I've been through portals before. On a pretty regular basis, in fact. They were all virtually instantaneous trips, one place one moment, someplace else the next. This time... Not so much.
I drifted, weightless, down a long, dark hallway, or so it felt. I have no idea how long I went along like that, but when I stepped out of the portal-tunnel, I didn't know it for a second.
I was standing in the middle of nowhere, on land that was neither dirt nor rock. It was closer to… burlap, mixed with whipped cream. Sort of.
There was light without a sun; there were no shadows, but I could see, though everything was quite unremarkable. It was flat. Featureless. And the silence was downright physical. I turned in a slow circle, looking around. The portal was there, hanging in the air behind me. Something tingled on the back of my neck, and I spun. I was suddenly not alone.
I was standing with myself. Inner Harry, my id, my unconscious, the Debonair Impersonator. It was the smirking, bearded, taller, darker, handsomer me that always noticed what I didn't.
Except it wasn't. We were dressed the same, jeans and boots, button-down shirt that had seen better days, looking better on him, of course. He had my face. He even had my scars and my haircut. But he didn't have my... What's the word I'm looking for? Oh, right.
Humanity.
"Hello, Harry."
I lifted the athame and shouted, "Fuego!"
Nothing happened. Nothing. Not a pull of willpower, not the slightest stirring of energies. What the hell? I couldn't even feel magic in the air. This wasn't like the blanket feeling I'd had the last few weeks in town; it was simply... absent.
"Missing something, Harry?" the not-me asked.
My eyes narrowed. "What did you do?"
He smiled, and it was just a little too wide for his face - my face. "Nothing. There is no magic here, not as you know it."
Lash, is that true? Lash?
I... am uncertain. She sounded very weak.
I reached for Soulfire. It wasn't there, either.
"Missing something else?" he asked.
A set of strong, heavy arms came out of nowhere and wrapped around my torso, holding me tight. I grunted in shock, but before I could do more than look down in surprise, two more arms erupted out of the ground and grabbed my legs, rooting me in place. Another set reached down from the empty sky and pulled my arms up in grips of iron. I dropped the old knife. My neck tried to move, but it was stiff. My tongue stuck itself to the roof of my mouth.
"I believe you know my compatriots. They Who Walk Above," he gestured at my arms, "Below," he looked at my legs, "Behind," he glanced over my shoulder, and I shuddered, "and Within." I groaned out a wordless curse.
Hot breath, carrying a stink of decay, whispered in my ear; "It is good to know DuMorne was right about you after all, dear boy."
I damn near dropped dead right there. He Who Walks Behind, speaking in its natural voice. The voice it had used the first time I had encountered it, the first time it had tried to kill me. I remembered it clearly, the whole encounter, for the first time. All the pain, all the terror, the clerk it had killed at that gas station convenience store…
No. No, now was not the time to remember all of that. I had to get free. I had to... To... What the hell was that?
"Do you hear that?" my reflection - He Who Walks Before - asked. I was already listening. A wind had started, though I couldn't feel it. He looked at me, that ridiculous Joker grin in his face - my face - and I realized; it wasn't the wind.
It was sound. It was echoing, breathless, static. It was white noise. And the volume was increasing. It was an itch between my ears. It was so powerful, I couldn't believe I hadn't heard it before. It was waves crashing on a beach, but I was buried up to my neck in the sand. Full Dolby 5.1, inside my ear.
It quickly became painful. Lash! Help me! Can you block that out?
I... will... try...
I could barely hear her, but the rest of the sound faded away. Or at least became bearable.
"That," Before said, "is what we hear constantly. No order, no reprieve, no mercy. It is the sound of your voices. Your thoughts. Your emotions. It is torturous!" His voice and smile both cracked. And so did the world around him. Behind him, I saw multi-coloured sky, full of shapes I didn't recognize, and movement. Movement on an epic scale, so vast and jarring in so many directions at once that it was incomprehensible. It was chaos, whipping about in five dimensions, and just that brief look shook my brain as surely as a kick to the head.
God, I heard Lash whisper. No wonder it was locked away from the mortals. No, that's wrong. No wonder all mortal life was locked away from it. Forgive me.
She fell completely silent, and I couldn't feel her anymore. And the sound of every mortal mind in existence came rushing in. Lash? Lash?! I reached for Hellfire... And didn't find it, either.
The Outsider stepped closer to me, the cracks in this reality - the mouth to the Courts of Chaos - closing behind him imperfectly. His impression of my face did not right itself. He now looked like me in a funhouse mirror. His hand sprung up and gripped my throat. Somehow, its voice was clear over all the others. "Did you see? Did you see what we are subjected to? Do you hear it? What we hear, and feel, with no reprieve? Do you see what your God did to us?!"
Did I ever. No relief from the pain, no break from the overwhelming noise, no chance to concentrate or even think...
God and I aren't exactly best buds. We both know that the other has done some rather... questionable stuff over the years, like that whole first-born of Egypt thing. Now, He and His have helped me out of a tight spot or two, but I honestly wouldn't put it past Him to have condemned this race - the Outsiders - to this eternal chaos just so we mortals wouldn't have to deal with it.
Got to admit, if I were an Outsider, I'd be pissed, too. With all that swirling around in my head, I squinted against the growing headache and slowly peeled my tongue off the roof of my mouth. He Who Walks Within allowed it, and I asked, "Why?"
The sky fractured again, and this time, the cracks didn't repair; chaos flooded in, and I understood that we were in a protected area. The true Outside was what was bleeding in through the cracks. Before threw up his arms. "Because he feared us! And what we would do to his precious creations."
