Listen to:
Bullet for my Valentine - Four Words to Choke Upon

Chapter Nine

"Look out!" Dentin said. The creature reared and screamed a blood-chilling, semi-melodic shriek that ran off into the surrounding caverns and broke into a thousand echoes. Flame flickered between its diamond teeth, but that was the only warning anyone got. A column of fire gouted forth, lighting the whole cave an eerie red. The heat wave alone knocked Taneia back, and she could feel her skin blister, smell frying meat ... She scrambled to her feet, and Tilin grabbed her and ran. He could run with blinding speed, so quickly that the entrances inside the facility blurred into one corridor-long door after another. Not only was he simply fast, but his reflexes were almost unparalleled.

"Outsider," she whispered.

"No," he said. "Semi-Eternal."

"Dentin's?" she asked, remembering X's comment.

"Who would have done him to begin with?" Tilin asked incredulously.

Taneia choked down a laugh. "He's not stunningly attractive, but damn! That's harsh! He's certainly not bad to look at."

"No," Tilin said, laughing. "He's the Outsider!" He got serious and finally set her down, deep within the facility. "He's an Eternal. Don't you remember-we were briefed on the Eternals. That information came straight out of the Badlands disguised as magic and fiction, almost a century ago now. He reeks like an Eternal."

Taneia snorted. "Great way to put it. Is that the weird impression diverter shit he gives off?" She'd known Tilin for ten years. There was no need to be formal in front of him.

"Of course it is."

They both spun around.

Taneia couldn't tell whether it was an Outsider or one of the new genetic experiments, or even, come to think of it, whether it was a he or a she. The figure was less than four and a half feet tall and only relatively humanoid, but it hovered several feet in the air, deliberately just above eye level, so you'd have to look up at it. It had a pair of massive black wings whose tips rose above its head in graceful arcs. Its seemingly metallic scales were so black that they shimmered with blue highlights. A circlet of gem-tipped horns rose from its scalp like a crown, catching the light every time it moved. Its face was flat, its nose unfinished, its gleaming multicolored eyes tilted at a strange upward angle, its mouth filled with small diamond fangs. It shed light from its body almost in layers, if layers of liquid could exist and if light could be fluid. For its lack in height, its strength was impressive. Taneia could see muscle rippling under the raven scales. She realized that it deliberately oozed power, shivering with a heavy magical energy. But this was forced. Its arrogance was not X' certainty, but a disdainful one.

"How the fuck did you get in here, creature?" Tilin barked.

It turned its flat gemstone eyes on the battle commander, a look of near incredulity on its small, slanted face. "God," it said, "you really are slow. I mean, I knew the first time I met you that you were unbelievably stupid. I knew before you ever said anything. You humans just drip idiocy. I just didn't know how bad it was."

"Don't be fucking difficult, creature," Tilin gritted out.

"Don't call me creature!" the creature snapped petulantly. "I'm not a creature. I'm an intelligent being, unlike yourself. If you really have to ask, I shouldn't tell you, but because your precious world is at stake, I will. I teleported. It's a simple matter of knowing how space folds. I know about the world that's coming to exist."

"How?" Taneia snapped sharply. She was going to kill people if she really had to suffer this being to live much longer. She already knew it.

"Oh God." It got that half incredulous, half long-suffering look on its face again. "I folded time. Can none of you honestly fold time? Jesus, what kind of world have I landed in?"

"The one I'm trying to protect!" Tilin said.

"Get the hell out of my facility!" Taneia snapped.

"Oh, see, there's a problem with that," it said. "I can't do that."

She almost reached out to shake it, but as soon as she lifted her hands, some unseen force batted them away. "For one, because I'm more intelligent than the people I've seen so far, and for two, because you need me, because I know all about the world that's coming to be. I know how it works. I know what kind of sad, semi-useless creature governs it. Give this one up-you can't save it."

She turned to Tilin. "Do I really have to suffer this creature to live?"

The being threw her a cocky grin. "Of course. You could never kill me."

Tilin sighed. "Unfortunately."

