Blind Fortune turns the Wheel. Tied to its rim, the vegetable kings are pulled down by its persistent cycle. The cycle of the seasons. Kings are buried by the children; the children become kings. The Wheel, always turning. The alchemical and Hermetic symbol of transformation. Death. Burial. Rebirth.
Thoth guides the newly born. Thoth, who became Hermes in Hellenic Egypt. Hermes Thrice-blessed. Hermes Trismegistus. The only vice of the soul is ignorance. Reason guides the soul; the Enlightened Mind breaks free. The body is buried, and we are reborn by digging out of this grave of flesh. Reason allows us to make choices. Not the random circumstances of fate, but informed choices.
Sword raised, Doug trotted forward to deliver the killing blow. He hesitated at the peak of his back swing, the expression on my face giving him pause.
I was smiling.
This is not a death of my choosing.
"What are you laughing at?" The tip of the sword, raised over his head, trembled slightly.
"Something said to me recently," I said. "Ex lux et vita."
The Chorus erupted in a flash of visible light. Doug recoiled from the starburst, and the sword wobbled in his hands. I kicked his kneecap, connecting this time, and he went down, the joint of his leg bending at an obtuse angle.
He bellowed like a gored wildebeest, hands going to his shattered kneecap. The etheric strands streaming from his head thickened like fire hoses filling with water.
Energy. Channeled energy.
Doug was connected to lines of force, and these conduits were feeding him power. At the other end of the strands were his buddies, the sorcerers sitting in the bleachers. Doug was getting help from the sidelines.
He snapped his leg forward, and a spurt of violet energy around his kneecap popped the joint back into place. The magick nimbus brightened about his head as he near-levitated to his feet. Blood-stained tears-quivering tracks of pink luminescence-spread from the corners of his eye sockets. He interlaced his fingertips, and a storm brewed in the hollow of his hands.
Lightning. I needed a ground, something elemental to hide behind. I scrambled for the damaged shield. The pentacle was the suit of earth, and even with one arm missing, it was my best protection.
A tempest blossomed like a midnight flower between his palms, and with a ragged noise, the storm spat a jagged cable of lightning. The discharge struck the center of the shield, the pentacle attracting the lightning. The shield grew hot against my arm, but most of the energy was dispersed by the earthly ground of the symbol. A shower of crackling sparks, the bitter smell of scorched ozone in their wake, cascaded from the shield.
Doug coalesced energy for another bolt, the force lines pulsating around his head. I had to break his concentration. The weather flower was a volatile construct, difficult to control. I charged, the hot shield raised, and I plowed into him with all the grace of an out-of-control semi truck. The tempest popped, a pressure wave pounding my ears.
We went down in a confusion of limbs. Beneath me, Doug reached around the edge of the shield. A web of electricity danced between his fingers, weather still storming in his hand. He strained to touch my face.
I tucked in my chin and shoved his hand away with the shield. His arm hit the Wheel, sparks erupting from his fingertips. I smacked his unprotected face with the hot shield, eliciting a cry of surprise. I got both forearms behind the shield, ignoring the searing burn of heated metal-it was hotter on the front-and firmly pressed the star-inscribed disk against Doug's face.
He bucked me off, a violent rodeo-worthy undulation. The shield stayed, stuck to his flesh. With a scream that was more outrage than pain, he pulled the pentacle off his burned flesh. The star's outline was livid on his skin; his left eyelid was melted into the socket, a fused tab of burned meat hiding the ruin of his eye.
"That looks like it hurts." I fed him a smug grin as well.
He had too much accessible energy. I couldn't beat him by magick alone. I had to keep hurting him, keep goading him so he reacted without thinking. A course chosen by my Will, not his. Antagonizing him would keep it physical, down in the brutal animal arena. Down where I knew a few tricks.
Doug threw the shield away and scrambled for his sword. I needed a weapon, so I ran across the arena to the eagle statue. It held a long staff-the symbol of fire. In response to the heated touch of the Chorus, the bird blessed me with the metal stick.
Unlike Doug, I had experience with weapons. As he tried to hit me with the sword, I parried his clumsy attacks and responded with sharp taps: one to the thigh, one to the kidney, one to the back of the head. After the third shot, his enthusiasm for straight weapons combat flagged. As I banged aside his half-hearted swing with the long wand, he let go of the sword. He caught the end of the wand as I tried to jab him in the stomach with it.
Halo glowing, he shattered the staff with an exhalation of power. I had already let go of the wand so instead of losing a hand, I was just peppered with shrapnel. Blood stippled my stomach, and I could feel the acidic bite of metal under my skin.
I tried to steady myself, and my foot slipped off the base of the eagle statue. Doug, seizing the opportunity, came in close and pounded me in the stomach with an energized fist. Something moved unnaturally in my gut and I choked on a wet cough. "How about that?" he snarled. "Does that hurt?" His burned flesh was vivid, and his remaining eye was filled with burst blood vessels. The lines streaming across his cheek were more blood than tears.
I spat in that bloodshot eye, the Chorus igniting the spittle as it left my mouth. His eye collapsed in a gush of hot steam, and he retreated. His pain confused him, and unable to see, he tripped over his own feet.
Grimacing against the molten pain in my stomach, I staggered along the rim of the Arena to the bull statue. Vis, I told the Chorus. Give me strength. They lit my hands as I reached up and tore off the two-foot-long curved horns of the statue.
By the time I returned to him, Doug had incanted an udjat eye-a floating sigil on his forehead giving him rudimentary sight. He turned his head like a mole questing for a scent, and when he turned in my direction, I caught him under the chin with one of the horns. The uppercut knocked him back down and, as he tried to get up, I kicked him in the ribs. He rolled away from the blow, sprawling onto his back.
"Compunge." The Chorus flowed into the curved horn, and I stabbed him high on the left hip with the magicked tip. The horn, sharpened and shaped by the Chorus, slid through bone and flesh until it struck the metal plate beneath his body. I leaned against it, and the horn slid into the floor until it was firmly planted in the plate. He curled forward around the metal spike. A bug protecting its belly.
I clobbered him on the forehead with the other horn, knocking him flat. Before he could curl up again, I put the second spike through his right shoulder. As the metal horn ground through cartilage and bone into the floor, he howled like a tortured animal.
"Do you yield?" I shouted at him, making sure the Hollow Men could hear my question over his agonized cries.
Energy sparked off his head and the udjat eye spun madly in the center of his forehead. He moaned around the spikes. All the magickal opiates in the world weren't going to blot out the pain.
I repeated the question, and he found the wherewithal to form a response. "Never!"
The Prince of Swords. Unable to see anything but his singular goal. Unable to realize his forward motion had been arrested. Incapable of knowing when to stop.
I retrieved his discarded sword. As my hand closed around the hilt, I fell back into memory, and was flush again with the fury that had led me to the bridge in Paris, to the duel with Antoine. Tied to that was the black rage that had nearly pushed my hand through Kat's chest. Blind idealism. Slavish devotion. The crippled Prince. The hubris of a mind so precise in its tunnel vision that it was unable to see beyond the pinprick of its immediate goal. No Will. No Reason. Just unrestrained passion.