Courageous Read online

  My switchblade dropped into my hand, and I took flight, surging forward, but slammed into an invisible energy field surrounding the platform. I staggered back and fell flat on my ass, my knife clattering to the ground.

  “Oh, please,” Treggen said. “Did you really think you could just run up and stab me? Honestly.”

  “Vinnie?” Gears said. “Vinnie, I—” and then Billy slumped forward, his servos whining. I scrambled over to the mech, Opened its chest cavity and found the pilot’s seat empty.

  “One less troublemaker in time,” Treggen’s voice was positively beaming.

  Older things would get removed from the timestream first, I realized. Petra was thousands of years old. Gears was close to a hundred. Cather was more than double that, but dragons, deities, and celestials were immune to temporal effects like this. Mrs. Rita was still there, but I had no idea what she was, or if she’d be erased like the others.

  Megan and Herb looked at one another; they’d figured it out, too.

  “Herb—”

  “Megan—”

  They kissed, tears streaming down both their faces as they faded away. The kobolds shrieked and all assumed their dragon forms, hurling themselves at Treggen, but their tiny bodies dissolved before hitting the barrier.

  “So, then, here we are, Corinthos,” Treggen said. “Your army is down to three. An old woman, a fop, and you. This would be a wonderful time for you to beg for mercy.”

  “Hmm, yeah, let me think about that. Ah, you know what, I can’t even pretend. Fuck you.”

  “You don’t disappoint, at least. Right now, all of time is at my fingertips. Can’t you feel it? I can remake history to my liking. The safe places you might have portaled to, the allies you might yet have tapped, they no longer exist, Corinthos. I, however, have access to the greatest warriors who ever lived. To the most advanced technology that man has yet to imagine. And I can bring all that to bear on you.”

  I could feel it, could tell that Treggen wasn’t bluffing. And I didn’t care. Megan and Herb, Gears, the kobolds, I was beyond angry about them. But it was what had happened to Petra that was pushing me to what felt like madness. “Shut up and fight,” I snarled.

  You know that old saying, be careful what you wish for? Well, I got it. Treggen opened a temporal rift in front of me, and a squadron of cybernetic soldiers in black uniforms came rushing out. Half their faces were black metal, the other half looking more ape than human. Each soldier had a cannon where its left hand should’ve been, and their left eyes were red gems that glowed like hate-filled embers. I snatched up my switchblade and readied a portal. If I was going down, it wouldn’t be without a fight.

  And then a column of hellfire surged over my left shoulder, immolating the closest cyborgs. I turned, expecting to see Cather in dragon form. But Cather was still dressed in his Braveheart outfit, a wide grin on his face, like a kid seeing his favorite actor in person. Mrs. Rita was nowhere to be seen, but in her place stood a twenty-foot-tall silver dragon with gossamer wings. The dragon’s eyes were a brilliant blue and seemed to look through everything they saw.

  “Shall we fight, little one?” the dragon asked Cather. I blinked. The dragon spoke with Mrs. Rita’s voice.

  “It will be an honor, Messesrhitha,” Cather replied and stripped off his tunic and kilt before assuming his own dragon form. Cather’s body shifted to a coppery-scaled dragon that wasn’t quite as tall as Mrs. Rita’s form, and somehow not quite as majestic. Cather’s green eyes flared with that same intense light though, and the cyborgs scattered as the dragons unleashed twin columns of hellfire into their ranks.

  I don’t care how disciplined of a soldier you are, you get two gigantic fire-breathing lizards unleashing hell in your general direction, you’re going to need a minute or two to adapt to that.

  “We will handle these, Vincent,” Mrs. Rita said. “You take care of Treggen.”

  “We need to talk about this,” I called, as I rushed forward, slipping between the cyborgs, stabbing those that got too close. My Olympian-steel blade cut through their armor as if it were made out of paper. Mrs. Rita chuckled behind me, and I swore to myself that if we lived through this, I was going to get her story come hell or high water.