Didn't have to be a genius to figure that one out. "Humans."
"All mortals!" Crack. "Everywhere!" Crack. Were pieces of this reality falling to the ground? "Not just humans, but everywhere!" All of the arms holding me tightened, and Before's voice dropped. "It is a vast universe you were given, with absolute laws and limits. Certainties. What we wouldn't give for that." His hand went back to my throat. He squeezed, and I knew he wasn't letting go this time. I closed my eyes. I was going to die. I had no allies, no magic, no Hellfire, no Soulfire, no weapon, no focus. No chance.
There had been other times when I'd been in trouble, but there had always been someone to help, some trick up my sleeve. But not this time.
When I'd fought He Who Walks Behind the first time, as a teenager, it had been harrowing, but I'd managed to use my environment and a little quick thinking to my advantage. This time, there was no environment.
When I'd been taken hostage by Nicodemus and the Denarians, held captive in an underground chamber and tortured, the instant before he would have slit my throat, I'd been rescued by a friend. This time, no friends could come.
When my gun or my staff had been lost before, I'd had my magic, and when it wasn't available I could still run. There was always a way out. This time, I was trapped.
It might have been pathetic, but I suddenly found myself wishing for another chance. A do-over. I mean, I was helpless. I was dead. This time, I was -
Dresden.
My eyes snapped open with the realization: I wasn't alone. I had never been alone. There was one Outsider that had championed humanity right from the start, understood the threat the rest of his kind represented and had made peace with the creator of the universe.
Hell, all those times I'd been lucky or in the right place at the right time, it had probably played a part.
My power over Outsiders was acting as the champion of Demonreach.
Unlike every other time I had heard its voice in moments of helplessness, I didn't suddenly find myself overwhelmed by weakness. Quite the opposite, in fact. I felt strength flooding in, and the sound dropping. All the strength I'd lost, all the energy that Demonreach had taken from me... The son of a bitch had been storing it. And it gave it all back at once.
A scream started in my gut, bubbled up my constricted throat and carried an Outsider through my lips.
Yeah. I vomited an ur-demon. All over another one.
At the same time, I got a grip on the arms above me, and yanked down. I saw Before reeling back, covered in some sort of phlegmy mess, and a scaly, furry, winged, grossly misshapen animal form whipped past my eyes, hitting the ground and jarring the Walker that held me there. Then the ground and sky split again, and the chaos - the colour, the movement, the feeling, the thoughts, the size, flooded in faster. To borrow from a wiser man who also saw other worlds than these, it darkled and tincted.
But my feet and arms were free, and I could move again. I jumped away from the violence I'd started. I ducked under sudden thought, and dodged around a wild colour that froze past me. I leapt within a shape that burned sounds in a specific musical time made of glass.
That makes no sense whatsoever, I know, but it's completely accurate, and the only way to describe what I experienced without using the word 'jabberwocky.'
The Walkers all recovered quickly, and advanced on me through the maelstrom, but I wasn't afraid. I wasn't alone. I wasn't weak.
"Wizard."
It appeared I wasn't particularly smart, either. I'd lost track of He Who Walks Behind, and shuddered at the sound of its voice in my ear. I spun around, but there was nothing there. The air filled with images and shapes I didn't understand and had no desire to, opinions, suggestions and colours with as much substance as real matter buffetting me, and the hum of mortal voices began to grow again.
"You can't escape, you know." I spun again. Before was there, still looking like a cross between me and the Mouth of Sauron. "Your way home is closed."
I looked around, and was unable to find the portal. I saw anything and everything else, ideas and colours and memories and planets and vacuum and everything in between, but not the way out. Concentrating was difficult, if not impossible. I could barely gather my thoughts, and my emotional control was slipping quickly. Despite my renewed strength, a note of panic began to settle in and clutch at my heart; I had to defeat these guys – all of them – but if I didn't find the portal, I'd be trapped here, with the voices screaming in my head and absolute chaos raging all around. I'd go mad.
I'd be an Outsider.
And that was unacceptable.
"No!" I winced and dodged around a wild absence. I ran straight at He Who Walks Before – and almost missed the blur that threw itself at my face. I tried to move, but the little streak of colour was too quick and easily lost against the chaotic backdrop.
I was prepared for an impact; I was not prepared for the feeling of liquid forcing its way down my throat. I gagged and fell to my knees, clutching at my throat and mouth just like everyone who's choking in cartoons does. I always thought that was terribly unrealistic – who grabs at their throat when choking? You cough, you sputter, if anything, you grab your chest.
Not this time. No, this time, I was willing to rip out my own throat, just to stop that sensation. As the thing forced its way down, I saw Before, cracked smile widening even more, cracked reality behind him open and pouring in like water into a sinking boat, slowly advancing.
The weird feeling in my throat passed, just in time for a wave of doubt and uncertainty to roll over me. What was I doing here? What had I hoped to achieve? I pitched forward, catching myself on my elbows. I wanted to vomit, very badly. I wanted to go home. But mostly, I wanted to roll into a ball and beg these things and this place to just go away. I was never going to accomplish what I had set out to do, so why had I even tried?
"Don't by stupid, boy."
I looked up. McCoy was standing there, floating in mid-air, translucent. "Sir? How did you get here?"
He looked at me like I was a particularly slow student at school. "I didn't, and you know it. You're projecting."
"Projecting?"
"Sure. That skull o' yours is so full of cracks, voices and things leak out like a sieve. Well I'm just part of that; one more voice leaking out."
"I'm imagining you?" I shook my head. "Most lucid hallucination ever, if I am."
