full speed, and she contorted to block it, though she wasn’t nearly as fast as he was. There was a bracer hidden under the sleeve of her dress, some bit of magic, capable of stopping the spear in its tracks, but he’d already seen that trick. The spear was only a feint, and he’d let go of it at the last moment, the hand that had been holding it turning into a fist that followed through on the motion.
It took her a moment to come to. He had thought she might be dead, but she sat up, dazed and feeble. He’d ruined her mouth, and could see how loose her teeth were when she took a gasping breath. The front teeth swayed like reeds in the breeze, sticking up from a swamp of blood.
She gave him a dazed look, and he punched her in the head again. Her move to block was slow enough that it had only just started when his fist made contact. This time, she stayed down, but a finger at her neck was enough to let him know she was still alive.
She’d been a challenge, but he had to imagine that she’d have been more of a challenge if he hadn’t known about the theater and her plans ahead of time.
The portal appeared, beckoning him, but Jeff stayed, staring down at Marjut’s body.
“Choices, choices,” he said to himself.