Thresholder

Fenilor moved forward, with only the light of Perry’s armor to guide his way. Mette had moved to stand behind Perry, and Perry had his sword drawn, ready to defend if he should be attacked. Fenilor wasn’t moving with a warrior’s steps though. Instead, he was walking lightly, and though he had armor on, and the same long spear he’d had when they met before, he didn’t look at all like he was coming in for the kill. He had his mask/helmet off to show his face.

“Peregrin,” he said once he was thirty feet away. It felt close, but not close enough that he’d be able to strike with a lunge. “And Mette.”

“You know me?” asked Mette from behind Perry. The words left her mouth only slowly.

“I’ve seen you,” said Fenilor. He looked around the dome. His eyes went to the desk, the bookshelf, the bed, and finally the unlit lantern with the chamber below it. “Did I leave anything here?”

“Not much,” said Perry. Bodies, a notebook, sins of the past.

“And how did you find this place?” asked Fenilor with a raised eyebrow. He moved his left hand in front of him, using gestural controls or an interface only he could see. When he stopped, he looked at Mette. “Ah, she’s a thresholder too. I hadn’t thought to check.”

“We’re on the same side,” said Perry. “But you didn’t give me a way to contact you, and there’s something that you need to know.”

“Oh?” asked Fenilor. He gave a gentle smile that Perry might have found disarming in other circumstances. “I’m all ears.” He wiggled his pointy ears, just a tiny bit. That was disarming.

“You’ve been camped out here too long,” said Perry. “The portals that move between worlds, they bring physics with them, and change the rules of the universe, at least locally.”

“You tell me this now, when you didn’t tell me before,” said Fenilor. “Why?”

“I didn’t know before,” said Perry.

“And how did you come to know?” asked Fenilor. He leaned in slightly, not changing the thirty foot gap between them much, but still giving Perry a sense of unease.

Perry stayed still and didn’t answer. If the Farfinder was unknown to Fenilor, then it should remain unknown. He was waiting to see whether the question would pass, or whether Fenilor would move on to the topic of conversation that Perry had started.

“I understand the systems at work here perfectly well,” said Fenilor. “But I bow to you as my superior, as you’ve traveled to many more worlds than I have.” He gave Perry a small mock bow.

“Then you understand that magic is suffusing this planet?” asked Perry. “Do you not understand how bad that is?”

“I have done my best to keep it all contained,” said Fenilor. “Much of what the thresholders bring through is like your armor, high technology. Sometimes technology rather than magic, or magic that can only be used with sufficient technology, or sometimes years of careful study, but in any case there’s not much that might infect the wider world. Other times, their magic requires materials that cannot be found in this world. And much of it I incorporate into my own power.”

“The lanterns?” asked Perry. He glanced back at the large unlit one that must have once illuminated this chamber. “Were they of this world, originally?”

Fenilor frowned at him. “What do you know?”

“I think you were responsible for them, centuries ago,” said Perry. “I just don’t know if they were something you found here and worked on, or whether they were something from another world.”

Fenilor stared at Perry, as though trying to glean something from the surface of the helmet. “You know my shame then.” There was no shame on his face, no crocodile tears, and his voice had stayed level.

“There was a notebook left here,” said Perry. “I haven’t had time to read it all. You tried to remake this world, maybe several times. You didn’t get a working culture right off the bat.”

“Getting the world to this point has taken time and effort, yes,” said Fenilor. “I had ideas, and have tested them as I could, and have seen the results. Sometimes I have not liked the results.”

“But did you invent the lanterns?” asked Perry, pressing the point. “Or are they a leak from somewhere else?”

“A man came carrying one,” said Fenilor. “This was in the early years, when I had been here only two decades, and not developed this system.” He gestured to the dome, though it wasn’t clear to Perry quite what he meant. “I saw promise in it, and repeatability, and it was magic that wove itself into the world in a clean way. Perhaps if I hadn’t introduced it, they would have discovered it themselves. A lantern can, after all, be made from any old materials, and the fuels are varied, many of them common.”

