Thresholder

The tower had worked. Flora was stunned by that.

Perry wasn’t supposed to be their canary, but it appeared that’s what he was, and he didn’t seem to be able to maintain a single thought about vampires or werewolves or anything else aside from the battle. Sometimes when she spoke into the earpiece, it was as though he was ignoring her, and other times he would come back with a garbled version of what she’d just said. He refused to believe her, kept saying that vampires and werewolves aren't real or offering other explanations. The effect was powerful, so powerful that within Teaguewater there would never be any need for the Custom, never any need for individual glamours. People would disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes and be unable to follow the evidence.

Mellon had said that it would be strong. He had made all sorts of promises though, and the more promises he’d made, the less she had believed him. The last-second work he’d been doing on the tower had been hopeless, an indulgence they’d granted to an egotistical madman who believed in his own genius a little too much.

All those sour thoughts had vanished now. Mellon had done it.

Flora could only imagine what was going on among the king’s vampires. They wouldn’t know their weaknesses, their hunger, wouldn’t have any conception of their state of being. It was a boon, if not, perhaps, the opportunity to deliver a deathblow. That remained to be seen.

“We go, now,” Flora told the group she was with. There were a few hardened soldiers among them, though all from past wars, some of those wars a century ago. None had fought in the Reclamation War.

They filtered out of the house, most of them moving fast, the strix on black wings, the others walking or running. They had no authority to do this, as the Jade Council was rotten through with traitors and collaborators, but they knew that it needed to be done all the same. Morale would be an issue, as their ragtag force stood a good chance of breaking at the first setback, but Flora knew that this was their only hope, especially given the werewolves in the mix.

A werewolf was a dangerous thing, even the day after the full moon. If there really were a dozen of them, it was going to be trouble.

Cosme spun his staff and began to rise into the air. Perry shot at him. The staff came around to stop the bullet, and the unlikely lift supplied by the staff stopped, dropping him to the ground. Whatever was actually happening, whatever the wolves were doing here, Perry wasn’t going to let Cosme escape from it.

The wolves didn't seem stupid. They were moving as a pack, trying to flank, sizing up their targets. The caution seemed unwarranted, as they were so large that against a normal person, they would just kill with a single bite.

The wolves moved on the men with guns first. The guns were large, cannons, heavier than Perry thought a person could carry. He’d been hit by one, in the arm, which had crippled the power armor, but he couldn’t make sense of the memory, or the fact that these men were casually carrying that sort of weaponry now.

The cannons fired, thunderingly loud, especially in concert with each other. Most of them missed, but there were a few hits, which did little to thin the numbers of the wolves. Then the wolves were on the men with guns, tearing them apart, claws piercing them, ripping off limbs, shaking them like rag dolls.

One of the wolves turned toward Perry. His jaw was dripping with blood, and the fur on his chest was matted with blood as well, centered around a dark spot off to the left side. The wolf had been hit, was limping slightly, but it bounded forward and opened its jaws wide.

Perry dodged to the side, trying to do his best impression of a matador, moving faster than the wolf had counted on. He thrust out his sword as an afterthought, but it bit through the fur and into the flesh, a grazing wound as the creature bounded away and turned back toward him.

A second wolf had joined the first, and they soon had him flanked.

“Shoot out their eyes,” said Perry.

“I’ll try, sir,” replied Marchand.

The gun on his shoulder had been holding, the servos not broken just yet. Perry worried the bullets would just bounce right off the eyes, like he’d seen in a movie with superheroes once, but with two loud bangs, the wolf was blinded, and with another two, as he turned, the second wolf was too. Perry raced at the nearest one, the one that had been struck by a cannon and still not killed, and jammed his sword into the open wound as deep as it would go. He felt the sword strike metal, the slug that was lodged inside, and changed his tactic, pulling the sword out to go for the head.

