Lord of the Mall
Part Two: The Ankh of Orlock

There is a fundamental illusion behind all reality. That’s what they tell me, anyway.

My reality is probably pretty different from yours.

In my reality the world is filled with monsters and demons. Some of these monsters are Bad Guys, some are Good Guys, and some are kind of neutral – depending on where you’re coming from. The thing is, the difference between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys and the Neutral Guys all depends on which one of the Guys you are. I like to think of myself as one of the Good Guys, but not everyone does.

For instance, the Vurkolack I’m standing over definitely does not think of me as a Good Guy. Probably because I’m about to lodge a metal spike in his ugly face.

Oh well, semantics.

This guy is far from a calendar model. His face is twisted and scarred, with giant, bulging eyes and a large, mosquito-like mouth which even the most devoted paramedic wouldn’t offer resuscitation to. But hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?

I remind myself it’s not a him, it’s an it.

It is definitely one of the Bad Guys. Its body is fat and bloated with festering grave-juices. The yellow, peeling flesh covering it stinks. I don’t usually go on first impressions but this I consider an exception.

The Vurkolack dissolves into a brown-green puddle of noxious odour when I ram the sharpened steel into his left eyeball. Most of this muck splatters on my hands and face.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer they float away in a puff of yellow smoke. No mess, no fuss. The cast wouldn’t have so much time to spout witty one-liners and follow sappy, soap opera sub-plots if they had to clean up after themselves. Why can’t my world be this convenient?

I look up at the grief-stricken rent-a-cop. This guy works in the Mall as a security guard for a minimum wage. He has his cheap walkie-talkie, his funny hat with the Mall’s logo emblazoned proudly on it, his little nightstick. What he now also has is a lifetime of nightmares and a terrible doubt for his sanity.

“Get out of here,” I tell him in my best Dirty Harry voice. He picks himself off the floor and runs. The click-click-click of his shiny, black, polished shoes slowly fades.

I smash a vial that Karen gave me in the stinking puddle that was the Vurkolack. Slowly, the liquid burns away any trace of the monster.

It’s something I do as a favour for Karen Keating, the love of my life. The LED doesn’t want the general public to cotton on to what actually happens in the Mall after dark. Aside from it being bad for business and all, they don’t think the civilian population could handle the real world.

Unfortunately, this is my world. My reality. No illusion.

*     *     *     *

Karen would kill me if she knew what I was doing. I feel like I’m cheating on her, and I suppose in a strange way I am.

I climb into the car and look across at the driver.

“Ferrari. Limited edition 550 Barchetta,” he says stroking the dashboard, “usually with a roadster the air buffets you when you go fast, not this beauty.”

He starts the engine and screeches out of the parking lot. “Perfect weighting in the steering,” he says vaulting around a ninety-degree corner, “that’s why you’re still in the seat and not out the window. Front-engined, quad-cam, V12, more like a jet than an automobile”

The guy doing all the talking is a Tech-Vamp named Dexter. He’s one of the top agents in their Arcane Activities Division. He does all the X-Files stuff, stuff that even the weirdos think is weird. He also likes guns, martial arts, and fast cars. The way he’s talking you’d think he spent his quiet time in the bathroom with a centrefold of a Lamborghini Diablo.

The reason I’m keeping these excursions secret from Karen is ‘coz the organisation she works for – the London Espresso Distributors, or LED – have made it one of their life’s missions to wipe out Tech-Vamps. Tech-Vamps crave information the way Dracula craves the fresh blood of virgins, and they suck this information right from the LED mainframe.

Dexter hauls around another corner and, with shrieking tires, slides the Ferrari into an open parking space. I wonder if he keeps a spare pair of underpants in the glove box for his passengers.

We get out and head towards the Mall. For the past week Dexter and I have been rushing between Malls to stop the Vurkolack. Every time I kill the ugly mug it just reappears elsewhere.

“How do you know it’s here?” I ask.

“A magician never gives away his secrets.” He says, “Though I think the Ankh’s here, not the Vurkolack.”

We make a good team, Dexter and I. He’s the detective, I’m the muscle. Kafka wouldn’t have asked me for this favour but Tech-Vamps can’t even get near the Vurkolack without becoming maggot buffet, worm food, or just plain dead.

He tosses me a pair of handguns and goes into encyclopaedia-mode, “The Model PT-145 Millennium. Lightweight, polymer-framed, double-action pistol is chambered for the 45-ACP cartridge. Ten in the magazine, one in the chamber. 3-inch barrel with fixed 3-dot sights. You can get night-sights too.”

“I just point and shoot, right?” I say.

“Yup.”

“I think I can handle that.”

*     *     *     *

Next time you’re in a shopping mall, take a look around. Go down one of the service entrances. Take a look at all the locked doors, ventilation shafts, and other places you can’t get to. If you’re feeling daring, break open a lock or climb through a shaft, but be prepared to have your reality altered.

I stick the guns Dexter gave me into my pants, like they do in all the movies I’ve seen. If I have to I’m prepared to use them. It’s not like I have anything against guns, I’m not Batman, it’s just that I’m crap with them. I unsheathe the sword strapped to my back instead.

I follow Dexter through the Mall.

This is how it’s been for the past week, me following him. He has some kind of psychic abilities or something that allow him to sense the Vurkolack, and I have the abilities needed to stop it.

The problem is every time we kill the damn thing it just rises somewhere else. Apparently the Vurkolack’s sole reason for being is to destroy all Tech-Vamps. Hey, at least it has some direction in life. I wish I could stay that focused. The only way to stop the cycle is with the Ankh we’re looking for, otherwise it will just keep coming back until the job’s done.

“It’s somewhere here,” says Dexter, “I can feel it.”

The only thing I can feel is the massive shockwave that tears through the ceiling above us. I grab Dexter and throw the both of us out the way. Rubble rains down, followed by two guys I know.

They hit the ground, bleeding and bruised. Then, not a second later, someone else falls through. A supermodel by the looks of it.

The woman lands between the guys, immediately picks them up by the collar and tosses them into a wall.

The two guys are Book-Demons, the woman is someone I’ve never seen before. I take a lot of time and effort to get to know every player in every Mall. In doing this I’ve built up a reputation, not as powerful a reputation as my father or Grand Wolf has, but a reputation nonetheless. I’m banking on this woman knowing who I am.

“What’s going on here?” I say stepping in front of her. She puts her hand on my shoulder and shoves me out the way. No, I mean she really shoves me.

I fly about two meters and thump down on the concrete floor. She walks over to the Book-Demons, grabs one, and rips his head off.

The thing about Book-Demons is that tearing their heads from the rest of their bodies doesn’t kill them. Eventually, the head will grow back and you’ll only have succeeded to make the guy uglier.

I’ve learned that to kill a Book-Demon you need to use one of the books they suck souls with. I’ve never actually seen this happen, but I’ll take the source of that information at his word.

I get up and dust myself off. I don’t know who she is but she might be one of the Good Guys, I won’t use lethal force. I sheathe my sword and walk towards her. I think of all the Bruce Willis movies I’ve seen and say, “This is my turf, lady. Any problems you have with anyone, you speak to me first.”

She flatly ignores me and turns to the other Book-Demon. Dexter is on his feet with a gun pointed at the back of her head. I hold my hand up for him to relax his trigger finger.

The Book-Demon looks at me and mouths “Help!”

Since Balgog saved my ass from the Priests of Hermonthis I’ve eased off on the Book-Demons a bit. Balgog told me I didn’t really know anything about what they did. He assured me it wasn’t what I thought at all.

I grab the woman by her shoulder and pull her away, “What’s going on here?”

She hits me square in the chest. I fly backwards as I feel the wind rush out of my lungs like a crowd of women to a shoe sale.

Dexter pulls the trigger and places a bullet in the back of her head.

Well, that’s the idea, anyway. The theory is sound, it’s just the practical application we’ve got a problem with.

Instead of blowing her damn head off, the bullet ricochets into the wall. From where I’m standing, or rather lying, it looks like she just took a bullet in the back of the head without blinking.

She turns around and throws a lightning fist towards Dexter. Dex twists out of the way and slams the knife-edge of his hand into her throat.

She just took a lead slug upside the head, I don’t think a karate chop will do the trick. Even Bruce Lee would be toting a shotgun.

She grabs Dexter by his shirt and hefts him over her shoulder. He lands next to me, a bewildered expression painted all over his face.

The woman turns away from us, which I’m kind of glad about, and walks toward the quivering Book-Demon. Why he didn’t just run away is beyond me. She grabs him by the skull and twists his head off. It’s okay, just a flesh wound.

I take the sword off my back and give her one last chance to throw in the towel, “You better start talking. I’m not as gentle as my friend here.”

Dexter looks at me like I’m Stuart Little telling The Incredible Hulk to fuck off. He now has a gun in each hand, like he’s the lead in a John Woo flick, and starts emptying them into Superbitch.

She moves towards us, bullets spraying off her like Dex is packing twin water pistols instead of “PT-145 Millenniums”. I dispense with the subtlety and swing my sword for her head. It sparks off her, sending her crashing into the wall.

I only now notice that the bullets were also sparking off her. Before she turns to face us I notice that the back of her head is damaged enough to see a steel skull.

She’s a robot? A robot? And I guess she’s also from the future, right? And we’re really human batteries fuelling a giant artificially intelligent supercomputer, right? And life is like a box of chocolates, right?

I drop down and swing for Terminator-Barbie’s legs. As she hits the ground I step over her and stab my sword into her chest. I hear a clang and see that I’ve only scratched the paint job.

“Excuse me,” says Dexter, moving me out of the way and slapping a small magnetic device onto her chest, “Now run.”

I’ve learned that when someone looks at you and says “Now run”, it’s best that you do as they tell you.

We turn around and head for the exit. I look over my shoulder and see Little Miss Scalectrix stand up, look down at the bomb sitting on her rack, and explode in a fiery eruption. 

And she thought PMS was bad.

Dex and I stand panting with our hands on our knees, not really sure what just happened. I try to process these most recent events – some Robobabe just decapitated a couple of Book-Demons. Why?

I’ll worry about it later, now we need to find this Ankh.

“Lead the way, buddy.” I say to Dexter.

“Can’t,” he says, “I lost the scent.”

Great, almost there and then some pesky subplot has to interrupt everything.

“And the Vurkolack?” I ask.

“Hasn’t risen yet, but I’ll know when it does. I’ll call you.”

*     *     *     *

I need a vacation.

Actually, I need some time to rethink my life and find some direction.

I always wondered what all those really young rock stars or sports people want to do with the rest of their lives. I mean, they had a goal and they worked really hard and eventually achieved that goal. But now what? If you set out at a young age to conquer the world and find that you’ve done it at nineteen, what then?

A god murdered my parents when I was an infant. All my life had been training to exact vengeance on this god. That was all I lived for.

Now that Mephisto is dead, what am I supposed to do?

*     *     *     *

I get home to an empty house. No dog jumping at the door to welcome me, no appetising scents wafting from the kitchen, no nothing.

After Mephisto died in the River of Souls Grand Wolf left. He said he’d taught me all I needed to know. Right now I think he’s travelling the world ‘finding himself’.

Karen and I unofficially live together. She can’t let anyone else know about it because the organisation she works for, the LED, think of me as a criminal. I don’t tell anyone ‘coz I have no friends.

I grab a soda from the fridge and slump down in front of the television.

I tried this before, living normally. Grand Wolf left me enough money so’s I never have to work a day in my life. I thought, I can be ordinary.

It was going really well, too. It was hard but I began to stop seeing demons everywhere. I started woodworking in the garage. I was even starting to place importance on the outcome of sporting events. But then everything went back to normal.

The phone rang innocently enough one-day. I answered it, expecting a guy selling insurance or selling cookware or breathing heavily, but to my surprise it was Kafka. He told me he needed my help, that his people where dieing. He didn’t need to talk me into it.

After seeing the world the way it truly is, do you think you can trick your mind into seeing it the way you used to?

*     *     *     *

I startle awake to find myself on the couch, an empty soda can in my hand and the TV telling me how to get better abs.

I hear the noise again. The unmistakable sound of a door being kicked in. Then someone cuts the power and all the light and the annoying celebrity selling Fatsuck Pills disappears.

Grand Wolf’s house looks like your grandmother’s. Old uncomfortable couch, crocheted blankets everywhere, a big doily on top of the TV. He’s got houses like this all over the city, most of them with a massive garage with at least four or five fast sports cars in them.

The window in the kitchen smashes in and I hear feet land on the floor. I grab my sword and slowly move towards the door. A third kick and the front door splinters at the lock. It sure ain’t wilderness girls selling cookies.

The intruders don’t say a word, which means they’re professional and know all those hand signals you see in Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. From their footsteps I say there must be about four or five of them, probably armed with cool assault rifles and night-vision goggles.

My back is against the wall. I’m in the living room, next to the door that leads to the entrance hall. I quietly place my sword on the floor and remove one of the pistols still stuck in my belt.

The guy who sticks his head in the door gets a surprise. I grab him and pull him inside. I shove the gun in his eye and wait for his back-up to arrive.

No one follows him in. They must have split up to search the house.

“How many?” I whisper.

“Fuck you,” he growls.

I smack him on the temple with the butt of the gun. I feel his body go limp and I drop it.

I recognise the uniform, my girlfriend wears the same one.

I kick the guy to be sure he’s unconscious and not playing possum. I don’t know why they need the night-vision glasses, it’s not that dark and I can see fine.

Grand Wolf has houses all over the city, close to all the Malls. I wonder if LED teams like this one are searching all the others right now.

I slowly walk into the entrance hall, making sure no one is lurking there. I need to find out what’s going on here, why all of a sudden the LED is so eager to find me.

I can hear more than one person walking around upstairs. I check downstairs to see that no one else is down here with me. Then I cautiously head upwards.

There are three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. One of the bedrooms has been converted into a mini-gym so I can keep in shape.

As I approach the first bedroom an agent steps out. He sees me and opens fire. This is the ‘shoot-first-and-fuck-the-questions’ attitude of the LED that annoys me so much.

I dive forward, underneath the little lead unfriendlies, and fire at him.

I’m not actually aiming for the guy. I’d never be stupid enough to kill an LED agent. If I did something dumb like that they would stop at nothing to get me.

Right now it seems as though all my restraint was chopped liver.

As I come up in front of him I slam my fist into his crotch. He’s wishing that I’d just shot him. He buckles over and I bring my knee up into his face. His nose breaks. I toss him over my shoulder and down the stairs.

That’s gonna leave a mark.

The other agents must have heard the commotion, but they don’t want to walk out into the hallway in case I’m sitting here ready to teach them a lesson in sittingduckology.

Instead, someone throws a grenade out and in my direction.

I mutter a dozen expletives and run over the grenade towards the door at the end of the passage. I dive through just as the bomb explodes in a bang-hiss of gas. At least they’re not trying too hard to kill me.

The agent in the bedroom is surprised to see me. They’ve all been through so much training that they’ve learned exactly what to do in any situation. I, on the other hand, have had no such training. So I always happen to do exactly the opposite of the smartest thing to do in any situation.

I burst into the room, leap in the air and roundhouse the guy. As he stumbles sideways I step in and punch him hard in the solar plexus. I hear Dexter’s voice in my head – “A complex of ganglia and radiating nerves of the sympathetic system at the pit of the stomach.”

“How many?” I say as the LED agent hurls on my carpet.

I slam my fist into the back of his head to drive my point home, “How many?”

“Five… five of us.”

I kick him in the face, KO-ing him.

Two more to go. The room I’m in is at the end of the corridor, the ones there are on opposite sides of each other.

I grab the guy’s Rebreather and stick it in my mouth. These things are a new addition to the LED arsenal, Karen showed me hers when she got it and taught me how it works. Quite a smart little device, it can be used underwater to inhale only the oxygen molecules or it can be used to distinguish between noxious gasses and ones you can safely breathe.

I walk out into the hall and see that the two other agents have already ventured here and are now standing looking down at where they thought my unconscious body would be.

I’m sick of pulling punches. These guys are trying to kill me and I’m having to come up with creative ways of keeping them alive.

