Mirrorworld (54 page)

“You’re here!” Keithus said. “I wondered if you might come. Do you know who this is?” He indicated the man next to him, whose eyes were downcast.

“I know who he is,” Marcus said. He heard the sounds of allies arriving behind him, but didn’t take his eyes off the wizard. He was aware that he was stood in the centre of the garden now, with orcs on all sides that would descend upon him without a thought.. but he knew they would only do so at Keithus’s command, and Marcus was banking on a few more minutes of gloating yet. For now, they were holding court. “I know who he is, and I think it’s kind of petty that you came after him.”

“What?” Keithus asked, a crack appearing in his cheery façade.

“Look at you, Keithus,” Marcus continued. “You talked about returning to a planet that needed you, and taking up your rightful place, whatever
that
means, but the first thing you did was come here, to a temple in the middle of nowhere, to take meaningless revenge on the person you hold responsible. It’s not very elegant, is it?”

“This is just the beginning,” Keithus said irritably. “In due course I will move to attain my rightful place in the world, and then I’ll show you some bloody elegance. But first, this. What this man did is unforgivable, and he must pay the price of his sins. Don’t
you
want to see him burn, for all he did to you? Or are you going to tell me that you
enjoyed
growing up on the wrong planet? That thanks to this fool and his foolish meddling you lived a wonderful life full of joy and hope? No, I don’t think so. We’re the same, you and I. I know how you felt about your life, because I felt it too. Well, here’s the man responsible. You want to see him suffer, right?”

“No,” Marcus said. Thunder crackled, somewhere in the distance. “For a while, back there, after you showed me the truth, I thought maybe I did, that maybe yeah, our only choice was to be the same. We’ve both got a piece of the Mirrorline in us, after all. You know, while you got the infinite potential of possibility, which I can only assume gave you your incredible magical ability, all I got was the infinite part, a big old hole in my head that drowned all the good stuff and left me with a life of forced sobriety. So yeah, we may have both been forced to grow up in lives that weren’t our own, but
you
at least got lucky in the superpower lottery
and
were able to get drunk about it. All in all, I’m kind of surprised that we’re standing in the places we’re standing right now, because compared to me, you have
nothing
to complain about. Yet here we are; you’re the crazy one, so I must be the voice of reason, because, in the end, no, we’re not the same. Despite everything I’ve been through.. I don’t want to see that man die. I would never have wished destruction like you have reigned today.”

“Really?” Keithus asked, in a voice laden with disbelief. “You
forgave
them?”

“Oh no,” Marcus shot back, “don’t mistake my lenience for forgiveness. I know that something terrible happened to me and I’m not quite ready to let it go yet, but I wouldn’t kill. Ha, I’ve been forced to make a habit of
not
killing my opponents lately, and that’s probably part of it. But mostly it’s because someone way wiser than me told me that I didn’t have to go that way, and they were right. So while I won’t deny that Rashalamn made a mistake, I’m not going to wish him dead for it. He didn’t act out of malice, but ignorance, and that might not absolve him, but it shouldn’t necessarily doom him, either. How many of the people who’ve died today actually had a direct hand in messing us up, Keithus?” Marcus thought of Helm, of the Assassin, of the innocent people of Portruss, of all the lives that had been extinguished to pay for a sin they’d had no part in. “How many people did you tear out of existence without caring to learn their names, their faults, their virtues? Too many. Who appointed you the judge of their worth? What’s the price of your revenge in innocent lives?”

“Like I care,” Keithus said, and spat. “The Mirrorworld is nothing to me.”

“Well it is something to
me.
It’s a place full of life, just like this world. All this emphasis on Earth.. you forgot that the Mirrorworld is just as real. But look, that’s not the point. There’s a whole bigger picture at work here, and no matter what you might think you’re doing, this is the truth of it. Look at you! You’re a wizard! You’ve come charging over to a planet where you don’t belong, throwing your power around, not to mention your mythical creatures.. and now, well,
look
.”

Marcus gestured wide, taking in the walls of the temple, which were slowly eroding, the horizon, which was fluctuating wildly in its relative distance, and the sky above, which had begun to be filled with the same psychedelic Mirrorline clouds that had already claimed Portruss. There were no sounds of wildlife, no birdsong nor animal growls, just the unnatural silence of a world slowly dying, punctuated only by occasional rolls of thunder; reality groaning in pain.