"C'mon," it said. "I know how to fix your creature problem. Dentin's probably fuckin' making it more beast so you can't fight it, or taking away your resources to deal with it." It beckoned to them. "And his creature? Pansy when he's not so elemental and a bit more mortal. You'll see later. Actually, maybe not. I never saw you around in that time." As if his not seeing us meant we didn't exist, Taneia thought.

"Go with him," Tilin said. "He's an ass but I think he's being honest right now. If he doesn't want us to, we probably won't die. ... Oh, I do see the problem with that ..."

"Dentin's there," Taneia said. "Hopefully someone can handle that creature. And I refuse to hide back here while everything I've worked for goes up in flames." She winced. It was a bad pun.

Great, Taneia thought. It'll be his way of saying we owe him something later. I know people like this inside out.

They followed the creature-"don't-call-me-creature!" back through the facility. He didn't quite move like Tilin, because he wasn't running. He didn't blur, space around him blurred. He moved with a seven-league boot effect, like taking one step and being much farther away. And because they were following him, the same effect covered them as well. It was disconcerting, stepping from section to section of the facility, so that in seconds they were back at the entrance.

Dentin and X were circling the creature. It didn't look like there was much fighting going on; it looked like there was a lot of evasion going on. Dentin's creature was nowhere in sight, and Taneia wondered what would happen if it appeared. It was much more agile than the beast in front of them, but it was also smaller and wouldn't take concentrated damage as well.

"Distract it," the demon-creature barked, and darted straight for the thing's face, its wings a blur. It gestured and cast a few words about it, and ice crystallized in the air around it. A heavy magical haze rose in a shimmering field that clung to its body like something alive. A golden glow coalesced around its head and then dissipated. A silver flash encapsulated it and then was gone. Its skin turned into something that resembled obsidian. And then there was more, things that Taneia could feel rather than see, like shifts in its reality. Its clawed hands were a blur, weaving complex symbols in the smoky air, which appeared as silver outlines under its fingers before fading away. Suddenly a storm of wind and ice billowed out from around it, a wave of bone-chilling cold whirling through the entire cavern until Taneia could see her breath puff in front of her face. The flames around the creature flickered, almost went out ...

And now Taneia could see it again, and it was darting in circles around the creature's face. It flared its wings and scooted across the ceiling, wheeled, and dropped vertically hands-first, slashing at the thing's eyes with a blade that shimmered as if someone had hammered it out of light. It avoided the next blast of flame with a mighty downstroke, fanning fire back into the being's eyes, and rose to circle again just below the ceiling. For a moment Taneia wondered if it was still showing off, but then she realized that if it'd gone in at any other angle, it would have been scorched, the delicate membranes of its wings completely fried away. And even if it could stay on its feet after something like that, it didn't look like it would be too graceful on the ground.

"Creature," as people seemed to call it, signaled to X. "You can take fire hits better than I can," it said, its wings a blur as it whirled near the ceiling, assessing the situation. "Dentin, don't even try any Eternal magic on us, because that's just lame. Unless you want to help us, whereas that's just cool. Tilin!" The big man moved reluctantly forward, but not within the range of the massive creature's attack. It had lost an eye, and was still reeling from the injury. "Hit for me. X, be useful and keep Tilin from getting blasted to pieces, if you'll even last long. You're a fire and shadow elemental, but barely useful while you're mortal. Lila. Stay over there and heal for us. And do try not to get yourself killed."

Creature flared its wings and dove. Tilin darted forward, trying to get beneath the-dragon, there was no other word for it-to its sensitive underside. X stepped smoothly into his place and flung up a net of fire, narrowly managing to catch the creature's next blast. The thing lashed out with its right paw, slamming into his chest and dragging its claws along his skin. X staggered back, swaying slightly, but he righted himself as the creature came at him. It slashed at him again, this time hitting him in the shoulder and spinning him away. It kicked Tilin across the room with one of its back feet, where he lay dazed in the shadows.

Again the small winged being dove for the thing's face. It spread its arms wide, almost as if it would wrap its arms around the beast's neck, but instead it backpedaled furiously and flung its arms outward. The room was filled with thousands of falling ice crystals, which dissipated as soon as they hit the floor. Taneia would have thought it was eerie and quite pretty, if she hadn't been busy scrambling backward in a pointless attempt to outdistance the wave of numbing cold that swept throughout the cavern. Even though it was centered on the dragon's face, the temperature change was so sudden that the shock of cold burned those too close to the caster.