I run towards them, fire one round into the first agent’s leg, and smack the second in the face with the smoking barrel.

The guy on the floor is already pointing his rifle up at me. I kick it out of his hands and follow through with my boot to his face.

The second guy stumbles back. He looks like he’s got crushed strawberries stuck up his nose. I kick him in the chest. He flies backwards and tumbles down the stairs.

The guy on the floor dropped his Rebreather and passes out from the grenade smoke. The second agent is on his knees at the bottom of the stairs trying to get his bearings.

I dive down, flying through the air like a crazed Kryptonian, and land on top of him.  He cushions my landing and the sound of his face smacking the floor turns my stomach.

I pull his head back and shout in his ear, “Start talking. What the fuck is going on here?”

Just before he passes out he says, “You… you killed them. We had to get you. Y-you’re a killer.”

*     *     *     *

Karen’s cell-phone just rings and rings. She could be in the middle of a shootout, or she could be part of what just happened. I’m banking on the former, she would never betray me.

I hop into the car Grand Wolf has parked in the garage. He has a thing for cars not unlike Dexter, and I think this is a Porsche 911 GT2 ‘coz that’s what is says on the back. What I know about cars you could write on one side of a postage stamp.

I’m heading to the Mall, that’s the only place I think I’d feel safe, to wait until Dexter calls me.

I don’t know what the LED agent back there was talking about. I haven’t killed anyone that they would care about. The only thing I’ve killed since Mephisto has been the Vurkolack, and I think that’s more like displacing a spirit seeing as it just rises in another body. And I’ve never killed an innocent.

The sun is coming up by the time I pull into the parking lot. I strap the sword to my back and pull on a jacket to cover it.

I can’t remember the last time I was at the Mall during the day. When you’re decapitating Book-Demons or being chased by the Dog-God you generally don’t want civilians around. Too much to explain. Their tiny, organised minds wouldn’t be able to handle the real world.

I guess I just have to hang around the Mall for the day and blend in. My greatest challenge yet.

*     *     *     *

By about ten o’clock things are starting to happen. Stores are opening, rich housewives are starting to do their daily shopping, cleaners and security guards are changing shift.

The only people here at night are cleaners, security guards, and other unsavoury characters. Although the unsavoury ones generally hang out underneath the Mall.

Most people don’t know about it, but underneath your local Mall there are fathoms of caverns and caves. The things that lurk down these caves aren’t things that you’d like to come across, they aren’t things I like to come across.

Then I see him.

I close my eyes and shake my head, thinking I’m losing my mind, but when I open them he’s still there.

It can’t be him. I saw him die. That can’t be Mephisto.

I feel my chest tighten and my breath come in heavy, panicked gasps. I start running. I shove past two businessmen with take-out latte’s from London Espresso Distributors.

I see Mephisto walk into one of the stores about a hundred meters away from me.  As I get closer I glance at the name of the clothing shop – Designer Rebel. There’s a giant poster with some pretty boy in a cowboy hat and underneath it are the words: An ounce of appearance is worth a pound of substance!

I run inside and immediately search the aisles. No one’s here except a few staff members. Wiping my clammy hands on my pants I imagine how odd I must look.

A ridiculously beautiful girl approaches me, “Can I help you, sir?”

“Just browsing, thanks.” I say trying to act casual.

I see her look at my shoes and her face twitches slightly. Then she strokes me sympathetically on the shoulder, “Don’t worry, we can help you.”

She takes an overpriced shirt off the rack and holds it up, “This would really suit your build.”

Under normal circumstances I’d probably buy the shirt just because a beautiful girl told me to, but not today. Today I’m looking for a dead god who murdered my parents and almost ended the world as we know it, and I don’t feel fine at all, “I’m okay, thanks.”

She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. For a while she just stands there, then she makes a whiny, gargling sound and next thing I know sparks are flying from the back of her throat.

She grabs my arm and squeezes. She’s strong, too strong for someone her size. She must really need this sale.  I push her hand away and she swings at me.

Her fist connects with my face. I’ve been hit harder, but not much. She swings again, but this time I manage to block it and push her back. She stumbles, falls over, and lies on the ground shaking spasmodically. Her eyes pop out with two tiny explosions. I look down at my shoes – they’re not that bad, are they?

Before my mind can process what is actually happening here, the wall behind a clothes rack slides open. Two heavies walk out, followed by an old guy in a white coat.

“Stop him!” the old guy shouts, “He must be trying to infiltrate the lab!”

One of the heavies storms up to me, hurling obscenities in my direction. There’s no way I can get out of this without a fight.

The world seems to slow down slightly.

While the gorilla’s jaw is flapping, I punch him as hard as I can on it.

If ever you know you’re gonna be in a fight and there’s no way to get out of it, make the first move. But you’ve got to hit the other guy while he’s still trying to intimidate you, while his mouth is spewing violence. The intention is to dislocate his jaw while it’s loose, when he gets into fighting mode his jaw’s gonna be clenched tight.

The guy stumbles back, holding his broken face. I step in and kick him solidly in the crotch.

The old guy picks up the chick on the floor who’s now wriggling and spouting electric fire. He drags her behind the clothing rack and into the room beyond it. The door slams shut angrily.

The second ape is heading towards me, his fists balled and his muscles tensed. I feel arms wrap around me from behind. Glancing over my shoulder I see it’s another too-beautiful shop assistant. I try and throw her off but she firmly holds me in place.

The big guy rams his fist into my stomach. He’s stronger than me and the girl together because we both fall backwards. Her grip loosens and I roll free.

Mephisto must have escaped behind one of these clothing racks. Into some secret chamber. I can hear the dramatic piano thump on heavy keys.

The Neanderthal growls as he heads towards me. I look for the scrapes his knuckles should have from dragging them on the ground all the time and jump to my feet.

The girl is now on her feet as well. She looks at the simian gentleman and they both head for me.

“Don’t try to stop us,” he says, “they’re evil.”

“I don’t even know what’s going on here,” I say, “I’ll just leave and you guys can go back to whatever it is you’re doing.”

“Too late for that,” he grunts, “you’ve seen too much already.”

I don’t have time for this shit. I only came in here because I saw Mephisto. I’ve already got the LED after me for allegedly killing a bunch of people, I’m apparently the only person who can stop the slaughter of Kafka and his people, and now I have Gorilla-boy and a bunch of mechanical hotties wanting my head on a stick.

I take my jacket off and drop it on the floor. I pull the sword off my back and swiftly remove the girl’s head from her shoulders. It clangs and sparks as it rolls across the floor.

This stops Apeman’s approach. He looks at the decapitated body next to him, Damn prototypes,” he mumbles.

The robot was a different story but I wouldn’t be that harsh with him because I know he’s human. He’s like his buddy on the floor with his balls in his throat. I wouldn’t ever kill a human.

But he doesn’t know that.

“I’m going to go now,” I say, “because I know you don’t want me to amputate your head.” I sheath my sword and pick my jacket off the floor.

“Don’t try to stop us,” he says, “they’re evil. They deserve to die.”

“Whatever,” I say turning my back on him and walking out.

*     *     *     *

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. I think I heard that in a movie or something.

I try thinking back to what happened in the River of Souls. Did I really see Mephisto die? Or was it one of his tricks?

What I saw was the ring engulf him and burst into flame. There wasn’t any corpse left over, there was nothing.

Then it hits me. What Rorschach said when I asked him if I would kill Mephisto. But I didn’t kill him, the ring killed him… didn’t it?

*     *     *     *

I’m back in Grand Wolf’s car. Driving round, trying to remember where he took me that night we went to visit Rorschach.

I know I can find the place. I just have to think harder.

The cellular phone Dexter gave me starts ringing. I answer it and it’s the car-crazy, gun-toting Tech-Vamp.

“Where are you?” he asks.

“On the road,” I say, “personal business. God and monster stuff.”

“Well get your ass over here. We’ve got trouble.”

“Where are you?” I ask him.

“125 Gate’s Street,” he says, “Headquarters. We need you here now.”

“What’s the problem? Have you found the Ankh?”

“He’s here,” I hear Dexter’s voice crack, the sound of fear, “the Reaper’s here.”

*     *     *     *

The car has a GPS system and a map of the city, so even though I don’t really know my way around it can guide me to 125 Gate’s Street.

We got cut off before Dexter could tell me more. It sounded like he was calling from the epicentre of a nuclear strike.

It takes me two minutes to reach Gate’s Street. I’m driving like Dex usually does, like I’ve got a Prodigy song playing in my head. I’m the Firestarter.

125 Gate’s Street is a massive skyscraper. This must be Tech-Vamp HQ.  As I pull up outside, an explosion about a hundred floors up blows rock and glass towards the street. That’s gonna get the attention of local authorities, something I’m sure they don’t want.

I run inside, my sword already drawn, and meet up with a squad of what look like LED agents.

“Swordsman,” says the commander, “he’s on the ninety-eighth floor.”

“What’s the LED doing here?” I ask.

“They stole our battlesuit technology,” he says, “we’re the last V-Ops squad. The rest have fallen. We’re waiting for you to take command.”

“What’s the fastest way up?”

“The express elevator,” he says walking over to it and placing his hand on a scanner. The scanner emits a happy bleep and access is granted.

“Okay,” I say giving my first order as commander of the last V-Ops squad, “you guys wait here.” I get in the lift and hit 98.

The elevator door slams closed with the Tech-Vamp commander holding his hand up for me to wait and saying something I’m sure is very important.

As the lift flies towards the ninety-eighth floor I relax my body and clear my mind, trying to get the Prodigy out of my head. I am the ultimate Zen Master. Calm as a gentle breeze and fluid as the ocean. I am the focused little centre of the universe. Nothing can faze me.

The door opens to total carnage. Dead Vamps litter the floor. The walls look like they’ve been repainted in arterial red and brain-matter grey. Where once there were desks and computers are now splintered wood and smashed monitors.

And at the centre of it all is one man. Standing waiting for me with a glowing green sword in his bloodstained hands. The breezy, ocean-like feeling drains from my body and the Prodigy CD starts up again.

I’m not the calm ocean. I’m not the gentle wind. I’m the Firestarter. Twisted Firestarter.

*     *     *     *

When I lost the ring in the River of Souls I thought that the madness would end. My life had been normal until I found it in the sand on a deserted beach. Then I discovered that it wasn’t actually me that found the ring, it was the ring that found its way to me. Or rather, it was the ring that found its way to my bloodline.

As soon as I placed it on my finger the world changed. I saw things differently. I was attacked by things that I can’t describe, shadows. Now I realise that they were agents of the dark god. They were Mephisto’s myrmidons. For some reason Mephisto has always been the mortal enemy of the Swordsman.

Losing the ring was the best thing that could’ve happened to me. I tried to live a normal life, but I was sucked back into it not entirely against my will.

This is the reason I was born. To fight all the evil in this world. But I started to see the lines between good and evil blur. Like cancer, some things on this earth just are. They don’t know any different. Cancer isn’t evil, it just exists, value neutral.

I look down at the bodies of the Tech-Vamps that I used to think were evil, and then up at the Reaper. I don’t know if this thing has a consciousness. Maybe it was created to destroy, maybe it doesn’t know any better or any worse, but right now I don’t really give a fuck. These people were my friends. And I’m going to make someone pay.

*     *     *     *

“So,” the Reaper speaks with a voice like decomposing flesh, “Kafka’s champion.”

I sprint towards the thing, diving with my sword outstretched. The Reaper must have expected me to stand around for a while and trade intimidating remarks because I catch it off guard. My sword slashes it across the chest.

The Reaper stumbles back clutching its chest. I can’t see if it’s a man or a woman or something else beyond description. I can see why it’s called the Reaper, though. Its body is covered in a brown, dirty robe. The opening where I should be seeing a face is just a seemingly endless, black chasm. I’m reminded of the Priests of Hermonthis, the wraiths whose only reason for being is to protect Cleopatra’s amulet.

But this thing isn’t a ghost. I cut it and that means that I can hurt it.

This time it’s ready for my attack. Our swords clash in a roar that makes the gods sit up and take notice. I drop low and sweep the Reaper’s legs out from underneath it. I spin round, to my feet and bring my sword down towards it.

The Reaper shoves its hand out and an invisible wave of energy hits me. I soar backwards and slam into the wall behind me.

The Traveller had powers like this, as well as a suitcase packing Nightcrawlers. I survived the Traveller through pure luck, but I’ve learnt a few things since then.

The Reaper gets to its feet as I get to mine. I can feel the fire ignite inside of me, it wants release. Grand Wolf told me never to fight angry. I try to find that calm centre but I only find furious electricity and rage.

The fire burns my mind. I can’t hold it in any more. I don’t want to.

I lunge at the Reaper, my body igniting in a white flame. Then the flame passes through my body and into the sword.

It tries to block my attack but the Reaper’s sword smashes into silver shrapnel. I hack through its chest and the ringing of its high-pitched squeal sounds like a melody.

The Reaper drops to the floor and its body rots away right before my eyes.

I hear my sword fall to the ground and feel my knees hitting the floor. A dark wave washes over my eyes. I struggle to focus. I feel my head hitting the carpet before I drown in blackness.

*     *     *     *

The Phoenix rises over the city, spreading its flaming wings and soaring high into the air. The pure fire inside it begs for release. It looks across at its brother, the Dragon. They both know what needs to be done.

The Phoenix cries out and fire bursts from its mouth, covering everything below. It glides amongst the clouds, watching the ancient city beneath it and all the inhabitants burn.

*     *     *     *

“He’s awake,” the voice is Karen’s. She is my saviour, my angel, the only reason I have for living.

My vision swims. “Swordsman,” this is Dexter’s voice, “can you hear me?”

My eyes clear. I’m lying down staring up at Karen Keating, the woman who makes me see beauty in this world, and Dexter, the Tech-Vamp I thought was dead.

What are these two doing in the same room together? The LED, Karen’s bosses, destroy any Tech-Vamps on sight.

I try to sit up but my body doesn’t let me. I struggle against it, trying to get to my feet, but the pain holds me down.

“What happened?” I croak.

“You stopped it,” says Dexter, “you stopped the Reaper. He hasn’t risen again. Not yet. I would have sensed him.”

“Dexter called me,” says Karen, “he has a lot of balls calling up an LED agent, but he knows how much I care about you.”

“I found her number on your cell phone,” says Dex, “she’s all you talk about, man. How could I not call her?”

“I meant to tell you,” I say to Karen, “but…”

She puts her finger to my lips, “I understand, and I’m not one of them anymore. I was dismissed.”

“What?”

“They told me you’d killed a squad of agents,” she says, “but I know you would never. I argued, but they told me they’d found traces of your ring’s energy signature all over the bodies. I tried to warn you but I couldn’t make it in time, I couldn’t get word to you. I’m just glad you’re alive.”

I don’t feel alive, I feel like a racetrack after a trucker’s derby.

“I saw Mephisto in the Mall,” I say, “or at least I think I saw him. I’m not exactly ticking the ‘sane’ box on my psychiatric evaluation sheet.”

I find the strength to sit up and kiss her, “Thank you.”

“You should be thanking Dex over here,” she says, “He’s the one who dragged you out of that building before the cops arrived.”

“What’s gonna happen?” I say to Dexter.

“Oh,” he shrugs, “what the cops know is a lot less than what they don’t know. And what they don’t know they couldn’t imagine in a thousand years.”

I look at Karen, “I meant thank you for trusting me.”

“We’ve been through a lot together,” she smiles, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Dexter’s looking uncomfortably around the room, like he’s going through ‘fifth-wheel’ syndrome.

“Where are we?” I ask.

I’m lying on a double futon with white linen. The wall in front of me is covered in framed pictures of Bruce Lee and a punch bag is suspended from the roof. The ceiling is one great mirror. The reflection of my ragged appearance stares back down at me.

“My place,” says Dexter, “You guys can stay here if you want. This is my spare room.”

“Thanks,” I say, “I appreciate all you’ve done for us.”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he says, “first we’re going to sort out your problem with the dead god walking, then clear your sullied name, and when I get the scent back we can find the Ankh of Orlock, grab a beer and forget about this whole mess.”

