Book 3, Chapter 4

Jager leveled his polearm at me. I tensed, but no more lightning followed. In the moment that followed I took a moment to look him over. His armor looked like a mix of Viking armor and English plate mail, with chain mail crammed in places that weren’t covered by steel. On his shoulders rested a cape made from the hide of a bear, the head of the beast incorporated into his helmet. Normally, I’d think a person in that much mismatched armor would look goofy, but Jager pulled it off. It was the way he carried himself. The armor was less armor and more of a second skin, something he was completely comfortable in.

“Maybe you should have,” I said with a sigh. “So much death because of one mistake.”

That made Jager pause.

“What?”

“I’m… responsible for what’s happening in the world right now.” I shuddered. “Jesus, that’s hard to say out loud.”

“Explain,” Jager demanded, lightning playing over his halberd.

I nodded, spitting to the side to clear my mouth of blood. “Well, when I was in college I fell into a group of friends who were exploring magic,” I began. As I spoke, I sent a tentacle through the floor from my ass, gradually making its way toward Jager. “Somehow we got a hold of a ritual to summon the Doorman.”

Through the slits in his helm, I saw Jager’s eye narrow. “No…”

I nodded. “Dunno if it was one of the cults that we got it from, as I was relatively new to the group and wasn’t involved in the acquisition. What I do know is that the Doorman killed all my friends and chased me through the night. To survive, I managed to create a shielding circle, cutting off a piece of the Doorman in the process. Inside the circle I summoned the Orphan, who traded that piece of the Doorman for what I thought was knowledge to banish it, but was in actuality a piece of the mind of a being known as The Wake of Dead Stars.”

“Bullshit,” Jager said. “Your mind would collapse even glimpsing a piece of something so powerful.”

I gave Jager a sickly grin. It was nice to talk to someone who had context for once. “I had a couple of things going for me,” I elaborated. “The first being that the Orphan is fair in his dealings and sealed the sliver so only a trickle could escape. The second, and probably more important thing, is that the sliver and I are oddly compatible, as in its—or should I say ‘in his’ dimension, he was born Liam Hayes.”

Lightning suddenly played all over Jager in a quite frightening display of power. I held up my hands in a warding gesture. “Now, you should be aware of a couple things before you resume your attempt to kill me: One, I plan to fix this. Second, I am…” I shuddered again. “Trying VERY hard to keep my humanity. The Waker took all my memories and I had to rebuild them from scratch, but in doing so I’ve had to basically break open the sliver and… His early life and mine are similar, but there are—it’s—let’s just say that I can see why he became known as the Wake of Dead Stars.”

I tapped a finger against my temple. “And that knowledge is here,” I said with sudden vehemence. “And every time some motherfucker comes after me, I get stronger. Just fighting your employees, I felt the pull of that knowledge, the desire to shed this shell and expand past mortality. That… terrifies me, Jager. I don’t want to not be human. I never wanted any of this! I JUST WANTED NOT TO BE AFRAID ALL THE TIME!”

The sudden volume of my outburst surprised me, but shocked Jager as he was hit with a concussive blast that knocked him back a step. I took several deep breaths to calm down. “Other Me has been dealing with the Distiller and his avatars for eons. I know I can get to them. I know how to kill them. The only trick is doing it in a way that I remain human in doing so, because I have a feeling if I loosen my grip, even slightly, I’ll pull a Doctor Manhattan and just stop giving a shit.”

Jager’s posture changed, not understanding my reference but getting enough from context.

“You’re asking me to let you leave,” Jager said with a growl that sounded like thunder, shaking dust from the ceiling.

“Pretty much,” I said with a shrug. “A fight between us would result in three things, as I figure it; I die, or you die, or I transcend and you die. Pretty sure this facility is collateral in all three scenarios. But if we came to blows, I’d stop pulling my punches.”

I pulled on some of the more subtle knowledge from Other Me. The shadows of the room lengthened, the temperature dropped and colors muted. A normal person under this effect would be struggling to breathe, their heart under strain just to beat. Jager, I was pretty sure, didn’t have a heart or organs unless he wanted them, but he was still affected by it.

