Time slowed. It was an adrenaline thing, I think; I remember reading a story about a cop or someone else whose fight or flight reflex got kicked so high that she could see the bullets carving trails through the air as she ran for cover. Terror had already flooded my body, terror and uncertainty at the impending death of Laura, myself, or someone else who didn’t deserve it. Hearing those words, distorted by the mechanical elements of Falem’s voice, sent a chill running through my entire body.
Trying to fight the influence of what Alonhall had described as an “off-switch in my consciousness” was completely impossible, but I tried anyway. Every previous time it had showed up so quickly that I had no chance to notice before it went lights-out. Fighting it meant that I could start to see how it worked: this was not a good thing.
It’s hard to even explain what it feels like having parts of your brain turn off one at a time. You just… lose awareness. And because it’s your brain, the thing you’re using to be aware, it’s hard to even recognize what’s happening to you, what’s turning off and what still remains. It’s like a drug kicking in slowly, so that you don’t even realize what’s happened until it’s too late, except it isn’t happening slowly at all and you’re losing parts of yourself bit by bit. Fighting against it slowed down the process a little bit, but pure willpower couldn’t stop the flood of nothingness as it slipped around and past my feeble attempts at holding on to my own consciousness.
There was chaos around me, though the sights were blurry and the sounds becoming more indistinct with each passing moment. Wolves were moving into action, Laura was struggling against Falem’s unbreakable alloy grip, somewhere behind me Tillie was in the throes of realizing how utterly screwed she was. My muscles weren’t working properly and my bones felt heavy as steel girders, keeping me pinned to the sand under my own weight.
My thoughts were dissolving, moving in a dozen directions at once. In one vortex was the thought that I’d probably never see Laura again, at least not alive. Another train of thought–in the process of driving directly off of a cliff–went something like “fuck you Falem fuck you Tersine fuck you wolves fuck you fuck you fuck you.”
Alonhall had tried to prepare me. She’d even told me that I wasn’t ready, that I lacked the skill to be able to overcome the power of a psychic attack with a built-in weak point in my mind. I couldn’t even fend off Alonhall, my mind was so pliable and weak. Still, in those desperate seconds, I tried everything I could before my consciousness slipped out from under me. I’d been able to subvert Alonhall’s control over me by describing the nature of her control, finding the weakness in it, and prying it off. So I looked; but there was no weakness. Falem’s simple command was a wave crashing against my nervous system, flooding out everything, drowning it all in a vast upwelling of empty unconsciousness.
What had Alonhall told me? That I needed to find my center, turn my identity into crystal? But I already knew. I was Emma Farrier, I was a student, I was in love with a mad archaeologist, I was a woman. I’d figured out who I was, solved the problem, and even with Alonhall’s guidance I hadn’t been able to find the strength to resist. I was going to sleep because I’d failed.
My thoughts started to wander. It had been another few seconds now. The blur in my vision where Laura was supposed to be was still struggling, Tersine had started moving back into cover, and the wolves were in full swarm. All of this was my fault. I was the one who had advocated for charging forward, I was the one who had decided that stopping Tersine was worth more than common sense. And now everybody was going to die. Maybe if I could have had the chance to go down fighting, that would have at least had a tragic sweetness to it, but considering I was on my knees in the dirt, my head hanging limply to one side as saliva trickled out of the corner of my mouth, it was really just pathetic. Falem was right: having a hero complex did make me easily manipulated.
I had a hero complex.
Hero Complex.
Hm.
The logical part of my brain, the part that could think in words, had already fallen asleep, but the phrase evoked quite a few memories. I’d charged ahead into the sewers to rescue Sir Margaret Halflance, and across the Zrimash treaty grounds to make a deal with Ikamja the Conqueror. I’d dueled the Violinist and Nemesis and Falem even when I knew I didn’t have the upper hand, rushed to investigate the death of Maria Faith, a woman I’d met a sum total of twice. Just recently I’d discovered that my sense of responsibility was stronger than my aversion to homicide. The memory of my first kill, the duel against Regan Leyrender, came on so strong that I could almost feel the saber in my hand. My fingers clenched.
I’d always go charging straight ahead, a mad dash to save as many people as quickly as my immortal body would allow. It was just something I did. Charge in, ask questions later, get in over my head. A trait that I was going to have to spend the rest of my life fighting, but it was who I was.