*     *     *     *

Even though we live in a world with ninja-cult hairdressers, Book-Demons, and Mallrats, some enlightened people still find things to not believe in. It’s something I could never understand, the same way that people who believe in an unprovable Creator of all things in the universe still can’t believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life – you’d think that to believe in an omnipotent being that created all life would take a very open mind, but these people will still say, “That’s impossible,” when confronted with things like aliens and superhumans and non-fat chocolate.

Most of the other Tech-Vamps think Dexter and everyone else in the Arcane Activities Division of Kafka’s organisation are a bit of a joke. Things are changing though, they used to laugh at them behind their backs until the Vurkolack and then the Reaper put them on the menu. Now everyone listens real hard when Dex is telling them about ‘ghosts and goblins’.

Dexter puts two cups of coffee in front of Karen and me. He sits down in front of us and does what he does best. He explains stuff.

According to legend the Ankh was created by an Oracle. The Oracles are a race of beings that have been around since before there was a ‘before time’, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, this Oracle named Orlock went insane. I suppose that could happen to anyone who can walk through time and space. He had some beef with a Tech-Vamp and created the Ankh thousands of years ago as a means to destroy them.

“But Vamps haven’t been around for thousands of years,” Karen says, “how could he have created it so long ago?”

Dexter explains to us in great detail, as is his way, that all time is static. There is no past, present and future. Everything is happening right now. At this moment you are being born and you are dieing, you are heading off towards your first day at school and you are experiencing your first kiss, your parents are being brutally slain by the dark god and that same god is being swallowed by the ring that your ancestors wore.

“They say Orlock used ancient magic to create the Ankh,” says Dex, “he can step from 2058 to 1058 if he wants to. The Oracles live outside the timestream.”

The Ankh raises the Vurkolack, a monster that feeds on Tech-Vamps to become more powerful. It feeds by tearing open your ribcage and sucking out the internal organs from your chest cavity.

Once it has fed on enough Vamps it mutates to become the Reaper. A thing infinitely more intelligent and powerful than the Vurkolack. The Reaper only needs to touch a Tech-Vamp to suck its energy.

“So how do we stop this thing?” I ask.

“We need to find the Ankh. It’s the only way to destroy the Reaper before it mutates again. It needs the Ankh for the final mutation. But we can only find it when the Reaper finds a host. If I can sense the Reaper, I can sense the Ankh,” Dexter opens a cupboard and takes out three battlesuits for us, “but we don’t have to sit around and wait for that to happen. We’ve got much more interesting things to occupy our time with.”

*     *     *     *

After dark, when everyone has gone home, the Mall you know changes into the Mall I know.

Dexter and Karen follow me past the store I saw Mephisto go into, Designer Rebel. What was he doing here? Why would a dark god be hanging in a clothing store?

The battlesuits that Dex gave us are just like the LED uniform that Karen is accustomed to wearing but with an added extra. We all also get these cool, long coats made with Kevlar and filled with even more goodies than the suits beneath them.

We look like we’ve just entered the Matrix. And we have guns, lots of guns.

Underneath the coat is my sword, as usual. It’s this thing I’ve got, I’m known as the Swordsman so I’ve kinda gotta have a sword with me, but the sword is also like a safety blanket for me. If I go out without a sword I feel naked.

“We can get in through the floor,” says Dexter, “but we might have to blow our way in.”

“Dex,” I say, “you know you don’t have to do this. It’s probably gonna be dangerous. I’ll understand if you want to back out.” I turn to Karen, “That goes for you too.”

“Dexter looks at me and says, “Dude, you’re the only person who can stop the Reaper. I’m only coming along to make sure you don’t get yourself killed.”

Karen slaps me on the back of the head, “Don’t be an idiot.”

I smile at both of them, “Okay, lets go re-kill a god.”

*     *     *     *

Dexter is a Tech-Vamp which means he’s sort of like a walking computer. He’s got the blueprint for the Mall and the caverns below it in his head. It’s the same blueprint the LED has on their mainframe. What a coincidence!

After an exhaustive search we find the way in, a solid steel door with a control panel sitting in the centre. To get in we need to punch the right code on the panel.

“This is my department,” says Dexter. He places his hands on the electronic device and a few seconds later presses a nine-digit number.

The door silently slides open.

Tech-Vamps are in the LED’s bad books because they sate their thirst for knowledge by sucking info from the LED mainframe. The stories I heard about Tech-Vamps made me think they had to chew on cables like Dracula nibbles on a virgin’s neck. Wouldn’t that be dramatic?

Dexter leads the way down a long corridor and then up a flight of stairs. A heavy, mechanical sound echoes down the passage.

“What’s that?” says Karen. We know about as much as she does.

The dull sound of the machinery gets louder as we head up the stairs and stand behind another door.

“This is it,” I say.

I slowly turn the handle on the door and peek round the edge.

The room is about the size of an airplane hangar. It’s filled with huge machines responsible for the racket we heard and a lot of robotic arms working on stuff. The things they’re building run along a conveyer belt. In the distance I can see the old guy in the lab coat shouting at the two apes who jumped me earlier.

I motion for Karen and Dexter to follow me. We stealthily run inside, not worrying about making any noise over the cacophony from the machines, and hide behind a Brobdingnagian, metal box.

Dexter places a hand on the metal monstrosity, “It’s building some kind of machine or machines. I know how to shut it down if you want.”

“Wait,” I say, “lets find out what’s going on here first.”

Karen says, “We can split up and have a look around. Meet back here in a few minutes.”

We all nod in agreement and head off in different directions. I turn back a moment later, wanting to tell Karen that I love her, but she’s gone. I’m a bit soppy like that, a bit of a hopeless romantic.

I remember Karen once offering to tell me what her favourite flowers were. I never imagined her liking flowers, she’s so strong and independent. I told her not to tell me, but rather to let me guess. The next day I arrived with a bunch of red, red roses. She loved them, but they weren’t her favourite. After about a dozen guesses and as many different flora I got it right when I handed her a bunch of lilies.

“These are your favourite?” I said.

“Yes.”

“But I thought lilies signified death?”

She looked deep into my eyes and said, “It reminds me of how little time we have on this earth, and that I want to spend every moment of it with you.”

Or maybe she just thinks they look pretty, I thought.

Anyway, when all this is over I’m gonna buy her a truckload of lilies.

I look around the hangar. On a raised platform there’s a glass cubicle surrounding a desk with a computer on it. I see Dexter heading for it. Good, that’s his thing. All I’m interested in is finding Mephisto, if indeed he wasn’t an hallucination.

On the wall next to me is a fat, red button next to an equally plump green button. For some unknown reason I hit the green one. The wall next to it slides open. It leads into Designer Rebel, the clothing store I saw the dark god go into.

As soon as the door opens an alarm sounds, so loud it drowns out the noise from the massive machine. “Shit,” I say smacking the red one. The door slides shut, but the element of surprise has already been lost. Curiosity. I feel like a cat with my head stuck in a tin can.

The old guy is shouting even louder now. One of the gorillas is heading my way and the other is heading up to the cubicle Dex is in. The old guy turns and runs to a lever in the middle of the room, he pulls it and the wall on the other side of the hangar opens.

I head towards the steroid junkie running towards me, but Karen suddenly drops from the ceiling in front of him. I look up and see a network of metal bridges. They all lead to different doors above us.

She leaps up high into the air and kicks the body-builder in the face with the heel of her boot. This is the same guy whose jaw I broke earlier, so he has a metal cast holding his ugly mug together. Karen’s boot snaps the metal wiring and sends a piece of it through his cheek. He drops to the ground, clutching his irreparable face.

The wall slides open fully and I can see what the lab was built for. Behind the wall are rows and rows of supermodels.

This answers a lot of questions for me: 1) Now I know where the woman who decapitated those Book-Demons earlier came from. 2) I also know what the commotion in Designer Rebel was all about, and 3) It’s now obvious where all those beautiful women I see in designer clothing stores come from. I’d always wondered where they found these jaw-dropping, traffic-stoppingly gorgeous women. Women like that don’t really exist, I thought.

Now I know.

The cadre of mechanoid hotties hear one word from Old Guy and start sprinting towards us. They look like they mean business. Business other than trying to sell us a pair of leather pants. When they’re through with us we won’t have any legs to put the pants over.

The other simian is heading up the stairs to Dexter, who’s got all the info he needs from the computer and is heading down the stairs. All I see is a swirl of black coat and feet, like a dark whirlwind, and the big guy is falling back down the stairs, unconscious.

A couple of the Robobabes reach Karen. She’s taken a look at what’s chugging along the conveyer belt and realises they’re okay to shoot. Her guns blaze and the automatons stumble back a bit. This doesn’t stop them, though.

Karen and I fought a horde of Book-Demons once, but these robots are ten times more powerful than them.

Next thing I know I’m next to Karen telling her to go up while I try to fend off the Terminator-Barbies. We both pull out the grappling hooks that come with the battlesuits and fire them up to the railing above us.

They find their grip and pull us toward the heavens.

I look up. There’s someone standing above us on the landing. Someone I have never seen before, but someone I seem to remember from my dreams. The ring on his finger fluidly changes into a bright, shining, silver sword. He smiles at me malevolently and cuts through the cord on Karen’s grappling hook like a guillotine blade through soft flesh.

Karen drops towards the sea of bloodthirsty androids.

I’m on the metal bridge now, standing next to the unknown man. I look down and see Karen disappear into the fray. A giant cavity opens where once my stomach was, “No!” I shout and dive over.

I hit the ground and start whacking at anything that moves, frantically trying to find Karen. I can feel the fire ignite inside me. I have to fight it, I can’t afford to lose control now.

I stab my sword straight through one of the robots, swinging my fist at the one behind it. The robot’s face smashes and she drops to the ground in an electric explosion.

I can hear Karen shouting and fighting somewhere close.

I wave my hand at a couple of androids instinctively, without thinking, and a white flame bursts from my fingers. The metallic heads pop like hot corn. I don’t think about how I just did that, I just need to find Karen.

Then I see her, struggling against a tangle of steel arms hitting and crushing and ripping her. She’s covered in blood. Looking more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen her.

I throw the robots off me and run to her.

The androids attacking her look at me when I grab them. I just want them to die. Their heads erupt the minute they set eyes on me. I shove my hand towards the crowd in front of us. A row of the robots bursts into flame.

Karen looks up at me. She smiles and tries to say something. I see tears in her eyes. And then the light fades from them.

She drops to the floor limply, her last breathe a painful cry.

A horde of androids engulfs me. I don’t see them. All I can see is an angry red fire. I scream in fury. I can sense the white, hot flame flooding from my mouth and eyes and pores.

And then the world becomes a dark pit into which I’m falling, falling.

*     *     *     *

Karen falls. I scream after her and dive over the railing. But something grabs me and pulls me back. I swing round to the unknown man wearing the ring. But his face has changed. The man standing in front of me is Mephisto.

I swing my sword. It passes through him. He laughs as the sword cuts through mist.

Then I’m kneeling over her dead body. Battered and bloody and broken. Mephisto stands next to me. His poisonous laugh infecting the air around us.

I have nothing left. She’s dead and I have nothing left.

*     *     *     *

My eyes focus and I’m back in the hangar. The darkness recoils like a swarm of cockroaches from the light.

All around me are pieces of the robot women we were fighting. Karen lies in a pool of blood. I kneel next to her. Trying to feel for any signs of life. But there are none. Her lifeless husk feels heavy in my arms. I close her eyes and gently kiss her forehead.

I look up toward the swaying end of the severed cord. The unknown man still stands staring silently down at us. I pick my sword off the ground and as I leap up toward him he dives down at me. My sword connects with his body, but a smooth, silver armour races round it to protect him.

We hit the ground and in a moment he’s up with a sword in his hand. “You cannot have it,” he says, “I created it and it’s mine.”

I scream with raging hate and attack him. He blocks with the sword and the one in my hand shatters in a silver explosion. The shards of my broken weapon explode into me, but I feel no pain from the cuts. The only pain I feel is the one squeezing and crushing my heart and soul.

“He said you would come,” says the killer, “he said you would want it back.”

I reach into my coat and pull two fat, heavy guns from it. I squeeze the triggers and a storm of bullets rage towards the stranger.

He walks towards me, flailing his weapon against my attack, the bullets sparking off the sword’s blade. I just need one to get through.

He swipes at the guns. They clatter to the floor in pieces. The sword vanishes and runs like mercury over his hand into a metal gauntlet. His fist slams into my chest. I can feel a couple of ribs cracking.

I stumble backwards. An endless explosion of pain in my chest. The glove changes into the sword and he brings it down to deliver the fatal blow.

 The arc of the stranger’s blade misses as Dexter swings down and knocks me out of the way. The Tech-Vamp lets go of his rope and throws two small, round objects at the stranger. They explode, one in a sea of burning acid and the other in a dark cloud of smoke.

Dexter hefts me over his shoulder and heads towards the door we came in.

I struggle free from his grip and try to run back to the unknown man who has taken so much from me. Dexter grabs me round the throat and hurls me towards the exit. He kicks me through the door and it slams shut behind him.

“Leave me,” I shout at him, getting up and heading back into the hangar. He punches me in the face and wrestles me to the floor.

“You can’t beat him,” he says, “not now. Not like this.” He snaps something round my neck and I feel my body go limp. I’m paralysed from the neck down.

“What are you doing?” I shout.

“The thing round your neck is called a Slavedriver,” he says, “you’re paralysed until I take it off.”

The crushing hammer of defeat cracks my heart. “She’s dead,” I moan, “I failed her and she’s dead.”

*     *     *     *

Time is irrelevant. I don’t know how many days have passed. The fitful sleep lasts one or two hours at a time. My imagined nightmares cannot be worse than my reality. Karen is dead.

The apartment is dark and dirty. Since I got here I haven’t opened any blinds or curtains. Filthy cockroaches and other insects crawl and buzz like chainsaws. Mephisto, the Ankh of Orlock, the ring that has somehow been found by another, none of this matters anymore.

We have no idea how powerful the mind is. People have found their malignant cancer disappear when they got together with all their buddies from church and prayed. What they don’t realise is that God didn’t take away their plight, their faith did.

But then what is God, but faith?

In the same vein there are people who, finding no point to life, have killed themselves through just not having a desire to live. They haven’t jumped off a building or chewed on a bullet, they just didn’t want to live anymore so their body shut down.

Whenever I close my eyes I see Karen drenched in blood.

 I’m sitting here waiting for death.

No one knows where I am. Maybe Grand Wolf could find me, but he’s probably forgotten about this place. He doesn’t know what has happened, but nothing he could possibly say could help me.

I keep thinking that if I had just tried harder to get the ring from the River of Souls this would never have happened. I struggled to get it, but a part of me wanted to be free of it forever. If I’d just pushed myself harder, been less selfish, Karen would be alive.

“I would have thought that recent events would have made the Swordsman more proactive.” I recognise the voice. Why would he be coming to see me?

“What do you want, Rorschach?” I say to the darkness.

He steps from the shadows, little more than a shadow himself, and looks down at the pathetic lump on the floor.

“I thought you would be trying to save her,” he says, “I thought you loved her.”

“She’s dead,” I stand shout at him, “I tried to save her but I couldn’t.” For a moment I’m powered by rage, but it fades as soon as it surges, and I collapse onto the floor again.

Rorschach stands above me and says, “So what are you doing here now? Feeling sorry for yourself? Why don’t you go and save her?”

I hurtle to my feet and at him. Rorschach steps out of the way and I fall flat onto the filthy ground, disrupting a roach’s tea party. 

“She’s dead,” I scream, “I failed her.” I curl into a tight ball and whimper, “Why are you taunting me?”

“Don’t you ever listen?” he says, “Time is static. You can still save her.”

The words slam my eyes open. I sit up and look at him, “How? How do I go back? You can tell me. You’re an Oracle.”

“You can save her,” he says, “but to do so you have to follow your destiny.”

“Tell me how.” I beg.

“No,” he says, “If you stay here and selfishly wallow in your misery, you will never get the chance. Destiny is not something that just happens, one has to find it and follow its path successfully. There are a many number of realities. One of them has you spending your remaining days in this room and dieing in pain and misery. Choosing which destiny to follow is not a choice in words but one in action.”