The imaginary McCoy rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "Hell's bells, your gears grind slow, sometimes. In a place like this?" He swung out his arms. "Where thought and idea are made real by simple virtue of existing? Give your sub-conscious some credit."
"I try. But he's an asshole."
"Harry, listen to me. All this doubt? It's not you. He Who Walks Within got to you."
That... actually made sense.
"Of course it does. You already knew that, or I wouldn't be able to say it."
"But you are part of me, right? Within me? How do I know you're not part of Him?"
A female voice answered as a projection of Elaine floated into my view. "You wouldn't allow it, Harry. You know that. Our voices are yours, not his. We're safe inside you, always have been, even when everything else was wrong, even when nothing else could be counted on, you have always had your friends." She touched my face, stroked it, gently. "You've always had your family."
A sudden flaring of pain exploded in my gut, like my stomach was having a seizure. I fell on my side, arms wrapped around my midsection, groaning. My eyes clamped shut, just for a moment. When they opened back up, McCoy and Elaine were still staring down at me. But they had changed. Their faces were still, cold, hollow.
They weren't mine anymore.
"You're not perfect, Harry," Elaine said.
"Doubt is natural," McCoy said. "Your chances are… slim. You really have no business trying."
I grinned, and God (or gods, I'm not picky) help me, I started laughing. I laughed hard. "Oh, man!" I laughed more, and the projections vanished. I glanced up and saw He Who Walks Before had paused, about twenty steps or five or fifty away – it was hard to tell now. I laughed more at that. "That's hilarious!" I laughed until my gut ached – not with the pain of the outsider hiding in there, but with that mirthful, genuine, laugh-induced ache you get from sharing the best jokes and stories with friends. With family.
"You actually think that would undermine me?" More laughing. "You're pathetic!" I almost couldn't pronounce 'pathetic' because of how hard I was laughing. "Trying to break my confidence with that? Ha!"
I gagged. The laughter weakened, but I didn't stop. Words and a feeling of doubt crept through my head, but I could tell they weren't mine, either. I kept laughing.
And the bile began to rise. I started retching, and I'm pretty sure I tore a muscle somewhere in my abs. I coughed and laughed alternately; but I couldn't get the son of a bitch out of me. I felt a swelling in my stomach, and was struck with an idea.
If my stomach could swell, the rest of me could too, right? Here, in a place where thoughts and ideas were real, where mere will could transcend the physical? Hell, magic was just the imposition of will on reality. I was already practised at it. There really was only one thing to do: I reached into my own mouth.
And it expanded. My fist normally wouldn't have fit all the way in, but this wasn't a normal time, or place. Hell, the ideas of time and place themselves didn't necessarily apply here. I felt my jaw move, but not with the usual sensation of dislocation. It just got bigger. I took a breath, then reached farther.
My gag reflex isn't super sensitive – no comments, please – but it would have triggered if I'd tried this in any other set of circumstances. Except, with my mouth so much bigger, my fist should fit, right? At least, that's what I told myself. It was just an application of will, the same as casting a spell or any act of concentration. I reached farther, my fingers moving down my throat. I kept calm, and held my breath, trying not to think about the fact that this shouldn't be working.
My fingers quested down, down, deep enough that my wrist and upper arm slid into my mouth. I could feel my heartbeat through my hand.
Then I touched something that was moving. It recoiled from me, but there was nowhere for it to go; my gut was only so deep. After a moment, I got a grip on it, and yanked. It was holding on to my insides, but it was weakened. I kept pulling, and finally, with a flourish and a grunt, a wet hand and a sense of complete disgust, I puked up a green-grey blob on the ground. It was still moving. Slowly, awkwardly, stiffly, but it moved. Something that could have been a spindly little arm erupted from it, grasping at the ground.
"Going somewhere?" I mumbled through my now oddly-shaped jaw. I shoved myself to my feet, lifted a foot, and drove it down, crushing the blob, grinding my heel into it and whatever passed for the ground here.
The ground cracked, and multiple limbs, some arms, some tentacles, some claws, some I couldn't identify, erupted upwards. I lost my footing and fell flat on my back. The multiple limbs clamped down on me, locking me in place, forehead to feet, like a mummy.
I flexed my arms and legs, gently twisted my abs and tried to move my neck. I had less than a quarter-inch leeway anywhere.
A voice breathed into both my ears at once. "You are unworthy to be a Champion."
Through gritted teeth, I said, "Your little brother just told that one. It got him laughed off stage."
"You are a betrayer. A weak soul, treading the fine line between good and evil, and all too often, stepping over."
"You don't know what you're talking about. Literally; you don't understand morality!"
The voice became a gentle whisper, and I heard it even over all the white noise. "I know you fear yourself. I know you fear your power. I know you have betrayed and destroyed those you loved. I know your word has been malleable." The volume and intensity both rose. "I know you hate yourself."
In my mind's eye, I saw myself burning Justin DuMorne alive; the man had been a father to me. I saw Kim Delaney, dead because I refused to help her. I saw the great Sword Amoracchius, with its power taken away due to my act of desperation, trying to escape another commitment to Lea. I saw Susan, poor Susan, forever tainted with the curse of the Red Court, a bloodthirst that could never be taken away, because I hadn't taken the time to talk to her. I saw myself putting a bullet in the head of Anastasia Luccio's original body.
In short, I saw every lie I'd ever told, every attempt to escape obligation, every time I'd ever been late to a meeting, basically every person who had ever suffered because I hadn't done the right thing. It hurt. It was, in fact, paralysing to have it all laid out like that.
"No one's perfect, Harry." My brother – well, what I recognised as a projection of him – knelt down beside me.