“But it was you who developed them,” said Perry. “It was you who released them into this world, and you who are responsible for all the effluence that followed.”

Fenilor gave a sad smile. “You might not believe it, but the effluence came later. In the early years, when the lanterns were running, there were no issues with them.”

“What do you mean came later?” asked Perry.

“It’s not clear to me what happened, and it wasn't clear it had happened for more than two hundred years,” said Fenilor. “The lanterns had a byproduct, yes, that was always known, but it was inert, only dangerous in a tightly closed space with a lantern that had been running for weeks. The problems happened when a thresholder arrived. He brought his own magic with him, and the harmless byproduct became the dangerous effluence you see now. Once it was clear that the effluence was having bad effects, I had deluded myself into believing that it was worth it.”

“It’s not,” said Perry. “Not when people were being poisoned, especially the most vulnerable.”

“It wasn’t the lanterns, nor the effluence,” said Fenilor, shaking his head. “It was the culture. That was my revelation. The lanterns could have solved everything, if the culture had been right. The domes weren’t necessary. It was only through a strong and vibrant culture that it could all be set right, a culture that valued the poor more than the rich, that focused itself on the goods of society rather than the riches of the individual, where people were censured for their transgressions and those transgressions involved those at the top.”

“That’s a strong claim,” said Perry. “But I’m not here to debate what you’ve done, or to criticize your methods or their outcomes. I’m here to warn you. You’re accumulating power, you’ve taken from the thresholders who have been here, and you can’t leave or this entire world will be wiped out.”

“Will it?” asked Fenilor. He cocked his head to the side. “And how do you know that?”

“I have an artificial intelligence,” said Perry, tapping the side of his helmet. “I’ve seen the state of this world, and I have projections based on what I know of metaphysics. I don’t know how much magic you would be trailing through a portal, but it would be too much.”

Fenilor stared at Perry, then glanced at Mette, who was behind him. “Then I will stay.”

“If you stay, more thresholders will come,” said Perry. “That’s how it’s been all these years, hasn’t it?”

“Then I will kill them,” said Fenilor. “As it has been all these years.”

“Every one of them risks adverse impacts on the world,” said Perry. “The Grand Spell wasn’t meant for something like this, it’s not safe.” He didn’t know that for certain, but it was a good point of argumentation, especially after what he’d just learned.. Something had clearly gone wrong on Markat.

Fenilor smiled. “Do you make these arguments to protect her?” His eyes went to Mette again before returning to Perry.

Perry frowned at him. “No,” he said. “I make them because they are right and true.”

“If I cannot stay and cannot go, what is left for me?” asked Fenilor. He watched Perry, who gave no answer. “Death, it seems?”

“We could find some other solution,” said Perry. “There are other methods of traveling the many worlds. If you were to leave without a portal, aboard a ship of some kind, the Grand Spell wouldn’t track you anymore.” He didn’t know whether that was true either, or even possible. “Or you would go through the portal and divest yourself of the magic you’ve accumulated, clean yourself so that you’re not dragging too much through.”

“This is a real threat, to you?” asked Fenilor. “I can see you have little skill with deception, and the lies you’ve told me have been in service of protecting others.” He tapped the butt of his spear idly on the ground. “I am an elf of science, by necessity rather than by inclination. I do not trust you, not in the slightest, but perhaps you can convince me with hard numbers.”

“Marchand?” asked Perry, tilting his head down slightly to speak only to the AI.

“Unfortunately, sir, I do not believe we have accurate and reliable numbers that he would understand,” said Marchand. “Eggletina has been using higher order math in order to make projections about punch width, and her calculations make certain assumptions which, in my opinion, are grounded in pessimistic understandings of the fundamental nature of the multiverse, as well as a data I cannot verify.”

Perry winced. “Would have been nice to know five minutes ago, buddy.”

