Satisfied with the effect his revelation had produced, the Lord Marshal determined to use it to his best advantage. That would lie not in killing this intruder, which he was now confident he could do, but in winning him over to the Faith. That which does not defeat us makes us stronger, he knew. As true for a cause as for an individual. This audacious breeder would make a fine replacement for Irgun.
“If you fall here, now,” he boomed, “you’ll never rise. You’ll be as the rest of the unconverted: nothing more than food for worms. But if you choose another way,” and he glanced down at Kyra, “if you choose the Necromonger way, you’ll die in due time—only to rise again in the UnderVerse. Rise afresh to a new beginning, and a new life.”
Controlling his breathing, Riddick stared at the Lord Marshal. “I’ve made my choice.”
“This life is nothing. A spark in time. The UnderVerse is everything.” Glancing down at the woman kneeling at his feet, he said commandingly, “Go to him. Save him.”
As she approached, Riddick noticed that even her walk was different. Instead of the bold, confident stride he knew from memory, she came toward him with steps that were measured and hesitant. His augmented gaze roved over her, taking in the paled flesh, the downcast eyes, the freshly applied purification marks that scarred both sides of her neck. She had been altered, and not just physically. It was Kyra— and yet it wasn’t.
Seeing the uncertainty in his expression, she struggled for an explanation. Even her voice was subdued, beaten down by hopelessness and circumstance. “It hurt at first. It hurt a lot. They want to be sure of you. But after a while, pain goes away just like they said it would.” She mustered a wan, humorless smile. “I’ve had so much pain, Riddick. I didn’t want any more. They promised to make it go away, and they did.”
His expression didn’t change an iota. “Did they? What else did they make go away, Kyra? I don’t wanna know what you had to do. I don’t need to know what you had to do. What I do need to know is, where you comin’ down?” His eyes bored deep into her own. “That’s all I wanna hear.”
Her gaze rose, and he saw that she’d hardly heard what he’d said. She was in another place now, and it was one where he knew he would never go.
“Then there was—a moment,” she was saying, as if trying to recount the details of a dream. “A moment where I think I saw it. Saw this new ’verse through His eyes.” She glanced in the direction of the Lord Marshal, who stood stolid and approving, saying nothing, but watching, watching. She turned back to the man standing motionless before her. “It sounds beautiful, Riddick. A place to really start over in. A place without—pain.”
He swallowed what he really wanted to say, said quietly instead, “Which side, Kyra?”
From across the floor that separated them, that was at once smaller than the throne room and larger than space, the Lord Marshal paraphrased. “Which side, Riddick?”
Kyra looked up at him. “I thought you were dead. I thought. . .” With that, she shuffled away, leaving him to his fate. Leaving him to his decision. He shut his eyes, but it did not shut out the pain.
“Convert now, or fall forever,” the Lord Marshal challenged the intruder, seizing on the other’s obvious hesitation.
The play was almost over, and the Lord Marshal knew the ending as well as he did its heroes and the villains. If the breeder would only make the right choice, there would be none of the latter and he would be welcomed into the fold. It was what the Lord Marshal expected. It was the logical, right thing to do.
It was, however, not the Riddick thing to do.
Moving so fast his action was literally a blur, the big man drew the Irgun dagger, spun, and flung it so hard and fast at the Lord Marshal that it was impossible for any human to avoid.
The Lord Marshal, though, was no longer wholly human. Nor were his reactions.
Reaching up, an armored hand deflected the blade. Or did it? A collective gasp of disbelief filled the throne room as the defender of the Faith dropped to his knees.
On the balcony above, Vaako immediately grabbed one of the ancient, ceremonial poleaxes that formed a fence of blades behind him and started forward—only to be stopped by his companion.
“Wait, wait.” Dame Vaako’s attention was torn between her consort and what was happening on the floor below. “Too quick, it was too quick. A Half Dead doesn’t die so easily. You don’t take down a lord marshal with a knife throw.”
Truly, the resources of the Half Dead are astounding to see. Turning slowly, as if from a punch that could not put him down, the Lord Marshal once again faced his assailant. Blood trickled down his cheek. He had deflected the blade just in time, and it had only grazed his face.