"You'd know, wouldn't you, Thomas?"
"Hey, I grew up in the White Court. You think you've done bad? You know Lara, you've met my father. Betrayal and back-stabbing are what we do to pass the time between brunch and dinner." He shrugged. "Or dinner and dessert. Depends how bored we are. I left you hanging once, too. Gave you up to save Justine, remember?"
"Of course. Hard to forget."
"But?"
"But… you came through in the end."
He nodded. "Just like you always do."
Another person appeared to come into view. "Betrayal is reviled, but it does not always leave you beyond redemption," Luccio said.
"I know. And I… I don't think you are. I don't think I can really blame you. You did what you did for family." I surprised myself with that ready forgiveness; I hadn't realised that I had forgiven her until I said it.
I guess that's the lesson; you don't ever truly know what someone else is thinking, for good or bad. You're not supposed to. And If I could forgive someone else… surely I could forgive myself?
The limbs around me convulsed and squeezed, driving the air out of my lungs and the blood into my extremities. The pressure was enormous. I tried to cry out, but the best I got was a desperate wheeze. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, and I started to panic.
Once, when I was six, before my first real growth spurt, before my father had died, I'd been horsing around with some other boys at a day camp Dad had signed me up for. It had rained that day, so the counsellors – really just high school students drudging through a summer job – had taken us all inside the school where the camp had been located. Some of us were in the gym, but a small group ended up in a general purpose room. The counsellor had turned away – gone to the bathroom, I don't really know – and some of the bigger boys had grabbed me and rolled me up in a rug despite my screams. Then they sat on me.
The panic I'd felt then was roughly what I felt now. But this time there was no high-school student to come to the rescue. I was alone.
"Don't give in now, Harry!" Ana shouted at me. "You can beat this!"
"Getting out of weird, impossible situations is what you do, little brother," Thomas said.
Yeah, great. But how? All these limbs, holding me down…
Limbs. Well, if my throat could stretch… Maybe?
Sure, why not? I forced a breath in, held it, and squeezed back against the crushing arms.
Then, I grew another arm. I couldn't quite rationalize having it pop out of my chest, but it erupted out from my shoulder just fine, taking one of the Walker's hands (and a large chunk of my battered shirt) with it. Then again on the other side. Some of the limbs let go of my chest to grab my new appendages. I could breathe again.
But why stop with arms? I felt a new leg ripping its way out of my right hip, then another on the left. They took my jeans with them. The restraints around me weakened and moved; He Who Walks Below simply couldn't keep up with my new growth spurt. "You like Spider-Man? Doctor Octopus? The Fly?" I shouted. I was suddenly in the middle of a dozen arm-wrestling matches, and I was winning.
Screaming and flailing, I pulled free of most of the limbs, and rolled over. I sprouted more arms, more hands, erupting from my chest now, my stomach, my back. I started grasping and digging at the textureless ground, and within seconds, I'd plowed through it into something else entirely. Something organic. Something equally colourless.
Something soft. I kept punching and gouging, grabbing and ripping. The soft organic thing under me was mostly composed of limbs, and though they kept trying to block me, I kept knocking them aside. And hitting harder. It was a replay of the Red King, only I was truly seething – with power, as well as anger. As more limbs grew, more power surged in.
After some time – I don't know how long, and being Outside, it might have been no time at all – I stopped. I was breathing hard through my still-enlarged mouth, and all twenty or so of my limbs were heaving with each breath. I stood, a little shaky. He Who Walks Below was just as done as He Who Walks Within.
Something hit me from above, driving me into the ground. Before I could so much as take a breath, I was hauled into the sky – I hesitate to call it 'air' since it was full of concepts rather than gas – by a powerful set of arms. My first thought was 'slyphs', but I dismissed that. It was pretty obvious He Who Walks Above had me.
I flailed, arms and legs and more arms and legs whipping around wildly. I was shouting, my words not quite forming the way they were supposed to in my loose jaw. My deformed mouth had been working, but the shock being driven into the ground and yanked back up had been a bit much.
It screeched. I got my head turned upward. It was a scaly, feathered, distorted, bird-like beast. And it was big. I was gripped in its arms and talons. Its wings were wider than Thomas' old Humvee. Its beaked head twisted around and one of its eyes bored right into me. "You cannot succeed," it whispered.
I saw my failures. All of them. I saw the tests I failed in grade school. I saw Linda Randall, her heart ripped out because I hadn't been quick enough to find her killer. I saw my father, dead of an aneurysm because I hadn't seen the signs. (I'd been eight, but I should have known!) I saw Carmichael, Murphy's old partner, ripped to shreds before I could stop the loup-garou. I saw Susan, again, half-dead and half-blood mad. I saw Meryl, a changeling friend of Fix and Lily, sacrificing herself to save me and others because I hadn't stopped Aurora fast enough.
I saw them all and dozens more; I saw dead women and men, friends and strangers, I saw maimed and tortured souls. I saw the bad guys winning, the monsters getting a foothold, and deals with the devil that could never be escaped.
And at the heart of them all, I saw me, failing to prevent any of it, despite my best efforts. How badly had I failed? How many had I failed? So many people, all paying the price for me screwing up?
For amoment, I would have given anything to do it all over, to save those people, to correct those mistakes. The impact of it all dropped me, and I went into a dive, headed straight for the textureless ground. And I found myself almost welcoming it.
"It's not true, Mr. Dresden. I mean, Harry." A transparent Ivy was falling along with me. "Not all failures are yours. You can't be so foolish as to believe you are responsible for everyone else's actions."