“Help me,” I say, “tell me what to do.”

“Your friends need you.”

*     *     *     *

Time is static. Right now you are dieing and being born. Right now Karen is falling to meet her death. I need to somehow go back and change things.

I feel uplifted for a while, but the huge task ahead of me seems like an invisible anchor crushing my spirit. How could I possibly do this?

The phone that Dexter gave me still works. I dial the number but there’s no answer. How long was I holed up for? Could the Reaper have fulfilled its purpose?

I’m walking through the deserted Mall. Wandering in circles, looking for some kind of sign.

How much has my selfishness cost Kafka and his people? Are any of the Tech-Vamps still alive?

Then I have an idea. If there are any Tech-Vamps left, I know just how to get their attention.

I walk up to the London Espresso Distributors. Everything is closed in the Mall. No one is here except for the cleaning staff and night watchmen. And the surveillance cameras.

The London Espresso Distributors is a gourmet coffee bar. All day they serve lattes and cappuccinos and café mochas, but behind the façade is a high-tech, high-powered organisation that polices the Mall and everything underneath it.

Right now the LED is looking for me, they think I murdered a number of their agents. Now I know that the person who murdered those agents is the same person that attacked us. That’s why the ring’s energy signature was all over the bodies.

Why did he attack the LED? Was he trying to find me? Or did he think that they would avenge their agents and take care of me themselves?

I’m wearing the same battlesuit that Dexter gave me. I haven’t taken it off in I don’t know how many days. I stare at my reflection in the glass. My hair is unkempt and greasy. I suddenly become aware of my body’s stench.

I slap a small, black device to the door of the LED. Dexter used the same kind of bomb to destroy the first android we faced. I push the button in the centre of the bomb. I have about thirty seconds to get away.

I look over my shoulder and see the front door of the London Espresso Distributors erupt. If this doesn’t get their attention, nothing will.

The Tech-Vamps have access to everything on the LED mainframe. If the LED knows I’m here, Kafka knows I’m here.

Then I wait.

I wait for the LED. I wait for the Tech-Vamps. I wait for my destiny.

*     *     *     *

Since I lost the ring I’ve changed. I thought it was because I had to rely more on my own abilities than the magical weapon that my father tried to destroy, but now I’m not so sure.

I became faster, stronger. I needed to use the night-vision glasses Karen got for me less and less. And then, when I faced the Reaper, I found a power inside of me. I had only ever used that power before in the River of Souls. When Mephisto plunged me into the darkness. I saw my father. He said the fire was within me.

The third time I used the fire was in the lab behind Designer Rebel. And I recovered from that almost immediately. Where did that come from? I thought I was just an ordinary guy who saw the world differently. And I only see the world differently because the ring showed me the reality behind the illusion.

What am I? Am I human? Or am I different like Kafka or Balgog? Could I be a demon?

*     *     *     *

“So you’re the Swordsman?” she says.

“I’m the Swordsman. Sans sword.”

“So it’s just Man, then?”

“Something like that.”

The woman is wearing a new version of the LED battlesuit. The suit covers her hands and feet, and it looks less bulky than the one the other agents wear. The neck comes down in a V almost to her navel, accentuating her ‘Wonder Woman-esque’ cleavage. Her long blonde hair blows in a wind that I can’t feel, like she’s modelling in a Revlon ad or something.

“The coffee-boys say you’re dangerous,” she says, “but you just look homeless.”

I thought the LED would’ve sent a squad. More than one agent at least. I supposedly killed dozens of them. The gesture is almost insulting.

“I’m strong,” I say, “strong smelling.”

“Well then, Swordsman,” she smiles, “lets dance.”

Two swords materialise out of thin air on the ground between us. That was different.

Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, or any other place for that matter, I pick the sword off the floor.

She does the same and we stand and stare at each other for a while. I figure she’s looking for some kind of weakness I might have. Right now I feel that all I have are weaknesses.

“In case you’re wondering how I did that…”

“I don’t care.” I say.

“Have you ever thought about how little of your brain you actually use?” she says.

“I sometimes wonder if I use any at all.”

“Well, I use a great deal of mine. So much, in fact, that I can do things like that. And more.”

“So write a self-help book.”

“I can also do things like this.” She disappears and in the same instant reappears behind me, her sword flying for my throat.

I don’t think I was supposed to see her attack, but I feel my mind click. I duck underneath the blade and spin round. My sword is now heading for her throat.

She parries and headbutts me. I stumble back in surprise more than anything else. If she was looking for a vulnerable spot, she made a gross miscalculation – my head is the hardest part of my body.

Click.

“Your friends are here,” she says, “look behind you.”

Who is she kidding? Look behind you? Is this the huge amount of her brain talking? Obviously the ‘battle-strategy’ section is missing a percentage of the turnover.

“Swordsman.” The voice is familiar. It’s Dexter’s. It’s coming from behind me.

I cautiously look over my shoulder, keeping one eye on the speedy mastermind. If she can teleport, she can probably throw her voice.

Dexter is standing with a V-Ops team. They’re armed and dangerous, like they’re ready to invade a small country with nuclear capabilities.

“Let’s get out of here.” He says.

“I was actually waiting for them,” I say, “I don’t think I have time for this.”

“I just wanted to introduce myself,” she says, “we’re gonna get to know each other real well.”

“Okay, so introduce yourself.” I say, “And don’t tell me you’re the Swordswoman, ‘coz that’d just be lame.”

“You can call me Alison,” she says, “Alison Wonderland.”

*     *     *     *

“I’m sorry.” Is all I can say to Dexter when I see him.

“For what?” he asks. We’re travelling in a black van with swivel chairs in the back and computers lining the inside.

“For disappearing,”

“You needed time to grieve.” He says, “I understand.”

“So what’s happening?”

“Well, it’s evolved again.” He sighs.

“Into what?” I look at the V-Ops team sitting in the back with us. Every now and again one of them looks up at me and then looks back down at the ground. I don’t want to know what they’re thinking. He let us down. He was supposed to help us and he ran away.

“The scientific name is a mouthful,” says Dexter, “but we call it the Helsing.”

“Funny,” I say, “The Helsing slaying Tech-Vamps. Were you born with a sense of humour or did you have to download one?”

Dexter smiles, “Whoa! Slow your roll, Foilboy. You can make jokes when you don’t smell like a septic tank.”

“What did you call me?”

“Foilboy,” he says, “you know, like you use for fencing?”

“Oh,” I laugh.

“So,” he smiles, “were you born ignorant or did you have to meditate on it?”

*     *     *     *

Dexter and the V-Ops squad wait while I shower and then sit zazen for a while. It’s a form of meditation that isn’t really meditation. Ten minutes is all I need to centre myself. I walk out in a clean battlesuit, totally focused.

We’re heading to the van, “which is more like a light tank than a van.” Dexter explains, “It might not look like much, but it weighs fourteen metric tonnes with fifteen centimetres of armour plate.”

“That’s a lot.” I say.

 Dexter carries on, “Tanks have been around for ages. In 1482 Leonardo da Vinci designed a crank-operated, covered chariot, but the development of an effective, track-laying armoured vehicle was only possible after the invention of the internal-combustion engine. During World War 1, the British developed the first armoured track-laying vehicles. The vehicles were shipped in crates marked ‘tank’ to maintain secrecy. And that’s where the name comes from.”

“Cool,” is all the enthusiasm I can muster.

By the time he’s finished the lesson we’re in the tank-van and on the road.

“With its evolution into the Helsing,” Dexter says, “it has to have the Ankh with it. As far as we know it can’t evolve any more. Which is a good thing and a bad thing.”

“Good because it can’t become more powerful,” I say, “and bad because now it’s the alpha-male of its species.”

“Yup,” he says, “it’s heading towards the completion of its goal.”

*     *     *     *

The Mall we end up at is the one where Karen died. I feel the sharp talons of grief dig in and burrow a dark hole in my stomach.

“Be on your guard,” says Dexter, “watch out for that assassin.”

“What assassin?” I say.

“Alison Wonderland. She’s an assassin created by the LED.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Well,” says Dexter, “she’s engineered to be faster than a cheetah and deadlier than a black widow’s kiss. She uses about eighty percent of her brain, so she can create matter by pulling molecules together. She can also slow things down, so it seems like she’s moving faster than thought. It’s as good as being able to teleport.”

“Sounds like your trying to sell me one,” I say.

“Don’t joke, the LED might be making more of these for that reason. They apparently implanted code words that enable them to control her.”

“But the LED aren’t like that,” I say, “they’re misguided but they’re not evil.”

“I could debate that,” he says, “the higher echelons of power in the LED are changing. The people in control have less and less scruples, not that I think they ever had any kind of conscience to begin with.”

We find one of the hidden entrances that lead beneath the Mall. These things are hidden in plain sight, if you really look for one you’ll find it. Ordinary people have heard about the world beneath the one they know. They’ve tried to find it but have come up short. I suppose a part of them either doesn’t believe or doesn’t want the world to change. It’s a question of faith, I guess.

They say the truth will set you free, but in my experience it just complicates things.

We head down and Dexter and the V-Ops squad put on their night-vision glasses. I would usually do the same but I don’t need to. I can feel my pupils enlarging like a cat’s.

“What’s that smell?” I say.

“What smell?” says Dexter.

“We’re close.” I say, feeling like I’m rehearsing lines for a B-Grade horror flick.

“I know,” says Dex, “but how do you know?”

“I can smell it. The stench of Death.”

We walk into a dark cavern. I’m in front because I don’t want any more deaths on my conscience.

The stench of the Helsing is strong now. I can taste it at the back of my tongue.

This is where it’s going to happen.

*     *     *     *

An Oracle named Orlock created the Ankh to rid the world of Tech-Vamps. Oracles are supposed to observe, not interfere. They can walk through time and space, some believe they may have even created this universe.

The Ankh raises the Vurkolack, a vampiric being that rips open its victim’s chest and sucks its internal organs out. I destroyed it a couple of times.

Once the Vurkolack has eaten enough Tech-Vamps it evolves. It changes into what the Tech-Vamps call the Reaper. The Reaper seemed more intelligent, whereas the Vurkolack just killed without thought. Like McDonald’s.

Dexter says the Reaper didn’t have to eat its victims to absorb their energy. The Reaper, once it has absorbed enough energy, evolves into this thing called the Helsing.

While I was moping around, feeling sorry for myself, the Reaper went on a killing spree.

If an Oracle does get involved in matters of the universe, what happens to him? Do the other Oracles have some kind of law against it, or is it just an accepted position? Will they try and stop him or will they just observe?

*     *     *     *

The cavern is darker than Cerberus’ asshole. Gigantic stalactites reach down from the ceiling and equally massive stalagmites look like a strange mountain range. I’ve been to many places under this Mall, but I haven’t been into a cavern this size. It must be at least a hundred square kilometres, but I don’t really know because I can’t see the other end. I’m half expecting to bump into the Batmobile down here, but then remember we’re under a Mall and not a mansion.

“It’s coming for us,” says Dexter, “I can feel it getting closer.”

“Get out of here,” I say, “you won’t stand a chance against him. It’s up to me.”

“We can’t leave you, Swordsman.” Says Dexter.

“Get out,” I shout, shoving them out the cave. I slam my fist into the wall, causing a mini-avalanche. The rocks fall over the mouth, trapping them outside. Or rather, trapping me inside with the Helsing.

It’s in here somewhere. But it’s not hunting a bunch of Tech-Vamps with no chance of defeating it. Now it has ceased to be the hunter and become the hunted. I reach deep down and find the fire within me.

I still hold the sword that Alison Wonderland created from nothing. The blade burns red as the fire builds inside me.

“Show yourself, Helsing.” I say, “Come and face your fate.”

My melodramatic dialogue works. A black swirl appears on the floor. The grime and dirt spins frantically. More filth is swept up in front of me. It grows taller and larger. A faint shrieking emits from the whirlwind as it takes form.

The small tornado crackles with white electricity. The shriek distorts as it grows louder. It spins faster. With frenetic anger. Inside the whirlwind I hear the beating of leathery wings, like a swarm of bats have flown from the depths of Hades into the storm. Then the tempest implodes with a sound like the legendary death rattle.

The figure standing in front of me doesn’t look like much. It stands, about seven feet tall, with its arms crossed over its chest. Like a sleeping vampire, its eyes are shut tight.

The Helsing resembles an ordinary man. Its thin, wiry body would seem pathetic to the untrained eye, but I learned a long time ago that – no matter what Jenna Jameson might tell you – size doesn’t matter. Mephisto walks around in a pathetic looking form, but he just might be the most powerful god to walk the ethereal battlefields.

The Helsing opens its eyes. A ghostly, cerulean light shines forth like you’d expect from the windows to an angel’s soul.

It speaks without moving its lips, but this thing isn’t a demonic ventriloquist, it’s using what I’d call extrasensory parlance.

I see that Kafka has sent the Phoenix to fight his battles.

If it can speak directly to my mind, can it also read my thoughts?

“You’ve got your superheroes confused,” I say, “I’m the Swordsman.”

The only confusion belongs to the one who sent you. He thinks the Phoenix can stop me. I will crush you as easily as I crushed the others.

I’m feeling loquacious, so I humour the guy, “Gee, my mistake. I must be at the wrong battle. Which way to the ‘Swordsman kicks the Helsing’s ass’ matinee?”

Your blunt, brusque wit will not gain you the edge you so desire. You will fall, so I may continue the will of Orlock.

The Helsing’s face changes. Its eyes turn from midday blue to sunset red, and then they shadow over into midnight black. Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? But the thing’s face changes more rapidly now. Its lips shrink back and I can see its teeth get longer and sharper.

I grow tired of this mindless banter.

“Well, it’s about fucking time.” I say.

Its shoulders widen, muscles grow before my very eyes. The hair that covered its head recedes, underneath are thick, snakelike arteries, pumping whatever poison runs in the Helsing’s veins. Its arms grow longer and the ordinary hands morph into gnarled talons.

I’m not impressed, I’ve battled gods.

I can also do the ‘changy-changy’ thing. I open my mouth and allow the fire inside to twist out and lick the centuries-stale air in front of me. I thrust out my hand, the flame roars from my palm.

Instead of defending itself from the inferno, the Helsing swings one of its claws out and grabs my arm. It spins round and hurls me into the darkness of the cave.

I crash through a pillar and land in a shower of rock and dirt. I look around the chamber. I can see dozens of columns formed from the stalactites and stalagmites meeting halfway. These things are a big part of what’s holding this cavern up.

I hear the Helsing’s quick, short breaths as it races to where I landed. The sword is still gripped firmly in my hand, I watch it change from red to blue to white as the heat builds. Soft flames dance on the blade.

I thrust my sword into the Helsing’s belly the moment it reaches me. It screams more in anger than pain and swats my head with its claw.

I black out for a moment as I fly across the cave. My initial confidence slowly fading as I taste the coppery blood in my mouth. So much for the whole ‘hunter-prey’ thing.

I get to my feet and see the Helsing tearing towards me. My sword is still imbedded in its stomach. I sprint towards it, trying to visualize myself as the last Kryptonian – faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive.

The Helsing and I dive for each other at the same time. It’s still changing, growing larger by the second. Right now it’s about four times my size, I can see another pair of incisor-wielding arms slowly pushing out its sides.

We thunder into each other with the deafening roar of an unstoppable force smashing into an immovable object. White flame explodes from my body. I lift the Helsing above my head, leap high into the air, and slam it into the roof of the chamber.

On the way down I somehow move us across, and the Helsing lands on a sharp, twisted stalagmite. The rock punctures through its chest, spraying grey-brown-black blood over my body.

I step back, ripping my flaming sword from its belly. That should sort out the winners from the pretenders.

The rock piercing the Helsing’s upper body crumbles as the hole in its chest closes around the stalagmite. It writhes angrily and gets to its feet.

“Okay,” I say nervously, “lets call it a draw.”

The Helsing roars as it dives forward, all four of its jagged claws in front of it, and lifts me off the ground.

