Lightbreaker

He had too much accessible energy. I couldn't beat him by magick alone. I had to keep hurting him, keep goading him so he reacted without thinking. A course chosen by my Will, not his. Antagonizing him would keep it physical, down in the brutal animal arena. Down where I knew a few tricks.

Doug threw the shield away and scrambled for his sword. I needed a weapon, so I ran across the arena to the eagle statue. It held a long staff-the symbol of fire. In response to the heated touch of the Chorus, the bird blessed me with the metal stick.

Unlike Doug, I had experience with weapons. As he tried to hit me with the sword, I parried his clumsy attacks and responded with sharp taps: one to the thigh, one to the kidney, one to the back of the head. After the third shot, his enthusiasm for straight weapons combat flagged. As I banged aside his half-hearted swing with the long wand, he let go of the sword. He caught the end of the wand as I tried to jab him in the stomach with it.

Halo glowing, he shattered the staff with an exhalation of power. I had already let go of the wand so instead of losing a hand, I was just peppered with shrapnel. Blood stippled my stomach, and I could feel the acidic bite of metal under my skin.

I tried to steady myself, and my foot slipped off the base of the eagle statue. Doug, seizing the opportunity, came in close and pounded me in the stomach with an energized fist. Something moved unnaturally in my gut and I choked on a wet cough. 'How about that?' he snarled. 'Does that hurt?' His burned flesh was vivid, and his remaining eye was filled with burst blood vessels. The lines streaming across his cheek were more blood than tears.

I spat in that bloodshot eye, the Chorus igniting the spittle as it left my mouth. His eye collapsed in a gush of hot steam, and he retreated. His pain confused him, and unable to see, he tripped over his own feet.

Grimacing against the molten pain in my stomach, I staggered along the rim of the Arena to the bull statue. Vis, I told the Chorus. Give me strength. They lit my hands as I reached up and tore off the two-foot-long curved horns of the statue.

By the time I returned to him, Doug had incanted an udjat eye-a floating sigil on his forehead giving him rudimentary sight. He turned his head like a mole questing for a scent, and when he turned in my direction, I caught him under the chin with one of the horns. The uppercut knocked him back down and, as he tried to get up, I kicked him in the ribs. He rolled away from the blow, sprawling onto his back.

'Compunge.' The Chorus flowed into the curved horn, and I stabbed him high on the left hip with the magicked tip. The horn, sharpened and shaped by the Chorus, slid through bone and flesh until it struck the metal plate beneath his body. I leaned against it, and the horn slid into the floor until it was firmly planted in the plate. He curled forward around the metal spike. A bug protecting its belly.

I clobbered him on the forehead with the other horn, knocking him flat. Before he could curl up again, I put the second spike through his right shoulder. As the metal horn ground through cartilage and bone into the floor, he howled like a tortured animal.

'Do you yield?' I shouted at him, making sure the Hollow Men could hear my question over his agonized cries.

Energy sparked off his head and the udjat eye spun madly in the center of his forehead. He moaned around the spikes. All the magickal opiates in the world weren't going to blot out the pain.

I repeated the question, and he found the wherewithal to form a response. 'Never!'

The Prince of Swords. Unable to see anything but his singular goal. Unable to realize his forward motion had been arrested. Incapable of knowing when to stop.

I retrieved his discarded sword. As my hand closed around the hilt, I fell back into memory, and was flush again with the fury that had led me to the bridge in Paris, to the duel with Antoine. Tied to that was the black rage that had nearly pushed my hand through Kat's chest. Blind idealism. Slavish devotion. The crippled Prince. The hubris of a mind so precise in its tunnel vision that it was unable to see beyond the pinprick of its immediate goal. No Will. No Reason. Just unrestrained passion.

'We are all your princes,' I whispered to the sword. Antoine. Doug. Myself. Slaves to the point, fanatics who walk the edge.

Our hands. What we do. It is all written there.