The massive beast reeled, disoriented and hurt, and Creature seized the advantage. He dove in a dazzling whirl of attacks, spinning and ducking and aiming for the soft spots around the thing's nose and eyes. But he couldn't move fast enough to miss all the blasts. One grazed his side, narrowly missing his left wing. He circled in confusion, giving the beast the moment-

-it would have needed, had Tilin not dove in and drove his spear into the soft joint between the scales of its shoulder. It screamed that eerie scream of its, but this time it wasn't defiance it screamed-it was pain and desperation. It wasn't overconfident anymore, which made it much more dangerous.

Creature regained its balance, but its left hand, its casting hand, was blackened. Taneia guessed it had sustained massive nerve damage. Its hand was clumsy and stiff, and casting by relying on a hand you have to manipulate externally, without your other hand, could result in disaster. Magicians who lost use of a hand were next to useless.

It raised its head and circled for a minute while Tilin and X distracted its adversary, staring in shock at its damaged left hand.

It flew in to land next to Lila. She and Taneia were sitting in the mouth of the passage, anxiously watching the proceedings. Every now and then she would stand and cast a hasty but neatly-performed spell, doing what she could for the combatants on their side, and she had already applied her magic to the burns Taneia had sustained when they first encountered the creature.

"What is your name, child?" she asked.

It glared at her. "I'm no child!"

"I'm older than you could possibly imagine," Lila said. "To me, you are a child."

"I have no name," he said. "Creature, Demon, It-but I have no name, I'm He paused. ?-epic. I don't need a name." Whatever he had been about to say was probably very different from what he had said instead.

It silently offered her its hand. She took it and examined it, turning it over between her palms. She reached her right hand out and placed her palm on its brow, singing in that language-that-was-song that she'd used when Taneia had fallen.

"I can't do as much as I could in the world that will be," she said.

"You can fix it, right?" it asked.

Lila was silent.

"Right?"

She sighed. "There's no way ... now, like this ... maybe technology could fix you; these people are still strong in that knowledge."

"But there's still something you could do? Restore it for a little while, maybe?"

"I'm sorry," Lila said. "I can't. The nerve damage is too great."

His wings snapped forward in a blur. (She had to call him something other than it, and he didn't seem very feminine.) Taneia was surprised at their strength; the breeze they generated was enough to push her back. He rose off the ground, and the look on his face when he lifted it toward them was enough to still her completely for a moment.

Creature had given up. His eyes were empty wells of pain. He knew in that moment that he would never see his homeworld again, and that was more than anything in him could stand. He had gone from believing he could be anything in the universe to knowing that he could never be anything again. But the look was there for only a second, and then his face drew into hard lines, his eyes glittering. He had nothing to lose. He too was much more dangerous now.

"I'll need you to cast," he said to Lila. "You don't have to do any more than you can." That was uncharacteristically generous coming from him.

Then he whirled, a blur simply too fast to follow, and dove back into the cavern. In that moment, his skill was unparalleled, rage and defiance driving him to entirely new levels of ability. He had no left hand, but his right still held on to the lovely sword he wielded, and it moved like an extension of his arm. Anyone else would have been amazed at how he fought. But inside, Taneia mourned another death, another sign that her world simply would not keep existing. Every time and every world rejected one another. What would it take to put it all back together? And what would it do to the person who could manage it?

Tilin and Creature drove the beast back bit by bit. With every passing moment he grew more able, as if the more his pain was magnified, the stronger he became. The more he lost his cocky, arrogant self, the more he became cold and bitter and angry, the more he became. He was amazing. But it took destroying him to bring it out in him.

I don't care how much you hate someone, Taneia thought. If you're going to kill them, do it quickly. This should never happen to anyone. He had lost his universe and remained alive. It was a perversion of reality; it simply should not be.

