The Blood-Dimmed Tide Is Loosed

[CONTINUED FROM THE HAMMER CHRONICLES: PERSISTENCE]

I cannot believe he actually pulled that damned stunt off.

.

..

…

Urgh. I’m going to be hearing about this one for years.

Regardless, Dan had managed to bring down the semi-magical wall surrounding London with…

… fucking hell, I can’t even say it, to do so would dignify it.

With a goddamned magical fart.

My husband, everyone.

‘Alright everyone!’ said Dan, a massive grin on his face. ‘E.R.I.S. should be able to fly through MacArthur’s Breach -’

‘We are not calling it that!’ said Eris, Urquhart, and I simultaneously.

‘So,’ he said, ignoring us, ‘it’s like we planned: core team into E.R.I.S. – just the way they like it – and the Academy fighters and Urquhart’s brigade securing the path behind us. Break!’

‘For the Order!’ yelled Urquhart’s soldiers, as one. Well. We’ll have to deal with that later.

---

A FEW HOURS EARLIER

The Flydell North Grotto was about as close as we could get to London without being blocked by the magical barrier surrounding the core of the city, so it was there that we teleported. Mark wasn’t with us; he had remained in Albion to rally additional troops for the assault on London. Neither was Urquhart, he was off doing… something.

We would have taken E.R.I.S., but Dan had pleaded with Eris to borrow it for his ridiculous side-quest – although I probably ought not to deride it too much, since no-one else had been able to come up with a plan to bring down the Wall.

Maybe Urquhart was working on a backup plan. I could only hope.

But Flydell North was still a fair step from the Wall itself, so we headed out on foot to make camp in some nearby woods; Eris’ drones had scouted the area to find a gap in the Grigori patrols, so as long as we didn’t draw too much attention to ourselves we’d be able to hunker down there and wait for Dan and Eris.

One area in which our intelligence was severely lacking was exactly which Amoralist had taken command of the City. Lionheart was out, obviously, and it wasn’t Cain or Styles or Valentine; our initial theory had been Andy Murray, but the more intelligence we gathered, the less likely that looked.  

No… sad to say we were walking into yet another unknown.

Eris had created some devices that were capable of radiant heat without generating light, and we were grateful to have them as we huddled under makeshift lean-tos barely keeping out the perennial London rain. Nia was sitting by herself, an odd expression on her face, staring at the bottom of her tin cup.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ I said, sitting by her.

‘The hell’s a penny?’ she asked, the slightest smile breaking.

‘You know…’ I said. ‘All told, given how ridiculous a piece of currency it is in 2026, it makes sense that no-one’s heard of it in 2326. But seriously. How’re you doing?’

She looked at me for a second, then back to her cup. ‘Fine.’

‘Hey. I invented “fine”. What’s wrong?’

She closed her eyes. ‘This isn’t the time or place.’

‘Um… if it’s something that’s bothering you this deeply right before we go into battle, I think it’s exactly the time and place. If you’re distracted out there…’

‘I won’t be,’ she said, gritting her teeth.

‘Yes, you will,’ I said. ‘Look, I’m a trained psychologist, and -’

‘The hell’s a psychologist?’

‘… The future isn’t a good place, is it?’

‘It’s really not,’ said Nia with a grimace.

‘Short version,’ I said, ‘is that I can tell when someone’s bothered. And you, my dear…’

‘Alright, yes,’ she said testily, ‘I’m bothered. I’m bothered by the fact that I spent years looking for Dan, and now that I’ve found him, he’s… he’s wrong.’

I said nothing, but I held eye contact.

‘You’ve thought it,’ she said. ‘Fuck. Your Dan has barely refrained from saying it. And I really wanted to believe… fuck, I can’t even put it into words. The man I loved, the man I was going to marry, that kind-hearted man who wanted to make the world a better place… I wanted to believe that he was still in there. But… if there’s any of him left, it’s deep down. The Dan I loved would never have thrown his lot in with the Order. He wasn’t capable of that kind of ruthlessness.’ She looked at me, the beginnings of tears forming. ‘You wouldn’t understand. Your husband is a good man; yes, he was tempted by the Order, they even tried to mold him, but you were enough to bring him back.’

And there it is, I thought. Let her get there…

‘Why, Cali?’ she asked, the tears flowing. ‘Why were you enough to save your Dan when I’m not enough to save mine? I know that I’m the one who took your name, I’ll never be you, but… goddamn it, I loved him, I thought he loved me, isn’t that enough?’