We smash through another stone pillar. My spine feels like a piece of steak tenderised by the chef who just found out his wife’s fucking the dishwasher guy.

The Helsing picks me up and pitches me into another column. I hold my arms up against the rain of limestone, thinking I should have brought a lead umbrella.

I’m still clutching the sword like it’s gonna make a difference. I’m the Swordsman, it’s my trademark. Like Superman’s cape, Spiderman’s web, Wolverine’s bad haircut.

I look to my left and see a massive pit leading down to God knows where. No one knows how deep these caverns underneath the Mall go. For all I know you could go down until you popped up in some supermarket in Australia.

The Helsing charges toward me, tearing through at least two more stone pillars, like a steroid-crazed bull in a cramped china shop in the Red Light District. He keeps on getting bigger and bigger – the Energizer Demon.

I feel the chamber rumble. Bits of rock fall from the roof. Those columns we keep destroying aren’t holding this thing up anymore.

The Dog-God was like a house with teeth and legs. The Helsing is now bigger than the Dog-God with sharper teeth and quicker legs.

The Helsing lunges at me. Its ferocious roar, coloured by the disgusting stench, is like a swarm of sewer rats that tears at my nostrils.

Then I hear the click.

The world seems to stop turning. The Helsing, with its four arms outstretched, with its gaping, incisored mouth wide open, hangs above me like a mobile in Hell’s nursery.

The freeze-frame lasts for not even a second. In that split second I move out the way and bring my sword down on it.

Then everything speeds up again and the Helsing crashes onto the ground, my sword slashing at its massive back.

To him it looked like I moved faster than thought, like I was using eighty percent of my brain to slow time to almost a standstill.

But I can’t do that. Can I?

The flame that has covered my entire body lights the tomblike darkness of the chamber. I grab the Helsing and throw him towards the hole I saw earlier. He skids on the ground and falls, kicking and flailing his arms, into the pit.

These caves underneath the Mall are all naturally formed, no one created them. They were formed from the solvent action of water and the compounds in it.

The water contains carbon dioxide and humid acids from the soil around here. The acidic water attacks the limestone and dissolves it. This results in the formation of subterranean chambers. If it rains a lot the chambers become flooded and new caves form higher up. During dryer periods, caves will begin forming on lower levels.

Over thousands of years, fluctuations like this will produce multi-level cave systems.

I know this because Dexter knows this. He feels that everyone should have little titbits of trivial information at their disposal. He blabbed on and on about caves while we walked down here. He really needs to get out more.

The chamber groans and the ceiling starts dropping much larger chunks of rock. Time to get the fuck outta Dodge.

I run towards the dark chasm that I threw the Helsing down and dive in after it.

*     *     *     *

The flames covering my body light my descent. The jagged walls of the cavern fly past, every now and again I see a passage leading to another room.

How far down do these caves go? How many chambers lie underneath the Mall?

Far below me, a cataclysmic crash echoes upwards. I hear the Helsing scream. He’s reached the bottom.

I exert more control over the fire and draw it in. When I faced the Reaper I let the fire explode from me, as I became more used to it I was able to feel it building inside me. That awareness allowed me to be ready for when I felt it again. With time I might be able to control it. At the moment, trying to gain control of that rage saps my energy.

The fire surrounding me disappears. It doesn’t burn me or the clothes I’m wearing, so I’m avoided any embarrassing situations.

I can see perfectly in the darkness, another new ability. Of late there have been many new powers emerging. Where are they coming from? I thought I was just another ordinary guy with a sword and a unique knowledge of the world around us. What is causing this change? Am I evolving? Like the Vurkolack? What am I becoming?

The addition to the battlesuits has more of a function than the ability to look cool and carry more weapons. I drop the sword, stick my hands in the pockets of the coat, and squeeze the triggers inside. The coat stiffens and extends on either side. I feel my descent slow until I drift gently to the bottom of the chasm.

I don’t want to know how big the Helsing has gotten. I’m surprised it didn’t get stuck on the way down, the fat bastard.

I squeeze the triggers in the coat’s pocket again and the wings relax and fall to the side. At my feet is the sword, I pick it up and look around for the Helsing.

I can’t see it anywhere, but the thing’s stench has become stronger.

Then I hear it moaning. I run toward the sound and the sight waiting for me is quite disturbing.

The Helsing is lying on its back, crying out in pain. Something’s moving inside it, like something is trapped inside its body and wants out now.

Then the Helsing’s chest bursts open in a bloody explosion, and a smaller creature climbs out of the opening. Then another creature digs its way out, and another, and another.

By the time they’ve finished, there are five of these things standing over the Helsing. The hole in its chest closes up with the sound of a snail being crushed underfoot.

The things cackle and run off in opposite directions. I hear the Helsing’s voice in my head.

My succubae will find you, Phoenix. They are my eyes in this darkness.

I see one of the little goblins coming towards me. It hasn’t seen me yet. I hide behind a pillar and wait for it to pass. It runs on all fours past the pillar, I step out behind it and decapitate the son of a bitch.

The Helsing roars when the succubus’ head is lobbed off its body. It looks over to where I’m standing and, with a pain-filled scream, points to where the head lies.

I turn and see the other four heading towards me. I don’t think these things are supposed to fight me, they’re supposed to find me.

They shriek when I come into view. The Helsing gets to its feet and heads in my direction.

I hold my hand out towards the approaching succubae and they’re scorched by the flame. But their task has been fulfilled, the Helsing knows where I am. It’s okay, he was gonna find out sooner or later.

I sheath the sword on my back and hold both hands out in front of me. One by one I destroy the columns in the chamber.

It ends here. I’m destroying the Helsing and the Ankh for good.

The Helsing thunders towards me. It’s only a few feet in front of me now.

I unsheathe my sword and get down on one knee. I place both hands on its hilt and stab the point into the ground in front of me.

I shut my eyes tightly and bring forth the hot, powerful flame. I can feel it rising from deep inside me as my body burns whiter than the fire from Heaven.

The Helsing’s quick, heavy footsteps are almost upon me. I shout with a voice that is not mine and the flame explodes from within me like a fiery tsunami sent to cleanse the Earth.

The cavern crumbles around us. I hear the Helsing scream as the white flame wraps around its body.

Then I can see everything. Into the blackest corners of the cavern. Into the blackest corners of the Helsing’s soul.

The chamber crumbles around us and caves in.

I can see the Helsing’s body burning. Its screams of agony fade as its throat and mouth and heart melt. I can see the Ankh inside it, at the dark centre of the demonic creature. I focus the power on that object. It slowly starts to crack as it burns hotter and hotter.

Then, just as the chamber collapses on top of me, the Ankh of Orlock shatters into a thousand silver splinters.

*     *     *     *

Icarus, son of Daedalus, stands next to his father’s bed. The man is old and withered and dieing.

“Where is it, father?” he says through clenched teeth.

The old man opens tired, glazed eyes. He says, “What would you do with it?”

“You know,” says Icarus, “I must claim my place at their side.”

“You are my son,” says the old man, “not one of them.”

“Where?” shouts Icarus, shaking the old man, “Tell me where.”

“In the temple,” says the old man, “in his daughter’s temple.”

Even though Daedalus had raised him, the old man was not Icarus’ father. Icarus was the son of Zeus, king of all the gods and father to Aphrodite.

He headed towards his sister’s temple. Inside, after he had killed all the guards, he found it. The thing his father had tried to keep from him. The Honeycomb.

He removed the hammer and chisel from his tunic and began chipping away. Once he had a sufficient amount he turned to the burnt remains of the guards and said, “You shouldn’t have tried to stop me. No one can stand between a man and his destiny.”

*     *     *     *

My eyes slowly open. I try to move, but the heavy, searing pain makes it impossible.

There’s something else here with me. I can sense him. Staring down at me not with pity, but not with any malevolent intentions either.

At first I think it must be the Helsing, but the familiar voice puts my mind at ease.

I don’t hear what the words are, but they send me back into the darkness.

*     *     *     *

Icarus looks down at the ring he has forged. This, he thinks, this will take me to them.

He steps out into the heat of the sun and for a moment, as he basks in its warmth, he thinks of how his mortal father has given him the means of reaching the kingdom of his true father.

His mother had confided in him before she died. She told him the true story of his conception.

Icarus was no mere mortal, he was the son of Zeus. Zeus, god of the sky and protector of both the Olympian family and the human race, had descended upon the Earth and chosen Icarus’ mother to bear a mortal child.

Daedalus, upon discovering his wife’s infidelity, had demanded Zeus face him in combat. Zeus had appeared to Daedalus, not to engage in battle, but to make the mortal realise what an honour it was that he, a god, had chosen his wife to bear a son.

Daedalus had earlier called upon Hades, a brother of Zeus’ and the god of the dead. With Hades’ help, Daedalus had forged a magical cage capable of trapping the god of the sky.

When Zeus appeared to Daedalus, he trapped the god in the Golden Honeycomb and hid it in the Temple of Aphrodite.

But now Icarus had found the Honeycomb and forged a powerful weapon from it. A weapon capable of anything he could imagine.

He closes his eyes and focuses all his will on the task at hand. The ring disappears off his finger, and a moment later two great, shining wings extend from his shoulders.

The wings start to beat the air, lifting Icarus off the ground. He laughs as he flies higher and higher. He soars through the air, finally able to reach the highest peak of Mount Olympus and claim his place amongst the gods.

His laughter fades as the ring, containing the spirit and the will of Zeus, fights him. Icarus struggles against the will of the ring, but he is not strong enough. The wings slowly recede and the ring appears on his finger once more.

Icarus screams as he plummets toward the Earth. He will return one day, and he will claim his rightful place at the gods’ side. He is no mortal, he is a god, and he belongs with his people.

*     *     *     *

As Icarus slams into the ground and dies, my eyes burst wide open. The presence that I sensed earlier is still here. It speaks and this time I understand the words.

“Do you see now?” he says, “Do you understand the power that runs in your blood?”

The last thing I remember is the chamber collapsing on top of me. I should be dead.

“All I understand,” I say to Rorschach, “is that you, or whoever put that in my head, have got your mythology mixed up.”

“What you saw is true,” says Rorschach, “Icarus possessed the same blood that you and your forefathers did.”

“But it was Heracles, not Icarus, who was Zeus’ mortal son.” I say, “But that’s Greek mythology. The Roman version has Hercules and Jupiter. And Icarus flew too close to the sun. The wings were an invention of his fathers, the wax that held them together melted. That’s how he died.”

“Remember, Swordsman, time is static. What you saw was not an illusion, you were there. This is what the Oracles do.”

“Not your friend Orlock, apparently.” I say, “Please tell me. Is that thing dead?”

“Yes,” says Rorschach, “you destroyed the Ankh and with it the Helsing.”

I look around the cavern. This isn’t the same one that caved in. “Where am I?”

“You are now in what we call the Dead Zone, it is a place outside of time and space. You should be dead, but I was permitted to pluck you from the timestream and bring you here.”

“Thanks,” I say, “but why didn’t you guys stop Orlock? Why didn’t the Oracles do anything?”

“We are merely observers. We have jailed Orlock, for a time he hid from us in another’s body, until he was expelled by that mind. The Ankh he created was your problem. We cannot interfere with Earthly matters.”

“Well Orlock certainly did,” I say, “and you haven’t exactly been a casual observer.”

“No, I have intervened when I have had to,” says Rorschach, “but anything I do is sanctioned by the Council. You, like your mentor, play a great role in our continued existence and are therefore extremely precious to the Oracles.”

“How sentimental.”

“I have been instructed to guide you to your destiny,” he says, “to guide you to the Golden Honeycomb.”

“The Golden Honeycomb is what Daedalus trapped Zeus in, right?”

“That is correct.”

“But what does that have to do with me?”

Rorschach appears as nothing more than a shadow, but if I know him he’s shaking his head. “When Icarus fell from the sky his soul didn’t die. He believed himself to be a god, and therefore he worshipped no god, so his soul was sent to the River.”

“The River of Souls,” I say, “that’s where I lost the ring.”

“And where Icarus found it.”

“But what does that have to do with me?”

“Only those with the blood of Gondlar can use the ring. Hades, or whom you know as Mephisto, allowed Icarus to escape from the River. The two of you are the only remaining members of Gondlar’s bloodline, if Mephisto can rid the universe of the children of Gondlar he believes nothing will stand in his way. He will be the most powerful god, with no one threatening his rule.”

“But what about Icarus,” I say, “why should Mephisto trust him?”

“Icarus struck a deal with Mephisto. It is a deal that Mephisto will break.”

“So why do I need to find this Golden Honeycomb?”

“With the ring,” says Rorschach, “Icarus will easily defeat you. But the ring is merely an extract of the Honeycomb. If you possess the Honeycomb, you will hold more power than Icarus.”

“Makes sense,” I say, more confused now than I think I’ve ever been, “so where is this Golden Honeycomb?”

“The same place it’s always been,” says Rorschach, “hidden in the Temple of Aphrodite.”

*     *     *     *

Next thing I know my body pops back into the Mall, with my mind a close second.

I slowly limp towards a bench and sit my tired body down. I suppose I should call someone to pick me up. I can’t just sit here all night. I’m covered in dust and blood. The tough battlesuit I’m almost wearing is torn to shreds. The sword is still in my hand. I’m clutching it so hard it’s almost a struggle to let go.

I’m thinking about all the things Rorschach has told me. He told me I could still save Karen, I just have to follow my destiny. That’s the thing about fate, though. You never know when it’s fucking with you.

The cell-phone that Dexter gave me is probably smashed to pieces. I struggle to my feet and find my way to a row of pay phones, then realise that I have no money on me.

Not a problem. I punch one of the phones with the little strength I have left. It cracks with a short, heavy sound and coins spill out onto the floor.

I bend my aching body down and pick up enough to call Dexter with.

“Job’s done,” I say when he answers, “come get me.”

“We’re already on our way,” he says, “don’t move.”

I disconnect the call and then call the phone company and report the vandalism of one of their pay phones in the Mall.

I slide down the wall onto the ground and try to think how the Hell I’m going to save my girlfriend from the past.

*     *     *     *

Zeus, Jupiter, Gondlar. All different names for the same god. According to Rorschach, this god came to Earth and screwed some guy’s wife. The guy got mad, called on Hades, known to me as Mephisto, and trapped Gondlar in some kind of beehive or something. What was it called? The Golden Honeycomb.

This guy’s kid, who was actually Gondlar’s son, was half-god. So he figured he belonged with the rest of the gods on Mount Olympus. He created a ring from a chip of the Honeycomb and tried to fly up to the gods.

But Gondlar wasn’t having any of it, and seeing as his will or spirit or whatever was trapped in this ring he could fight Icarus’ flight.

So Icarus crashes and burns and gets sent to the River of Souls.

The way things work is like this. When you die your soul goes to whichever god you worship. If you’re a hairdresser and you worship the Dog-God you go to the Dog-God and make it more powerful. But if you don’t worship or believe in anything your soul hangs around in Purgatory until one of the gods wins your soul in battle.

This guy Icarus, who created the ring, found it after I’d lost it in the River. And somehow he found a way out of the River. I can only assume he had help from Mephisto, who I thought died in the River of Souls.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that since I saw him. Maybe to enter the River you have to be dead already, and if you can get in without dieing then maybe you can’t die there. Maybe the small part of Gondlar that’s in the ring wasn’t strong enough to kill Mephisto.

*     *     *     *

The sound grows. It gets louder and louder until I can’t hear myself think. Like a thousand simultaneous drumbeats, the sound so rhythmical it would become white noise if I wasn’t curious about its source.

I get to my feet and investigate.

An army of women, beautiful women, the same women that murdered Karen, stomping through the Mall in formation.

The old guy in the white coat must have been creating them for some reason. I watch as the cadre of Robobabes passes and follow them at a distance. I think about Austin Powers and life imitating art.

They head down a passage that leads underneath the Mall. I follow them through the tunnels and passageways, but I think I know where they’re going. The question is why are they going here.

Is this the reason they were created? I suppose it’s as good a reason as any.

They stop outside the entrance to a cave I have been in dozens of times. I know this place. It only holds memories of pain and death.