"But - " I started, though it came out 'Buh'.
"Don't, Harry." An image of Michael, the bearded paragon of virtue, was floating along with me now, too. "You always try to shoulder the burden. But you always forget that yours are not the only shoulders that can bear it." He shook his transparent head. "Taking responsibility for everyone else, for all the bad things in the world… it's what you do, but you must have faith – if not in God, then in humanity – that others can take responsibility for their own actions. Failure is not your cross to bear alone."
"You have made mistakes, Harry," Ivy said. "But everyone does. But I would point out, that statistically speaking, you have succeeded more often than you have failed."
The ground and a million other random things were rushing up at me now.
"Those who have died made their own choices, Harry," Michael said. "You did not put them in danger – you toiled endlessly to save them from it. To remove them from danger." He leaned in close and started to fade away. "Remove yourself, this time."
Yeah, great idea. How?
He and Ivy disappeared without answering. I saw the ground approaching, I felt the air – or whatever it was – getting caught in my distended mouth, felt the air was catching it, like a brake or –
A wing.
With the tiniest of effort, I willed wings to sprout from my back. Not little prissy things, either – full-on, dragon-scale, Batman-inspired wings. They caught the air – or whatever – like a parachute, and I leveled out into a super-fast glide. A screaming sound, louder than the voices of all humanity – all mortals, everywhere, throughout the universe – erupted above me.
He Who Walks Above slammed into me, driving us both into the ground.
Or it would have, if I hadn't vanished.
Focussing on a spot above the Walker – back up in the air, surrounded by chaos – I was suddenly there. Wings spread, I finally got a good look at it: covered in scales and feathers, with five wings and seven talons, its head was mounted on a spindly neck, and culminated in a long, hooked beak. The tail looked borrowed from a scorpion, segmented and tipped with a hooked barb.
It was trying to turn over as it fell. I tried to smile as I coasted along, while it smashed into the ground at a breakneck speed. Then I dove.
The ugly beast clawed itself halfway out of the gouge it dug just as I crashed into it from above, screaming. I was having difficulty thinking now, simply acting on instinct. All of my arms and legs were suddenly pounding on the monster, and my slowly retracting mouth was screaming something incoherent. I landed several blows before one of the Walker's wings snapped up and struck me across the face.
I flew backwards, but my body seemed to know exactly how to right itself, and I landed on my feet. The Walker hopped out of the hole it had fallen into, landing on some of its talons. It screeched at me, wings and talons and mouth wide open. Without thinking, I flared my own wings and arms, all of them, and screamed back. Then we threw ourselves at each other, like King Kong and the T-Rex.
We were both pretty pissed, I'd say; the voices in my head, blended together into a roar of white noise, was distracting and frustrating, and the Walker was a true monstrosity, which didn't like being beaten by a mortal. We both unloaded that anger and frustration, hatred and fear, on the other.
Every blow I landed on it let a little of that emotional fury go.
Every blow it landed on me caused a flash in my mind: Susan; Victor Sells; Kim Delaney and Harley MacFinn; Carmichael; Lydia; Meryl; Lash; Arturo Genosa and his friends; Luccio; Molly, Rosie and Nelson; Anna Ash; Elaine; Morgan; Ivy; Murphy; Thomas; my parents.
Every image was of a person I had cared for, each of them at a moment when they had been at their most vulnerable, at a moment when I hadn't been there for them. The Walker was trying to undermine me by showing me my failures.
It backfired. Badly.
Instead, I drew on the frustration and rage that each image presented. I might have let those people down from time to time, I might have made mistakes that got them hurt. But they had all made their own decisions that led them to those moments, too.
It wasn't all on me; I hadn't saved them all, but I wasn't supposed to. I'd been a long time in coming to that little revelation. Being a good person doesn't mean always saving everybody. It means doing what you can, doing your best, and letting the world be.
Right now, my best included beating the ever-loving shit out of this monster. It gave as good as it got, but so did I. My skin broke numerous times, talons sank into muscle, but I ignored it; after all, I could just grow a new arm, couldn't I? Or why stop there? Couldn't I just fix the one that was hurt?
With that thought, my wounds all closed. I let out a bellow of triumph, and re-doubled my attack. Finally, one of my many, many fists cracked it across the beak. It flinched backward, and in that moment, I threw myself forward and completely lost myself in the melee. It went down under me, an unnatural place for it, and despite its flailing and thrashing, it didn't know how to cope.
I beat it until it stopped moving, then hit it some more anyway.
"Borrowed time," a loud voice said. I jumped up. He Who Walks Before was standing there, looking down at me. He was still wearing a distorted, broken copy of my face. "You're living on borrowed time, and borrowed power, champion." He held his hands out to his sides, and they began to light up with power. "I have plenty to spare, though."
He threw balls of energy at me. I had no time to do anything but wrap my wings around myself. The spell – or whatever it was, since there was no magic here - hit me like a freight train, and I went flying, tumbling end over end. I saw stars, which drifted away from me like they do in cartoons, and joined the cacophony of imagery in the sky. I saw that happen just before I hit the ground on my shoulders and flipped over. I managed to land on a couple of my legs, digging a furrow with my momentum. I steadied myself instantly with all of my arms, but my wings were fried. I could smell them cooking.
I roared at the Walker, and simply grew new wings, the old ones falling off and vanishing into the ether. It launched itself at me. It moved like a really ugly bullet, spinning and zipping along almost faster than I could see. I dove to the side and hit a metaphor as the Walker passed by.