We sat in silence while her words rang over us. It was a good two minutes before I spoke, taking her hand as I did. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I’ve never really processed it, but… I came damn close to not getting him back. I forget – how much of our story do the “ancient legends” tell?’

‘Not as much as we’d like; Discordia was the source of our knowledge, and even they were still in their infancy then; they remember only what they were told. I know that Dan fought the Moonchild in the Great Tower; and that the fight left him broken. I know that Institute forces attacked the Academy; that in the chaos, the Order took Dan. And I know that you spent a long time seeking after him. And that the Order was molding him into the Starchild, the warrior who would conquer Pierreia and cast down the Moonchild and the Institute.’ She looked at me. ‘And that you never gave up. That you stayed brave. That you saved him. That was what drew me to you, to be honest; to your story.’

‘It’s… not all of it,’ I said. ‘Before the end he was… he was a true believer. And we came to blows. I fought him, I fought my husband to protect… you know, I say to protect the Moonchild, but I’d like to think I was fighting to protect Dan from himself. To stop him crossing that line he could never uncross.’

‘You fought?’ she said, surprised. ‘But… his love for you…’

‘It was what brought him around… in a way,’ I said. ‘But… Nia, I need you to promise me you won’t think less of him.’

‘I promise.’

‘He… he only came around when I told him what the Order had planned for him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He thought,’ I said, reaching for a tin cup and pouring myself some wine, ‘that after he slew the wicked Moonchild, then all would be right; one man’s soul tainted, yes, but a great evil removed from the present and the future. He thought that he could ride off into the sunset, and that I would be there waiting for him.’

‘Would you have been?’

I didn’t answer that. ‘That wasn’t what the Order had planned. They – and in “they” I include my own father – had planned to annul our marriage.’

‘What?!’

‘The Oncoming Storm wasn’t the only ancient order involved in the war against the Institute,’ I said. ‘There was another; the Order of the Lunar Eclipse. They had been the source of the Institute’s spiritual wing; but their spirituality had been twisted to serve the Institute and its founder. And so they formed an alliance with the Oncoming Storm; an alliance forged in birth.’

Nia looked askance. I continued. ‘When I was young, my father had… what I thought for the longest time was an affair. It was more than that. It was the price the Order had to pay to bring the Lunar Eclipse into their fold. And from his union with the witch from the Lunar Eclipse… a child was born.’ I chucked wryly. ‘My baby sister. Jezebel, she was called; raised by the Order of the Lunar Eclipse in secret. Their leader had divined a purpose, but even she couldn’t say what it was… until decades later. Until the Starchild.’

I took a deep breath. Nia continued to look at me, her eyes now dry. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ I asked with a mirthless chuckle. ‘Were Dan to play the Starchild to Elisha’s Moonchild… he’d need a Princess of his very own. Omega, she was called, the woman who was to be Elisha’s concubine… but Elijah, who was to be Elisha’s mentor, fell in love with her and rescued her. I believe his successors took on the name Prodigy?’ Nia nodded. ‘The Order wanted to wed Dan to Jezebel. Symbolism, you see? And it was that, and not that what he was doing was wrong, or even the fact that I was standing in front of him and begging him not to continue down that path…’ Huh. My turn to feel the tears. But I wasn’t alone; Nia’s eyes were glistening too. ‘So you see,’ I said to her, ‘it’s not you, darling. Any more than it was me. It’s these fucking Orders and Institutes, who have no qualms about treading on all the people they want, on manipulating the good so that they’ll do evil, all to pad their fucking wallets. And that’s why we’re taking them the fuck down.’

‘Then let’s just hope,’ said Nia, ‘that there’s enough left of my Dan to bring him back from the brink.’

And at that precise moment, we heard the distinctive roar of E.R.I.S’ engines. ‘They’re back!’ I said. ‘I swear to God, if he actually found that ridiculous jar…’

---

Eris, Dan, Nia, and I piled into E.R.I.S., and I looked briefly at Mark. He shook his head. I nodded. The door closed behind us.

‘Will the four of us be enough?’ asked Dan.

‘Gonna have to be,’ I said. ‘We’re stronger than we were when we fought Lionheart, hopefully we can take on… whoever the fuck they have at the Palace.’

I’d seen Buckingham Palace many times; even went inside once or twice, when school functions took us there. It shouldn’t have been surprising to me that it was… exactly as I remembered it. It made sense though; the Amoralists were our contemporaries, whoever it was living in there doubtlessly delighted in imitating a monarch.

The gates were locked against us, and another magical barrier kept E.R.I.S. from flying in. But Nia and Eris exchanged a look, and Nia notched a red-tipped arrow to her bow. She drew, loosed… and Eris’ explosive-tipped arrowhead, lodged squarely into the lock, blew the ancient gates clean off their hinges.