  Ahead, Treggen was still hovering over the Tempus, drawing on the man’s fear to fuel this nightmare. I launched myself into the air, flying along Treggen’s force field, my knife trailing sparks as I dragged it across the barrier’s surface. Olympian steel can’t cut through force fields, but I was hoping I might find an edge to the barrier. Unfortunately, the whole thing was a dome.

  The most frustrating thing was that I wasn’t afraid right now. I was too angry to be scared, so all of the Anisa Amulet’s tricks were cut off from me. But I wasn’t powerless, not completely. I’d failed to bend time on my last attempt, but that was when I was going against the central hourglass. What if instead of fighting it, I bent time a bit more along with it? I reached out to the temporal energies swirling around me, and rather than resisting them, I tuned in to them, felt the tachyon flowing, and bent myself right out of the timestream.

  I stood there, looking around at the now gray-scale world. Treggen and the Tempus were just ahead of me, moving as if in slow motion. The dragons were locked in combat, their jaws snapping up cybernetic soldiers and hurling them across the room. I drifted toward where the barrier had been, stretched out a hand, and my fingers passed right through. I grinned. The barrier didn’t exist here.

  Gotcha, fucker.

  I drifted down, stood behind the Tempus, and extended my bend in time around the terrified leader of the Chroniclers, taking him out of the timestream and away from Treggen. He blinked at me, his expression glazed. “Corinthos?” he asked.

  “Sorry about this,” I said and knocked him unconscious before returning him to normal time. The sand in the central hourglass shifted and changed back to its normal golden color. I stepped out of the bend in time and smiled at Treggen.

  “What? What have you done?” he spluttered.

  “The Tempus’s fear was your key to controlling time, Treggen. He was more scared of something corrupting the timestream than anything else in the world. And you tapped into that. But the thing is, it’s hard to be scared of something when you’re unconscious. So, with the Tempus out of the equation, you can’t control time. But you know what? I still can.”

  I spun tachyon out around us, intending to bend time around Treggen. As I did, extradimensional energy shifted around him, and I could tell he was getting ready to teleport away. “No,” I snarled. “No, not again. Not ever again.” I seized the extradimensional threads and ripped them away. “This ends now, Treggen. Once and for all.”

  “And how will you kill me, Corinthos?” Treggen mocked. “I am inside an indestructible vessel, one that even your powers can’t Open. I am like the tuna safely inside the can, and you are but a cat without opposable thumbs.”

  While that was a rather poetic image, I ignored it. “I don’t need to kill you,” I said. “I just need to cut you off from your powers.”

  With that, I wrapped an extradimensional bubble around Treggen and me, creating a tiny pocket dimension. It wasn’t much to look at, just a twenty-foot sphere made of glowing green light, but it would be more than enough.

  “Really?” Treggen asked. “Are you honestly intending to do to me what you did to Sakave? In this shell, I am truly immortal, Corinthos. Time will not wear me away.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Here, the only two people are you and me. Well, I’m a person. You’re a bowling ball. We’re in a little dimension of my creation. There are no souls here for you to raise as undead, and your amulet can’t tap into my fears. You’re powerless here, Treggen.”

  A beam of green light shot forward from Treggen, which I trapped in a cloud of glowing blue tachyon. The beam stayed frozen in the
air, like a lightsaber blade. “And I have complete control of time here, asshat.”

  As if trying to prove me wrong, the chronometer affixed to Treggen’s underside began to glow. I sensed him trying to shift away, to escape to some distant point in the past or future, but I ground my teeth and willed time to keep Treggen right where he was. The chronometer tried to resist me, but it was just a trinket, and I’m a god with the domain of time. A spark burst from the chronometer’s face, and thin wisps of smoke drifted up from the device. I was grateful that this one hadn’t reacted the way Drago’s had. Otherwise, who knew where or when this asshole would’ve wound up.

  “Did you burn out your toy, Treggen?”

  Treggen’s voice sounded merely inconvenienced. “So, what now, Corinthos? You can’t hold a pocket dimension forever. What can you possibly hope to accomplish with this, other than a stalemate?”