That moment, if I forced my half-lidded eyes to focus, I could still see Falem standing right in front of me. If I couldn’t get up and give her a run for her money, then was I even worth the label of “having a hero complex”? I was still weak, but in that weakness a faint flicker of strength returned, flowing into my muscles like lukewarm water poured across frozen sinews. With an exertion so severe it hurt, I forced myself to rise onto one knee. Just one knee. I raised my head, opened my eyes, fixed my gaze entirely on the steel mask obscuring Falem’s features.
Emma Marcus Farrier. Graduate Student at the University of Chicago. Recently-self-actualized member of the female gender, for all that mattered on Selene. Alraune, powerful mind placed into immortal, regenerating flesh. Traveler, yanked from her world and placed in an entirely new one. Owner of a particularly well-developed hero complex, urging me to rush forward and beat Falem until even her steel body bled. I lurched forward, numb hands scratching at the dirt until I found the hilt of my saber and curled my fingers around it.
There was a billion-ton weight on my back. Even breathing was an exertion, my exhausted body barely having the strength to perform even that simplest of actions. But with the sword in my hand I rose, teeth gritting, sinews straining. Always charge ahead, never slow down, never stop, never give up. The tip of the blade leveled out in front of me, the focal point of my eyes drifting between it and the automaton on the far side. My whole body shook with exertion as my foot drifted forward—the exertion threatened to send me off balance—and took a single unsteady step.
Falem noticed me, her head pivoting around with the mechanical curiosity of a searchlight. For a moment, we locked eyes.
“Storm-child. Sleep now, like death.”
A wave of cold un-thought bashed against me, sending me reeling back. Every muscle threatened to go slack, my knees buckling and the tip of the saber sagging. Sleep had taken almost everything from me, nearly every conscious thought blotted out, except for one: forward. Move forward, hero complex.
Another step carried me forward. Then another. My hand closed once more around the hilt of the saber, this time holding on so strongly that the tendons stood out and the muscles shook with exertion. I would close the distance, I would carry myself all that way, and when I got there I was going to rip Falem a new one, because she had dared to hurt my friends. There was no giving up, no turning back. My heart was beating faster and harder in my chest with each step, each movement waking it up. The cold flood of Falem’s power kept on pouring through, and nothing I could do could hold it back, but I didn’t need to hold it back because in the heat of my anger and determination that cold flood was boiling.
Each step was easier than the last. Parts of me that I’d forgotten about were coming back online, flickers of memory waking up from their forced sleep. Violence and shock were swirling all around, Tersine and her wolves racing to close the steel jaws of their trap, but all panic and fear about that potential future had been sealed. It was just me and Falem, her frozen in what I could only read to be panic and I advancing one step at a time with blade in a front guard.
Laura was there, too. She’d gone almost slack in Falem’s grasp, looking at me with an expression nearly impossible to parse, not quite staring into my eyes, but definitely staring.
I’d cut the distance between myself and Falem in half, just by taking those same unsteady steps forward. Falem made a subvocal noise, muffled by her mask and yet unmistakeable, a sort of growl of annoyance and displeasure. Then she stood to the fullness of her height, over eight feet, and spoke with a voice like the synthesized words of an out-of-control train:
“Storm-child. Sleep now, like death.”
“FUCK YOU!”
Several things happened at once. My head cleared up, Falem’s influence vanishing all at once. A pounding heat filled my skull, and something ineffable surged up my spine, through my brain, and out of my forehead. Everything twitched, a psychic flinch inflicted on every mind in that ruin. Even Falem stuttered, an interruption in her stance so small as to be almost invisible: but not to me.
With the weight lifted from my back, and with the fullness of my strength once more under my control, there was nothing stopping me from rushing ahead, full-tilt, ready to unleash everything I had against the automaton that had broken my girlfriend’s arm. Falem knew exactly what was about to hit her. She hurled Laura to the side, betting that she could handle me before the Alderburg University Dueling Club champion could get her feet under herself. The huge broadsword that she brought to bear, taking her substantial reach advantage and magnifying it, suggested that she stood a chance. We never got to run that race, because as fast as I could run, someone else reached Falem first.
The first one was so quick it looked for all the world like a big brown blur had just tried to tear Falem’s head from her shoulders. It wasn’t until she tore it off of her back and sent it crashing into the dirt that it was possible to identify her attacker: it was one of the wolves, the one that had been closest to her when I’d broken her power.