“The data dump they provided us with has taken some time to go through, sir,” said Marchand. “I have been busy reading everything I can, and your faith in me has been appreciated, but higher dimensional physics whose base axioms I cannot verify were not high on my list of priorities.”

“Problem?” asked Fenilor, leaning forward slightly. “You converse with your machine?”

“It will take time,” said Perry. “There are mathematics you likely don’t know, and some of the premises depend on readings that you would simply have to trust.”

“Ah,” said Fenilor. “A shame that’s the case.” He spun his spear around and inspected the sharp tip. The red tassel whipped through the air. “Do you know how many thresholders I’ve fought?”

“No,” said Perry. “More than fifty.”

“Seventy-eight,” said Fenilor. “Usually they come to me every five years, singly, but I’ve fought a few in pairs. I like to hear their stories before I end them. Sometimes I let them believe that there’s a way out for them. My lack of trust has a clear and visible wellspring, where thresholders are concerned.”

“I didn’t mean to lie to you,” Perry lied. “There are certain things I’m not at liberty to say, but the danger to the world, that’s all true. If you can tell when someone is lying, then you know that’s the truth.”

“Mmm,” said Fenilor. “This is the last cycle. I had thought it might bring tricks. But convincing me to end my own life, no, I think that will not work.”

“We can try other solutions,” said Perry. “We have tools you might not have run into, most of the people you’ve been fighting have been — I mean, weak, right, only a world or two under their belt?”

“People like Mette,” said Fenilor, again glancing to where she stood, wood, behind Perry.

“She came with me,” said Perry. “She’s not a part of this.”

“She is,” nodded Fenilor. “She and Nima will need to die before the portal opens, and this time, I intend to go through it.”

“Her and Nima?” asked Perry. “Why?”

“They are my foes,” said Fenilor. “I have talked with many thresholders, you understand, and I know well that I am on my own. It is inconceivable that she should be part of a team with me — and inconceivable that I would subject myself to the experimentation you suggest necessary.”

“I’m saying there’s another way,” said Perry. “You’ve seen that you’ve made mistakes here, how trying to create a society has gone wrong, is it that hard to believe you’ve made another mistake? That you just didn’t realize what was happening? That we’re perched on the doorstep of calamity?”

Fenilor shook his head. “I have won. My victory in this world is complete. They govern themselves, and can respond to any threat. The last monarchy will fall, and their society will stay stable and verdant. The culture I helped to create works across every continent, in every former kingdom. It must be spread to other worlds, now that it’s found purchase here and has been proven a success.”

“If a portal opens and you go through it, you might kill them all,” said Perry.

“Might?” asked Fenilor. “There’s no longer the lie coming from your lips, because you’ve found a new tactic, the ‘mights’ and the ‘maybes’.”

“Hear us out,” said Perry, holding up a hand. “For the good of this world. You owe them that. But it’s going to take time. I can print papers out for you, something you could read. If I have a way to contact you —”

“It’s very tempting to go in for the kill now,” said Fenilor. He slipped his helmet back on, cloth morphing into metal. “Do you feel the same?”

Perry frowned. “Yes,” he said. If Fenilor had a way of telling the truth, there was no point in lying, and no point in trying to dodge the truth, which would be obvious.

“I have never fought someone of your caliber,” said Fenilor. He got into a wide stance, spreading his feet and gripping the spear with two hands. He was still quite far away.

“How have you stayed winning all these years?” asked Perry. He had his sword ready to go. It gave a second source of light, its blue glow, but it wasn’t strong enough to reach Fenilor. The most important thing would be protecting Mette. He had energy in his vessels that he could turn to moonlight and blast at her, activating wolf mode, and his own Wolf Vessel could be opened if it came to that.

“You’ve figured it out already, haven’t you?” asked Fenilor. “I would be disappointed if you hadn’t.”

“No,” said Perry. “Not a clue.” That was a lie too, because he had an inkling.

“The Grand Spell mates us together,” said Fenilor. “The matches are based on wins, even wins where possible, but sometimes unevenly, especially where it would be a fair match to have it uneven on wins. Do you know how many wins I have to my name?”