Book-Demons live here. This is Balgog’s lair.

*     *     *     *

Book-Demons look just like you and me, but they are very different. Once upon a time I went around trying to kill them.

To kill a Book-Demon you need to suck its soul into one of the books they use for the same thing. They absorb souls for some reason unknown to me. I try to remember who gave me all this information, but for the life of me I have no idea.

I’ve never figured out why the Book-Demons do this, I’ve never even seen it happen. At first I thought they did it to become more powerful. That seems to be almost everyone’s aim in life, human or other. But the Book-Demon I’ve faced the most, Balgog, has apparently absorbed more souls than any other Demon and he’s no stronger than when I first met him.

I don’t think they send the souls to some evil master in another dimension or anything – whoever created this universe just isn’t that corny. I just figured it was what they did.

Do things exist for a reason or do they just exist? I can’t tell you.

Anyway, killing a Book-Demon is hard work. There’s some kind of incantation or spell that you need to recite before you can suck the thing’s soul. That’s the only way to kill one. Chopping them up doesn’t work, even their heads grow back after a while.

Balgog and I have a mutual understanding – he doesn’t get in my way and I don’t try too hard to find out how to kill him. He told me that all of my beliefs were wrong, I had no idea what their purpose was. I didn’t believe him.

Under normal circumstances I’d just mind my own business. This would be his problem, not mine. But these robots killed my girlfriend, and it’s time for some payback.

*     *     *     *

I turn and run back into the Mall. Balgog’s lair is about three stories below me. In a few seconds the place will erupt in battle. Right now I’m heading for his back door.

The thought of some kind of vengeance has pumped my body full of so much adrenaline, it’s like the Helsing incident never happened.

I’m not going to save Balgog or his friends. If the Robobabes were off to fight Mephisto I’d still want to take them down. I just want revenge.

I slide the hidden panel in one of the walls open and head down the stone steps into Balgog’s lair. At the bottom of the stairs is a long hallway, shelves on either side of the passage hold hundreds of dusty books. I guess these books are used to claim souls.

The passage leads to the main entrance. Usually, there are at least two dozen Book-Demons lying around. Now there is only one.

“Hey, dickhead? Where’re all your buddies?”

Balgog looks over his shoulder and says, “Swordsman, I was wondering when you’d show up.”

He must think I actually know what’s going on, and I assume he knows that a thousand bloodthirsty babes are outside his front door.

“So it’s just you and me then?”

Balgog frowns, “You’re helping me?”

“I’m helping myself.”

“Whatever,” he says, “go for the small of their backs. It’s where the main operating systems are.”

The door to Balgog’s cave explodes. A gorgeous blonde walks through, one of the ludicrously beautiful women who works in a designer clothing store. It figures these are robots, women who look like that would be working as models, not as sales assistants.

Balgog launches himself at her, flies over her head and sticks to the wall just above the door – like he’s Spiderman. He reaches down and places his palm on her back. Electricity crackles and the Robobabe falls forward. All of this happens in about two seconds.

Balgog smiles at me from his position on the wall, “Are you just gonna stand there or do you want some of the action?”

*     *     *     *

The Battlesuit is pretty trashed from my rumble with the Helsing, but it’s still got some tricks in it. I reach into a pocket and pull two circuit-grenades. These things are designed to short any computers or appliances, not to do any harm to innocent bystanders. 

Doing a disservice to the male population everywhere, I toss the grenades through the door and into the crowd of hotties rushing inside. The grenades explode with a whomp and a dazzling blue flash.

The first wave of ‘droids collapse with a snap, crackle and pop of electricity. My stomach rumbles, it must be breakfast time.

The walls on either side of the door crash and crumble as the robot menace finds another way in. Balgog climbs up and across the ceiling. He drops down next to me.

“Very subtle,” he says, “what else you got in there?”

“These are always a laugh,” I say throwing one of three small, pancake shaped devices in the air. The pancake sticks to the roof in front of us. I throw the other two in different locations on the ceiling.

The second wave of ‘assemble-at-home’ girlfriends storm inside. As soon as they get under the pancakes they fly up and stick to the roof.

“Ha ha,” says Balgog, “James Bond – one; Blofeld – nada.” He jumps up on the ceiling and with one touch of his hand disables them.

“How do you do that?”

“Just overloading their circuits,” he says, “one of my many talents.” He drops down onto the rest of the ‘droids and disables them.

“You know,” I say trashing a mechamodel, “you’ve changed since I first met you. You don’t seem at all like a monster that sucks souls for fun and profit.”

“I already told you,” he says, “most people don’t have a clue. You’ve got us all wrong. I’m not what you think I am.”

Balgog’s already breathing heavily and there are still hundreds of them left. “Time for part two,” he says, “the elaborate death scene. Follow me.”

I don’t know why I’m trusting Balgog, but my instinct tells me to go along with whatever he’s planning. He charges into the oncoming tsunami of blonde killing machines with me behind him.

He somersaults over the first line and lands in front of a dozen more. I swing my sword like a madman and follow the Book-Demon. Six more Robobabes drop as Balgog does his thing.

“Hope their warrantee hasn’t expired,” he says grinning like a maniac. He grabs my arm and says, “don’t fight back. Just trust me.”

Why am I trusting this guy? I have no reason to. But my gut tells me to just play along.

The horde envelops us. I’m cursing my instincts and remembering what an idiot I am when we suddenly disappear into a white haze.

*     *     *     *

I grew up in an orphanage. I had no idea that I was descended from a long line of Swordsmen. I definitely had no idea that my blood ran thick with the energy of an ancient god.

I turned eighteen and left the orphanage to find my place in the world. I had a below average education, no work experience, and no hope for any kind of future worth living.

I was walking along the beach, feeling sorry for myself, when something made me stop walking and kneel in the sand. It felt as though something had drawn me to that spot on the beach. I ran my hand through the sand and found a ring.

I didn’t know how long the ring had been lying there or where it came from. But it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It shined like someone had polished it every day for a hundred years and kept it in a golden case lined with the most expensive velvet.

I put the ring on my finger and the world changed. An eternity of knowledge flooded my mind. I could suddenly see the world as the place it actually was, and it scared me.

I walked back to the pokey apartment I was renting, never once taking my eyes off the wondrous ring.

When I got back home something was waiting for me. I was attacked by some kind of monsters. Nothing more than shadows, but they were powerful and vicious. I tried to fight them but the things were much stronger. 

That was when the ring changed.

It flowed like anthropomorphic liquid into a sword. The sword guided my actions. I fought off the demons and killed them.

After I met Grand Wolf and he helped me defeat the dark god Mephisto, I discovered that this world was not the only one. There are millions of realities and plains of existence.

When we fought Mephisto Grand Wolf took me to something he called the quaquaversal point. He told me it was the point that our universe began.

If you imagine that the universe started with a massive explosion, this point was where someone put the C4.

Every universe’s quaquaversal point is connected. Imagine a ball with millions of tiny dots on it. The dots are so close together that they don’t look like dots at all but just something covering the globe. The ball is the quaquaversal point and the dots are the different realities and plains of reality. But each reality also has millions upon millions of layers. Layers that are different universes in themselves.

This basically amounts to an infinite number of worlds.

I wonder how many other worlds Balgog can get to.

*     *     *     *

It looks just like any other storeroom in any other place, but I know it’s not. Balgog sits next to me on the floor. He groans and massages his forehead. I’m hoping he has a headache even half as bad as I do.

“What the fuck was that?” I ask.

“That was a decoy. To buy us some time. We’re trying to get her soul back, if the old guy just left us alone we could all do our jobs.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about but I know we’re alive, and at the moment that seems really important.

The storeroom is filled with books in boxes and on shelves. In the corner is a desk with a computer humming softly on top.

“Where are we?”

Balgog reaches into a box and throws me a book, “This might make it easier.”

A page size photograph of my face stares up at me. I’m smiling like a dork and my hair is styled and combed, not like the surreal dumping of hair on top of my head.

I turn the book around and look at the front cover. There’s a cheesy drawing of a guy in a long, windswept coat holding a sword. Above the guy is the legend: Lord of the Mall.

I open the book and start reading:

There’s something about a near-death experience that makes you want chocolate.

  “What’s this?” I say.

“That’s your world,” he says, “I’ll understand if it comes as quite a mind-fuck.”

I flip through the book, reading interesting-looking parts. I read about the Traveller, Grand Wolf, Mephisto. Word for word, it’s my life.

 “My world is a badly written novel?”

“Hey, give him a break,” says Balgog, “it’s the best he could do.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Nope, but don’t let it go to your head. Everyone’s life is a book. You’re not special or anything.”

“Thanks,” I say, “I’m looking really hard for a validation of my existence. Apparently came up short.”

I look at the front cover, “So who’s the author? This Nathan Casey guy?”

“Yup,” says Balgog, “bit of a weirdo. Single, smokes too much, has issues with his mother. Typical ‘lonely writer’ type. Quite a cliché, really.”

“So I don’t really exist?” I say, “I’m just the product of this guy’s mind? A figment of some loser’s imagination?”

“No, you exist. This guy just has what all other writers have.”

“What’s that?”

“Your world flows into his subconscious.” Says Balgog, “he writes because he needs to get it out of his head. It’s like an itch that needs scratching.”

“So now I’m an itch?”

The door opens and some guy who I can only assume is also a Book-Demon walks in. The guy looks at me and speaks to Balgog, “What’s he doing here?”

“He followed me home, can I keep him?”

“We’ve found a suitable place,” says the guy, “here’s the coordinates.” He hands Balgog a slip of paper.

“Thanks,” says Balgog getting up. He takes the paper, reads it, and walks over to a shredder. The guy then leaves, closing the door behind him.

While Balgog shreds the coordinates that he’s memorised I ask, “What’s that?”

“A new base of operations.”

“Aha,” I say, “so you can go back to sucking souls while everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“Is that what everyone thinks we do?”

“You’re saying it isn’t?”

“In a word, no. What we do is rid stolen bodies of renegade souls.” Says Balgog, “That is the sole purpose of the Enuma.”

“The Enuma?”

Balgog smiles, “You call us Book-Demons. Unfortunately, once the body is stolen and the renegade soul inside, we need to find the lost soul. That can be quite a task.”

“So you’re saying you return lost souls to their bodies, which have been stolen by who?”

“A race not unlike our own called the Satyrs. They like to meddle in other world’s affairs. They even stole my body once. I think they tried to kill you.”

“And they can also cross over into my world?”

“Yup,” he says, “and when we absorb their essence the body wanders around aimlessly until we can find the original inhabitant. We generally try to go back to the time it was stolen, but we can’t always be sure of when the Satyr struck.”

“And just why should I believe you?”

“Don’t,” says Balgog, “I don’t care, really. But maybe you’ve wondered why we never sucked out your soul, and I’ll tell you it’s because we can only trap Satyrs. We couldn’t absorb a soul that’s in its rightful body even if we wanted to.”

Balgog opens the door and turns to me, “It’s time to go, Swordsman. Back to your world.”

*     *     *     *

The universe is as infinite as the imagination. How many worlds are there? Is God nothing more than a writer? Who comes first, the writer or the world that he writes about?

We walk out into, you guessed it, a bookstore. This looks like any other bookstore I’ve been in, but the Book-Demons don’t look like demons anymore. They look like normal, everyday people.

In my world, Book-Demons, or Enuma, look like ordinary people to ordinary people. But to people like me, who can see the world the way it really is, they look different. I can’t explain what looks different about them, they just don’t look right. Almost like when you meet someone and you get a funny vibe off them. You can’t explain why, but there’s something not right about that particular person.

I stop at a shelf and stare in amazement, still trying to get a hold on what I’ve just discovered. They sell my world to people as entertainment. I pick the book up and open it.

I look up. There’s someone standing above us on the landing. Someone I have never seen before, but someone I seem to remember from my dreams. The ring on his finger fluidly changes into a bright, shining, silver sword. He smiles at me malevolently and cuts through the cord on Karen’s grappling hook like a guillotine blade through soft flesh.

Karen drops towards the sea of bloodthirsty androids.

I flip over a couple of pages, my heart exuding a stranglehold on my throat.

Karen lies in a pool of blood. I kneel next to her. Trying to feel for any signs of life. But there are none. Her lifeless husk feels heavy in my arms.

I’m having trouble breathing. I look up at Balgog. He’s turned back to see what’s keeping me. He says something and turns away, but I can’t hear a thing. I close the book and put it inside my coat.

The world races back into focus. Balgog turns again. I haven’t moved at all since he last spoke to me.

“Swordsman,” he says, “come on.”

I can feel my legs again. I nod my head and follow him.

*     *     *     *

“So where do you want to go?” asks Balgog.

He asks this casually, like we’re planning a vacation.

“I need to find my friends,” I say, “I was waiting for them when I followed the robots.”

“Okay, we can just put you back there. Right before they arrive.”

“They probably won’t be there anymore. They’ve got some way of tracking me. They’ve probably been and gone.”

“Not a problem,” says Balgog, “we’ll just put you back there before they arrive. They’ll never know the difference.”

“I don’t get it.” I say.

“Let me put it this way,” he says, “I’ll send you back in time to before they even arrive. Which isn’t true, really, because time has no before and after. It’s more like just dropping you off at that place along the road.”

“But what about the robots,” I say, “If I go back, I’ll just hear the robots coming for you and go after them again.”

“Well, you can do that if you like, but that’ll just loop everything and you’ll get back here.”

“But how can I choose not to?” I ask, “I’ll just do it again because that’s what I did before.”

“You’re thinking that if you go back to before this happened it won’t have happened yet.”

“That’s right.” I say.

“You can’t change what’s already happened,” says Balgog, “it’s not like you’ll forget this. You’ll go back and wait for your friends, but you’ll already have come back here with me and travelled past that time in your life. You couldn’t forget this even if you wanted to.”

“But won’t that cause an anomaly or paradox or something?”

“I guess you’ll find out, won’t you?”

Then everything pops away and I’m flooded in white light.

*     *     *     *

From movies and television and books we all gain what I call untrue truths or false knowledge. Things like ‘good always triumphs over evil’ or ‘the shy, caring, not so good-looking guy will get the beautiful girl even though her current boyfriend is a dickhead who drives a Porsche and cheats on her’. These are things we like to think of as truths even though experience tells us time and time over that they are, in fact, total bullshit.

One of those untrue truths is: ‘if you go back in time and change things the universe will end’. I don’t know how I found out about this, but I’m expecting the world to come to a grinding halt when Balgog pops me back into the ‘past’.

Time is static, I’ve been repeatedly told, there is no past.

In a blinding flash I reappear on my butt, underneath the pay phones in the Mall.

I can remember everything.

Balgog told me that the Book-demons are actually these things called Enuma that don’t steal souls but return stolen ones to their rightful bodies. They’re not thieving bastards sucking the life-essence from innocents. Guess I got that one wrong.

I’m not too sure how I feel about the other thing I discovered.

I reach into my coat and pull out the book I brought back. The book that is my world. I’ve heard that there are universes, and then there are universes within those universes, and there are also universes within the universes within the universes. And so on. I never expected to find my universe inside another one. Especially not in this form.

Am I real? Or just the figment of someone’s imagination? It’s hard to find inner peace when you know some guy you never met could just go: and then he died!

The sound grows louder. For a moment I wonder what it is and then remember the army of robots heading towards Balgog. Did he pop out at the same time I did or did he go somewhere else?

The sound of a thousand mechanical feet becomes deafening. I think of the old guy in the white coat. He must be the one who created the androids. Did he create them to destroy the Book-Demons?

The rhythmic marching fades slowly into silence.

“Got nothing to do with me.” I say putting Lord of the Mall back in my pocket.

I stand up, to my body’s protestations, and from the corner of my eye see Dex and a V-Ops squad running towards me.

“Swordsman,” shouts Dexter, “behind you.”

I slowly turn around – because at the moment that’s the only way I can do anything – and see the assassin created by the LED to remove me, Alison Wonderland.

Click.

She flies at me, her leg extended and heading for my head. I dive out of the way and roll to my feet. I glance over my shoulder at Dexter and the other Tech-Vamps. They look like an action panel from a comic book – frozen in time, running with their weapons pointed and their mouths open to shout.