The wolf was attacking ferociously, claws leaving tracks down Falem’s arm. The wolves were always strong, fast, relentless, but I’d never seen one so motivated as in that moment. Falem cut the wolf’s head off without hesitation, but it wasn’t the only one: almost before she could dispatch the first, two more were on top of her, trapping her between them. Whatever had happened hadn’t just affected one wolf, but a chunk of them; in fact, all the ones nearest to me. In a matter of moments, she was swarmed, four or five hunched figures nipping at her heels. To her credit, Falem remained standing.
Tillie still needed my help. I veered to the side and broke out into a full sprint. Confronted with half a dozen of Tersine’s werewolves under the direct command of the good doctor herself, Tillie had not immediately gotten pinned down and ripped into a large number of very small pieces like my worst fears had imagined she would. She had, upon realizing that she’d walked herself into a trap, dashed into a small passageway and proceeded to hold the chokepoint with two revolvers. There was already an incapacitated wolf at her feet.
I crashed into the mass of the werewolves with vigor, using every bit of experience at battling regenerators I had, cutting into limbs, striking at vital points. Half the wolves redirected all at once, putting a wall of muscle between myself and Tersine. Tillie was still in trouble, but at least she was at less risk of getting outflanked.
“Falem, damn you, I told you to take care of the…” Tersine whipped around, her protective coat flaring as she absorbed the rapidly-changing circumstances of the battlefield. She said something in Rochathan about my mother, then continued, “The alraune is the main threat. Take her down.”
I knew that this was more wolves than I was capable of handling at once. As soon as I lost the ability to keep all of the claws in front of me at once, I was done for. But I also knew that this kind of distraction was the exact thing Tillie would need to escape; and unlike her, I could beat the wolves in a footrace. So I fought as best as I could, giving ground one step at a time, letting the blood from my claw wounds drip onto the blade in order to give it more killing force.
Tillie, meanwhile, refused to run away. She moved slowly out of the corridor, dropping one of her revolvers just long enough to reload the other one, but adamantly refused to put herself into safety. Did she really think she stood a chance? Except, she didn’t seem that focused on the fight, either, in fact her gaze kept wandering somewhere else, like she was waiting for something.
“Storm-child,” said Tersine. “Sleep now, like death.”
I felt the vague outline of the compulsion, faintly, in the very back of my mind. It evaporated like so much sea spray. Tersine waited a moment for the command to take effect, then quirked her head to the side when it failed.
“That explains a bit. Curious. Rapid neural regeneration?”
I might have told her to go fuck herself, but if I’d spent even the moment required to do that, I would have definitely gotten mauled. The wolves were pushing me back in earnest now, my speed only barely allowing me to evade their increasingly-effective outflanking maneuvers. No fatigue nor any hesitation could wear me down, but even my incredible speed was finding its limit. I glanced over at Tillie: still, she was motionless.
“Main force it is, then,” said Tersine. “I’ll have to look away, I can’t stand the concept of watching someone be dismembered alive. You really should have let yourself go to sleep.”
One of the wolves got me. I was distracted, whirling around to deal with a lunging bite from an unexpected angle, when I left myself open. Her jaws clamped down around my arm, and when I twisted away, a large chunk of flesh right above the elbow went with. I screamed, hesitated. Another wolf bore me to the ground, crouching over my chest. I still had my sword in hand, but I was at a disadvantage, especially when other wolves tried to tear my legs off.
“I’ll have to go back to the conditioning on my wolves, though. I think what’s happened with Falem here proves that it might not be as infallible as previously thought. But I’ll have time to double-check my work once I have you preserved in an assortment of jars.” Tersine giggled.
“Hey, Doc.”
Delilah Sandborn appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, not ten feet away from Doctor Tersine. How she’d done it I had no idea. But she had a pistol in her hand with the hammer cocked back. I suddenly understood exactly what Tillie had been waiting for.
“This is for my friends, you wretched bitch,” Delilah said. And then she pulled the trigger.
The fake end was good!
I also liked that Emma’s burst created a disruption in the control of the wolves. A disruption of the mind, like her blood causes a disruption of the body. And shows they certainly are not mindless, in that they loath being controlled.
You definitely got me with that fake out!
okay I'll admit, the fakeout got me *good*. I was all ready to click away and grumble to myself about such a short chapter. bravo!