“You were wrong,” Marcus told Keithus firmly. “The Viaggiatori might not know everything, but they were right about this. Your being here is breaking everything.”

“What would you propose, then?” Keithus asked, icily.

“Come back to the Mirrorworld,” Marcus said, since it had to be worth a try, “and maybe we could do this properly. It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“Ha!” the wizard snorted. “Why would I go back? No, no, no, I refuse your worldview. I don’t believe it. This? This is all Viaggiatori trickery. You want me to think this, so I’ll stop? Yes, that’s right.” His eyes took on a glassy sheen, and he appeared to be holding court with himself once more. “My dreams are all taking their rightful place in my waking world. Of course there would be side effects. Nothing bad is happening. Nope. I should continue, complete my vengeance, sort it all out. Oh
yes..”
The wizard raised his staff, pointing it at the side of Rashalamn’s head. The old man looked up for the first time, meeting Keithus’s eyes with a look of undaunted confusion, and for a moment the wizard hesitated. Then, his eyes narrowed, and with a roar, he fired.

The blast was huge, loud and bright. The assembled peoples and creatures dived for cover as the shockwave passed over them, blowing out what remained of the temple’s walls. Marcus remained where he was, shielding his eyes, watching Keithus, who stood at the heart of it, staff still pointed at the spot where Rashalamn had been, of whom there now remained only a faint scorch mark on the ground, and the echo in Marcus’s head of another life leaving the world. He groaned as the orcs went wild and turned on each other, Keithus’s control over them shattered by an excess of magical detritus. The wizard himself began laughing madly as chaos broke out all around him.
I have to reach him,
Marcus decided, and set out into the brawl.

Before he’d taken two steps, however, the dust that hung in the air before him began to move, caught in a vortex that twisted the air around him. Marcus held his scythe at the ready as the fold in the sky turned into a glimpse of blackness, and then blossomed into a full-length cloak as Death stepped out, sword in hand and supernovas alight in his eyes.

“Good evening,” the Reaper said with salacious pleasure. “Marcus, Marcus, Marcus. What did I tell you about hanging out near people who were dying? Not that you have much of a choice at the moment. Natural disasters, unexplained explosions and people dissolving into salt all over two worlds! I’ve never been so busy. How have you been?”

“No!” Marcus yelled, pounding his scythe against the ground. “No, no, no, no! Why
now?
Why are you here now? You saw me earlier! Why wait until now?!”

“Hey, I was busy. Unlike you, I take the responsibilities of this job very seriously, and there have been a lot of deaths all over everywhere in the last couple of hours. But right now, everything is.. at a lull. It’s as if both worlds are waiting for something. Spooky, huh? So yeah, I had a free moment, and when someone managed to die regardless, I knew you’d have to be nearby.”

“Keithus killed Rashalamn,” Marcus said. “Not me.”

“I don’t care,” Death said cheerfully. “You’re here now, and there’s nowhere to escape to. The best part is, that’s actually true for once.” The sword came around impossibly fast, but Marcus got the scythe up to deflect it. Death, unfazed, came back around for another hit, and another, pushing Marcus backwards under the strength of his assault. He backed up against a shattered pillar that had once been part of the temple’s wall, desperately attempting to block Death’s attacks, aware that he no longer had enough room to manoeuvre the scythe. It seemed almost tragic that, after everything, he had returned to Earth, where he’d narrowly avoided dying, just so that he could be killed.

Suddenly, Kendra was there, slipping around Death’s sword in order to get entangled in his legs and trip him. The skeletal figure fell to the ground, rolled over, and was back on his feet so fast that it might never have happened. The brief reprieve, however, gave Marcus time to move aside into some space, and so attack Death again. Kendra flashed him a thumbs up and stepped back out of the way as a nearby orc decided to try her for size, and Marcus swung the scythe overhead. Death held his sword up at an angle, and the two blades clashed, locking against each other in a shower of sparks.

“Death,” Marcus said, as they stood pushing against each other, neither willing to give any ground, “listen to me. We don’t have the time for this. Look over there – just look around. If we don’t do something, the whole world is going to end.
Really.
Can we do this later?”