Normal wolves weren’t the size of a car, and they’d die from a chest wound. These weren’t normal wolves, but the thing Flora had called them, werewolves, was insanity. In the back of his mind, even as he moved and fought, he knew that something wasn’t making sense.

The wolf was thrashing around, blinded, or nearly so, but still with fight left in it. Perry brought the sword down again and again, using the full power of the damaged suit. He finally landed a strike that crunched through something, sliced a vital part of anatomy beneath the fur by the neck, and the wolf stopped moving.

It was a full-on battle across the fairgrounds, and Perry had found the best way to deal with that was to focus on some small slice of the battle that he could win. The battle as a whole had too many parts to it, too much to see or conceive of, even with Marchand putting up all kinds of displays in the corner of Perry’s vision.

One of Cosme’s legs was bloodied, gashed open by claws or teeth in a way that should have been dumping gallons of blood on the soil. His staff was twirling without his input, blocking the claws and teeth, which worked right up until the point that the wolf bit down on the staff itself. The wolf gave an angry shake of his head, and Cosmmse was shaken around like a chew toy, snapped one way and another. He released the staff and went flying off to the side, tumbling when he landed, and as the wolf tossed the staff and charged, Cosme quickly reclaimed the staff and struck with a flare of red light from his bracer. It was a sloppy, powerful strike that would have missed against a smaller target, but the blow cracked through the wolf’s skull.

Perry was barreled into from the side by the other wolf he’d blinded, and they were left tumbling on the ground together. When Perry pushed himself to his feet and called his sword to his hand, we saw the wolf was halfway healed already, one eye still broken and the other milky white. The gun on Perry’s shoulder fired again, a decision made by March, and the milky white eye burst again, which gave Perry the time to plant his feet for a firm thrust of the sword. He went for the mouth, sliding the sword between sharp front teeth, and when the sword bit flesh, he pushed harder, leveraging the armor’s full power.

The cannoneers were being literally eaten alive, and a few of them were still moving, even with missing limbs or torso whose deep wounds must have gone straight through their ribs. It rivaled the worst battles that Perry had ever seen, particularly the way one of Cosme’s soldiers ran with his hand at his stomach, trying to hold in his guts. Perry bounded forward and cut the man’s head off with a single swipe, putting him out of his misery.

Only three of the wolves remained. They had fought viciously, killed dozens, but the cannon fire had been too much for them, and after the initial confusion, the soldiers had started to rally. It helped that they were supernaturally durable, though Perry didn’t much understand that either. The first time he’d seen it, it had seemed like a trick of the light, or just a bit of improbability, mortal wounds turned into glancing blows.

It still wasn’t clear where the wolves had come from, or why these soldiers were so resolutely refusing to die. Perry wasn’t even sure why they were fighting each other.

Perry went at Cosme again as the staff began to spin, commanding March to fire the gun. The staff blocked it, dropping Cosme once again, as the cannons continued to fire, and Cosme swore in an unfamiliar language. Then Perry was on him, trying to press the advantage, bringing his sword down against the staff with quick strikes. All of the power that Cosme had been pouring into the bracer was taking its toll, and two thirds of the rubies were gone — tracked by March as part of the HUD. When the bracer was depleted, Cosme would be finished, and already Perry could tell that the counter attacks were coming slower, with less force behind them.

“Servo malfunction in the backup gun,” said Marchand with a clipped tone. He always called the gun on the shoulder the ‘backup gun’, since it was assumed that anyone wearing the suit should have a proper weapon, something that weighed ten or twenty pounds, maybe more given that the armor could handle it.

Perry didn’t like that, but he kept up the assault anyway. He’d been in lengthy battles before, and knew the limits of the armor’s batteries, which were barely even being stressed. The fight could go on for a half hour before he’d need to rest and recharge.