Almost on queue, red-coated soldiers with ridiculous hats began pouring out of the Palace. A lot of them.

Oh, of COURSE you keep the fucking hats…

I noted with some relief that they didn’t seem to be carrying guns. Perhaps they never thought anyone would make it this far, perhaps the Institute’s old aversions held.

‘Did we account for them?’ I asked.

‘Not this many,’ said Eris, tensely.

‘Well. Nothing for it, then. If we -’

A mighty roar came up from behind us, and a vast horde of people began streaming out of houses and taverns and alleys.

Wait. Urquhart’s reinforcements can’t possibly have reached us yet…

The horde of people gathered around us, and one stood forward. Nia’s jaw dropped. ‘Eris?!’

‘What?’ said Eris.

‘She’s referring to me,’ said one androgynous person towards the front, stepping forward. ‘Cali.’ They looked at her with a longing laced with pain. ‘We have little time, but… I’m sorry.’

‘What changed your mind?’ asked Nia.

The other Eris nodded towards me.

‘The tournament?’ asked Nia.

‘Let’s just say,’ said Other Eris, speaking directly to me, ‘that your victory was not for nothing. You showed the world another way. We must fight, yes… but we can do it without losing ourselves. And so with that in mind…’

They turned to the assembled Children. ‘For those who come after!’

As one, they roared and charged the Amoralist soldiers. We charged with them, the past and the future as one fighting the same foe. I downed a particularly bulky redcoat with a roundhouse kick, then another with a palm strike.

‘Caledonia!’ yelled Other Eris. ‘Get to the throne room, we’ll handle this fight!’

A wave of the Children opened a gap in the Amoralist defensive line. Dan, Eris, Nia and I sprinted through it, and I laid out one final guard by the door with a massive right hand.

Once we were inside, it was a matter of following the route we had memorized. We knew that the Amoralist ruler of Britain would be in the throne room; with all that the Amoralists valued and drew power from symbolism, it would be the only place they would be.

A steady jog through the hallways. My heart was pounding.

You know, if it turns out they made Cain the “King,” it’ll make your match a lot easier once you depose him…

We still haven’t ruled out Andy Murray, you know. Never did fight him.

Ugh.

Up the stairs, through the Green Drawing Room… and there was the door to the throne room. The four of us looked at each other. Silence passed for a moment.

‘Oh, go on, Eris, you know you’ve always wanted to,’ I said. They grinned and started unbuttoning their trousers. I averted my eyes. ‘I meant kick down the bloody Queen’s door!’

… King. Come on, Cali, Charles has been King four years now, you should be used to saying “King.”

Eris sighed theatrically, but nonetheless indulged the (pen)ultimate fantasy of an anti-monarchist and kicked down the door to the Buckingham Palace throne room.

Well.

May have meant Queen after all.

A slender figure was draped lazily across an enormous throne. ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘It has been a while, hasn’t it… dear sister?’

‘Jezebel,’ I said under my breath.

I felt Dan tense up beside me, and comprehension dawned on Nia’s face.

‘You know, I confess,’ she purred, ‘I really didn’t think you’d win our tournament. I was rather hoping for the Ripper. He seemed a natural Amoralist; I still don’t understand why he isn’t with us. Can you imagine your little revolution happening had his vision of the world been the one imparted to the masses?’

I ignored her. ‘Surprised they let you back. Didn’t think the Institute was big on traitors.’

‘Ha!’ she said, throwing her head back. ‘You know as well as I do that the Amoralists are idiots. All I had to do was walk back all confident, tell them that I had been spying for them… with Ryan Sunset driven into exile and the Moonchild incapacitated, the fools left behind were desperate for all the strength they could muster.’

Nia, quick as anything I’d seen, notched and loosed an arrow; but Jezebel was faster, snatching it from the air and tossing it contemptuously to the side.

‘That,’ she said acidly, ‘was high treason. The sentence for raising arms against your Queen is death.’

Dan, Eris and I went into fighting stances. Jezebel chuckled. ‘A trial by combat, is it? So be it!’

With a sweeping wave of her hand, she knocked Dan and Eris hard against the wall, then rounded on me.

‘Go on then, sister,’ she snarled. ‘Let’s see the High Priestess. Of course you were the fucking High Priestess. Do it!’

I reached within myself to the Power that was slowly becoming familiar and felt the form of the Priestess emerge.

And then my sister and I went to war.

TO BE CONTINUED!