After a moment I let the effect go and panted heavily, black sweat covering my skin. “I—“ I coughed. “I’m not gasping because that was hard,” I met Jager’s eyes and glared at him. “I’m gasping because it was so, so easy. Now, unless you want a second Wake of Dead Stars being born on your doorstep, let me go clean up my mess.”

Jager stood, considering me, the point of his halberd not moving, as if held by a statue. “I’m sorry, but—“

I sighed as he began his refusal. I had hoped Jager would let me leave. I spun up my future sight and as he was mid-word, dozens of tentacles sprang from my body, shooting in every direction only to change and home in on the giant warrior. He was ready for me, sweeping his halberd through the air as if it were nothing, slicing through the wave of tentacles like a blender.

“—you are too dangerous to let live,” he finished, taking a step toward me as lightning began to build in his halberd.

That step took him within reach of the tentacle I had sent through the floor. It shut up, under the rim of his sabaton, into the flesh of his ankle. He reacted instantly, jerking his foot away, but it was already too late. I was in his memories, and I took a select few of them. Mainly, the ones that allowed him to not be a giant angry pyroclastic cloud.

As a roaring superheated storm suddenly burst from Jager’s armor, I yanked back my tentacles and dashed from the room as the primordial storm that was Jager expanded after me, and I suddenly knew what people in Pompei must have felt. I followed the hallways that my senses have been mapping out since my escape, bursting through a couple of large stone doors that shattered as my shoulder crashed into them.

Beyond the rubble of the doors was the familiar room where I had first met Jager. My magic flew out of me, making subtle changes to the spells and protections laid into the foundations. For this working, I pulled heavily on the knowledge of Other Me, as I could not escape without it. The entirety of this facility was so deep underground I could not sense the surface, nor could I sense any kind of ventilation or tunnels that led up. Surrounding the facility was an endless expanse of rock and granite. The only way in or out was by teleportation, which is fucking bonkers. The amount of effort and power just to render transportation to this place is staggering. It’d be like building a bullet train to go down the street to the liquor store.

The massive room shook as I reshaped tiles, shaved away columns, turned other features to dust. It was also shaking because a massive, several thousand degree storm made of anger was squeezing through the hole I had made in the doors, intent on turning me into a pile of carbon. As more of the storm got through the doors, the faster it became, taking up more room. My clothes suddenly combusted as the temperature got to the point where nothing that wasn’t stone or my reinforced flesh could not be on fire.

The room had originally been designed to look like a bigger version of the Roman senate, which hid its purpose of funneling magic away from anyone that wasn’t Jager. I was fighting against that purpose now, using sheer magical might and cunning borrowed from Other Me to get around the restrictions and destroy them, while also taking hold of the teleportation enchantments and brute forcing my way past their security.

All while fleeing for my life.

I felt my skin bubble and cook, my hair long since burnt away as the edge of Jager crossed the final few feet to reach me. With a sudden panicked burst of magic, I slammed the last changes to the room in place and felt the teleportation take effect.

I appeared in the middle of the Nevada desert in an explosion of fire as the part of Jager that had been trying to consume me teleported with me. Several thousand degree clouds dissipated around me, setting the dry vegetation within a few hundred feet ablaze and creating a mini inferno.

I slapped the fires out with a few bats of telekinesis, even as I collapsed to the ground. I felt my mind reaching beyond—beyond the world, trying to reach past the fetters of humanity. The struggle to remain what I am was reflected in my body, as it bulged and thrashed, new organs and limbs sprouting and fading from me in a kaleidoscope of struggle.

“God fucking damnit!” I screamed from eight mouths. “I’m not going to lose at the fucking starting line!”

I roared, loud enough to be heard miles away as I forced myself to remain in my mortal constraints, shoving the knowledge I had borrowed from Other Me back at him and erasing the memories of it. It took several minutes, but I was able to calm down, mashing my body into the form I wanted through sheer grit.

As soon as I had two legs and two arms again I laboriously climbed to my feet and began running north. The teleportation was off by several hundred miles and I needed to grab some shit before meeting up with Alice in a few months. I needed to lay false trails and make it so they focused on other shit so I can see my friends.

I… needed to see Ida. It had been over a year.

Feeling as if the world was too fragile to contain me, I lengthened my stride and began the long trip to Oregon.