J. King - Onslaught

Ixidor landed on his side in a broad courtyard of Locus. Gritting his teeth, he glanced up through the glimmering air.

His unmen followed, vaulting one after another overhead. Five of them escaped through the sixth, who closed forever, keeping the wurm away.

Not for long.

Shifting his focus, Ixidor saw the monstrous beast. Twisted, titanic, evil, it clung to the highest tower of his palace. Its black bulk dripped ooze down the white walls. Its head rooted through the chamber above-Ixidor's bedchamber.

Staring up at the grotesque creature, Ixidor awakened from his stupor. Since the beetles had first poured in their ravenous swarm from Phage, he had reeled like a man suffering a stroke. Part of his mind had been eaten away. All the thoughts that had dwelt therein had vanished. At first, Ixidor had been unable to move or think. Now, he could do both. Anger awakened him.

Locus was his tribute to Nivea: beauty defying ugliness, life defying death. Now death's ugly parasite clung to it.

Ixidor rose. His five remaining unmen did so as well, standing in the center of a beautiful garden. Beneath their feet, four paths diverged, each leading outward to one of the white walls. At the terminus of each path stood a huge frieze of Nivea's face. Four Niveas peered inward.

"My north, south, east, and west."

The flowers of each season were planted around her faces so that as the fickle year turned, she would never be without adornment. This was Locus at its finest-beautifully defiant. It was the perfect place for Ixidor to battle the wurm.

On the tower above, it finished its depredations and withdrew from the ravaged bedchamber. Its head waggled in the air, seeming to sniff, then, with slow magnificence, that sinewy thing turned toward Ixidor. Recognition glinted in its ink-ball eyes. Shifting feet on the stony side of the tower, the wurm wound its slimy way down the tower.

Ixidor strode to gather his weapons. He would not wield killing things, for the wurm embodied every killing thing. Ixidor would fight only with life, with beauty-the essence of Nivea.

He started small, gathering a broad bouquet of fresh blooms. His arm was its vase, and his life energy was its water. It was a work of art, his greatest weapon.

The wurm slithered over the courtyard wall. It was quick. Extending its rubbery form down to the river-stone walk, the wurm wound toward Ixidor.

The man only stood and waited, his unmen surrounding him. He held his bouquet ready as if the wurm were a coming bride. The flowers were no longer mere flowers, though. They had transcended their material forms. Ixidor had infused each stem, leaf, and petal with his life essence. The bouquet solidified in this precise form, this exact orientation. He completed his creation by extending the flowers toward the wurm. He said, "These are for you, Nivea-my love. For you alone."

Wet and lunging, the wurm flopped up the trail and opened its black mouth.

Ixidor leaned forward like a man flinging flowers into a grave. He opened his arm, hurling the bouquet into the jaws of death.

The wurm snapped closed on the flowers. When its mouth opened again, the blooms were gone. It leaped on Ixidor.

He flung himself sideways through one of his unmen. The other four followed. Ixidor left the bright garden and the black wurm and landed in a long art gallery. The remaining unmen tumbled down around him, while their comrade vanished in the face of the wurm.

Ixidor stood, feeling the thick woolen rug beneath his feet. He wished he could have remained to watch what his bouquet did. It would tumble intact through the monster's gut and seek out whatever essence of Nivea remained there. It would find her, and he would find it.

Or perhaps the bouquet was a foolish fancy, and Ixidor was simply mad.

He peered around at the gallery, and his misgivings deepened. Perhaps he was mad. He'd only half imagined this space. The long rug beneath his feet was extraordinarily detailed, but the paintings on the wall were indistinct, the sculptures shapeless, the ceiling irregularly bossed and in places receding into misty uncertainty. Ixidor had known he wanted an art gallery in his palace, but had been so busy creating living art that he had neglected dead art.

It was just as well. He could finish the gallery now and finish off the wurm.

Even as he stood there among his unmen, the rose window at the end of the gallery shattered. Where once bright panes welcomed the sun, now jagged fangs of glass ringed the frame. The wurm broke through. Glass cut long furrows in its sinewy flesh as it squeezed in.

Ixidor turned away from the coming beast. He lifted his hand toward the empty frames on the walls and sent out mental images of himself. Each painting became a precise portrait of him-so precise that it lived and moved. Ixidors stepped from their frames and mingled upon the floor. Death would have to eat them all before it could find him.

Lowering his hand, Ixidor flung it out toward the sculptures. They too took shape, life-sized images of him. They jumped down from their bases and stood staring at the monster that flopped toward them.

"All for you, Nivea. I give these folk only to you."

Just like the immutable flowers, these works of art would not dissolve in the tract of the beast. They would climb through it, giving Nivea company and killing the monster from within.

Or Ixidor was mad.

The wurm would not be stopped. It smelled the true Ixidor among all these false ones and bashed the creatures aside. They scrambled up along its muzzle, and when the beast gnashed at them, the Ixidors leaped into its mouth. An army of semblances invaded the monster and ripped out fistfuls of flesh as they went.

Ixidor laughed. He had reached the farthest vestibule in his gallery, and the wurm thundered angrily toward him. It swallowed its killers obliviously-deadly portraits, beauty against ugliness. Ixidor laughed.

The great beast lunged.

Ixidor hurled himself through another unman. The final three followed. They and their master tumbled to the ground elsewhere in the palace, and the one who had been their portal snapped shut.

Air hissed into Ixidor's inner ears. He clutched his head while the pressure equalized and then looked around at the deep chamber, stony and dark. Though he had created this windowless space, he had never been here before. There was no way into this deep sanctum except through a single stair that wound down within one of the foundation pylons. They were fifty feet beneath the bottom of the lake. Even if the wurm could smell him under stone and silt and water, it could not hope to squeeze down the pylon to reach him. Here he would be safe.

Ixidor smiled. He snapped his fingers. Lights flickered into being along the stony walls. They showed an opulent chamber with thick red carpets. Before him, a long and elegant dining table stood in the midst of tall seats. To one side, a canopy bed waited, and next to it stood a giant wardrobe. With a huge and well-stocked pantry, a deep cesspit, and burgeoning bookshelves, Ixidor could remain in this room forever.

He had forgotten about this place. He should have come here first. Let Topos take care of itself. Let mortals ravage his world, and when they were done, he would rise to live again.

Ixidor strode toward the canopy bed, and his three remaining unmen followed. Heaving an exhausted sigh, Ixidor climbed onto the silken sheets and laid himself out flat. He would wait out the war here with his unmen.

He must have slept. He had right and reason to.

Ixidor awoke to see an unman grasping at him. It tried to shake him, but its empty hands laid hold of nothing. Its silent shouts had not awakened Ixidor either. He rose because of the steady trickle of water off the canopy onto the carpet.