“One?” asked Perry.

“Alas, none,” said Fenilor. “I stepped through the portal, and in the first world I came to, I was soundly beaten, though not before I had wondrous powers attached to my immortal soul. But the power was a blessing beyond my comprehension at the time, and when I got to this world, I put everything I had into training.”

“And that’s the secret?” asked Perry.

“I believe I am, for my win record of zero, the strongest thresholder across the entire multiverse,” said Fenilor. “I don’t know if the Grand Spell doesn’t count it as a win until you’re through the gate, but I suspect so. The spell must make a choice between giving me an opponent that cannot possibly win, and giving me an opponent that has a much, much better win record than I have. So far, it has chosen the former.”

“I’m not letting you hurt Mette,” said Perry.

“I am curious whether you think you can stop me,” said Fenilor. “Do you know that I get stronger with every win?”

“I didn’t, no,” said Perry.

“Truth,” said Fenilor. His face was covered, but there was a smile in his voice. “Excellent.” He shifted his left foot a half inch. “But the men and women and others I’ve been fighting have been giving me less and less power as the fights get easier and easier for me to win.”

Perry wasn’t going to be able to retreat into the shelfspace. Even if he was able to grab Mette and bring her in, that would leave them at Fenilor’s mercy, and who knew what he would have done by the time they got out. Perry didn’t actually know what would happen if the rock above them came down while the shelf was closed. He would be entombed, he was pretty sure.

“I am fairly sure that killing Mette will have no effect,” said Fenilor. “I have been in many matches, sometimes with allies, other times with multiple opponents. It’s a quirk of the Grand Spell. If she’s a designated ally, her death will change nothing. If she’s Nima’s ally, her death will change nothing. It’s only if she were the sole opponent that the portal might open.”

“What about me?” asked Perry.

“You are not here for me,” said Fenilor. “You are here for Third Fervor. Isn’t that obvious?”

Perry frowned. “Not to me. There are five thresholders here, to my knowledge. Why wouldn’t we all be a part of the same conflict?”

“That, I do not know,” said Fenilor. He moved the tip of his spear a foot to the side, and Perry didn’t flinch. It was a test of reflexes, he was pretty sure. “You know more than you let on. You came through together, somehow. I see the working of the Grand Spell much better than you. Our paths were not meant to cross.”

Perry grit his teeth. He was hoping not to fight, and if they did fight, he was hoping to trounce Fenilor. There had been no true sign of how powerful the elf was. He’d had five hundred years though, and a power that grew better with conquest, and he’d either gathered implements from around the world or stolen things from those he’d defeated.

If the Grand Spell had great predictive powers, then what did that mean if they came to blows? That Perry was doomed to lose? That they would find themselves evenly matched?

If there were two separate thresholder conflicts that were, in theory, divorced from each other, as Fenilor was suggesting, then Perry had thrown himself into the lower level conflict. What did that mean as far as prediction went? Weren’t they linked now, the two conflicts, if this came to a head? He couldn’t let Mette handle this herself, not even if she wanted to handle it herself.

“I need a way to contact you,” said Perry. “A way that we can talk to each other.”

“Are we not about to fight?” asked Fenilor. “I’ve been eager to test myself against you.”

“For after the fight then,” said Perry. “After you limp away, or I outrun you, or … something like that.”

Fenilor nodded. “If we both live. Fair, I suppose. Then I propose you have a message delivered to the Cinnamon Station House in Deregia. They’ll get it to me. You would of course use your own messenger, the better our paths would not cross. And for me to get a message to you — is there a place in particular you favor? A place with friends?”

Perry nodded. “Dirk Gibbons, in Berus, he’ll be in the central city by now. Not a friend, but he can get a message to me.”

“Mmm,” said Fenilor.

