Chapter 39

  Day 23

  He that feareth is a slave, were he never so rich, were he never so powerful. But he that is without fear is king of all the world.

  - E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

  Turquoise waters lapped at pristine opaline sand. A faint warm wind breathed across the channel, ruffling the surface of the waterway as it wound on its lazy course, branching and converging without end on an interminable journey around the Delta Moon.

  Calm music, acoustic guitar, twanged out tinny and staticky from a speaker at rest on the sand. Nearby, Akkama sprawled in a blue paper chair, where she sipped a cool sweet drink from an icy glass. With one hand she inscribed careful calligraphic poetry into her burned and battered journal. She wore sunglasses against the brightness of the Delta Moon, though she sat in the shade of a broad conical umbrella made of pink and red paper. A flat conical paper hat, like a small imitation of the umbrella, ornamented the hilt of Nemesis where it rose from the sand beside her. Akkama wore full armor, but was not uncomfortable. After all, it was only paper. She had hewn it from the landscape of her moon and had written it into shape herself. Loose leaves of colored paper lay scattered about her like autumn leaves, nudged by the breeze.

  Emmius, a few paces distant in the wet sand, busied himself with the creation of sand sculptures. A meandering trail of such figures marked the length of the beach. Akkama occasionally glanced up from her book to see what he had created. Some of them were remarkable. Others were insufferably stupid, such as his sand sculpture of a rock. (Any rock in particular? she had asked. No, he had replied, just a rock.) Emmius had stripped down to reveal the dark marks which covered his brown skin. He insisted that they had changed since coming here, possibly to account for his lack of tattooable flesh on his robotic left arm.

  Emmius at length concluded his latest work. He approached Akkama and took some of the fruit (dragonfruit, of course) from nearby. Akkama saw, to her annoyance, that his latest sculpture was of her. It wasn’t bad, though.

  “I used, like, carnelian for the eyes,” he said.

  The eyes glinted reddish brown in the sun. A clattering of stones drew her attention back to Emmius, who was holding a handful of polished carnelian to show her. Red and brown, those were the colors. “Don’t push your luck, Emmius,” she muttered at him before turning back to her poetry.

  It was a joke, of course. She had been pushing his luck for the last week, ever since she found out how much it had been amplified. Emmius was almost untouchable here in the Narrative, his luck field nearly palpable. Only a few select beings, such as the Lords, the Guardians, and the other heroes, seemed unaffected by his aura of incredible fortune. Even Black couldn’t hit Emmius. So it was a no-brainer for her to drag him along on her adventures. He came willingly enough, even when he had to be put in his place, and she was becoming skilled at ignoring his imbecility.

  Emmius plopped down next to her in the sand. His new guitar, which was shiny and sharp and doubled as a club in a pinch, lay beside Nemesis. He picked it up with fingers stained sticky and magenta from the fruit, and he began adding his music to the sound of the speakers. It wasn’t terrible. He’d been practicing a lot. He was getting better.

  “Um,” he said, “so, like, is it okay if maybe we stay here for a while?”

  “Here? Mentawi?”

  He nodded. “It’s just ‘cause, like, I wanna find out about these words you know.” He looked down at the dragon marks. The rivers and channels of his moon made similar shapes when seen from orbit.

  “No,” she said.

  “Aw, man,” he said. “It’s just ‘cause you know I found those caves right? And I think there might be like a clue or something right? In the caves I mean.”

  Caves? It did sound interesting. Maybe she’d spend some time here after all. The Paper Moon was getting old. Everything burned so easily, even her enemies. It was all too easy.

  “Maybe,” she said, “when I’m done with Black.”

  “Oh…uh…” Emmius cleared his throat; his music faltered. “Is he…like…?”

  “He’s coming here. Eh, he should be around any time now.” Akkama finished writing a line, blew on it with a hot breath to dry the ink, and snapped the journal shut.

  Emmius stopped played. “Like I don’t know if you should be messing with him.”

  Akkama rolled her eyes. Here it was again. What was it with everyone? Anthea had just messaged her earlier too. Black this and Black that, blah blah.

  “It’s just ‘cause you know he’s…uh he’s like dangerous man.”

  She turned to him. “Well guess who else is dangerous, Emmius. That’s right.” She tossed her hair and gave him a fanged grin. “It’s me. And besides, he’s not dangerous to me. He likes me. He was in love once. You know anything about that, Emmius? Being in love?”

  He blushed a deep brown and turned away from her. He kicked the ground; his chocolate-colored spines glowed for a second. The earth trembled, and the sand sculpture he had made of her dissolved back into wet white mush. Akkama laughed. He still hadn’t gotten over her. That was fine, though. It made him keep coming, lending his luck.

