Codex Born

for centuries.

I’ve killed some of those vampires. Ageless doesn’t mean immortal, and there’s always something capable of taking you out. Even if that something is simple entropy.

Gutenberg relies on the magic of the grail, which he created using his first mass-printed Bible. It’s kept him alive for five hundred years, but that’s nothing in the larger scheme of the world. Christianity is only 2000 years old. Who’s to say his religion will last another millennium, and what happens to the power of the grail when all those who believe in it are gone?

Or maybe he’ll go on indefinitely, until the sun falls into its death throes, cooking all life from this planet. Hopefully, humanity will have moved on by then, but even the universe will end someday. Unlike the heat-death of Earth, the universe will die in cold silence, taking even the so-called immortals with it.

Perhaps science or magic will offer a way to outlive the universe. I have a hard time proclaiming anything impossible these days. But by any reasonable standard, death is a certainty.

I blame Isaac for this train of thought, for the endless “What ifs?” I’ve found myself asking lately. For the nights spent dreaming in my oak, imagining not only the coming years, but the centuries.

I’ve survived the death of my tree. My human body appears not to age, save for cosmetic changes dictated by the unconscious desires of my lovers. I don’t know what would happen if this body were killed but my tree survived. Nor do I have any interest in finding out.

(All right, fine. Maybe there’s a small, nagging streak of curiosity, which I again blame entirely on Isaac.)

The point is, if I’m both careful and lucky, I could survive longer than any ordinary human being. Perhaps even longer than Gutenberg.

At the same time, I’ve already died more than any of them, and my deaths are potentially as limitless as the stars. Even if my body survives, my lovers pass. Each time that happens, the person I was dies with them.

METAL RODENTS SWARMED DOWN the side of the tree, and the buzz of insects grew deafening. Birds swooped from the branches, and wendigos leaped to the ground.

I spun, only to have bark shear away from the undulating roots beneath me. My foot slipped, and roots the size of my thighs pinched my ankle in place. Something popped in my knee, and pain exploded through my leg.

The problem with plan B was that it required a great deal of concentration on my part. Between the pain and the fact that the world’s largest and grumpiest oak grove was trying to smother me, this was going to be difficult.

Deifilia ripped her weapons from her side. Lena raised her branch to parry. Deifilia’s first overhead blow dropped her to one knee. I saw the roots of Lena’s grafted branch twining around her fingers, sinking into her skin, until the weapon was a literal extension of her arm. The wood flattened, and the buds and twigs ripped away with Lena’s counterattack.

Both dryads moved too quickly for me to follow. Within seconds, Deifilia was bleeding from cuts on her arm and thigh. The right side of Lena’s face was bloody as well.

Lena dodged past Deifilia and scrambled up the tree like Spider-Man. Her hand and feet sank into the wood, giving her just enough traction to climb out of reach of the roots.

I didn’t know much about Lena’s study, but I was certain no sensei had ever taught the stance she adopted next. She turned to face Deifilia. Her left leg was stretched up over her head, anchored to the wood, while her right braced her full weight. Her leg muscles shook as she swung her sword two-handed, knocking Deifilia’s sword from her hand.

Lena’s training and experience gave her an edge over Deifilia, but it wasn’t enough. A rat dropped onto Lena’s back and sank metal teeth into the flesh between her shoulder blades. She jumped down, smashed her back against the tree, then spun to cut the arm from a wendigo sneaking up behind her. In that time, Deifilia scooped up her sword and lunged. Lena parried, but the blade sliced the skin over her ribs.

I tried to concentrate on Deifilia. Gutenberg had demonstrated how easily he could rob Lena of her power. I had seen him perform the same trick two months before, pulling Smudge’s magic into himself and flinging fire against an enchanted car. Smudge hadn’t liked that one bit, so I had excused him from guinea pig duty, but I had tried time and again to duplicate Gutenberg’s feat. For the most part, I had failed utterly.

But I had been relatively stable those times. Given how magically raw and exposed I was now, I should be able to tap into any book-related magic I touched. The real trick would be holding on to my sanity long enough to use it.

A root shot upward, shaping itself into a spear. Deifilia dropped her dagger, snatched the spear, and thrust the point at Lena’s chest. Lena twisted and stepped inward. She caught Deifilia’s other wrist, blocking a sword thrust, and smashed her forehead onto Deifilia’s nose.

Until now, the two empty shells who had once been students of Bi Sheng had been content to watch. Maybe Deifilia was enjoying the fight, or maybe the Army of Ghosts needed time to adjust to their human bodies. Whatever the reason, they acted now.

I saw them move toward Lena, and then my vision flickered, and there was only magic pouring forth to tear her from existence. It was like staring at an optical illusion, a landscape that suddenly resolves into the face of a man, or a goblet that becomes the silhouette of two faces. They weren’t casting a spell; they were the spell. They reached out, flesh and magic stretching to touch Lena’s arm, to unravel the cells of her body one by one.

I couldn’t read the expression on Lena’s face as she collapsed. Fear? Sadness? She didn’t appear to be in pain, for which I was grateful.

“Wait!” I could bargain for her life, trade the books for Lena. Trade myself, if that was what Deifilia wanted.

Deifilia stepped back and watched, completely entranced by Lena’s pain. She seemed not to hear me at all.

Nor did she see as Bi Wei reached skyward and pulled down the stars’ fire upon the two magical ghosts.

They should have died instantly, but I could see them moving within the twin pillars of white flame, pulling Bi Wei’s attack into themselves, trying to reshape her magic.

Bi Wei’s eyes bulged. Blood trickled from her neck as the millipede clamped tighter, cutting off her breath and the circulation to her brain. Inside her body, tiny metal serpents seemed to be finishing the job. She would be dead in seconds, as would Lena.

I studied Deifilia, trying to see not the physical form, but the words that had brought her to life. I didn’t have her book with me, but the text was seared into my memory. I focused on the final battle when the nymphs and the commoners rallied together behind John Rule to overthrow a false ruler. I knew this book, knew the snippets of text that defined her powers.

Her hand glided over the shaft of her spear. The wood thickened in response to her gentle touch.

Correction: I knew the snippets of really bad text that defined her powers.

Branches swung low, weaving together to form nets, ripping soldiers from their footing and dangling them in the air like freshly killed smeerp.

Her fingers sank into the crevasses of the bark, touching the hot wood beneath.

Why would the wood be hot? Neptune was a cold planet, even with— I stopped myself. Following that trail of thought would only lead to distraction and frustration.

Under ordinary circumstances, the nymphs were no match for the Lords of Neptune, but here in her grove, the strength of her oak pumped through her veins like fire.

I could imagine my fingers sinking into the text, but the wood of the tree remained stubbornly solid. How