The ball of water came unexpectedly, leaping up from the ground, and it splashed harmlessly against Perry’s armor. It wasn’t a trump card, just a last ditch effort, and as it moved over Perry’s armor, all it was doing was covering the cameras, which March could compensate for, especially given how many cameras were studded around the armor. There were artifacts in the vision, but that was it, the water spirit of Cosme’s a non-entity in the fight.

Cosme’s chest was stained red with blood. His leg seemed held together with blood more than anything else, and he was panting, which was less of an effect than Perry would hope the cumulative injury would have given him. It was hard to say whether Cosme was being held together by the strength of the bracer or the mysterious other power he had, but Perry’s only option was to keep fighting.

A shout came up from one of the tents, and Cosme bounded away from the fight, pushing the staff off against the ground with his full might and sending himself sailing backward. Perry turned, not to track Cosme, but to see where the shout had come from, and he was just in time to see flaps being drawn back. Between them, there was a familiar hulking metal machine, one that he’d seen in Cormorant Wesley’s workshop. Wesley was just behind it, at the controls.

“Zeus-Killer,” said Perry as he launched himself to the side.

The machine let loose thick streams of lightning, which lit up the fairground, and where the lightning came down were immediate fires and blinding light that March mostly blocked. For all the hardening that the armor had against electricity, Perry had no illusions that he’d be able to survive a direct hit from the machine.

When Perry landed from his bounding leap, the machine swiveled to follow him, turning on its mounting, and Perry ran with the full power of the suit, just barely outrunning a line of lightning that was following him. He gripped the sword tightly in his right hand and whipped it toward the machine and its operator — improbably, it was Wesley himself, a fact that registered only belatedly — but the sword glanced off the lightning machine, or cut through the metal without damaging it. The sword returned to Perry’s hand as he kept on running, until he was beyond the turning radius of the machine.

The few remaining soldiers had regrouped, and were reloading their weapons. Only a single wolf was left, and it was limping but still angry, and the remainder of the soldiers had turned their attention toward Perry. Cosme was looking angry. His face was red, but he’d gotten the lye off, or simply powered up the bracer and healed through it, or used whatever other insane tricks he’d been hiding. He didn’t look like he was going to try to run anymore.

Perry held his sword out to the side. The shoulder gun was a bust, which was unfortunate, and the soldiers were barely standing, their ranks having been winnowed by the wolves. Perry didn’t like his odds though, especially not as he saw a few of the cannons being reloaded.

“Servos on the gun are broken,” said Perry. “Can the gun still fire?”

“Yes, though it risks further damage, and cannot aim itself,” said Marchand.

“Fire whenever you have a good shot lined up,” said Perry.

He raced forward, not toward Cosme, but to the soldiers who were at the back ranks, reloading their weapons. They hadn’t been expecting that, and Cosme wasn’t fast enough to intercept, which meant that Perry landed among defenseless men with a razor-sharp sword. He’d seen how much damage some of them were fighting on with, and went for the head, a smaller target, and more difficult to get at with metal helmets. The sword could cut metal though, and cleaved halfway through one man’s skull, then through the jaw of another.

Cosme was on Perry then, swinging his staff. He had only a tenth of the rubies left. Some of that power must have been going to healing, for him to be so low on them, and his leg was looking less like it was held together with hope and willpower.

Perry dodged the staff once, then twice. The wide, powerful swings were easy to see coming, the wind up betraying the strength. He tried to parry and had his sword knocked from his hands, buried in the dirt, but the sword leaped back to his hands again, though it was only of limited use in defense.

There were still guns being hurriedly reloaded. Wesley was making adjustments to the mounting his lightning gun was on, repositioning it. If there was a time to retreat, it was now, but that risked Perry being shot out of the air, and another fight against Cosme seemed like it had worse odds.

Flora came in from above, her cape looking like dark wings, her approach heralded only by a brief chirp over the radio. She landed with her feet on the staff, which had come up to block her, and she flipped forward to land behind Cosme. They had him flanked, though Perry was dismayed to see that she’d brought no weapons, only her bare hands. It didn’t occur to him to wonder how she’d come from above, how she’d made such a jump, or flown without the help of powers.