  The trembling returned more violently. It took Akkama only a moment to realize that Emmius was not the cause; he gaped around, startled.

  The earthquake increased. It shook down all of Emmius’s sculptures along the channel. Akkama’s paper umbrella fell away. She seized Nemesis. A sound came from somewhere below, like thunderous words muffled by sand.

  “Emmius,” she said, shifting her feet and watching the sand, the unquiet water. “What is this?”

  “Uh oh,” he said.

  With a final violent wrenching of the sands, something huge erupted from within the channel. Water and pale mud geysered up into the air around a massive cylindrical beast, brown and armored with thick chitinous plates.

  Its voice was deep and resonant. “Well, well!” it said with a bizarrely polite tone, as though it had come upon them at a dinner party, “what have we—I say, what have we here? The Feckless Insouciant and the Vituperative Incarnadine. I say. Can you—I say, can you READ, brother?” The word READ made every grain of sand jump into the air in a shockwave that rippled out from the churning, bubbling spot where the beast emerged from the midst of the channel.

  The creature turned its head down toward them. Akkama at last grasped its shape and the nature of the being. It was a dragon, some kind of colossal serpentine sand dragon. Emmius’s guardian.

  Emmius did not respond. The creature rumbled something to itself, something that sounded like “Unsavory rapscallions, I say.” And then it attacked.

  The dragonsteel blade called Nemesis was remarkable indeed, and no less so were the skill and courage of Akkama, but there was little that she could do alone against Dilong, guardian of the Delta Moon. After one minute of battle, she had only inflicted minor scratches, whereas at every moment she was in danger of being crushed by his great mass or sucked down and smothered by the shifting sands.

  After one notable and very nearly successful attempt to reach the guardian’s face and gouge out its eyes, the coiling mass of its body cast Akkama down upon the hot white sand, where she found Emmius nearby huddling under some sand that he had pulled up over him like a blanket.

  “Emmius!” she hissed. She spat her own sandy hair out of her mouth. “Do something!”

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  He trembled with terror. “L-like…like what?”

  “You’re a damned dragon, Emmius!”

  “Poltroons—I say, I say profligate wastrels! Come hence now, brother.” The guardian shifted toward them through the sand and glared down at them from its high vantage.

  Akkama unstrapped her journal, flipped open to a page she had written earlier, tore it out, crumpled it in her fist, and immolated it in a burst of fire. Even after the paper had crumbled to ash, the text remained. The words burned in the air; they flew letter by letter onto her paper armor. Her armor tore itself away from her (didn’t matter; it was useless against this beast). The paper fluttered and refolded in the air as it shaped into something else. She had burned a haiku about a bird.

  The red paper bird soared up and away from them, distracting the guardian. “What in the—I say, by the sands, what have we now?” Its gaze followed the bird, its draconic expression one of bewildered curiosity. A lot like Emmius.

  Akkama darted over and seized Emmius by the shoulder. She shook him violently. “Aren’t you a dragon, Emmius?!”

  He whimpered. He nodded. He clutched his guitar. Once, three days ago, he had caved in the side of a Darkworlder heavy hovertank with a single blow from that guitar. Akkama had seen it with her own eyes, yet still scarcely believed it.

  “Then bite down on your fear, damn it! Eat it!”

  “E-eat it?” Puzzled, of course,

  Akkama glanced at the guardian. It had tired of inspecting the harmless paper bird. It turned back to the two heroes. “Yes!” she shouted. “Dragons eat their fear for breakfast!”

  Emmius’s eyes widened. “B-but like…” His voice fell to a horrified whisper. “I’m not hungry, man.”

  Akkama rolled her eyes, growled. “Just get out there and do something!” With a mighty heave, she stood and pulled Emmius up with her. She shoved him toward the approaching guardian. He could at least distract it long enough for her to figure out how to kill it.

  The dragon guardian, with neither warning nor hesitation, dropped its coiled sinewy mass upon Emmius. Emmius stood, gazing stupidly, until the moment at which he disappeared under its crushing scales.

  Akkama sighed. A lost cause.

  She readied her gleaming blade, thought desperately, tried to plan an attack. Its hide was simply too thick for Nemesis. Only its face was vulnerable, and those jaws were dangerous. She might die here, which was too bad. It would be a meaningless death against a ridiculous foe. But she wasn’t about to back down.

  The beast bore down upon her.

  Thunder rang out through the hot blue skies. And again. And again. The guardian recoiled in pain.

  Akkama grinned. She knew that thunder. She turned to look, to see if his approach was badass. As always, Abraham Black did not disappoint. He was a dark outline against the horizon where pearly sand met cerulean sky, all shimmering together from the heat. His cape flapped sideways in the breeze, and the sun glinted off of two shiny silver objects in his hands.