Death gave Marcus a blank look, something he was very good at. “No. You’ve had more than enough laters. Marcus Chiallion dies right here.” He pushed harder against their locked blades, and they slid apart, slicing wide of each other and stepping back to regroup. They began to circle.

“You really enjoy your job, don’t you?” Marcus asked.

“I take great pleasure in my work,” Death said. “The pay is good, there’s always a market for it, and I get to meet lots of interesting people. The holidays are also quite generous.” He struck forwards again, but Marcus was ready. With a sigh and little hope for what he was about to attempt, he stepped to the side, bought up the wood of the staff to knock aside Death’s sword, and spun the blade into the Reaper’s form. He’d been expecting to fall straight through again, and was therefore highly surprised when the blade tore through the cloth of Death’s robe and impacted bone.

“Ouch,” Death said absently, raising a hand to his side. Against all reason, it came away covered in blood. Both Marcus and Death stared confusedly at it for a moment, before their gazes rose to meet each other, and they each took a step back. Fighting continued, and the sounds of Keithus’s shrill laughter still echoed around, but for them, time slowed and nothing else mattered.

“What did I do?” Marcus asked amazedly, as Death sagged to the floor.

“There’s too much of me in you,” the Reaper said, stupefied. “You
know
that my scythe has the power of death, just as I do. Except now, it’s in you, too, and it’s been building up all this time.. Damn. I
really
should have seen that coming.” Somehow, Death spat, and the spit was red with blood.

“What happens now?”

“It seems I die,” Death said, “something which I would not have thought possible. But, because of all this, you’ve got more of my power than I do; you are the new Death. Oh, irony..”

“But I don’t want to be Death!” Marcus said, panicking. “That’s your job!”

“Too late now,” Death said dreamily. “My power is yours.”

“Can’t I give it back to you? Here, take the scythe!”

Death peered up at Marcus curiously. “But you’ve
won,
Marcus. Triumphed.. over Death. You didn’t want to die, and now you’ll.. never have to. What more could you wish for?”

“I don’t want to live forever,” Marcus said sadly. “I just wanted to have a life worth living.”

“Well, now you will,” Death said, quietly, weakly. “Enjoy it.. it is a
good
job..”

“
No,”
Marcus said, and threw down the scythe. “I don’t want it. I’d only mess it up. You can’t expect a human to have power over life and death. I’m not impartial. Take it back.”

Death stared up at him, his expression unreadable. “You have to hand it back.. to me.”

Marcus picked the scythe up again, and knelt down to hand it over, but then hesitated. “Are you just going to kill me if I give this back to you?”

“Maybe,” Death said, the lights in his eye sockets blinking on and off rapidly.

“That won’t change anything,” Marcus said. “The world is still ending around us.” He looked around, but the brawling that was happening in the vicinity seemed slowed, and unnatural, as if it was being seen through some sort of filter, and all sound had faded away. “Look, you need a life, right? To fill the hole in your book?”

“..Yes,” Death said.

“Well, you could take my life, and then shortly afterwards the universe would end, like I said before. Do you want that?”

Death laughed weakly. “It is my final job.. to turn out the lights, close.. the door at the end of the universe. When it comes.. Death must be ready. Better hurry up with the scythe.. else you’ll be the one doing.. it.”

“
Listen,”
Marcus said urgently. “The universe doesn’t have to end now. You enjoy your job, you want to keep doing it, right? Well, don’t take my life. You need a life to meet your quota, take
his.”
Without taking his eyes from Death’s Marcus pointed to where he knew Keithus was still stood, laughing himself silly as the world ended around him. “
He’s
the reason why this is happening. Keithus upset the balance between worlds. Kill him, and it stops. You get to go on doing what you love.”

“I don’t know..” Death said. “I’d much rather.. kill you.”

“Give me your word that you won’t, or I’ll let you die,” Marcus said flatly. Maybe immortality wouldn’t be so bad. If he did tire of it, he could just lend someone his scythe and let them kill him in turn.. Maybe he could age normally. Maybe he’d find something to do with all that time whilst watching the friends he’d made wither and die..
No
, he thought.
This is a bluff. I can’t do it.