My choice, now.

Doug screamed as he twisted against the horns. I rolled him forward with my calf and put my foot against his tailbone, elevating his right leg. 'You're not afraid to lose your body, are you, Doug?' I asked. 'You're on the rise. You can deal with this.'

The Chorus sharpened the blade as I brought the sword down on his right leg, just below the knee. The blade went through, slicing off his calf and foot. His leg jerked, showering the deck with blood.

I swept up the piece of twitching meat and hurled it at the audience of Hollow Men. The severed leg hit the barrier of blades and vaporized into a spray of bone, blood, and flesh. The Hollow Men in the front row recoiled, and those connected to Doug channeled their outrage through the conduits, pumping the pinned man full of energy and adrenaline.

Doug, full of animalistic howls, was still lucid enough to fight back. His right hand scrabbled on the deck, struggling to reach my foot. I swept the blade down on his wrist. He tried to jerk his hand back, but his arm was pinned beneath the edge of the blade. Almost.

'This is for Gerald Summers. That old sack of meat you used and threw away.' I twisted the blade, feeling it cut through bone and muscle. 'Nothing more than a cheap coat, was he? Something to wear once and discard. Nobody cared what happened to it. Right?' The blade sheared through the ligaments at the end of his wrist.

A contorted mask, Doug's face was a riot of uncontrolled expressions. Neural networks overloaded with pain were being blocked off while the Ego retreated to the core of etheric power still flowing into the damaged flesh. Through this opacity of pain, Doug started to use the conduits to heal himself. To fight his way back into control of his body. Pain is transitory. Eventually, the spirit extracts obedience from the flesh. Flesh can be remade.

'Show me your magick trick, then.' I raised the gory sword. 'Let's see what you can do without your flesh.' I drove the steel sword through the center of his skull, burying the point in the floor.

Doug's spirit-a glistening, twisting shape of diaphanous energy-erupted from his corpse. In this pure form, I could See energy pumping along the extruded veins of the conduits, pouring power into the maelstrom of Doug's sparkling spirit.

I knew what he had to be planning. There was only one viable body on the platform. He had reached the rank of Initiate Ascendant within the group. He knew how to body-jack. He was going to try to possess me. His psychoanimist trick of taking over a body.

I laughed at him. 'You have no idea how fucking stupid a plan that is,' I said, and spiked him with the Chorus.

His spirit convulsed, shrinking to a dense clot of white-tipped will-o'-wisps. The ravenous Chorus tore at this spirit mass, shredding the outer layers. Doug swirled like an emergent galaxy, throwing off spiral arms of gossamer light. I could taste his panic. He knew. Lightbreaker. I was going to devour him.

I survived the dark night in the forest because I listened to the Qliphoth, because I welcomed the hunger into my heart. I survived because I learned how to break spirits and take their light.

Doug tried to fend off the Chorus, but they were already inside him, nipping through the veils of his soul. He cried out, but I was the only one who heard him. He started to beg, his voice keening in my head; he whimpered for mercy; I ignored all of it.

The Chorus devoured Doug and, in an orgiastic rush, I felt his essence pour into me. Faster and faster, the jumbled collection of Doug's sense data and memory associations gushed into my head. Most of it would vanish quickly, chunks and blocks of memory dissolving into random noise and color; but, for this instant, his entire life was mine. All the sensory details of his existence were there: I witnessed what Doug had seen; heard what he heard; tasted the meals he could remember eating; knew the scents that made him think of his mother. I held his doubts, his dreams, and his errors. I knew his dirty little secrets; I knew why he had been left behind. I knew why he had come to my cell and dragged me to this duel. I was Doug.

This was the promise given and then taken away: Doug had been grudgingly granted the rank of Initiate Ascendant, but he had not been Anointed. The biting betrayal in Doug's heart was that only the Anointed were allowed to participate in the Great Work sponsored by Bernard and Julian.