“Stand back,” I shouted, dropping the pipe. The sound it made as it clanged against the asphalt was fitting. If I was wrong, this would be my death knell.
“And what the hell do you expect to do against all that?” Bastion screamed, thrusting a finger at the newest oncoming rank of creatures. A hail of pebbles flew feebly as he threw his hand out, barely denting the leathery hides of the abominations.
“Trust me on this,” I shouted back, though I had no reason to trust even myself. The blistering light of the portal cast such intense brilliance across everything that all that stood before it was shadow, the entire square shrouded in a writhing, undulating mass of limbs and tentacles.
I focused on that darkness, homing in on the sensation of peeling back the veil between Here and the Dark Room, only this time, I had no intention of stepping through. Whatever dwelled in that nether place – it was time to let them out.
“Dustin, we need to get out of here,” Prudence shouted, so close to my ear that it nearly broke my concentration. I shook my head. “You idiot, we need to go before – ”
A black mist rose from the shadows cast against the street, climbing, at first, in thin wisps, delicate tendrils that seemed to be made of smoke, or darkness. That smoke began to stir, and to churn. Still the horrors stampeded for the living, howling, frothing. All at once the mists and shadows hardened, coalescing into a baleful, bladed solidity that glimmered like crushed velvet and gleamed with the unmistakeable sharpness of steel. Something in my chest burned, low and slow, but it built into an agony so intense, like an ember forcing its way out of my body. I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth to fight the pain, but to no avail. My heart was on fire. I threw my head back and screamed.
The shadows rose as one.
Whips and lashes burst from the ground, the insides of the Dark Room hardened in this reality into something thorny, vicious, and sharp. The Hands shouted at each other to retreat as the square transformed into a nightmare pit of writhing black appendages, all hungering to slash, flay, and shred. The shadows tore into the abominations, ripping them into rubbery strips and chunks of foul meat. Every last thing that poured out of the gateway fell in the field of black grass I had conjured from the Dark.
I was doing this. I felt every blow that struck out, every knife cut inflicted within this meadow of ebony blades. I was controlling it somehow, and the fire in my chest, the sensation of my heart being thrust into boiling oil was almost worth the grand swell of power. Something like laughter threatened to burble out of me, tearing its way out of my throat. It was just another scream.
And Thea met it with her own, her face contorted in rage. “No,” she shouted. The gateway was closing. My assault had finally depleted its never-ending supply of fodder. “No.”
She spread her arms to her sides, fingers splayed, the very picture of fury. The air around her shimmered as she used her gift, manipulating light to use as a weapon. Reality itself wavered as she summoned an array of massive lances around her body. There were six at first, hovering near her, like guided missiles waiting on her command. The light about her flickered, and then there were a dozen spears, then twenty, then too many too count. She pointed at me, shouting wordlessly. As one, the spears flew for my throat.
The pain in my chest was too intense, searing at my insides, rooting me to the spot. More and more spears appeared around Thea, an unending hail of javelins, like a salvo of comets waiting to annihilate me. Yet I couldn’t move. If I had to die, then at least I knew I died saving the city.
Hey dad, I thought. Look. I’m a hero.
But the spears never hit home, colliding and bursting in the air just inches from my face in scintillant flashes of light. Two bodies stepped into my peripheral vision, and I knew how I had survived. To my left, Odessa had her hand out, one of her shields erected invisibly. To my right, with sweat dripping down his neck, Bastion exacted the last of his power to keep me protected.
Which left me free to focus on the only enemy we had left.
With the final dregs of my strength I forced the pulsing mass of shadow to rise from the ground, black ropes of solid darkness twisting into a singular, massive tentacle. It crashed upward, roaring like a tidal wave, reaching easily to Thea’s height and driving forward with enough force to halve her at the torso in one horrible slice, or to pulverize her in a single blow. My first friend in the underground, my mentor, my murderer. Straining against the pain, I bid her a silent, remorseless goodbye.
But the blow never hit home. Thea cursed me, her teeth sharp and white, and before the surge of shadow collided with her body a blinding flash of light scorched the night. When I looked again, she was gone. With nothing left to destroy, the shadows dissipated into motes, little droplets of night returned to the blackness of the Dark Room.
“Fuck,” Bastion shouted. Good old Bastion, never at a loss for words. “Fuuuck,” he yelled again. “She got away.” He raked at his hair in frustration, then looked left and right, at the sticky mass of severed tentacles and oozing rubbery blackness, the only signs that the children of the Eldest were ever here. “Fuck,” he shouted. “Who’s going to clean this up?”
It was almost funny to me, how Bastion could hardly decide whether sanitation or Thea’s escape was more important, and I might have laughed if I didn’t feel like my entire ribcage had been torched right out of my body. Nothing had ever been that painful to me, and I didn’t understand how I had survived. The agony was subsiding, but it was dreadfully clear that calling on the Dark Room had taken something out of me.
I patted at my torso, my chest, just to be sure that I hadn’t actually been burned alive. Everything was still there. My hand came away wet, though. Sopping wet, and I wondered how I could have possibly sweated so much.
“Dustin,” Prudence said, running up to me. “That was incredible! How did you – Dustin, you’re bleeding.”
I looked at my hand. It was covered in red. I laughed.
“Oh,” I said, chuckling. “Oh, good. At least I wasn’t burned.”
“Dustin, we need to get you out of here.” Prudence’s eyes were wide with terror, and I knew that I was in trouble. “We need a cleric,” she shouted. “Here. Now.”
How was I still alive? I held out my palm for Prudence to see, proud as I had been in first grade when I was finger-painting, when Mrs. Moyer said I showed an aptitude for art, when I knew even then that I would always like everything and never be good at anything.
But it wasn’t fair. I finally found something I could be good at. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to go. Not yet.
I touched my chest again. Under my shirt, something felt ragged, and torn, and it stung insanely. Ah. My scar, from the ritual dagger. It had reopened. I held my hand out again, up against the light blazing from the moon. The stars were singing to me. But it was too loud, and too bright.
Too bright. I needed the darkness.
“Hey dad,” I said, laughing. “Look. I’m a hero.”
The world went black.