In the Company of Ogres (42 page)
The destructive powers of the Mad Void and Rucka were nearly without limits. Each sought to annihilate the other, but they regenerated from every wound. They disintegrated each other over and over again, only to reform instantly. Each rebirth burned away some of their boundless might, and the loser would be the godlike entity that was depleted first. But godlike entities had a lot of energy to burn, and it could take a century or two to find a winner—providing the universe wasn’t destroyed in the process.
Reality itself was far more delicate than either of these titans. It began to crumble around them. The speaking staff held between them became the focus of their struggle. It radiated twisted energies. The forest withered around them. Small birds and beasts were consumed by invisible flames. A blizzard of black snow fell from a red sky even as the air grew hot and sticky.
Rucka belched a toxic cloud. It dissolved the Void, the grass, and nearby stones. The dirt began to boil and churn. The Void reformed and blasted a lance of power from his eye that sliced Rucka’s head in half and burrowed into the earth. A torrent of magma gushed from the world’s wound as the demon emperor’s skull knit itself back together.
Grinning, Rucka tore at the Void’s side with his two free hands. The demon sank his fangs into the Void’s neck. Rucka’s long, barbed tail speared his opponent through the chest and pulled out the Void’s malformed heart. The organ continued to beat even as Rucka devoured it, laughing.
The gulped heart erupted in a spiky mass. It filled Rucka’s throat, stomach, and bowels. Thorns tore at his flesh from the inside out. Pain wracked his body. The Void’s heart blazed with such unnatural darkness that even the Emperor of the Ten Thousand Hells must shrink from its touch.
Rucka collapsed into a spasmodic heap. He shrieked, foaming at the mouth, tearing at his own guts. It was only temporary. If necessary, Rucka could rip himself apart to extract the heart and still regenerate.
The Void stood over the demon and considered how to rid himself of this nuisance once and for all. The answer was obvious. He must call down enough of his power to end this. One blow with sufficient strength of the Mad Void behind it would destroy anything. It could destroy everything.
The staff in the Void’s left hand churned with power; like a miniature sun, it cast aside the night in its blinding light. The world beneath his feet quaked and whimpered as the Mad Void readied to deliver the strike that would obliterate the demon emperor and this small corner of the universe.
And then he saw them. All about him. Little things. Insignificant, unimportant. Not even worth noticing. Yet he noticed them as they stood in the stinking, blackened snow, so deep that it came to an ogre’s waist. The soldiers of the company looked on, their faces etched in confusion and quiet terror.
His gaze fell across Regina and Miriam. He couldn’t quite remember them anymore. There was nothing to remember. They were but particles of dust. They mattered not at all.
“Then why do you remember their names?” asked the Red Goddess, standing suddenly by his side.
He turned to her. “It’s nothing, an empty memory from a man who never was.” He looked at Rucka, still writhing in quiet agony beneath the Void, still struggling to remove the heart he’d so foolishly swallowed. All the light in the staff faded into a blackness that consumed the night in an ebony fog so thick that only the Void, Rucka, and the Red Goddess could still see.
“Are you a god who dreamed he was a man?” asked the goddess. “Or are you a man who dreams he is a god?”
The Void smiled grimly. “I am. And I shall always be. But these things beneath me will pass away. As will their world one day. Today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, when does it matter to me? It is all but a moment in eternity.”
Rucka had nearly succeeded in extracting the heart. There was but a handful of seconds left for the Void to take advantage of the demon’s weakness. Otherwise, the titanic struggle would renew.
The Mad Void raised his staff to plunge it into Rucka.
The goddess leaned close and whispered in the Void’s ear.
“It matters. If not to you, Ned, then to them.”
The Void hesitated. Not long ago, by his measure of time, he would’ve destroyed Rucka, this world, these specks, and countless others, and the entire universe as well without a second thought. But things had changed. He’d lived as a man, as many men. The exact memories eluded him, and he could only recall Ned’s life.
Even measured by the insignificance of mortal lives, it had been an exercise in absurd futility, a complete waste of time, a struggle against fate to find a place in a world that cared nothing for one more mote crawling upon its surface. But there was some strange dignity in it, and in all these little things. And though they didn’t mean anything and their lives or deaths meant even less, the Void saw them as oddly beautiful in a way he’d never before imagined and couldn’t completely understand.
He lowered his staff. The darkness faded, and the night returned.
He smiled. At Miriam. At Regina. And Frank. And the whole of Ogre Company. The blizzard ended. The snow turned white, then faded away.
The Red Goddess held out her hand. “Give me the staff, Ned. You don’t need it. The power lies within you. It always has. You’ve chosen not to use it before. You can choose not to again.”
Rucka sprang. He threw the Void’s own heart at it, and the blackened organ wrapped around its former owner. Rucka knocked the staff from the Void’s hand, seized him by the throat, and before the Void could recover from the surprise, the demon reached into the Void’s head and plucked out his eye. The Void slumped on the ground. His body shrank into Ned’s proportions.
The Red Goddess moved to stop Rucka from inserting the eye into his empty socket, but his barbed tail sliced her into quarters. Rucka put the eye in its place and cackled.
“It’s mine!” he screamed triumphantly. “The power is all mine!”
“No,” said Ned.
The demon whirled on the little mortal creature below him. Ned looked completely normal except his eyes had grown back and his left arm remained red with its patchwork of blackened scars.
Rucka raised his heel to crush the speck. He slammed down his foot, but one touch of Ned’s red fingertips pushed the demon off balance. He crashed to the earth.
“But I have your eye!” shouted Rucka.
“But my power lies elsewhere.” Ned’s left arm sparkled for an instant. “You were looking in the wrong place.” He clenched his fist as Rucka tried to rise, and the demon fell as if bound to the ground.