He moved forward as though floating on a gust of wind, aiming his spear directly for Perry’s heart. Perry had expected the attack, and parried it aside. As he did, the shoulder-mounted gun popped up from its housing and fired off three quick shots, hitting Fenilor in the stomach, chest, and face. Fenilor moved past Perry, rolling down onto the ground then springing back to his feet some distance away, holding his spear out in front of him.

“Shall I keep firing, sir?” asked Marchand.

Fenilor’s armor wasn’t dented, it had snarled and unspooled, like a sweater that had been plucked at too many times. There was enough distance that only a long lunge would bring them together. Fenilor took a hand off his spear and raised it to his face, and when he pulled it away, Perry could see blood.

“Aim for the head,” said Perry. He’d empty the whole damned clip if he had to.

Fenilor cast his hand out to the side, the one with the spear in it. The first bullet hit him in the face as ghostly images showed up beyond the outstretched hand, all of them weapons in glorious variety, lined up one after another in neatly ordered rows. There was a jeweled halberd and a six-foot sword, a thick longbow with a wispy string, a mace with twenty spikes and a heavy leather strap — and as Fenilor was struck in the face by another bullet that jerked his head back and made another rip in the armor, the spear was replaced with the largest sword from the ghostly array, becoming real and solid in his hand as the others disappeared.

The sword blocked the next bullet, then the one after that, twitching into their path.

“Stop,” said Perry.

Fenilor thrust out his other hand, and a range of armors and clothes appeared, just as ghostly as the weapons had been. The range was more narrow, only a dozen of them, and Fenilor made his choice almost instantly, causing them to disappear. His other armor had disappeared, and he was clad in thick plate armor with far too many spikes, so many that he looked like a walking porcupine. His face and mouth were obscured by the spurs of metal.

“Many people have come here, from many worlds,” said Fenilor. “They have carried many tools. These will do nicely against you, I think.”

He took a step forward and sliced with the huge sword, which was held one-handed. Perry stepped back and raised his own sword to meet the attack, but his sword was knocked to the side like it wasn’t even there, and Fenilor’s blade cut halfway into Perry’s side, straight through metal, lodging itself in one of Perry’s kidneys. Fenilor left the sword stuck there and moved forward, spikes out, to wrap Perry in a hug.

Perry thrust a hand out behind him and released a blast of moonlight at Mette, then wasted no time in cracking the Wolf Vessel wide open and transforming.

The transformation came as Fenilor’s spikes began to drive themselves into Perry, but they snapped off as the wolf took shape. The sword snapped too, crunched by the shifting of metal around and inside of Perry. It was sharp and strong, sturdy at its edge, but brittle as well.

When the transformation was complete, Perry snapped forward, closing his jaws around Fenilor’s spiked head. His mouth was immediately filled with blood and oil as the spikes drove into them, but the powerful muscles of his jaw held Fenilor’s head tight. He used as much crushing force as he could manage, and felt something crack or snap, but it was only a few of his teeth.

Fenilor bashed Perry’s lupine form back with a mace that had come from the same ghostly place, and with the nut of the helmet not yet cracking, Perry backed away.

Mette was beside him in all her furry glory. She had a dark blonde coat and a long tail that whipped back and forth with ferocious intensity. She was ready to pounce on Fenilor, and as he drew his mace back, she bounded toward him, leaping high in the air and looking, for a moment, more like a fox than a wolf.

She landed on him, heedless of the spikes, which jammed into her paws. She scratched at him as he brought his mace down on her face, and he reached to the side, summoning new armor just as she tore a hole in the metal by wrenching an underlying panel free. She was bleeding freely, and blinded on one side where the fur around her eye was matted with blood.

When Perry reached Fenilor, he bit down on an arm which was coated in a new armor, this one inky black and tasting of tar. Perry’s teeth were caught in it, and he whimpered as he tried to pull away. Mette was stuck against the new armor’s cuirass, paws enveloped in a sticky blackness that came from the armor and spread outward from it. Perry howled at her, trying to tell her something, but whatever it was she heard, she got off Fenilor and stepped onto the rock, where her paws stuck. Her eye was healing already, but she was dripping blood down onto the ground.

