We saw Alexander’s approach from across the logosphere, with a herd of twenty-three flying, howling, horrifying heralds in his wake. He was riding the lead herald as though he were mounted on a flying horse, except the horse looked like it was half built out of damaged military tanks from WWII, turrets spinning, treads churning, alongside wings that seemed bolted on like the thing was stitched together from parts in a junkyard. This was only the third herald I’d seen up close, and I was surprised at the technological composition of it. But it made an ugly sense: any culture that had been devoured by the thunderstorm could be recycled into herald form and consciousness, and no doubt many warlike cultures had lost the battle when the time came.
As they got closer, the Dauphine and I both realized what had happened, how Alexander had tamed these heralds. In the same fashion that he’d awakened the Dauphine back in the Shimmer Lands, he’d excised slivers of his essence and somehow managed to implant those sparks inside these heralds. Perhaps as he wounded them in combat, he slipped spark past their armored hides. Perhaps his spark seemed like catnip to them and they consumed it willingly without understanding the trap he’d set for them.
Regardless, whereas their previous herald minds might have had a dawning form of self-awareness about them, these heralds were less rageful and studied their surroundings with acute interest, as though seeing reality with fresh eyes, and like the Dauphine, they were not in Alexander’s thrall as mind-controlled entities. They were distinct personalities that had allied themselves with him, for the time being at least.
For lack of a better term, he “parked” his heralds outside the rift, and then launched himself through the rift to land in front of us. I’d seen him in many incarnations and avatars, but this one was by far the most grandiose. He was a towering, muscular Hercules figure, wrapped in gorgeous armor that still gleamed despite countless dents and scratches across its surface. You could still recognize him as Alexander Reece, though, enjoying his afterlife, in training as the warrior god he intended to become.
“So good to see you again, my friends!” he shouted, stopping short of rushing to embrace anyone.
“You look ridiculous,” Olivia said.
His laugh was genuine and hearty, seeming to take no offense.
“It’s just an avatar,” he said. “I trade them every so often to keep my self-image fresh. I have to say, Olivia, I’m surprised to find you here in the logosphere. Don’t you have important work to do in your lab?”
“Like make you into a god behind everyone’s back?” I asked.
“Precisely,” he said, suddenly all business. “No thanks to you, I might add.”
“Still a terrible idea,” I said.
“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen, or fought what I’ve fought. Right now, we need all the extra firepower we can get.”
“We’ve got extra firepower. That’s why we’re here.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll keep my own counsel on appropriate levels of firepower. Olivia, how long will it take you to run the godhood sequences?”
“Simulations take fifteen minutes,” she said.
“And when were you planning on running them, if I might ask?”
“During the relocation. In a few days.”
Outside the rift, Alexander’s pets were becoming increasingly hysterical with anger.
They were sounding an alarm.
The herald army that had been hunting them had appeared in the distance; the Sparkle Realm had been discovered.
“You do not have the luxury of a few days,” he said to her. “Your arkship may very well die today, do you understand?”
She nodded. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like he was reinforcing his threat with expertly masked power morpheme commands to make doubly sure she did understand him.
“Go back to your lab and run those sequences on the population you already have in the battery,” he said firmly. “If I am not elevated in fifteen minutes, I shall join the enemy’s heralds in tearing this arkship to pieces.”
Olivia vanished.
It suddenly dawned on me that Alexander had actually led the army straight here, on purpose.
He was no benevolent warrior out to save us. He was single-minded in his willingness to sacrifice all of humanity in pursuit of his own elevation. He didn’t care how many people died on the way to his ascension. I couldn’t wrap my head around how conniving and corrupt you had to be to manipulate the situation this way.
I could chase after Olivia to try to stop her, facing her not inconsiderable skills in a one-on-one confrontation. Or I could stay here with the exact collection of souls and armaments that I’d personally arranged like chess pieces into this exact position, in order to fight that exact army of heralds, in order to reinforce this exact conniving asshole. He’d maneuvered everything so that we needed him to become a god and save us all.
I felt incredibly, deeply ashamed about how I’d been played.
“We must keep the Realm safe for fifteen minutes,” he said, returning to his veneer of joviality. “I look forward to seeing your ‘extra firepower’ in action!”
He leapt back through the rift toward his trusty deformed-panzer steed, and shouted a series of commands to his cavalry unit. And then they were gone.
“Pompous fuck, isn’t he,” Maddy said.
“And yet we must fight by his side,” the Dauphine said, turning to me. “My Queen, will I see you on the front line?”
I nodded.
“Excellent,” she said, and she instantly jetpacked off into the fray. She apparently wasn’t much for sentimental goodbyes.
Suddenly the entire Sparkle Realm experienced a jolting shudder and then stabilized.
“This is your captain speaking,” said Jordon via enchanted in-ear monitor. “I’ve had maybe ten minutes of training on this giant rig, so my apologies if I run us into a bridge or something. I’m repositioning us to optimize for gunnery.”
The entire Realm swiveled slightly, which we could only detect by watching the action shift outside the rift; inside the Realm, our experience of “gravity” remained rock solid, no one felt motion sickness, and so on. The arkship had a damn fine physics engine at its disposal.
“We need to get the battle choir into position,” I said.
“You think seven people singing are going to be audible above an army of heralds shrieking in battle?” Maddy replied.
“I do, because the one thing you can always find in the Sparkle Realm is a massive high-power sound system. Maddy, listen, in case … you know, in case something happens to me out there … there’s something I wanted…”
And then I hesitated.
But Maddy was never one for hesitation. She took my hand and said, “Can I kiss you?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
She pulled me close, leaned in and kissed me, and it was sweet, and luscious, and I wanted it to last a lot longer than it did.
When she pulled away, she looked up at me and said, “We’ll have all the time in the world together when this is over. But first, you need to go kill some shit.”