The flood of chaos and thought-made-real was getting worse. I pushed myself to my feet and bumped my head on a cliché, which hurt like a simile. I turned to snarl at it in frustration, and took a kick to the face. I fell, my neck snapping back and limbs flailing, my warped jaw displaced and swinging. The skin of my face burned and the pain was beyond expression. I landed in a bright puddle of tropes.
"No strength left," Before continued. "Just a few tricks and desperation." I felt an impact and a burning sensation somewhere in my midsection. The air was driven from my lungs and I sputtered, gasping. Another impact. And another. The Walker was kicking me, each impact accompanied by an insult. "You are weak! You are mortal! You are nothing!"
I couldn't get an arm up or a leg bent. I could barely get a breath in. The lack of focus, the lack of energy; it was crashing down on me – almost literally, here. What I wouldn't give to have another chance to fix this. To fix everything…
Then he was on top of me, pinning me down. His mouth, already unnaturally extended – seriously, he reminded me of Ledger's Joker – widened again, and he started drooling on me. It was acidic, and seared my skin. I tried to will it to heal, to thicken, but he punched me in the head, and what little focus I had was gone. I screamed in anger.
I started swinging multiple arms at him, but he grew more arms himself, and simply held me in place, while still having more than enough fists to pummel me with. I tried to teleport away again, but his grips on me wouldn't release, and I snapped back.
I couldn't move. I couldn't fight back. I'd given it a good fight, done all I could, but I simply couldn't move – the pain and the rage were starting to blind me. I couldn't concentrate, couldn't think…
There was a growl beside my ear, but there was something… familiar about it. I turned my head, and saw a transparent image of Mouse crouching beside me, angrily staring down the Walker. Blows kept landing on me. Everything seemed to slow down – hell, for all I know, everything actually did – and Mouse turned to me.
I heard his voice in my head. It was a clear, bright clarion call, and it cut through the cacophony of every voice in the universe, it cut through all the rage, all the fear. It cut through my weakness, and hit me like a splash of cold water. His voice was refined, not rough, and had an almost, dare I say, angelic feel to it?
Get up, Harry. You're stronger than this. Not just in body, but in spirit.
My jaw and tongue didn't want to work, but I made them. "I don't think - "
Get up!
That last was delivered like a slap. My dog faded away, the chaos flooded back into my head, but I was clear. I was thinking. I was strong.
I heaved my many legs and wrenched my many arms as He Who Walks Before tried to hit me again. We rolled over, and I found myself top of him. With all the leverage suddenly mine, I started delivering blow after blow – punches, kicks, knees. The limbs started flying furiously on both sides – I still took a few shots to the head, the joints, the gut – but I gave just as good as I got. I wasn't weak – I was holding my own against one of the things that goes bump in the night.
It landed one good hit on my jaw – but the jaw just kind of rolled with it, stretching out and practically over my shoulder. I kept hitting, but one good knee to my back knocked me off. I scurried back on all twenties, and crouched, facing it. It was like a twisted mirror staring back. My jaw once again retracted, but Before's mouth was larger and even more full of sharpened, vampiric teeth than previously. It smiled. "You offer a brief challenge."
I smiled back, rolled my jaw once to make sure it was in the right place, and said, "Tell that to your brothers."
His smile vanished, and he threw himself at me again. I was ready, this time. I ducked and threw ten uppercuts at once, just as he was passing over me.
Several of his teeth broke off, and even though my hands were bloodied, I let out a roar of triumph. I closed with him quickly, before he could recover, and laid into him. Bursts of light – the version of magic here, I supposed - erupted from him as his skin cracked, broke, and bloodied. His head changed shape under my hands, like a squeezed balloon. He tried to parry, but simply couldn't stop me and my Demonreach-fuelled strength.
Finally, I drove half a dozen fists into his face at once, and he fell, unmoving.
I stood there, breathing heavily, feeling equal parts thrilled and angry. I threw back my head and screamed into the sky.
And it was a sky. The various ideas and concepts had retreated; I was standing in an empty hemisphere. "Well done," a voice said over my shoulder. A voice that touched a deep, visceral, buried part of me, connected directly to my fear response. I spun with a startled cry, thrusting out arms in a vicious swing. There was nothing there. "I had great hopes for you," it said again.
I spun the other way, suddenly terrified. Goosebumps on twenty limbs is quite the sensation. The body of He Who Walks Before was gone. "Show yourself!" I shouted, though it came out distorted. The bravado in my voice was 100% faked.
A dry chuckle over my shoulder. I spun.
A hiss behind my ear. I jumped and turned.
A sudden blow to my back, crushing a wing and sending me into the ground, hard.
I rolled over, keeping the ground to my back. "Get behind me now, you son of a bitch!"
It kicked me in the head. I rolled and tumbled, seeing stars again. These ones didn't take on a life of their own. Worse, I began to feel the surge of strength I'd taken from Demonreach – or, I guess, taken back from Demonreach – ebb. I was running out. Woozy and hurting, unable to focus or really think, I forced my head up on muscles fuelled by rage.
"Can you find me yet?" the air beside my ear asked me, and I flinched, turning. I turned in a slow, un-ending circle. It couldn't get behind me if I kept turning, could it?
Another blow to my back. I grunted and stumbled, anger beginning to blur my vision. If it was always behind me, how the hell was I supposed to fight it?
The full memory of my first encounter with the Walker rushed through my mind. The creepy son of a bitch had stayed behind me the whole time, until I'd started spinning – but that hadn't worked here, on its home turf. What else had happened? How had I survived?
It had nearly broken my face against every surface in the store, but then I'd started twirling around and got outside, where it had been waiting for me, and killed the clerk.