“You’re back,” said Cosme. His face was swollen, words slightly slurred.

Others were showing up, men and women that were part of Flora’s … rebellion? They were just normal people though, not even soldiers, and Perry despaired that many of them would probably die, especially against the secret magic that Cosme was wielding.

One of the men who’d arrived with Flora punched one of the soldiers, who crumpled under the strength of the strike.

Another landed with whisper quiet and grabbed a soldier by the head, giving it a twist so violent the head was sheared off the shoulders.

Perry’s mind reeled. He thought it likely that he was hallucinating, it was the only explanation that made sense, unless … there was some power that Flora and her people had, something that had been kept hidden from him for some reason. That didn’t make sense though. No, more likely it was something that Cosme had done, some manifestation of power they had been able to usurp.

He tried his best to turn his attention back to the fight, to Cosme. Even flanked, Cosme didn’t seem to be slowing. He was whipping his staff around, making wide swipes that forced them back, a look of intense concentration on his face.

“The machine!” Flora called.

Perry turned to it. Wesley had done something, and the machine was humming loud enough to be heard over the sounds of battle. Perry threw his sword again, more on instinct than anything else, and the sword spun through the air, catching the lightning machine in the side.

The machine exploded with lightning, whatever internal process was going on inside it spilling out. Blinding arcs came out of it, spilling in all directions, and Perry was brought to his knees. The armor had protected him, but something had gone wrong, and the display flicked off. The armor felt hot around him, and for a few seconds Perry was blind. The display was rebooted with a test pattern, then with low quality video.

“Malfunction in the fusion core,” said Marchand. “I recommend immediate return to base for repairs.”

It took Perry a moment to get his bearings. Cosme had taken a wound to his face, what looked like claw marks, and Flora was unsteady on her feet, making uncoordinated dodges that just narrowly let her avoid Cosme’s staff. As Perry was calling his sword back to his hand, Flora took a hit from the staff, a clipping hit on her shoulder that spun her around. She didn’t get up.

“Fifteen percent battery warning, sir,” said Marchand.

That was much lower than it had been half a minute ago.

Cosme turned on Perry. His one good eye, red and swollen, peered at Perry. The bracer was almost empty of rubies, but the staff was held like a bat, ready to strike. Cosme’s clothes were nearly ruined, but he reached into a pouch of his black vest with his free hand, wincing as he touched his bloodied chest. He pulled something out as Perry went in to strike, but the staff moved easily and stopped the attack.

In Cosme’s hand were rubies, dozens of them. He slapped them against the bracer and they bumped against it, drawn to it, like magnets, until they had snapped into place, filling the small slots.

“Five percent battery warning, sir,” said Marchand.

“This is it,” said Cosme. “The end.”

Perry attacked, and the staff blocked. It was pointless, except that it would allow Flora some time to recover. An attack forced defense, as the staff wouldn’t allow its owner to be hit, but the battery was running low in a hurry, either bad diagnostics or a leak somewhere. Perry wouldn’t be able to keep it up for more than a minute, and alarms were showing on the HUD, flashing reminders of impending doom. The sword came down over and over again, the staff always blocking.

Flora wasn’t moving from where she’d fallen. Her arm was twisted around.

The suit faltered mid-swing, and Cosme pounced on the opening, striking straight at the chest with startling speed.

Perry went flying and landed on his back, pain shooting through him. The power armor normally absorbed more damage, angled itself to take hits more easily, but now, his chest was aching from the strike and his joints felt like they were on fire.

“Emergency mode active,” came Marchand’s voice.

The HUD was gone, and the video was a simple feed from a single camera, somewhat smudged, without any of the stitching or correction that the suit normally provided. When Perry tried to move, to get to his feet, there was no assistance, it was only his own muscles fighting against the bulk of the armor, all the internal components and plating now weighing him down. He rose up on his elbows, propping himself up, and could only watch as Cosme approached, staff in hand.

