James Maxey - Greatshadow

“Is this going to work?” I asked. “Can you read Menagerie’s thoughts?”

Relic didn’t answer me as he placed the two halves together, letting the bisected worms touch at their shared wound.

There was a rapid blur of motion, as the thin, squiggling worms gained mass and muscle. In the span of a heartbeat, the worm was gone and Menagerie sat before us, restored once more. The speed of the recovery left me seeing double.

Only, I wasn’t seeing double.

There were two Menageries, sitting facing each other, both the size of pygmies.

“What the hell?” they both asked in unison. Their voices were high-pitched squeaks as they asked, “How did… It wasn’t supposed to work like…” They each reached out to touch the other, their fingertips tapping together in mirror symmetry.

Both reached for tattoos on their shins and suddenly two small bears were staring at one another. “Terrific,” both bears said, in a resigned tone.

Father Ver walked toward the twin bears and looked down, his eyes narrowed. “You’re to blame for this! You were ordered to ignore the treasure. You’ve cost us the ogress and the War Doll by your disobedience.”

Relic shook his head. “The War Doll is still functioning.”

Infidel punctuated his sentence by tearing free of her stony outline, staggering onto the floor, still looking dazed.

The Truthspeaker continued to glare down at the small bears. “Disobey again and your contract will be terminated.”

The Menageries shifted back into their twin, pint-sized human forms. They both placed their hands across their knees and sighed. They said in their stereo voices, “You don’t need to threaten me. No one feels worse about this than I do. The sight of all that gold made me stupid.”

“Muh fuh,” said No-Face, looming over his fellow Goon. “Nuh whoowa smuh guh?”

“Yeah, you’re the smart Goon now,” the Menageries said, shaking their heads.

The faceless giant held out his hands. Menagerie took them, and let himselves be pulled back to their feet.

While this was happening, I’m certain that I’m the only one who noticed that the Deceiver had pulled out a piece of cloth and wrapped the largest shard of glass within it, stuffing it into his bag.

“Let’s take an hour to rest,” said Tower, sliding the harpoon back into the book. “There are prayers of penance I need to perform for having allowed a book to touch the ground. No-Face, you’re bleeding; let Father Ver stitch you up.” The big man’s hands and knees were red with blood from where he dug through the glass fragments searching for Aurora. Finally, Tower turned to Relic and said, “Make certain your War Doll is still functioning. If you need more time for repairs, let me know.”

“Of course,” said Relic. He left the others and headed toward the shadows of the hall where we had first entered. Infidel sat there, crouched down out of sight of the others. She’d removed her shining steel bra, which was squashed flat. She was hammering the flattened plates back into cup shapes with her fists, using her knee caps as a guide.

“I’m sick of this,” she grumbled softly as Relic approached.

“Patience. You may shed your disguise soon enough.”

“I don’t mean I’m sick of my disguise. I’m sick of this mission. Stagger and I goofed around in these ruins for a decade before he got killed. This team is dropping like flies. Maybe Aurora and I weren’t always friends, but she deserved a better death than that.”

Relic squatted down beside her. With his limbs hidden within the confines of his cloak, he looked more like a heap of rotting rags than a man. “We can’t be certain that Aurora is dead. Her thoughts simply vanished when the pyramid swallowed her. Perhaps she was transported elsewhere.”

I also had my doubts she was dead. Unlike Ivory Blade or Reeker, Aurora hadn’t lingered behind as a ghost. Or would a human ghost and an ogre ghost go to the same afterlife? The Great Sea Above she’d described certainly was nothing like the church’s version of heaven. Since the ghosts usually only lingered a moment, had I simply missed her in all the excitement?

Infidel tried the repaired cup on for size. It was still dented, but it did vaguely resemble the curve of her breast again. “The Black Swan said that only two people survived this quest, and made it pretty clear I was one of them. Tower’s probably the other survivor, given his bag of tricks. It doesn’t bother you that your death has been foretold? Why don’t you get out while you still can?”

“Whatever the Black Swan saw, she’s already altered our fates. It’s possible we will all survive, and the dragon will die.”

Infidel didn’t look at him as she worked on the second bra cup. Her lips were pursed tightly together for several seconds before she said, softly, “Or maybe all of us will die. Even me.”

I put my ghostly hand on her shoulder, wanting to comfort her. I’d never heard such despair in her voice.

“I thought I was done with this,” she said, hammering the metal on her knee.

I didn’t think she was talking about the bra.

Relic nodded. “And now you are afraid again.”

She picked up the cup-shaped steel and began to smooth it between her fingers. “I haven’t felt like this since I left the palace. I used to be so timid and terrified. I never wanted to feel that way again.”

I was surprised to find out she’d been afraid of anything as a child. It seemed counter-intuitive. As a princess, I would have guessed she’d been protected from everything.

“I was treated like a china doll,” she said. “I wasn’t allowed to play outside because I might fall and get scratched. I couldn’t sit too near a window, because the sun might burn my skin. I slept with armed guards stationed at my bed because my father was afraid of kidnappers. My whole family had tasters who sampled our food to make certain it wasn’t poison. Being constantly reminded I was so fragile left me in a constant state of terror.”

Relic nodded knowingly, but I had trouble imagining a fragile, frightened Infidel.

She sighed. “I wanted to do this treasure hunt as a quick smash and grab, making stuff up as we went along, the way Stagger and I always played it. Events never got out of control when we were together, because we never tried to control them. We just moved on whim and instinct, living fast and fearless. Now, Tower is talking about destiny and history, the Black Swan is playing with people’s lives like they’re pawns in some game, and it sounds like my father is already studying maps of this island figuring out where to build his new palace. I can’t help feeling that all this planning has put things out of control. We’re all going to die.”

Relic rose up, stretching his back, sinews popping. His hunch disappeared as he rose to the height of an ordinary man. His body was still hidden by the tattered cloak. His eyes glowed like red embers in the shadow of his hood.

“Perhaps you’re saying these things hoping I will reassure you,” he said, in a stern tone. “I need offer no comfort. All the strength you need to prevail pulses within your veins. You ceased to be a frightened little girl the second you devoured the blood of a primal dragon. A dragon soul shares your body now, a soul more powerful than the sniveling child you once were. Surrender yourself to the dragon inside and our victory is assured.”

Infidel shook her head slowly as she tested the second cup. Satisfied, she worked silently with the link of chain that held the cups together, crimping the ends between her fingernails, then slipping the whole thing on from the back like a vest before pinching the final connecting link between the cups shut at the front.

She stood up. Relic, still standing straight, looked down upon her, a good head taller. She peered up into his glowing eyes. “Who the hell are you?” she asked.