Then I set the bastard on fire. There was no magic here, not as I knew it, but…
"Anything to say?" the voice asked.
"Yes. Fuego!"
I burst into flame.
I didn't project the fire anywhere, I just willed my skin to burn, erupting in gouts of pure heat. I imagined I looked a lot like a Balrog. It hurt, but I took a grim satisfaction from knowing it was hurting the Walker too.
Or not.
"Excellent, there's fight left in you yet!" The voice was no further away. And the impact from when it hit me was not lessened. I flew a few yards and fell on my wings, painfully.
How the hell was I supposed to fight this thing? What else could I do to something that was always behind me?
"You have to get behind it, Harry." I looked up at the calm, stern voice, and the fierce, blonde face attached to it. Murph looked just like I had last seen her, a little weary, roughed up, and beautiful as all get-out. "It feeds on your fear, your worry, your self-doubt. It will destroy you if you let it."
"Gonna destroy me anyway."
"That's the fear talking. That's the creeping doubt, at the back of your mind. Stalking you. Stalking us all, really. But you know full well it can only take you if you let it."
"How do I beat it?"
She smiled and leaned in close. "It's a weakness behind you, Harry. But all your strengths – all the people you love and who love you, we're all behind you, too." She whispered, "Now you have to get behind you," then she was gone.
"Say what?"
A kick to my mid-section, barely cushioned by my extra limbs. I flipped over in midair and landed on my face. I lifted my head, slowly. A hand slid into my hair and pulled me up, bending my neck at an annoying angle and ripping out hair in clumps. "You prove to be even more entertaining as DuMorne himself."
"Yeah, I'm a regular barrel of monkeys."
"Though I tire of the witticisms."
"I've yet to decide how to kill you. A twist of the neck?" He wrenched me sideways and tossed me to the ground. Before I could get up, a dozen limbs wrapped around me, tight, and yanked me to my many feet. My own arms were limp and had no leverage to force it off me. "A crushing?" The limbs tightened, and I lost my breath. "Or a simple beating?" I was lifted and slammed into the ground. I saw black, then red.
My eyes opened slowly. "Or perhaps," the voice said, and I no longer had the strength to flinch away, "I will keep you here for eternity, watching and listening as my brethren flood into your reality and destroy it all. Silence it all."
My eyes snapped back to focus. Threatening my friends and family was a damn good way to get me angry. It was an even better way to get me thinking. And I suddenly understood what Murphy – what I – had been trying to tell me. I pushed myself up to my knees. A hand wrapped around my neck from behind and lifted me to my feet, then higher. My arms and hands barely managed to keep me from choking. "Or perhaps," the Walker continued, "I will merely crack your throat, or remove your tongue, and let you suffer in silence forever."
I blinked, and was instantly standing three feet behind where I had been. I lashed out at the empty air – except, for just a moment, it wasn't empty. It was full of an ugly, deformed, scaly monstrous presence. One of my feet clipped it as it vanished.
I was rewarded with a cry of surprise and pain.
So I did it again. I was tossing half a dozen punches before I teleported – an odd sensation in itself, it just felt like the world around me was moving while I stayed still. Four fists impacted before the monster faded away again. The next time, five. Then six. Then I got a few kicks in.
He Who Walks Behind was simply unable to deal with someone who could get behind it. It was a complete glass cannon. Its howls of rage every time I got behind it and hit it were music to my ears, and I harmonized with a scream of triumph.
It went on like this, for how long I don't know, and it doesn't matter. After a while, it took longer to get away. Then, much longer. Then, finally, it didn't fade away at all. The Walker collapsed under my fists, face down.
I stood over it, not quite knowing what to expect. I had victory in my grasp – what last trick would it have up its sleeve?
I kind of expected laughter. I did not expect the request. "Now," it said. "Finish it. Finish it all, and start again!"
"Yeah, I'll finish you, all right!"
"All! Finish it all!"
I paused. "What?"
"Restart it all!" The Walker rolled over, and its beady little eyes – incongruous in its ridiculous, distorted head – found mine. "You want it. Just as much as we did."
I…
I wanted to deny that, but I'd just had the thought a few minutes ago, hadn't I? A chance for a do-over. I'd wanted it a few times.
The Walker saw me thinking. It laughed at me. "You are truly one of us, now. You have the power simply by virtue of being here. You can go back. You could undo all that which was done wrong. Take back all the mistakes made." It was tempting, I'll admit. "All your own." Obviously. "And everyone else's. It's all we wanted. We needed a mortal to make the choice. We thought DuMorne, perhaps, but he rebelled. We thought Schneider, but you cast him down. But now, there is you."
I paused again. There were quite a few mistakes I could take back. So much that had gone wrong – so many I'd hurt and destroyed –
What the hell was I thinking?
"Get out of my head!" I yelled at it. "I am nothing like you!"
"How cliché," it said, and lifted a finger. I followed the line of that finger to a point beside me. There was a mirror standing there, now, far away. I approached it slowly, knowing what I would see and hating it, fearing it. And embracing it. I saw my reflection.
It was horrifying. I was naked. My skin was a mottled assembly of various colours and textures, like a surrealist scrapbooking image of a person. I had nine arms and seven legs, all connected to my torso. I still had wings, five of them, erupting from my back at all angles and looking like something pulled off a dragon that had been set on fire.
Worst, though, was my face. My hair was gone. My skull was deformed, bulging in every direction. My jaw was still distorted, not quite closing right. My nose looked broken, pulling down in a 45o direction across my face. And my eyes were sunken, dark and red.
