Game Over (26 page)

Favian flashed through the graveyard mist. Even he was surprised he had the nerve to do it. Graveyards spooked him out. Mist spooked him out. Darkness spooked him out. Just about everything spooked him out if he had to do it alone.

But he had to do it, so he did. He flashed through the misty cemetery, simply ignoring whatever ghouls and zombies were probably right that minute circling him and moving in for the kill. Even the sight of the cloud wall in front of him didn't make him hesitate. It didn't make him happy, mind you. But though he swallowed a little harder as the flashing miasma loomed above him, he didn't stop
flashing past the graves to get to it. In fact, he didn't even stop when he reached it. He figured if he let himself think about it, he'd never go through. Instead, Favian held his breath and flashed right into the cloud . . .

Or, that is, he would have. Except when he hit the wall of cloud, it was like hitting a brick wall, and he was flung backward and fell on his backside with an impact that jarred even a light-made creature like himself.

Favian got up. He floated in front of the boiling wall. He tried again to get through it—and again, it was like hitting brick.

At that moment, finally, all his anger against Rick dissipated. He realized the truth: Now that he wanted to help his friend, he couldn't. As the cloud wall kept out the water that carried Mariel, so it also kept out light like the light he was made of. Only the more solid Rick could pass through the barrier.

Whatever happened in there, it was going to happen to Rick alone.

Mariel had never felt anything like what she was feeling now. As she flowed through the stream around the graveyard, fresh energy and fresh strength seemed to pour into her. But it wasn't just that. Suddenly, she knew things, remembered things she had never known or remembered
before. Rick loved her. And she loved Rick. And they were going to be together. The idea made her feel a kind of happiness she had never in her life felt before.

And yet how could it be true? When Rick said she was not even a human being. She was just a code coming out of a black box. How was it possible . . .?

An idea came to her . . . She slowed in her passage.

Hurry
, a voice said inside her.
Rick . . .

That voice . . . Mariel realized it was her voice, her thoughts, and yet . . . yet it also wasn't.

Who are you?
she thought.

The voice spoke back to her:
I am Mariel.

And with a hundred images and sensations and memories crashing in on her all at once, Mariel thought,
I am Molly.

Mariel did not understand completely, but she understood enough: She would not die in this place; she would not die alone; she would not lose the hero who had come to help her, the man she had come to love. She didn't know how—not really—but it was going to be all right.

If only she could reach Rick in time.

With renewed energy she flowed on in the little stream . . .

. . . until she, too, reached the wall of fog and was blocked by it and could go no farther.

As he stepped out of the fog cloud, Rick found himself in a nowhere netherworld. He was standing on a floating circular platform of rock with nothing around it but starry darkness. It was a kind of arena, he thought, maybe as big as three or four football fields, but not much bigger. There'd be nowhere to run here, not for long. It was not a place made for escape. It was a place made for battle.

The only features of the floating rock were occasional jutting crags and boulders, rough stalagmites that stuck up out of the stony earth. And at the far edge, looming up high about a hundred yards, mingling with the blackness beyond the rocky arena, there was a transparent ghostly image of a face, an ugly face that looked like a cross between a toad and a skull.

Kurodar.

That was the interface: the place where Kurodar's mind connected to the Realm, the source of the Realm, and the imagination that created it.

And the King of the Dead prowled back and forth before it, ready to slaughter anyone who tried to do it harm.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The King of the Dead was a monster. But more than that, it seemed an assembly of monsters, half a dozen monsters, their parts cut up and rearranged into something new. Its body was immense and scaly as a dragon's. It had a dinosaur tail that writhed behind it like a snake. It had slithery, squirming arms like the tentacles of an octopus.
Several of its arms were holding weapons: a gigantic sword, a huge ax, a spear the size of a tree. Rising up behind its back were two enormous purple wings, bony and webbed like the wings of a demon.

But its face—that was the most horrific thing about it.

It was a human face. A man's face. There was something particularly horrible about that, about a human face crowning that monstrosity. Cruelty and viciousness were etched deeply into every feature of it: in the narrow planes and angles of its brow and cheeks, in the bright, furious gleam of its eyes, and in the thin lips pressed together in a tight smile of sadistic pleasure. The tortured intelligence in the man's expression made it even uglier, even worse. It knew what it was, what a beast it was, and its only possible joy could be destruction.

It spotted Rick the moment he stepped out of the cloud wall. Its tight smile widened. Its bright eyes grew brighter still.

“You!” he said—and his deep voice rolled like the thunder inside the cloud. And then he laughed, and the air shook all around him.

In that first moment Rick confronted the great creature, he was so struck with shock and terror, he could barely think at all. Still, though, an idea began to form in the back of his mind. It wasn't quite conscious. He wasn't completely aware of what he was thinking and he couldn't have put it into words. But even in that frightened moment,
it flashed dimly through his brain that just as the Golden City was made of images from Kurodar's imagination, so, too, was this beast, this guardian of the interface, this final boss in the great deadly video game that was MindWar. The monster was a combination of every monster Rick had met and battled in this cursed Realm. Its wings were the wings that Reza had had in the fortress; its snake-like tail belonged to the Spider-Snake; its octopus arms were the arms of the Octo-Guardian Rick had battled in the Realm's black outer space . . .