  “You’re about to find out.” And with that, I seized control of more tachyon than I ever had before.

  Chapter 20

  Time swirled around me in a psychedelic vortex. Treggen was in front of me, still hovering, screaming as tachyon surged past us. “What are you doing, you idiot?”

  I didn’t reply. Time bent further around me, nearly to its breaking point. I seized more tachyon, and with all my concentration, with all my will, twisted it into something resembling a Möbius strip. Time shifted around me, settling into a new path.

  Treggen sensed it, too. “Time feels all wrong… What have you done? What have you done, Corinthos?”

  I wiped sweat from my brow and raised an eyebrow at the several dozen green beams of energy that were frozen in front of me, trapped in shimmering blue tachyon sheaths.

  “Well, you were right about one thing, Treggen. I started off doing what I’d done with Sakave. We’re in our own personal pocket dimension right now. But did you know that when I ran the clock out on him, I was able to do it without the Tempus noticing? That’s because the pocket dimension I created had its own private timestream. Just like this one does.” Treggen started to interrupt, but I held up a hand. “I know you can’t be killed. I know you can’t be ejected from that phylactery.

  “But I realized something, Treggen. I don’t need to do either of those things. I’m just going to leave you here, all by yourself. You can’t call for help, you can’t teleport out, and no one from outside can get in. Sure, you’re effectively immortal, but that just means you’ll stay in here for all of time, all alone, with no possible chance of escape.”

  Treggen laughed. “You’re only half deity, Corinthos. When you die, your little prison will cease to exist, and then I will be free. This is only temporary.”

  Treggen’s words were delivered evenly, but the Anisa Amulet picked up on his fears. Like what I’d sensed with Mitt, there were three paths open in front of me; three magician cards being presented to me. Treggen was afraid of being trapped. Was afraid of losing to me. Was afraid of me being right.

  Perfect.

  As I had with Mitt, I picked the utility card. To Treggen, I said, “You keep thinking that you’ll get out of this. It’ll help you sleep at night. You’re right, I’m only half deity. But I’m a half deity with the domain of time. And I’m wearing an amulet that lets me tap into your fears, which means I can make this prison eternal.”

  Treggen tried to rush forward, but I caught the phylactery in a field of slow tachyon before it had advanced even a foot. I created a portal behind me and stepped through back into the chamber where I’d left Cather and Mrs. Rita. Then I sealed the pocket dimension and threw my arms forward, using all my strength, all my control over time and space to make the pocket dimension permanent.

  My blood pounded in my ears as sweat ran down my face, and still I called on more power. More tachyon, more extradimensional threads, more and more and more. Green and blue light flared around me. I was practically hyperventilating, all my will focused on the task at hand. I lost track of how long I stood like that, but was dimly aware when I fell to my knees.

  Cather was somewhere behind me, asking if I was all right, but I couldn’t spare the energy to talk to him. My vision narrowed, and colors were distant things. Everything I was, everything I’d ever felt, or known, or would be, was poured into my weaving. Tachyon and time surged and exploded around me, and space warped and distorted as I pulled and heaved on every thread of extradimensional energy I could get my hands on. Treggen’s fear, channeled by my amulet, wove in as well, his terror becoming as effective of a binding as infragillium. And just as I finished, as the final threads knitted into place, something broke inside my chest. I collapsed to the ground, screaming.

  I don’t know how long I was like that, lying face down, howling in pain. But when my mind finally cleared and the pain faded, I was on my back. Mrs. Rita, again in human form, was kneeling over me. She was chanting something in Korean, a piece of glowing pink crystal in one of her hands. She touched this to my head, and the pain subsided a little more, enough that it didn’t feel like my body was trying to tear itself apart.

  I tried to stretch out with tachyon to see if what I’d done had worked, and felt nothing. “Shit,” I croaked.

  “Vincent?” Petra’s voice. It was Petra’s voice. I flopped my head over and saw her perfect, beautiful face staring into mine. “Are you all right?”

