More yelling filled the plaza as more of the Lorica fell to the monsters. What was this all in service of? Was this the sacrifice that Thea wanted? I eyed her as she floated above the proceedings, hovering in midair like a noble watching over the peasantry. I gripped my pipe harder. She was responsible for the portal’s existence. If we could take her out of the picture, even just distract her, we could loosen her hold on it, and find a way to shut it down from there.
“Thea,” I screamed, my hackles rising as she turned to favor me with a slitted gaze and the smuggest of smiles. “Why are you doing this?”
She flew nearer, still infuriatingly out of reach, but close enough that I could hear her voice and her taunting.
“Call it an offering. Call it a sacrifice. Magic can only take you so far, Dustin, and what I want, only the Eldest can give.”
“And what is that? Death? Mayhem? Look around you. They’re destroying everything. Why do this?”
Thea’s smile was angelic, so far removed from the terror and carnage around us. “Because they are the only true Gods. If I do as they ask, then they will grant me anything, even dominion over life. And death.” She pursed her lips. “Magic,” she repeated, as if in some sort of trance, “can only take you so far, Dustin.”
Life, death? Magic had its limitations, the way the Lorica couldn’t simply bring me back to my father. But then it came to me, how Thea had lied about casting a massive circle. “That’s how you get an apocalypse going,” she told me. The dead don’t just come back – unless, perhaps, through a contract with an entity so powerful that it demanded blood on an equally massive scale.
The memory of her children. The Eldest. That was what she meant.
“That’s why you’re doing this,” I said. “Your son, your daughter. You’re trying to bring them back.”
Thea’s face twisted into a furious mask. “Do not speak to me of my children,” she hissed. But I knew I had hit the mark. Whoever these Eldest were – whatever they were – she was only doing this to earn their favor, to resurrect her children.
“There has to be another way, Thea.”
“There isn’t,” she snarled. “You fool. I know so much more of our world than you ever will. Don’t you think I’ve exhausted every possibility? No. This is the only way.” She lifted further off the ground, raising her head to the portal. “Fare well, Dustin. Live, if you can.”
I puzzled this out for the briefest second – was she really expecting me to survive any of this? – when I realized what she meant. I narrowly dodged as another tentacle whipped past my face. Twisting from the hip, I smashed the pipe across where the creature’s head would be, the nest of tentacles between its shoulders.
Upon impact, the thing gave a series of screeches from its many mouths – but it didn’t go limp as I’d hoped. Three of its tentacles reached out, entangling my wrists, wrenching the pipe from out of my grasp, hurling it away. Ichor and saliva dripped from more of its tentacles as it took aim for my chest, and –
A blur of green and gold streaked across the night, shearing through the air and slicing at the monster’s tentacles. I felt the appendages go limp as they were severed in a singular arc, a masterful slice that, at first, I assumed had come from Bastion. Then the blur struck again, cleaving the abomination in half, rending its torso asunder.
“Vanitas,” I breathed.
The sword’s voice pulsed in a corner of my mind. “You’re going to get yourself killed. Idiot.”
“You can call me whatever you want. How did you – ”
“I don’t know,” he said hurriedly, repositioning himself in time to hack at another of the oncoming creatures. “Our bond, perhaps. I couldn’t control it. Just came smashing out of the glass, and here I am.”
“Thanks,” I said, reaching for my lead pipe and diving back into the fray with Vanitas, fighting inexpertly alongside the animated sword. His scabbard joined the battle too, bluntly crushing and smashing with quiet relish. From above us Thea bellowed her rage, whether at the sword’s very existence or its ability to continue carving up her fell army, I couldn’t tell.
But she wasn’t finished. Thea thrust her hand at the portal, a thin ray of light emanating from her fingers. I swallowed nervously, watching as the gap widened – no, doubled in size. Fuck. Her minions flooded in faster, in greater numbers than before.
I glanced around. Even with Vanitas at my side, we couldn’t hope to stop them all. Prudence was panting as she fought, her motions less fluid, driven with less power. Bastion hung back from a safe distance, swatting and sweeping at the things with a telephone pole. Romira’s flames didn’t burn as bright. In time I knew that Vanitas would lose momentum too. It was happening. Mages didn’t draw from some limitless well of power. We were running out of ammunition.
The Hands fell back. From around us fearful screams issued from the stray normals. We were trapped under the dome, unless Odessa lifted her shield. But what good would that do? It would only send the abominations out into the city. There had to be some way I could help to stop it all. I squeezed the pipe, the metal of it rough and icy against my hand, sobering. Think, Dustin. Think.
I laughed to myself haughtily, soft and low. Step. That was all I could do, was shadowstep away and out of there. Maybe find my father, tell him there was no time to explain, then just head the fuck out of Valero as fast as we could go, before the creatures could catch up to us. But wouldn’t that just be delaying the inevitable?
I hated my helplessness. I hated that my thoughts turned to running. Everyone was right. The school counsellors, dad, fuck, even Hecate, who didn’t know me from Adam, read what hid in my heart. All I’d ever done was run. Turn and face the darkness, she said. Easy for her to say.
But that was all I had to do: find the nearest shadow, walk into it, and enter the Dark Room. But I would be leaving all these people behind, all of them to die, these men and women who had become my colleagues, dare I say friends. Even Vanitas, whoever, whatever he truly was.
Hah. Hecate had the truth of it all along. Even she knew that my first instinct would be to run. Here I was facing down this horde of alien death, and all I had was a lead pipe. My bones yearned for the safety of the Dark Room. All I had to do was close my eyes and open the door.
“But the door opens from both ends.”
My spine shivered. I couldn’t rightly tell if I’d recalled Hecate’s words at that precise moment, or if she had spoken them directly into my mind, but it was starting to make sense. All this time I had been pulling on the Dark Room’s d
oor to use it as an escape hatch. What if the answer wasn’t to go into the shadows, but to throw that same door open – and bring the roiling, hideous denizens of the Dark Room to this reality?