I couldn't look away, even when I heard the Walker struggling to its feet behind me. "You are as much an Outsider as I. You cannot go back. You cannot be what you were. The only way forward, is to undo the cosmos, while you still have the choice to do so!"
I was on the cusp of listening, of believing, when a connection suddenly erupted in the back of my mind. All those years of absorbing pop culture, I never once thought it would actually be useful, let alone save the universe. But there it was, as the Walker tried to be Emperor to my Luke.
I turned to He Who Walks Behind, and made sure to clench my right fists as I did so. "You've failed your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me!"
The Walker's head tilted, like it had heard a foreign language, and I suppose it had. I closed my eyes, and remembered myself.
"I am Harry Dresden!" I said. I opened my eyes again, and felt a wing fall from my back. "Son of Malcolm and Margaret!" I took a step forward, leaving one of my legs behind. Then an arm fell off, vanishing into the ether. "Grandson to Ebenezar!" Another step. With each pace I took towards the Walker, more of the extra pieces were left behind. "Brother to Thomas!" My jaw finally snapped back into place. "Friend to Michael!" The last of the wings fell away. "Teacher to Molly!" Down to two legs. "Friend to William, to Georgia, to Ivy, Knight to Winter, friend to Summer, guide to Lasciel!" I took one more step, and felt my skin returning to normal. "Past to Elaine, and future to Karrin!" I looked down at myself. My body was as I remembered it from all my recent showers: bruised, tall, battered, lean and mine. I looked back at the Walker, who was now thoroughly confused.
"It is impossible. I do not understand!"
"I am Harry Dresden, wizard. I'm mortal, you son of a bitch, and I've made my choice!" I took another step. "You weren't locked away from the universe at the dawn of creation, were you? It was the other way around. The universe was locked away from the Outside, to keep humans – to keep all mortals – from having unlimited power. Any mortal here would have this power, and you needed to draw one in – one with power - and convince it that the universe would be better unmade. To convince one to play God, to have unlimited power, and still have the free will to use it. Well, like I said; you failed."
The Walker, still on its knees, looked confused for another moment. Then, it started to chuckle. "There will be another. There will always be another. This was as close as we've ever come, but there will be another chance, another mortal willing to succumb. We are eternal, wizard, and you will die here!"
I nodded. "You're half-right," I said. Then, I started laughing. And running, straight at the eternal monster, straight at the darkness. I understood what the Soulgaze had meant; with all those good people behind me, with the life I had led, how could I not give all to destroy the evil that l stalked us all?
I ran, laughing, straight at the bastard, and at the same time, drew upon my very essence – the truest magic, the one a wizard – the one a mortal – carried with them through their entire existence. I drew upon my life itself, and readied my death curse.
As I ran, the Walker finally pushed itself back to its feet, and bellowed at me. I only laughed harder, seeing the Incredible Hulk. It took a few lumbering steps towards me, genuinely angry now. I didn't care. I got angry myself at this pompous, self-serving, murdering monster , and my laughter turned into a cry of defiance and rage. Three steps away from it, I threw myself at it, fist pulled back, and cried out, "Understand!"
I felt the life pull away from me, felt the power flow out, like casting a spell, but infinitely greater. There is no way to truly describe it, but I felt a part of myself… transcend: I was suddenly less and more at once.
As the strength left me, I had the immeasurable satisfaction of seeing the Walker's eyes glaze over; hit with the curse, it was granted an instantaneous view from the mortal level. It saw, it felt, it knew what it was to be one of us little people. It understood.
Then my fist sank into it chest, knocked its heart – or what I imagined to be its heart, in this place it all came to the same thing – and we both fell to the ground in a tumble, as my vision narrowed and faded to black.
Some time later, some unknown and immeasurable time later, my eyes opened, which they were not supposed to do. I was still lying in a mess with the body of He Who Walks Behind, my right arm covered in gore and ichors. The concepts and ideas and chaos were still held at bay, still floating around madly just a few hundred yards away. I took a breath, and pulled my arm free, collapsing to the ground.
I heard my own breathing, my own heartbeat. It made little sense; I had thrown my life, my sustaining magic, my very essence at this thing – and I'd felt it go. How was I still alive?
I heard clapping.
I rolled over onto my side and got my head up. "Worthy, mortal. Surprisingly worthy."
"How did I survive?"
The man – I knew it wasn't a man, though he appeared man-shaped and sized – shrugged. "Things are different here, and the use of magic – and there is magic, despite what the Walkers would say – is governed by very different rules."
I shrugged, too, because I couldn't wave a hand, and decided to just go with it. "Well, in that case, Ferrovax," I said, "to what do I owe the pleasure? I'm sorry, I haven't had a chance to clean the place up; I wasn't expecting a Dragon to drop by."
He was dressed in a simple robe, pure white. His face was old without being ancient, and lined without being craggy. But he was old. Old beyond imagining, except perhaps for my fallen Walker friends.
The Dragon snorted, and a wisp of smoke came from his nostrils. "I had to see what all the fuss was about on this side of the wall. I'm not easily impressed. But today, you showed me something new. Something… unexpected."
"Glad to be of service," I said. He didn't catch the sarcasm, and maybe that was for the best.
"For that, I offer you a favour."
"A favour?"
"I will return you home."
"That would be swell," I said.
He stepped forward, and produced a knife from behind his back. I recognised the athame. He held it out to me. "To me, this is little more than a trinket. To your Queen… well. I find it better if she owes me a favour, rather than the other way around."
I nodded. "I'll make sure she knows. She can thank you personally."
He gave me an unenthusiastic half-smile. Then he took my hand, and everything went black again.