  She turned back to the guardian with a renewed ferocity. Now it was a fight.

  Dilong soon reached the same conclusion. Being shot in the eyes tended to have that effect. It retreated back into the desert sands, murmuring something about “another time, then, I say,” as it departed.

  “My angel,” said Akkama with a smile as Black came within earshot. He smiled back. His appearance was odd. He was not a daimon; there were no daimon here in the Narrative except for the ten of them. But he was similar in appearance, though he lacked arda. Skin pale as Anthea’s, eyes black as Jeronimy’s, but his blood was as red as hers. She had found that out personally during their first meeting.

  He was tall and strange, mysterious, dangerous, with a slow tongue but a quick wit. His shots never missed. He was one of the Dark World’s most potent agents. Most of all, he was a sentimental fool. He had loved someone once, and they had died. And apparently Akkama reminded him of her. There was more to that story, but Akkama couldn’t remember it because she didn’t really care. The important thing was that she had heavy duty emotional leverage with him.

  “Captain,” he replied. He tipped his hat slightly in her direction. Hearing herself be called that, especially by Abraham Black, filled her with a wild sense of glee.

  A groan of pain sounded from somewhere nearby. A dull metal arm reached up from the bright sand and clutched feebly at the air. Akkama, annoyed at being interrupted with Black, marched over, seized the arm, and hauled Emmius up out of the sand. “Still alive?” she asked. “Gods, you’re useless.”

  Emmius had been partially crushed. His breath wheezed, and he winced in pain with every inhalation. Akkama had seen broken ribs before. “You’ll be fine,” she told him. No doubt the only reason he hadn’t been smashed to paste was that the sand had cushioned him.

  She turned back to Black. “Ignore him.”

  Black tilted his head curiously at Emmius. “The Hero of Earth,” he said. “Isn’t he your friend?”

  Akkama laughed. “Friend? Come on.”

  Black considered this. “Then, am I your friend?”

  Akkama opened her mouth, but caught herself just short of more laughter. If Black thought that she considered him a friend, her next idea might go along easier.

  “I’ve been wondering, lately,” said Black as he gazed into the distance, “what it means. Friendship.”

  “Friends help each other,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t make sense.” Thoughts of Zayana whispered in the back of her mind, but she ignored them.

  “I see,” said Black. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, alternately watching Akkama and Emmius and the distant horizon. His dark eyes turned back to her, and she could not help but feel a chill. That gaze reminded her that Black was a powerful tool, but she had to be very careful about how he used him.

  “Like just now,” she continued. “You helped.” She held out a hand and materialized new sunglasses into it. She flipped them open and slid them on.

  He nodded. “Yes. I have seen that among the heroes which the Dark World lacks.”

  Abraham Black was disillusioned with the Dark World. At this point, he was nearly a loose cannon. Just as Akkama had intended. It was time. “We’ve come across some valuable intel,” she said. She assumed a businesslike stance. “We know where the Dark Ruler is. We know what his defenses are.”

  Abraham Black faced her squarely now, curiosity plain on his face. Even he had not been aware of these details.

  “We need the dark key, as you know,” Akkama said. She paused for a long time, letting the implications build. Then, just as she had rehearsed, she said it plainly. Black approved of speaking plainly. “Will you get it for us?” Damn, not quite right. “For me.” That was better.

  Emmius made some noise of surprise amid his groans of pain, but Akkama shot him a glance that shut him up.

  Black gazed at her for an uncomfortably long time. He was probably thinking about the one he’d loved, the one he’d lost. Maybe about friendship, which to him was some nebulous mystery he had only heard of.

  “Prove that you’re my friend,” said Akkama. “Get me the dark key.”

  “And then…” He said slowly, as though working through a difficult puzzle, “…we will be friends.”

  She nodded, smiled. “Yep.”

  He nodded, gradually, in return. “Very well,” he said. “She told me, once, that all things will change, and all things will be made new.”

  Akkama didn’t know what that had to do with anything, but a thrill of excitement shot through her. Black was going to do it. He was going to get the key! That or die trying, which would still help them, in a way.

  “Send me what I need,” he said. His voice sounded unusually gruff. He turned away and walked back into the desert, presumably toward whatever craft he had arrived in. Akkama and Emmius watched him go.

  Akkama contained her glee until he was out of sight. Then she jumped, pounding her fists in victory. “Did you see that, Emmius?” she laughed. “He’s getting the key! Ahaha! It was so easy. Everyone else is running around, doing stupid nonsense ‘quests,’ and here I’m going to just show up in a few days with the freaking dark key!” she giggled. “Why go to all that trouble if I can just get some narrative construct to do it for me?”

  Emmius started to say something, but she ignored him. She still had a lot to do to make sure this all worked out.