“Suit not working so well?” asked Cosme.

The battle around them had died down. Those who hadn’t fallen to the exploding lightning machine had fled. Flora moved, but only slightly, a twitch of motion no more effective than Perry’s own attempts at getting up.

“The wolves were a nice touch,” said Cosme. “You kept that one in your pocket, I have to admit.”

He was gloating. Perry seethed. There was nothing he could do though, not unless Marchand was working in the background, fixing up some of the suit’s internal processes. It wasn’t clear whether Marchand was even running though, let alone doing emergency diagnostics and repairs on the microfusion reactor, if such a thing could be done.

Perry was beaten. Even if he could use the quick release to escape from the armor, all he would have was his sword, and that wouldn’t be enough to stop Cosme. It wouldn’t even be close.

Light spilled out from a portal as it appeared behind Cosme.

Cosme frowned and looked back at it.

“Interesting,” he said. He turned back to Perry. “It would seem the fight is over, by whatever criteria the portals use. Are you injured under there, or are you just useless without the armor?”

Perry said nothing. He was hoping that there was a way out, something that he’d overlooked, that Cosme had also overlooked.

“You’re not going through,” Perry finally said. He hoped that his voice carried. He wasn’t entirely familiar with emergency mode, but it did seem that the internal microphone and external speakers were on some kind of auxiliary battery.

“I’ve done this a few times,” said Cosme. “I’m not worried about it closing.” He was looking Perry over.

“What do you want from me?” asked Perry.

“I’m thinking about what you’re going to do if I let you go to another world,” said Cosme. There was anger on his ruined face. The bracer was still pulsing with red light, the rubies being eaten through. Cosme was healing.

“I’m not a bad guy,” said Perry. “I was on the side of the rebellion here.”

Cosme frowned. If his autobiography as given over the radio was right, that made him a hypocrite this time. The poor, downtrodden minorities were Flora’s allies, her people, and there was a piece missing, something Perry couldn’t figure out, but Cosme had sided with the king, who wanted to exterminate them.

“Take off your armor,” said Cosme.

“What?” asked Perry.

“Take it off,” said Cosme.

“It was printed for me,” said Perry. “You won’t be able to wear it. It won’t fit.”

“Then I’ll sell it, or study it,” said Cosme. “Take it off, or I’ll kill you here and now. I’m not a dangerous person by nature, but for you, I’ll make an exception.”

Perry wasn’t supposed to take the armor off. The fog had lifted and the moon was shining bright, and for some reason Perry was worried about that. Maybe it was all that ridiculous talk of werewolves. He didn’t want to give up the armor, couldn’t lose his most valuable asset, even if it couldn’t be fully fixed, even if the reactor was damaged. It had been Richter’s gift to him. It contained Marchand, his only companion.

Flora’s voice came into Perry’s ear like a whisper. “Get out of the suit. I’ll be ready.”

There was, somewhere in the back of Perry’s mind, a piece of the plan. Trust Flora. Trust March. If it doesn’t make sense, follow their instructions. He wasn’t sure why that was in his brain, how they could have planned for whatever Cosme was doing to their minds, but he went with it.

The emergency release could be done from within the helmet by biting down on the water pipe in sequence, which Perry did, slowly and deliberately. The latches had thankfully not been compromised, and the armor came off in pieces, snapping off as though it was a perfectly normal thing for armor to disassemble itself. Perry had only used it a handful of times, always when his body was broken, and while the portal seemed to think that Perry had lost the battle — while he didn’t disagree with that — he was feeling fine. The pain in his chest had faded away, and as he climbed to his feet in his skintight suit, he felt better than fine, energized as though the battle hadn’t even happened.