I swing the sword for the assassin. She smiles as the weapon turns to dust in my hands. I figure what she giveth she can damn well taketh away.

“What did you do to them?” I shout.

“Nothing,” she says, “they don’t concern me. You do.”

“So kill me and get it over with.” I say.

Click.

Everything starts moving again. Dexter and Co. storm towards us, guns blazing. The bullets heading towards Alison Wonderland would hit their mark if she wasn’t able to move faster than Godzilla towards the writhing, human hors d’oeuvres table. 

“Stop right there.” I turn to the new guy’s voice and see a team of LED agents with their ludicrously large guns pointed at my head.

“Put the guns down,” says Dexter, “now.”

The LED agents and the V-Ops squad are standing across from each other, looking equally serious about causing casualty. I’m standing, ready to rumble, in front of Alison Wonderland, the both of us between the Tech-Vamps and the London Espresso Distributors. This is starting to look a lot like a Quentin Tarantino movie. I think of this Nathan Casey guy and wonder about his originality.

“Oh, boy,” says Alison, “this is getting interesting. I wonder who they’ll shoot first, you or me?”

“Both of you get on the floor and put your hands on your head,” says the LED commander, “you Vamps get out of here.”

Alison Wonderland grabs my shirt and says, “I’m bored. Lets get out of here.”

Click.

*     *     *     *

After everything froze, the assassin known as Alison Wonderland grabbed the back of my head and planted her lips on mine. What would have otherwise been an okay experience turned out to be just the opposite.

It felt as though every fibre in my body was being torn apart and booted in different directions. Then, after less than a millionth of a second, the fibres slammed back together into what I like to think of as me.

I check that everything is where it’s supposed to be. You know, the important stuff. And then look around.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“Far away from any interruptions.”

From what I can tell, we’re on top of a mountain. All around I can see the tops of other peaks. We’re knee-deep in snow, but Alison Wonderland moves through it like it’s not even there.

“So this is where you’re supposed to kill me?”

“Do I look like the kind of girl who does what she’s told?”

She doesn’t. She looks like the kind of girl that other women hate and men crash cars staring at. She’s wearing a top that a six-year-old would struggle to breathe in, with tight, black pants and knee-high boots. Her long, blonde hair whips in the wind like someone’s filming a perfume commercial.

“So the LED were after you at the Mall and not just me?” I say.

“The LED created me,” she says, “they stuck needles into me and cut me up and sewed me back together more times than I can remember. They pumped poison and steroids and God knows what into my brain. They even planted code words into my head so that they could control me. But when I have your power I will have my vengeance.”

Click.

She flies towards me and lands a boot against the side of my head. She’s moving faster than thought, and at the moment faster than me.

She can slow time, and apparently I also have this unique gift, but I’m broken, exhausted. In this state I’m having a hard time keeping up.

She grabs my throat and shoves me down into the snow. I try to throw her off but I’m weak.

“Just relax,” she says, “this won’t hurt a bit.”

*     *     *     *

“No!” I scream. I explode forward off the sofa and slam over an antique coffee table.

“Rorschach said you needed help, but I didn’t think it had gotten this bad.”

It’s Grand Wolf, my mentor and the closest thing to a father I’ve ever had. He’s standing above me, looking very concerned.

“What happened?” I gasp. I’m finding it hard to catch my breath, it feels like someone removed a couple of internal organs. “I was on the mountain and then… I don’t know.”

“Don’t look at me,” says GW, “I got here and you were passed out right on that chair. You didn’t even bother to take your shoes off.”

“These past few days my life seems to have spun totally out of control.” I say, “Karen is dead, I found out that the Book-Demons are actually the Good Guys, and people keep calling me the Phoenix.”

“Never mind that,” says GW, “right now you better get your act together and come with me. We don’t have much time left.”

Well, thank you Mr Sensitive. If it was anyone but Grand Wolf bossing me around like this I’d start saddling up a really tall colt.

“What’s up?” I ask. I know it sounds a bit casual around all of this doom and gloom but it’s all I can think of to say.

“A war is brewing,” says Grand Wolf, “the outcome of which threatens the entire human race and the very existence of the Oracles. For once, they need to get involved.”

*     *     *     *

You know when you go out on a real bender? You drink until you either break the bank or become physically unable to manoeuvre a bottle to your mouth and the next morning you wake up and think: How did I get here? Where am I? Is this my bed? Why is someone hitting me on the head with a small country?

Anyway, a great big chunk of the previous evenings festivities is lost. You know it’s somewhere inside your head but for the life of you, you can’t find it.

But then later. Much later. That missing memory starts to come out of hiding and slowly reveal itself.

That’s what is happening to me. I remember everything until Alison Wonderland shoved me down into the snow. The rest is not hazy, it’s not there. But slowly, very slowly, brief, blurry images are starting to flit past my mind’s eye.

I can remember struggling. I don’t know what she was trying to do but I managed to break free. We fought – I think – and I can remember the fire pouring out of me and the assassin bursting into flames. I don’t know how I got back here.

I’m not at all sure of what happened, but she took something from me.

*     *     *     *

I’m suited up. Grand Wolf contacted the last of the remaining Tech-Vamps and they gave him another battlesuit tailored specifically for the Swordsman.

There aren’t many Vamps left. Just Kafka, Dexter, and about a hundred others. And that’s not just in the city, that’s in the entire world.

Orlock, the rogue Oracle, almost realised his vision. I can’t help thinking that, in part at least, it was my fault.

“The Temple of Aphrodite is not a place that can be found on any map,” says Grand Wolf, “it isn’t even a place that could be found if you travelled every inch of the globe in search of it.”

“Then where is it?” I ask.

“It’s everywhere. All around us.”

“Like the Force?” I say.

Grand Wolf doesn’t get my joke. He’s probably the only person in the entire world who hasn’t seen Star Wars. He frowns and says, “We need to meditate.”

*     *     *     *

I’m sitting in the lotus position, staring at a blank, white wall. No distractions, that’s the key to inner peace. Once you’ve taken away all arbitrary distractions in your life you can focus on what’s important. And what’s more important in life than peace. That peace inside you that no matter what happens, you know everything will be all right.

To start, you need to think about what the things in life are that cause pain. Things like greed, regret, resentment, envy, want. You can basically take your everyday emotions and put them at the top of the list.

Once you’ve cleared your mind of all these distractions you can start on the path to what’s important. I feel like a total hippie but there are only two things important in this life, and those are peace and love. Both of which will lead to happiness.

Once my mind is clear I do what GW told me to. In this state nothing matters, not even the end of the world.

There is a fundamental illusion behind all reality. I need to focus on what is behind the illusion. Step through it and see what is actually there.

The white wall in front of me fades. I feel my essence, my life force, my soul, step out of my body.

I look back on the husk that has carried me through this world. The realisation dawns that even though my body is constantly growing old and rotting away, I will never die. No one dies, the body that holds us in this world is nothing more than a vehicle.

I step through the illusion, and into…

*     *     *     *

What is reality?

According to academics, there are two types of reality. Objective reality and subjective reality.

Subjective reality is the way the individual mind sees the world. Some see the world as a dark, dangerous place. They think that life is devoid of any pattern or meaning. Life is just a series of random events that you can either benefit from or are harmed by. Others see this as an exciting, prosperous world. A world that has meaning. They don’t think of life as random, they see things happening for a reason. They believe that coincidence doesn’t exist. Reality is not a solid thing that you can hold in the palm of your hand and observe, it is an experience.

Objective reality is the world the way it actually is. Seen with no emotion, opinion, or influence. No one can see this world. Everyone sees the world in their own, subjective way. If no one can see this objective reality, does it really exist?

*     *     *     *

I step through the illusion and into… the illusion.

It’s like I’ve turned one-eighty degrees and walked out the same way I went in. But where before I could see my body seated on the floor is nothing. Grand Wolf was sitting with his back to me, but he’s not there either.

While the room is exact to the one I was in, at the same time it’s different. The sharp edge seems to have been taken off everything.

“You took your time.” Says Grand Wolf.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“What’s on the other side of the mirror?” he replies.

Grand Wolf grabs my arm and everything gets blurry.

When our surroundings come into focus again we’re standing in a forest. The trees creak and move slowly apart, their thousand year old limbs groaning in displeasure, to reveal a Brobdingnagian structure. The forty-five degree walls race up to a giant ankh. The loop in the ankh is filled with a gigantic emerald, too big to be real.

“There’s no door,” I say, assuming that this must be Aphrodite’s temple, “how do we get in?”

“Up there,” says Grand Wolf pointing to the ankh, “and it’s not we, it’s you.”

*     *     *     *

After I’ve climbed for about an hour I look up. The ankh is still miles away, and my feet feel like they’ve been jogging in a blender. I look down to where GW was standing but he’s not there anymore.

How did he get us here in the first place? We were standing in that room and then – bam – we were here.

Even though the entire time I’ve known GW I’ve always thought of him as incredibly knowledgeable and extremely powerful, I realise that I actually know very little about him.

I know that he was once an LED agent and that his wife was killed by the Bohemian. I know that my father and him were partners and had a close relationship. But other than that I know nothing about him even though we’ve been friends for years. I wonder where he went for all this time, what was he doing and why did he come back all of a sudden?

I look up at the green glow from the ankh. The harder and faster I climb, the further away it seems to be.

Why can’t I just be there now? I scream in my head.

In the blink of an eye I’m there. Standing right in front of the ankh with the blinding green light shining in my eyes.

Questions can be asked later. I think. I climb onto the ankh and through the loop.

*     *     *     *

My head spins through a maze of colours. Reds and greens and yellows flash and whirl around me. I feel like I’ve been taking too much acid and watching way too much Easy Rider. When I eventually hit the floor I expect to be dressed in a floral shirt and bell-bottoms.

I look up from the hard, stone floor and gauge my surroundings. The room is gigantic. Massive stone pillars that go on for eternity stand ominously like grey soldiers. The ceiling is a million miles away, for all I know there isn’t even a ceiling.

I stand up and turn around slowly. This seems less like a room and more like a universe. A universe that is nothing more than stone floor and monstrous pillars.

What is your greatest fear?

The voice comes from the air around me. Luckily I’ve been in these types of abnormal situations before so I don’t freak out. Instead, I answer the question.

“That my life has no meaning.” I say to the air.

“Then that is a fear that is misplaced.” She says.

The woman who appears in front of me can’t be Aphrodite. The lady whose temple I’m allegedly in was the daughter of Gondlar, she was the goddess of love and beauty, but this woman – at least I assume it’s a woman – is probably the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen myself naked in the mirror.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“This is my temple,” she says, “my home. I am Aphrodite.”

“Oh…”

“You think that I should appear as the most beautiful creature you have ever set eyes upon?” she says, “But I learnt long ago that fickle, outer beauty does not bring love. In fact, the most beautiful woman in the world could search a god’s lifetime and still not be sure if she found it, but the most repulsive creature would know true love when it appeared. When you truly love another person their image is carved anew into your eyes, so that no matter what anyone else who gazes upon them sees, they will never be more beautiful unless seen through your eyes.”

“Well,” I say, a bit confused, “that’s very enlightening, but I’m really here for the Golden Honeycomb.”

“Why do men seek material treasures when the greatest treasure of all is within the heart?” she says angrily.

“It’s not like that, really.” I say, “I just need the Honeycomb so that I can save the world… again.”

“You shall never have it!” she screams, “You are no more than a beast wishing to sate your selfish desires!”

Oh man, I don’t know who burned her but she’s got more than one chip on her shoulder. She screams like a turbo-charged banshee and before I can do anything about it the ground opens up beneath me and sucks me down like the worlds smallest piece of dirt into the Electrolux of the gods.

*     *     *     *

So I guess I’m now in what can only be described as a dungeon. The walls are made of stone and are covered in moss. I can hear a faint dripping of water that doesn’t seem to be coming from anywhere in the chamber, but it adds to the whole effect. A cold wind howls from nowhere. If this is the reality that is hiding behind the illusion you can paint my mind with whatever values you want to.

The place is dark, but lately that hasn’t been a problem for me.  I look back at the game plan.

I’m supposed to come in here to get the Golden Honeycomb, a magical cage that thousands of years ago trapped Gondlar, also known as Zeus, also known as Jupiter. This Honeycomb is apparently the only thing that can stand up to Icarus, the guy who stole my ring from the River of Souls and killed a bunch of LED agents for whatever reason. Then, once I’ve kicked seven shades of shit out of Icarus, I’ve got to somehow figure out a way to save my dead girlfriend from death. And on top of all of that, Mephisto is back and I’ve got to find a way to rid the universe of him permanently.

And now this bloated, pimple-faced, bitter bitch Aphrodite has locked me inside some dungeon because she’s so ugly the tide wouldn’t take her out and somehow this is all my fault and I’ve become responsible for the actions of the entire male race.

Although you might not know it, I’ve got a high tolerance level. I can take a lot of what the world throws at me. When life gets me down I always try to put on a brave face and smile at the world and tell myself that everything happens for a reason and things will sort themselves out. But that invisible line marked in the sandy ocean shores of my psyche has just been crossed.

In this place I’m not confined to the restrictions of my body. I left my shell and walked into this world, this supposed reality behind the illusion, and I can damn well walk back out of it.

I bend my mind and reach out with my hand. I push my fingers through the stone wall of this dungeon and tear it open like it’s nothing more than a wet paper bag. That was easy. Behind the wall is just a long, deep darkness that even my highly evolved self can’t see in. I look up and with but a thought I fly upward towards the room I came from.

In seconds I’m back up there. Standing right where the ground previously swallowed me up. I try to find the fire within me, but for some reason I can’t. I don’t want to torch the place, I just want to scare her.

Oh well, I guess it’ll just have to be me without the pyrotechnics.

“I’m not leaving without the Honeycomb, honey.” I shout.

The room is silent. It’s the kind of silence that if you listen to for long enough becomes loud. Then I hear a faint sobbing. And then a sharp, short wail, followed by more soft sobbing.

I just need to think about being at the source of the sound and I’m there.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “but sometimes I can’t control myself. I’ve become so irrational lately that I just can’t control my emotions anymore.”

Somehow I know that when she says lately, she doesn’t mean in the last couple of weeks. When you’re dealing with gods, ‘I’ll do it in a moment’ means in the next hundred years or so.

The girl sitting in a heap on the floor isn’t the same girl who threw a hissy-fit and got the ground to do a Pac-Man on me. I mean, she is the same person, but the body she’s in is very, very different. This body is what you’d expect to see the goddess of love and beauty wearing.

To me she looks like Karen.

“Look,” I say placing a hand on her shoulder, “I don’t know what happened to you but you can’t go through eternity blaming everyone, or yourself. There are good people in the world.”

“What would you know?” she sobs, “Men know nothing of love.”

“I do,” I say, “the only reason I get up in the morning is because of love. And the thing I love, the very essence that keeps my heart beating, was stolen from me. That’s why I need the Golden Honeycomb, so I can figure out a way of getting that love back.”

She looks up at me. Her eyes are red from the tears that have dampened her beautiful face. She stares into my eyes and then puts her arms around my neck. I sweep her off the ground in my arms and stand up. The endless room with giant pillars has gone and been replaced with a cosy, cushioned bedroom. I walk over to the bed and gently place her down on it.

“Get some rest,” I say, “this feeling won’t last. It won’t be gone tomorrow, but it’ll be less. And the next day even more so.”

I turn to leave but she says, “Wait!”

I look at her again. She sits up and kisses me softly on the forehead. “You have a good heart,” she says, “your love is very lucky indeed.”

“Thank you,” I say, “I just wish there was more I could do to help ease your hurt.”

“You have done more than you had to already,” she says, “and I will always remember you for that.”

Then the room and Aphrodite fade away, or maybe it’s me that fades, and I’m standing in front of what can only be the Golden Honeycomb.

*     *     *     *

Pretty soon I’m outside the temple, back in the forest, with the Golden Honeycomb under my arm. The Honeycomb is pretty big, made of pure gold, and it weighs a hell of a lot. They say that banks will let you have a gold bar if you can carry it out of the bank – they’re that heavy – and this thing is about the size of five gold bars.