  I didn’t have words. And I didn’t have the strength to pull myself up and wrap my arms around her, but I did it anyway. I just hugged her and cried into her hair, terrified to let go.

  “Mrs. Rita, what’s happened?” That was Megan. I saw over Petra’s shoulder that the kobolds and Herb were back, too. It had worked.

  “He’s done something extraordinarily clever and extraordinarily reckless,” the Tempus said. The leader of the Chroniclers looked a thousand times better than right before I’d knocked him out. His eyes were no longer bloodshot and had lost the haunted look. Instead, his expression was contemplative. “You broke off a sliver of the timestream and wrapped it back around itself, didn’t you? That’s what it feels like.”

  I nodded, but did not release Petra from my embrace. I didn’t talk for a while. I never wanted to let her go again. My chest still ached and everything felt fuzzy. I had the sense I was going to be feeling the aftereffects of this one for a few days. Finally, I raised my head and addressed the Tempus, who’d been patiently waiting for my reply. “I created a pocket dimension with its own timestream and made it permanent,” I said. “Treggen’s trapped in there. I made it so he can’t teleport out, and there are no undead to raise or other people to draw fear from.”

  “So, you pulled all his teeth,” the Tempus said appreciatively. “But aren’t you worried that someone else will break him out?”

  Oh, that had crossed my mind. And I was pretty sure that the amulet had conducted some of my own fears into Treggen’s prison, too, ensuring he wouldn’t be able to escape. “Who would try to break him out, though?” I asked. “All the followers and lackeys I know about are dead or imprisoned, and I’ll go out on a limb and say you’ll be checking the rest of your people for Treggen sympathizers. Besides, I’m the only one who knows how to get into that pocket dimension, and I have no desire to ever go back. It’s over.”

  “But, Vinnie,” Gears said, shuffling up to me. “General Zod got out of the Phantom Zone. What if Treggen gets out of your space?”

  “If anyone other than me tries to go in or out, they’ll be trapped in a perpetual loop of time.” That was why I’d forged the pocket dimension’s timestream into a Möbius strip; it would just keep feeding back on itself for eternity, and any actions that took place after the break would repeat themselves over and over again. To Gears, I said, “Even if Treggen got out, he wouldn’t get anywhere. If the dimension is pierced, then time resets itself to the moment just before Treggen escaped. He’s trapped twice over.” I glanced up at the Tempus. “By the way, I’ve got
Webb imprisoned in a cell at Courage Point. The asshole was working for Treggen.”

  The Tempus’s face darkened. “I suspected he might be a Treggen sympathizer. I will see he faces justice. Take me to him, and I will return him to the Citadel.”

  “One thing at a time, if you please,” Mrs. Rita said. She looked to Cather and the kobolds. “Thank you for your help, little ones. Vincent requires rest now. He will contact you when he is well again.” Mrs. Rita turned to the Tempus. “Would you mind providing a rift for them?”

  The Tempus nodded and created a temporal rift to transport Cather and the kobolds back to the Undercity. Once they were gone, Mrs. Rita said, “Vincent, perhaps we should take you back to your home on Olympus. You can recover from your ordeal there.”

  “Yeah,” I said, fumbling the homestone from my pocket. “Let’s do that.” I squeezed the stone and a portal appeared in front of us. I leaned against Petra, and I’m not too proud to say that she practically carried me through the shimmering green gateway and eased me onto one of the beds in the medical bay.

  Mrs. Rita looked at the group of us, and I realized the Tempus had accompanied my friends through. “Gearstripper, Herb, Megan, would you kindly show the Tempus where Webb is being held? And then meet me in the kitchen when you are done. I think everyone has earned a bit of refreshment, and I’m certain Vincent has some manner of junk food appropriate for a celebration.”

  “Oh, man, does he ever. I saw an entire cabinet filled with Hostess Fruit Pies and Twinkies,” Gears said. “I call dibs on those.”

  The Tempus looked at me for a moment, as if he were about to say something, then turned to Gearstripper. “Lead on, if you please.”