. . . and so the face . . . the face, too, must belong to someone . . .

But before the thought could fully form, the King of the Dead attacked him. One of its slithery arms whipped back and forward and hurled the tree-sized spear right at him.

It happened so quickly, Rick barely had time even to think of getting out of the way. Then he did think it—and the moment the thought crossed his mind, he found himself moving suddenly in a Favian-like flash.

Whoa!

It was the power of Mariel's armor, he realized, magnifying his spirit and turning his thoughts to instantaneous action.

He flashed to the side in a silver streak and the spear fell where he had just been standing, its point smashing through the rock so that it stuck in the arena floor, its shaft shivering. Rick stared at the weapon that now pierced the
ground where, a second ago, he had been standing. But before he could fully register the nearness of his escape, the King of the Dead flew at him.

One flap of its giant wings that stirred the mist to swirling and it was in the air, its great bulk lifting off the floor of the rock arena with preternatural grace. It let out a roar and . . .

Oh no!
Rick thought.

. . . breathed out a gout of fire. The claws of its dragon feet extended like daggers as it plummeted down toward him, and another of its octopus arms snapped the edge of a gigantic ax at Rick's head.

There was nowhere for Rick to go. If he dashed to the right, the ax would cut him down; to the left, the claws would impale him. Run away and the beast's breath of flame would scorch him to cinders.

There was nothing else for him to do: he charged straight at the thing.

Again, his armor turned his very thought to action. Even as the King of Death flew at him through the air, he was flashing forward like a silver beam of light. He passed underneath the monster just before it landed. And when it did land, the thunderous tremor that shook the arena sent Rick spilling face-forward onto the rock.

The rough surface of the arena floor would have scraped his flesh off, but the armor protected him. Good thing, too, because he was able to leap up just in time to dodge the King of the Dead's lashing tail. He leapt to his
feet—and then leapt into the air as the spiny tail swept under him. By the time Rick dropped to the surface again, the King of the Dead had spun round to face him.

“You think you'll escape me?” the thing said. There was something particularly horrible about watching that human face speak human words atop the body of a monster. He had a thick Russian accent, like Kurodar's own. “They all thought they'd escape me! But they all fell into my prison eventually and into my hands. Look around, boy! There is no place for you to run!”

With that, the creature let out another great roar, its face tilted toward the starry nothingness. Breathed fire blotted out even the color of the dark. It spread its slithery tentacles out on all sides like the arms of a flattened spider. And its front—disgustingly—opened. And it released smaller monsters from within its belly.

Boars and Harpies and Cobras—they rushed and slithered and flew at Rick across the rocky arena. His sword was in his hand and with the armor giving him speed and strength, he flashed from place to place, swinging the blade and cutting the creatures down. Harpies fell from the sky and died. Boars reeled back, cut in half. Cobras shattered, their white bones flying . . .

But while Rick was distracted with the melee, the enormous King of the Dead thundered at him again, the pound of its huge feet making the round platform quake.

The beast reached him . . . towered over him . . . whipped its gigantic sword at his midsection. Rick had just
dispatched the final Boar in quick combat, and only the power he got from Mariel's armor gave him the speed he needed to duck the King's giant blade. He felt the great wind of it as it passed over his head. Then he straightened—and struck back. He flashed straight at the King of the Dead, bringing his sword back with both hands and swinging it around like a baseball bat. Tall as Rick was, his head only came up to the monster's knee. Mariel's blade sank into the scaly calf of the beast. It roared fire and slapped at Rick with a slithery arm.

The blow caught Rick on the side of the head and sent him flying. He landed hard on the rock surface, dazed. The transparent head of Kurodar—the interface—rose up above him. Did he have time to attack it while the King of the Dead was hobbled by his wound?

He glanced away from the interface and toward the beast. He saw the place where his blade had sunk into the King of the Dead's leg. There was a gash there, bleeding green goo, and the King was still roaring in pain. But even as Rick looked at it, the wound began to mend itself. In a second, it was completely gone. The King was healed and whole again and ready to renew his attack.

No time to attack the interface. He had to stop the King of the Dead first.

Rick pushed up to his feet, breathing hard. He could feel Mariel's armor bleeding strength into him through the pores of his skin, but it couldn't save him forever. He was growing tired already and would soon grow more tired
still. And the King . . . he had so much power! Too much! He could heal himself. He could create monsters of his own. He was ten times Rick's size and a hundred times more powerful. Rick's armor was strong and his sword was sharp, but he needed some other power to defeat this thing.

You hold the truth inside you. The truth is your greatest weapon.

What truth?
he wondered. But there was no time to find the answer now. With a fiery roar, the King of the Dead opened himself once again and set another army of creatures at him—and flew into the air and attacked Rick at the same time.