Perry yanked at Fenilor’s arm with his mouth. The black armor was leaking everywhere, the goop spreading out, moving up Perry’s fur. Fenilor had abandoned the mace and moved onto a green dagger, which he whipped in Mette’s direction without looking. It caught her in the shoulder, and she howled in pain, but he thrust his hand out again. The ghostly weapons appeared again, and he must have given it less thought, because they disappeared right away. He was holding what looked like a tooth, perhaps was a tooth, pulled from the mouth of some enormous beast and wrapped with leather to make a grip.

Perry had been, this whole time, holding the oily black armor in his mouth, gnawing on it and trying to break it. The black stuff was coating his throat, its acrid tang blotting out the taste of blood and broken teeth. He found the right angle and felt the armor give way beneath his teeth, which let him crunch down on the flesh and bone inside.

The bone Fenilor had been stabbing against him found a weak spot soon after, sliding into the junction of forelimb and shoulder. It was a long tooth, and broke inside of him almost at once, then broke again, small shards now separating in excruciating fashion. Whether this had been Fenilor’s plan or not, Perry twisted and howled at the pain, releasing the arm.

Fenilor was up as quick as lightning, finally back to his feet. He changed armor once more, into a tawny cloak that trailed behind him as he ran back down the hallway, bow in hand.

Perry tried and failed to run after him. The shattered bone inside him was excruciating. It had gone down into the flesh of him, and every movement was cutting him from the inside, even as he healed back from it.

He looked to the side and saw Mette, limp and unmoving. The black grease was no longer expanding, but it coated parts of her.

When Perry looked back at Fenilor, he was at the end of the tunnel, only visible because of Perry’s enhanced eyes. His face had gashes on it and his right arm was hanging limply at his side, bleeding heavily, but he was moving as a man with purpose moves. He looked back only once, and gave Perry a slight bow before flinging himself up the mine shaft and out of view.

The wolf wanted to give chase, but the bones inside him were agonizing. His energy was being depleted fast, though the fusion reactor was running at full tilt.

He moved on his sticky paws to Mette, and looked at the wound on her shoulder where the dagger had bit her. She smelled foul, and at the shoulder she was rotten, gangrenous even though it had been a few minutes or less since she’d taken the wound.

Perry bit her, hard, sinking his teeth into her at the site of the wound. It was all he could think to do against whatever chemical or magic was working its way through her. Every effort was tearing him apart inside, but her life was on the line.

He spat a chunk of her shoulder onto the floor, then took another bite of her, and a third. The taste was getting better, and she was still healing, if slowly.

When he went to take a fourth bite, she snapped at him, then began to rise to her feet. She collapsed back to the ground and transformed into a naked woman, looking small, laying in a puddle of the black liquid and her own blood. Her shoulder was mangled but not bleeding, not quite healed when the energy of the transformation had run out.

Perry focused on the bones inside him. It was difficult with the wolf's mind, but Marchand’s mind was in there too somewhere, and together they were articulate enough to speak, even if they had only ever said a single word. The problems were all internal, but so were the vessels and meridians, and Perry began moving energy around, pushing it internally, making the metaphysical manifest. It was slow, steady work to get the first of the pieces out, and it was only out in the sense that it had been pushed to where metal and flesh met.

He paid no mind to anything else, only the removal of the bone shards. Mette was laying limply, but he could smell her breath, and she was alive.

When the last of the bone shards had been moved, Perry transformed back. It was easier than it had ever been before, and the pieces of bone could be felt against his ribs and stomach, sharp but not cutting.

He went to Mette first, leaning down to look at her. Her face was pale and covered in a sheen of sweat. He hoped she would be alright. They needed to get out of the mine and back to the surface, away from where Fenilor knew them to be. Perry hoped that the elf would need time to recover too, that his power wasn’t as strong as claimed.

The mechawolf was one of the biggest tricks in the arsenal though, and Perry couldn’t say for certain whether he had won that fight, even if it had ended in retreat.