He dove past Tilin as they drove the creature into the back wall. Another blast of fire seared down the side of his face and slashed his shoulder, scorching his side and charring the edge of his wing. For a moment it looked like he would plunge straight down, impaling himself on the great beast's teeth, but he dropped out of the air and landed clumsily, his metallic claws leaving gouges in the stone. With a wordless scream he launched himself beneath the arch of the creature's neck, plunging his blade in at the place where neck-segments and natural armor met. He drove it upward to its hilt in the creature's flesh and pulled it out with a mighty yank, tumbling across the floor, trying to outdistance the wave of scalding lizard blood that fountained forth. The dragon was mortally wounded now, and if they didn't get a safe distance from it, its death throes would certainly crush one or more of them. Creature came scrabbling to a stop in front of Lila and Taneia. Dentin, X and Tilin ducked back into the mouth of the tunnel as the creature dragged its head forward on its now-useless neck, spraying blood from between its crystalline teeth. It shrieked again, a long, despairing sound that was cut off by a horrible gurgling noise. It flung its head sideways, losing all its senses. Its body swayed and it crashed to the ground, shaking the chamber so hard that Creature bounced and rolled painfully along the stone, barely conscious by now.

It lay there, its legs twitching for a moment. It could no longer contain the fires in its body, and everyone scrambled back into the tunnels as its flesh erupted with volcanic heat.

"Creature!" Taneia said, craning her neck back to see where he had landed.

"Don't save him!" Tilin snapped.

"Damn you, Tilin! That's a fucking life! I don't care how irritating it is!"

"Which is why you wouldn't have been commander of this goddamned facility! You don't know when to make necessary sacrifices!"

"So the fact that you hate him makes him the sacrifice? Fuck that! That's ridiculous and you know it!"

"You defend people who don't even deserve it!" he screamed back. The conflagration behind them sent a roiling wind down the tunnel, nearly knocking them off their feet. Dentin was turning back to them, looking exasperated. "This is the same person who hates us for being human, hates people for having weaknesses, acts like the goddamned king of the universe because he's strong and fast and intelligent and he thinks that entitles him to everything! He likes the fact that he's a mutant because it makes him one of a kind. Some people will die to be unique and, in their eyes, better than the whole motherfucking universe! He's one of them! A lost cause! You saw him break! So what? He was stupid. Survival of the fittest. He would have said the same thing about us. He will never forgive you for going back for him because he thinks he doesn't need you, and it will damn you in his eyes. If you go back for him, he'll know you're weak and use you, and when he's done with you you'll have signed your death warrant."

"He saved our lives!" Taneia shot back.

"He saved us to prove a point. He saved us to prove that he was the only one who could do it. Taneia, you have to understand-it was a big fuck you. It was him telling us that we're worthless and we couldn't dream of being as powerful as him, so we need him. He's one cold, arrogant son of a bitch."

Something sank in, leaving Taneia feeling hollow and sick. "What do you mean, I wouldn't have commanded this facility?" She could barely even hear her own voice over the roaring behind them, and breathing was becoming impossible.

"I pushed to have you put in place," he said. "I pulled every string I knew-not because I was proving a point to you, not because I wanted you to owe me something, but because I believed in you. And that's more than that piece of shit has ever done for us, more than he ever would do. He's not capable of caring about anyone or anything beyond himself and his overblown ego."

But Taneia was turning back anyway. She almost stumbled over him; his black scales were covered in soot and the edges of his wings were nearly scorched away. She didn't know or care if he was conscious; she just hoisted him up and ran backward as fast as she could, but he was a hell of a lot heavier than he looked.

She should have sensed it coming. She felt his body tense with crackling potential an instant before his grip was on her arms, hard as steel; his eyes flew into focus, and before she could blink, she was pinned immovably against the far wall. He was breathing too fast, and something dangerous and painful glinted in his dark gem eyes.

"Don't," he said, in a raw, barely-controlled voice, "touch me."

He released her so quickly that she went staggering backward and wheeled away, his proud wings dragging, barely managing to stay on his feet. But he would not accept help from anyone, not until he lost another piece of himself. His pride couldn't handle it.

"Tilin is right," he said. "You should have left me there. If I'm so weak that I need you to save me, I'm not worth saving at all. Unless you were trying to prove something, bitch, because if so, point taken." He limped off down the corridor after the others.

"Men," Lila said. "One and the same." She helped Taneia to her feet and guided her away.