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Part 3-19: Battlecharge

“Do you feel it too?” I asked Persi. Our ghosts were out of the bush and approaching the fence. The ring itched and tugged, wanting me to be closer. My wonder in this moment was balanced by an embarrassing situation from physical me: she’d taken advantage of my split consciousness and had let my bladder go. At least the sensation would be a physical anchor.

“Not sure, but I feel a vibrancy in you,” she said.

“The rogue signal. It’s always easier to warp in when I’m close to the clock. Eden must’ve created a satellite version of it.” I tried to remember if the Queen’s Band had been this excited when I visited the ghostly realm to check out the book, right under the real clock’s nose. I didn’t think it had felt especially keen.

Musings on the strange physics of the land were cut short, however. Three figures trailing blue streaks sped towards the house, spread out as planned. Circling the dwelling, like drunken cultists in messy concentric rings, were an ungodly number of the little pearl shitsplats. Just like in the park, bigger blobs had risen as well, a dozen or so shapeless freaks, scattered about. The farm setting gave them the look of hay bales, if hay bales were the colour of dirty snow and liked to snack on souls.

Eden was nowhere to be seen, but I didn’t trust that to last long.

“Let’s go,” I said, and we zipped down the field.

Our hands fired up with the otherworld flame. The rush made me think of the fight with The Keeper, little over a week ago, a lifetime away. We had long, sharp weapons then, and as the notion swam past, a bright blue rapier telescoped out of my arm, trailing a wide ribbon of light. The handle formed and gripped my hand—not the other way around.

Persi whooped and laughed and a swishing noise came from my side. I didn’t need to look because I felt her polearm there, our gifts from the Jailer, from the King via the Queen in this long fight, longer than I could possibly ever know. Now the duty was with us, a duty so compelling that in that moment of rushing battlecharge I skidded to a confident halt before the edge of the field, and in a voice stronger than Alena Bisk had ever managed—more cutting than her meanest road rage curse, more impassioned than her most primal lust-lost cry, more purposeful than her proudest postseason cheer—I inhaled and bellowed,

“Eden you foul blue shit! Get your sorry demon ass out here and let me serve you a premium course of royal fuckin’ justice!”

Me or the Band, unsure which, raised the rapier in a salute and fired a blazing comet of a warning shot over the house. It erupted in a Disneyworld fireworks display, and the wee ground beasties scattered in a mass, zipping about and plunging underground as blazing sparks rained all across the land.

“Damn,” remarked Persi.

“Hah, yeah! Whoah,” I agreed, buzzing. It felt like I’d drank six coffees, snorted half a line and had just won tickets to see and bang Drake.

Jimena made it to the front door, some forty feet ahead, Dack and Deluxe trailing a few seconds behind. As she pounded the door, shouting “Police!”, Eden heeded my call.

It rose out of the roof, rigid, faceless, arms crossed like a vampiric Oscar statuette. It had barely stopped before a twirling double helix cyclone of golden beams blasted out from Persi, engulfing it in a silent inferno.

The flames sputtered, and Eden remained unchanged.

The arms unfolded and the head twitched down like a velociraptor.

“Alena. Bisk.”

“Hey,” I gulped. The electric horny-Drake sensation crumbled away into a shaky anxiety.

“Hello,” it replied, and flickered away.

Behind me, I knew, the Band knew.

I spun, rapier out. Blue weapon hit blue arm, crackling and fizzling as we strained into one another. Ozone stink filled the air, I tasted metal, and my vision filled with a maddeningly empty face.

THAMP!

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