I hit ground, tumbling, and managed to put my hand and arm out to stop myself from rolling over into the next patch of darkness and accidentally skipping over to the next patch of mirrorverse. I could feel the spirits patching up the damage to my body as I stood. The drawbacks of having hollow bird bones or a skeleton of dry twigs. I broke easily.
Slippery slope.
The three had already caught up to me, standing on or just outside this space.
I might as well have been a swimmer in shark infested waters. This was their element. Except the sharks were bald fat men with the smallest dicks I’d ever seen.
First Aunt Irene, now this.
Maybe Mags’ reaction to hearing Molly speak had been on target after all.
This sucked.
They paced in a circle around me. I held the Hyena ready to retaliate if they tried to grab me again.
“I clawed my way back up from the Drains,” I said. “I’ve faced off against demons. I’ve killed a goblin, I’ve killed a man. Do you really want to do this?”
They did.
One of them came at me from the left, hands reaching out.
With the broken Hyena, edge very possibly dulled from scratching a damn picture series into the floor of the factory, I slashed out at the closest reaching hand.
Though it looked like these guys had been cast from some dull metal, the blade still managed to cut. Sparks flew where metal met metal, joined by a spray of blood.
In recoiling, he lost forward momentum. In an action that was simultaneously flailing his arms for balance and reaching for me, he threw his other arm my way.
I ducked under it, and I was quick. Much as I’d ridden past the Shepherd, I dragged the ragged edge of the broken sword against the side of the Other’s belly, moving behind it.
I could see the others advancing. Their faces were contorted into matching expressions of utter rage. I’d have called their faces demonic, if I hadn’t met actual demons before.
I wasn’t experiencing the same kind of rage. I didn’t feel much at all. Even the fluttering in my chest had a certain slow rhythm to it.
Just as I’d opened him up along the side of the belly, exposing guts that looked as real as any human’s, I brought the sword across the back of his knees.
The Drains had ground away everything I didn’t need, and had left me equipped with only what I needed to bring about entropy.
“Blake!” Mags’ shout brought me back to reality.
The Other dropped to his knees. His buddies were making their moves, one moving away, no doubt aiming to get to the black void they could swim though as quickly as they did.
I brought the broken sword to the Other’s throat.
His brothers stopped.
“Blake!” Mags said, closer.
“I’m here,” I said.
It took her another twelve seconds to find the reflective surface, even though she hadn’t sounded like she’d been far away.
“What the fuck?” I heard her say.
“They got in my way.”
“What are they?”
“Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and Bleeding Profusely?” I suggested.
“Shit. Okay, don’t do anything if you don’t have to,” she said. “This is getting out of control fast. Johannes! I need you or a representative, asap!”
“You realize this could out me?” I asked. “He might know my face.”
“Killing one of his guests does too,” she said. “Unless you plan on killing all the damn witnesses?”
I looked at the other two. I wasn’t sure I had it in me.
Light flashed, brilliant, and for a moment, the patch of light I stood in extended two or three times as far in every direction.
“Ambassador,” a male voice spoke, rich with an accent.
“Faysal. We’ve got a situation. I need a decision on this that doesn’t lead to outright war.”
“We’ll see. This would be…”
The dog with the long white fur hopped up, front paws resting on the ledge beneath the window of the house. “…Ah.”
“They’re yours, right?” she asked.
He leaped up and over, jumping into this mirrorverse. Much as the fat men had, the dog walked on the nothingness. Each footstep created ripples that moved too fast, rings of light that seemed to stretch on to infinity in every direction. His fur seemed too white, here, considering the fact that light didn’t reach him while he stood in the darkness.
He spoke, “They are Johannes’ guests, yes. Should I recognize the swordbearer? I’d think I’d recognize these markings, but man’s kind all look so similar.”
“I’m not sure you’d recognize these markings,” I said.
“Ah, very well,” Faysal said. He looked back at where Mags peered in. “You seem agitated, ambassador.”
“Go, Mags,” I said. “Handle it.”
“I have somewhere I should be,” she said, looking between me and the dog.
“Then please go,” Faysal Anwar told her. “Be where you should be.”
Mags ran.
The dog looked at me, sitting. “Good afternoon. Will you tell me who you are?”
“No, sir,” I said.
The outright refusal felt heavy in the air, as if it had a very tangible quality to it. I wasn’t sure why I’d added the sir, but it felt right.
I was left wondering how often something like a Gatekeeper heard the word no, and just what the response would be.
“Good afternoon to you too, by the way. I don’t mean to be rude,” I said.
“I forgive you, abyss-borne. I’m sorry to say so, but you smell of goblins and worse things. Demons, even. The threads that are supposed to tie you to the world are either cut, never to heal, or they were torn during a recent fall, and are only now mending. If I had to guess, I would say you’re walking a very short, violent road.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I answered. “I’d like it if the short, violent road involved helping people along the way, turning that violence against ugly things.”
“Even when that description might include you?”
“Uglier things, then,” I said.
“If you grow ever uglier, then what will you do when there is nothing uglier than you that you’re able to fight?”
“I’ll have reached the end of my short, violent road, I suppose,” I said.
The Other I was holding hostage moved. I moved the sword in warning, and I inadvertently nicked it.
Faysal seemed to take it all in stride. “That will do, then, in place of an introduction. I now know you, and I can present myself as Faysal Anwar, familiar to Johannes the North End Sorcerer of Jacob’s Bell.”
“Well met, sir,” I said, without irony.
“Once upon a time, after I had finished working, I would perch on the tallest mountaintops with two or more of my cousins,” the dog told me. “I would watch. Centuries would pass before I had cause to move again. When I worked, I forged paths. Natural concourses for rivers to flow, for beasts to find water and for feet to tread freely. I helped open up the world like a flower might unfold. I opened doors, and earned the title of gatekeeper.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Do you have an allegiance?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“To whom?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“I understand, but I’ll also warn you: Refuse me one more time, and I’ll declare that this is no longer a discussion, for it isn’t conducted on even footing.”