“You can’t hold me forever!” said Rucka. “I’ll break free. Even if I have to tear the world apart to do it!”
“I know.”
“And I’ll come back! Again and again, I’ll come back! As many times as it takes!”
“I know.”
And he would. And each time he would fail. And each time Ned would have to call upon the Void’s power to defend himself. And a little piece of his humanity would disappear until it all disappeared, until he became the Mad Void again.
“There’s only one way to stop me! But you haven’t the strength for that. Because all these worthless mortals mean something to you. And to destroy me, you’ll have to destroy them all. They’re your weakness. It’d be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic.” Rucka laughed anyway.
Ned gestured with his left arm, and still laughing, Rucka was raised into the air and shot up and out of sight.
Ned floated a few feet off the ground. He turned to Miriam, Regina, and Frank. “I’ll be right back.” He streaked after the demon.
The two hurtled out of the atmosphere, into the darkness of space, past the sun and planets of the solar system and onward. Physics twisted beneath Ned’s will, and a billion billion miles passed by in moments. They continued onward, out of the galaxy, past the next galaxy and the next, until they reached a portion of the universe that fit Ned’s needs, a corner filled with lifeless planets and dying stars.
Rucka whimpered, his misty breath visible in the airless emptiness. “No, no! I didn’t mean it! I submit! I surrender!”
Ned said nothing. Whether Rucka meant the words or not, it didn’t matter. He was too ambitious a demon to not try again.
“You can’t do this,” pleaded Rucka. “I have a purpose in this universe. I belong here. Not like you. What right do you have to destroy me?”
“I have every right,” said Ned sadly. “I’m the Mad Void. And you made me remember, so I don’t think you can complain.”
Rucka, seeing his pleas fail, came to his last resort. “But to destroy me, you must destroy yourself. Are you willing to do that?”
“If I could’ve destroyed myself, I would’ve done it long ago.” Ned laughed bitterly. There was only one thing the Void could not annihilate, and that was the Void itself.
Ned laid his hand on Rucka’s chest, and a galaxy disappeared in a flash. There was no death rattle, no final gasping spasm for this empty portion of the universe. It was just gone, winking out of existence, dissolved into nothingness and then beyond nothingness.
A lone piece of charred, blackened debris fell from the emptiness. It was a man, but not a man. Dead, but not dead. Supernatural guidance took hold of it and gently steered it across the cosmos to an inconsequential ruined citadel on an inconsequential planet. The comet streaked downward to strike the world with devastating force, but the Red Goddess cushioned the landing so that it touched the ground without disturbing the dust.
Ogre Company circled the thing, barely recognizable as Ned.
“He’ll come back,” said Miriam. “Won’t he?”
The goddess smiled. “He always comes back.”
Thirty-two
NED AWOKE IN a tent. It was a nice tent, just large enough to hold a cot, a table, a chair, and a glowing heatstone. It was the wrong time of year for heatstones, and Ned wondered just how long he’d been dead this time.
“Just over five months,” said the Red Goddess, sitting in the chair. Her raven sat on her shoulder.
Ned pulled up the heavy blankets. “Took you long enough.”
“Don’t blame me,” she replied. “You were in the center of an obliterated galaxy. Takes a while to recover from that, and even I don’t have enough power for it. But I’m not the one who brought you back this time. I don’t do that anymore.”
“Oh, really? Who has the responsibility now?”
“You, Ned.”
“But I thought if I brought myself back, I’d come back as—”
“I think you’ve finally grown out of that.”
“But what about the Void?”
“What about it?” She stood. “You know it better than anyone. So why ask me?”
Ned concentrated. Deep, deep inside he sensed the ancient, unstoppable evil as it slumbered. This wasn’t the forced, uneasy doze of old, but a content, relaxed nap. The Void couldn’t change its nature, nor could it ever be destroyed, but it could sleep. And it might sleep forever, or at least until the natural end of this universe.
“Once it was held by a spell,” said the goddess, “but that was never a lasting solution. The only power that could ever hold the Mad Void in check was the Void itself. And now it does.
“That was the original intent of this business, you see. The spell was merely part of the process. As was each and every life it lived. A crash course in what it means to be mortal, to see the world in the way gods and demons never can. And you are the final result of that spell, Ned.”
“Me?” Ned sat up. “But I’m not very good at anything.”
“Exactly. You have no particular talents, no greatness, no exceptional skills or abilities. You can’t even keep yourself alive. You are incompetent and inconsequential, and I can think of no being in this universe farther removed from godhood.”
“Wait a minute.” Ned mulled this over. “You’re saying I’m supposed to be an idiot?”
“If it makes you feel better to think of it like that,” said the raven.
“You aren’t an idiot,” said the Red Goddess. “You’re just mortal. Very, very mortal. Perhaps too much so.” She put her hand on his cheek and smiled. “But that is your burden, Ned. Bear it well. The universe depends on it.”
She moved toward the tent flap. “If you’ll excuse me, I must return to my mountain. There are more threats to this world than just you, and I still have my duties. Take care, Ned.”
She stepped out of the tent, and Miriam stepped inside a moment later. Ned didn’t ask if she’d seen the Red Goddess leave.
Miriam’s fins raised. “Ned, you’re back.”
“I’m back.”
He stretched and noticed the absence of so many aches and pains that he’d grown used to carrying. He threw aside the blanket to reveal his naked body. His scars had vanished. His left arm remained a tad greenish, and his right eye was still missing, but everything else seemed in working order.
Miriam averted her gaze. “Sir?”
He jumped to his feet, grabbed her by the shoulders, and gave her a long, long kiss. The gesture surprised her, but she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back.
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