“You’re back,” says Grand Wolf, “I was starting to think you’d fallen in love and I wasn’t going to see you again.”

“I think I prefer the illusion, thank you very much.” I say.

“Then lets get going.” He says.

“Okay, I just wish there was an easier way to carry this…” Before I’ve finished speaking the Honeycomb melts and glides smoothly up my arm and over my shoulder. This should hinder my hand and arm movement but it doesn’t. It’s like my arm is now covered in gold paint, not a magical cage.

When I first tried to learn to control the ring, I learnt to turn it into a spiked glove. This is much easier to control. With a thought I make sharp spikes jut out of my fist. I imagine a sword in my hand and it’s there.

I look at Grand Wolf, “Hold on a second, I’ve got to try something.”

I think of Icarus. The Honeycomb knows what I want to do. The gold races around my shoulders and two great, golden wings extend from my back. With a mere thought the wings beat the air powerfully and within moments I’m soaring high above the forest.

I can feel the fire again, burning frantically inside me. I only wonder where it disappeared to.

*     *     *     *

Grand Wolf isn’t charmed with my Hawkman impression. After I’ve landed he scowls and hurries us back into the room we started in. We step back into the illusion and into our bodies.

I open my eyes and see Rorschach standing in the room talking to Grand Wolf. The Golden Honeycomb still covers my arm.

 “What’s up?” I say to GW.

“The Oracles need me,” he says glaring at the shadow, they have a hard time keeping track of their own.”

With that he turns and stalks out of the room, leaving me to my own devices.

Rorschach looks at me and says, “You have done well, Swordsman, your destiny awaits.”

“Wait,” I say before the annoyingly cryptic Oracle vanishes, “you said I could still save Karen. How?”

“That is for you to discover on your own,” he says, “the power is within your grasp. You merely need to open it.”

With that the shadows slide like living liquid over him and he’s gone.

*     *     *     *

If you want to keep your friends and hopefully make a few more, there is only one piece of advice I can give you and that is to just be straight with people. There are few character traits that are more annoying than the propensity to speak in riddles. Don’t hint, don’t leave subtle clues about what’s really on your mind or what you actually want to say, just fucking say it.

I seem to, for most of my life, have been surrounded by people who just can’t say things like: “He’s the bad guy. Kill him.” Or: “I actually would like that last doughnut and would be really annoyed if you ate it.”

Rorschach tells me I can save my girlfriend, that it’s my destiny and all that crap, but he just can’t spit it out and tell me how.

What? Does he think it will be more of a character building experience if he lets me struggle and find out for myself? Does he not realise that the frustration and annoyance that I’m suffering could be eliminating vital years of my life?

I stand around in the empty room, not really knowing what I’m supposed to do now, when it hits me like a runaway truck filled with ice-cold glasses of water and fish of the face-slapping variety.

The book, you idiot. The book you stole when you were mucking about in other worlds with Balgog. The bloody book with your ugly face on the cover for heaven’s sake.

*     *     *     *

Sometimes I think of the Mall as a living thing. The fact that most shopping malls are built above fathoms of deep, dark caves is no coincidence. There’s something about the ground they are built on, some call it magic, I’ve heard others call it pure evil. An evil in the very earth that seeps into the foundations and pollutes the hard concrete and polished tiles.

If the Malls do, in fact, have a kind of consciousness, that consciousness is split. By day the Mall is very different than it is at night. The building itself like an echoing sepulchre, calling the bad spirits to rise when the sun falls. At night the dark, evil twin embedded in the Mall’s psyche rears its horned head.

Standing in the Mall, wondering where Balgog could be hiding, I can sense the evil pulsating through the empty corridors this night.

The book is the key. With the book that has documented my past and my unknown future I can go back. I can go back and save my reason for breathing.

From the corner of my eye I notice something that gets my attention. I haven’t seen him in so long I’d almost forgotten about him. The Traveller is standing in the distance, his suitcase in his hand, watching me.

“You seek it, you yearn for it, but you will never have it. It found me, and now that we are together again I will claim my place upon the throne of Gondlar as his heir.” I turn and face the man that has taken so much from me. The Golden Honeycomb burns as I stare at the ring on Icarus’ finger.

The Honeycomb covering my arm and shoulder is just like the ring, only more. The ring was crafted from a small piece of the cage that trapped Gondlar, the magic that powers it comes from the essence of that god. But the ring is only a small amount of Gondlar’s power. I can feel in the Honeycomb the insatiable fury of spending lifetimes trapped.

Everything I’ve heard about Gondlar, all the legends and myths and stories passed on about him say he is a god of light, a benign creator. But the power I feel in the Honeycomb is angry, a dark, burning power. A power fuelled by vengeance.

I don’t think Icarus knows I have the Golden Honeycomb. The long coat that is a part of the battlesuit is covering it. Where the ring always felt like something I was wearing, the Honeycomb seems to be a part of me. The gold doesn’t feel like a glove on my arm, it feels like a second skin.

“Why is the ring silver?” I ask. It’s something that’s been bugging me for a while now, the Honeycomb is golden.

Icarus doesn’t seem to think the question inappropriate at a time like this, I have a feeling he just loves the sound of his own voice. “The small part I stole from the Honeycomb would not bend to my will,” he says, “I had to meld it with metal given to me by Gondlar’s own daughter. Metal she stole from an Elemental. With the ring I would fly to Olympus and claim my place among the gods. But Gondlar was too stubborn, he couldn’t accept the future.”

“And what future is that?” I say.

Icarus shifts the ring into a sword. Then he does something I could never have learned to do with the ring. He somehow makes the silver fluid run from the hilt of the sword, around his shoulders, and into his other hand where another sword, exactly like the other, appears. Something in his face shifts, for a second I think I’m standing in front of Mephisto.

“That future,” he says, “is one in which he is no longer ruler of the gods. It is one where I have taken his place. As his son and heir.”

I’ve just about had enough of this.

“In all honesty,” I say, “I couldn’t give a monkey’s banana about your ideals and aspirations. But I just have to say that you’re really suffering badly from delusions of grandeur, and I’d recommend you seek counselling immediately.”

The Honeycomb moves with my thoughts and in my hand is a golden sword just like the silver ones that Icarus is holding. I smile at the surprise on his face.

“So let’s cut the bullshit already,” I say, “and get down to why we’re both really here.”

*     *     *     *

The golden sword in my hand flies towards Icarus’ skull. Lately I’ve been able to see in the dark, shoot fire from the palms of my hands, and move faster than thought. I’ve discovered that I’m descended from the god Gondlar, and that his power runs in my blood. In other words, you’d want to think real hard before fucking with me.

But Icarus is the original. He is Gondlar’s son.

The silver swords race up to block the blow. The clashing of the magical weapons sounds like a million simultaneous thunderclaps. A spark like a bolt of lightning ignites the air.

For a split second I think I see Icarus’ face distort and change again.

I let go of the sword and drop low in an attempt to sweep his legs from under him. The golden sword disappears and, like the ring does, turns back to the golden glove covering my arm.

Icarus somersaults forward, avoiding my attack. He lands behind me and swings his twin blades for my neck. The Honeycomb races round my body, covers my entire head and shoulders, blocks the deathblow with a clanging crash.

Even though my face is covered with the gold, I can see and breathe perfectly. I swing round and back away from Icarus. The Honeycomb flows off my head and over my arm.

“I see that Gondlar protects you,” he says, black shapes emerge from his body, “it won’t save you. I have the power of two gods.” The shadows

“He’s using you to try and kill me,” I say, “and when you have he’ll just send you back to the River.”

Icarus laughs, “I’m afraid you are incorrect. It is I who is using the dark god. His power is trapped inside the ring, thanks to you, and now I wield that power.”

The shadows slide quickly toward me. Flame bursts from my body, igniting the servants of the dark god. with Gondlar’s will inside me, and with my brand new ‘flame-on’ powers, the shadows don’t stand a chance.

Icarus drops to the floor and slaps his hand down. The silver races off his finger and along the ground. It leaps toward me and, before it engulfs me, I see Icarus’ face distort into the dark god’s.

I understand now. In the River of Souls, when the ring swallowed Mephisto, it didn’t destroy him, it caged him like the Honeycomb trapped Gondlar.

My father stopped wearing the ring for the same reasons I did – it was trying to gain control of him. The god trapped inside wanted a new body. But that was a small part of Gondlar that was trying to take control, a small part of his essence and power. The ring holds all of Mephisto’s power, all of his will, it will be much harder to fight it.

The silver engulfs my body, but I feel the Golden Honeycomb cover all of me as well. For what feels like hours the ring and Honeycomb struggle against each other. The silver trying to crush the life from me, the gold struggling to preserve its host.

My body bursts into flame with a deafening roar. The silver is flung back towards Icarus. It slams into him and brings him down to the ground. I watch him writhe as the silver wraps his body. It looks like he’s struggling with his own weapon.

The Honeycomb runs back onto my arm and shoulder. I walk over to Icarus as he starts screaming in agony.

He gets to his feet while the silver tears across his flailing body. I glimpse his bloody face as the ring begins seeping into him. He drops to his knees and looks up at me. I see the light fade from his eyes.

No, not fade. It is replaced with something else. His face deforms, for a while he looks like a Book-Demon that’s just grown another head. Then the features become recognisable. His body grows taller and broader as it gets to its feet.

This new body standing before me once belonged to Icarus, but now it has been taken by someone else. The ring caged Mephisto. While only containing a small part of Gondlar, the ring absorbed all of the dark god. And that god did what Gondlar had been struggling to do for generations of the Swordsman. It found a host body and took control of it.

The body standing before me was once human, now it belonged to a god.

*     *     *     *

When I was about two years old my father, the Swordsman, removed the ring on his finger, the source of all his powers, and locked it in a heavy, steel box. He took this box away and dropped it into the middle of the ocean.

When Mephisto came for him, my father fought valiantly, but without the power of the ring he fell. Mephisto violently killed my father, and then he turned on my mother, a woman with no chance, and brutally murdered her. My parents hid me before the dark god knew I existed.

Mephisto spent eons trying to destroy Gondlar, his nemesis, and eventually he conspired with Daedalus to build a cage. With the inventor’s skill and Mephisto’s dark power they were able to trap Gondlar in what was known as the Golden Honeycomb.

But Icarus forged a ring from the Honeycomb, thereby giving Gondlar the chance to one day rise again.

I understand now, when the ring was trying to control my actions it was actually Gondlar trying to take over my body so that he could live again.

Mephisto spent thousands of years trying to stop Gondlar’s bloodline from flourishing. That’s why he has killed so many Swordsmen throughout the ages. I have no brothers, sisters, or children. If Mephisto kills me, Gondlar will be caged forever. The ring only works with Gondlar’s bloodline.

I almost feel sorry for Icarus. He thought that he was more powerful because Mephisto was now also trapped in the ring. The reason Gondlar could never take over a Swordsman’s body was because such a small part of him was in the ring. Mephisto’s entire soul was locked in the ring, he could easily steal Icarus’ body.

I wonder if now that I have almost all of Gondlar’s will on my arm he will destroy my soul and take the body it travels in?

*     *     *     *

 

The Mall around us is trashed. The floor to ceiling windows of the shops around us are no more, I now remember them smashing when our swords first clashed. The floor beneath me is turned up and I’m standing in rubble. The dark god steps towards me.

“Give me the book.” He says. I can see the fury in his eyes, burning like a thousand fires.

A voice behind me says, “You will never have it, demon.”

I turn and see Balgog standing with a cadre of Book-Demons. I remind myself that they’re not Book-Demons, they’re Enuma – a race of beings that returns lost souls to their rightful bodies.

What a time to get all politically correct.

Mephisto screams and a horde of Shadow-demons pour from the ground beneath us. I look up and see that the Nightcrawlers are also coming out of the stone ceiling, not to mention the walls around us.

Balgog and the Enuma burst into action. After all this time I still don’t know what Balgog is capable of. When I last saw Mephisto’s minions they slaughtered a crack squad of LED agents, but the Enuma don’t seem to be having so much trouble with them.

“Give me the book!” he roars, lunging at me.

The Golden Honeycomb morphs quickly into the sword. It seems to guide my actions, I feel myself succumb to Gondlar’s will.

I lunge forward, screaming with rage. The Honeycomb is controlling me, Gondlar is taking control of my body and its actions. The golden sword pierces Mephisto. It stabs straight through his chest. Black blood spurts out of the dark god’s back.

I scream as the Honeycomb starts to leave my body. The flesh on my arm burns and scars as Gondlar tries to take back the part of his soul that is still with the ring.

A thought flashes through my mind. A thought that does not belong to me. Gondlar needs a host. He is pleased that Mephisto is here, he wants the rest of his soul back so he can continue his war with the dark god and exact revenge upon him.

I reach deep inside myself and force Gondlar out. A part of him was hanging on, wanting to claim my body as his own. But he reached too far into Mephisto, trying to find that lost part of him. The little bit of power he left to hold on to me is not enough. Causing more pain than any man should ever know, I shove the Honeycomb off my arm and out of my body.

The sword in Mephisto’s chest melts and the golden liquid wraps around his body. He screams as the Honeycomb begins melding with his flesh. Then the dark god’s body crumples on the floor. He shrieks in pain as the wound in his chest starts to froth. His body flies in the air, like it’s been kicked, and as it soars I see it morphing into something else. His head melts and I think I see horns and insect feelers and great, sharp teeth replace it in a flurry of sped up images.

Then the face is Mephisto’s again, and then it’s someone else’s – I think it must be Gondlar’s – and then the body erupts into flame. The fiery form suspended in the air roars and descends with insane speed into the ground. It passes through the ground as though it’s not even there. Not breaking or smashing it, just passing through it as though it were nothing more than air.

With a cut off shriek the thing that is both Gondlar and Mephisto vanishes from this plain.

The dark god is gone. The Golden Honeycomb is gone. The ring is gone.

I turn to the Shadow-demons fighting with the Enuma. I scream like a wild man and the fire inside me is released. The demons wail like wounded animals and burn into dust.

I look around for the Traveller but he’s gone. Balgog said he called him off, but when the Traveller was after me he wasn’t Balgog, he was someone else.

“The book,” I say to Balgog, “I need to…”

“I know,” says Balgog, “you need her. We don’t know why things happen the way they do, the reason behind fate’s actions are often lost to us. But I will help you this time, Swordsman, because I know that without her your life would be meaningless.”

*     *     *     *

The air becomes harder to breath, but in less than a moment it tastes sweeter than honey. A kaleidoscope of colours swarms my eyes. I’ve never felt more at peace.

Balgog explained that the old guy who designed the Terminator-Barbies thought that the Enuma stole his daughter’s soul. What they actually did was remove the Satyr from her body before they’d found her true essence, which they’re still searching for. Mephisto gave the old guy the power to create the robots, and they won’t stop hunting the Book-Demons until they are all vanquished.

The dark god did all of this with Icarus’ body. He wanted to use the Enuma’s ability to travel through the books so that he could, once and for all, destroy Gondlar’s bloodline and hope of rising again. Well, that’s Balgog’s theory anyway.

Balgog explains all this, but at the moment I don’t really care about the how’s and why’s. All I care about is through the book.

I drop through the rainbow and into a gigantic, airplane-hangar sized room with a loud, rumbling machine pumping out robot parts. I’m floating in the air, above the horde of robots.

I look over and see myself shooting up a grappling hook towards a metal landing above me. On top of the landing stands Icarus. Next to me, ascending on a similar cord, is Karen Keating.

I see Icarus slash Karen’s cord, and I say the words that Balgog taught me. I don’t know what they mean or even what language they belong to. It doesn’t matter.

Everything slows to a standstill. I fly like one of those heroes in the comic books that Grand Wolf reads and gently take Karen from the air.

She opens her eyes and stares at me. Her mouth opens to say something but I place a finger to her lips. “I’m here to take you home.” I say. She closes her eyes and leans her head against my shoulder.

And then, as I cling desperately to the woman I love, we both fade from the page.