“Rrr,” said Perry, the noise coming from his throat unbidden. It was always a difficult time when coming out of the suit, his motions so different without the enhancement, the audio unfiltered, the vision no longer crystal clear, no HUD, fresh air …

He was changing. He could feel it. His eyes went to the moon. He could smell blood in the air with an alacrity that had nothing to do with how much death there had been on the fairground that night. His body was shifting, bones stretching, muscle coming from nowhere, and soon he was towering over Cosme, who was looking at him in horror, until Perry came down on his front paws.

The portal winked shut. The wolf barely registered it. There was prey in front of him, and he was hungry.

He’d become a being of pure instinct, his uncertainty a distant memory, any thoughts of things more complicated than claws and teeth completely evaporated. He remembered what he’d seen though, the way that stick had taken out the others, and circled his prey, wary of its stinging blow. The bloody human was like a snake with a poisonous bite, more powerful than his appearance let on.

The wolf nipped at him, and found his teeth stopped by the stick. He growled as it stymied him, then went in with his claws, rearing back to meet the staff with force. It was resolute, difficult to move, even as the human grit his teeth under the weight.

One of the corpses rose from the ground near the prey, her pale skin marred by wounds. She approached the prey from behind with footsteps that would have been whisper quiet to a human. When the wolf attacked again, moving forward to bite, she attacked in concert, her claws rending the flesh on the prey’s back, opening him up. He cried out in pain, and the wolf bit down hard on the stick, holding it in place while she continued her assault. She was cutting deep into the flesh, and the blood was flowing freely, but the prey didn’t stop moving until she sank those claws deep into his neck. He collapsed, though his stick still moved in his hands, as though it meant to protect his dead body. The wolf bit him, tasting the staff, but also sinking his teeth into flesh.

A shimmering light opened up in the air, and the woman yanked at the prey, taking him from the wolf’s mouth, throwing him bodily through the light. He disappeared, and the light with him, leaving the wolf alone with the woman in the moonlight.

The wolf hesitated. She had a familiar scent to her, almost comforting, a scent of wrestling and nipping, mate scent. It confused him, and he prowled toward her, trying to get a better sense of her.

She was frightened of him, and backed away, seeing his movements for that of something else, as though she hadn’t recognized her. He growled at her, a warning, and she unfurled huge black wings, making herself look bigger. Her stance was wide, as though she meant to tackle him, even with how small she was, and the wolf learned that small things were sometimes dangerous.

She made human sounds at him, loud ones, but she didn’t move toward him, and he didn’t move toward her. After a few indecisive moments, he stopped his growling, and in response, she lowered her black wings, curling them in. She approached him, head low, and touched him on his muzzle.

There were more human sounds, and this time the wolf felt a bit of the human, the second self that was buried underneath the fur and claws. He could understand what she said.

“Let’s go home.”

Home, the small apartment they shared together, a place of warmth and food. It sounded nice to him, but there was so much he didn’t understand, like why she had thrown the prey into the light. He was still hungry, hadn’t had his fill of blood, and if he’d had a way to communicate it to her, he’d have said that they could return home once they’d both eaten their fill. Instead, he loped off to the nearest body, that of a fallen soldier, and began to rip away the fabric that served as a false skin until he had a bit of thigh to bite into.

The woman was watching him, looking around, as though there was some danger, but the wolf would have known danger, would have heard it from a mile away, smelled it from two miles. There was only the stink of the city, the blood of the battlefield, the earthy fairgrounds that had been trampled by thousands over the previous weeks, the metal of the tower — hundreds of things, but not danger, not just yet. More humans would come, the gunfire had been deafening, but they had time yet.

While the wolf ate, the woman gathered up pieces of metal, putting them into a sack. It was odd behavior, and when he nudged a corpse in her direction, she ate only a small piece of it.

Eventually, the wolf had eaten his fill, and the woman touched his neck, then lifted herself up with her full sack until she had sat astride his midsection. It was uncomfortable, and he didn’t like it, but she urged him on in the direction of home.

His belly was full, and he did as he was bid.