One hand dabbing at the cut, he contemplated the red stain quietly. “A long time since I’ve seen my own blood. Maybe too long. One can become too comfortable. Success breeds confidence. Too much success breeds overconfidence. I should thank you for reawakening that within me that made me what I am.”
With one sweeping gesture he motioned everyone back; Elites, regular guards, onlookers—everyone. He would confront his own demons now. Both of him.
His astral self exploded forward, raging across the hall at the one who had dared to deny the offer of conversion, and who had drawn the Lord Marshal’s blood. When his physical body caught up, the two combined to strike.
The blow went right through Riddick’s defenses, slamming him backward into a pillar hard enough to dent it. As he slid to the deck, dazed, a new figure materialized high above. Unnoticed and unobserved, but intensely interested in the proceedings, Aereon watched from her hiding place.
Unaffected by the impact, the Lord Marshal gathered himself for another assault. This would be as profound a lesson as the coming destruction of the capital below, he had decided. Let everyone see and understand what it meant to be the Lord Marshal, who could command forces not only of this world but of the other. Let them see, and remember.
Unsteadily, Riddick struggled back to his feet. Pulling another blade, he made a sudden and unexpectedly forceful lunge straight at his adversary.
Or rather, where his adversary had been. As his physical self stayed clear of the fighting, almost a contemptuous observer, the Lord Marshal’s astral self blurred around Riddick, hammering on him from behind, below, above. Riddick fought back, as he’d always fought back, but every time he struck, his blade cleaved only empty air.
The beating went on until even the big man could no longer stand. Unable to absorb one more unblockable blow, he finally went down. Only then did the physical lord marshal move forward, astral hands exposed and extended, reaching for the man now prone on the ground. The ethereal claws reached down, digging into the thick body, until they found the soul they were hunting for and started to pull, to extract . . .
Howling in pain and outrage, Riddick somehow found the strength to kick free, jump back, and stand once more on his feet: battered, wounded, but still defiant. As he did so, his essence snapped back into place. This was one soul that would not be so easily extracted from its owner.
Muttering at his failure, the Lord Marshal saw that, lesson or no lesson, this was one foe he was going to have to full-kill first. Projecting, his astral self flew into one of the two giant statues that guarded the entrance to Necropolis and cracked off an oversized spike. Clutching now a weapon that was not only deadly but was rich with mythological import, the wraithlike shape again launched itself at Riddick.
Who dodged at the last possible instant. Striking the floor, the spike shattered in half, only for the broken end to be picked up by the Lord Marshal’s physical self and thrust toward Riddick. Preoccupied with his adversary’s constantly harrying astral counterpart, the big man found himself driven back all the way to the throne area. A blow to the head finally dropped him. He lay there, stunned.
It was time. Stepping over to an Elite guard, the Lord Marshal took possession of the man’s staff. Returning to his fallen adversary, he slipped the staff beneath him and seemingly with
little effort flipped him into a standing position. With a simple twist of both hands, and before Riddick could fall back to the floor, the Lord Marshal positioned the staff firmly against the big man’s neck and began to apply pressure. Slowly but irresisitibly, so that this troublesome interloper would have time to feel death coming for him. Through his manner of dying, the breeder’s passing would serve as a reminder as well as a lesson.
Something was happening. A glow, lights, strengthening not within the prone figure’s clothing but from within the body itself. The Lord Marshal hesitated, uncertain, staring. The singular internal lights began to flicker.
And then—they went out. Faded away, along with the rest of the big man’s strength. Smiling viciously to himself, the Lord Marshal prepared to coil a length of cable around the breeder’s neck. Both his physical and astral self were completely focused on the task at hand. On finishing it.
“They’ll write poetry about this moment. A paean to the present Lord Marshal.”
His jaws parted and his mouth opened preparatory to letting out a cry of triumph. What emerged instead was a gasp, accompanied by a wide-eyed look of surprise and shock. His astral face spun around, seeking the source of the interruption. Of the surprise. Of the spike that had been plunged deeply into the back of his physical being.
A young woman stared back at him, her gaze no longer distant.
With waning strength, both the physical and astral Lord Marshal lashed out simultaneously. The blow sent Kyra flying across the room to smash into the protruding spikes of a decorative column. They bit— deeply. Her eyes widened as she slipped off the spikes and fell to the floor. They stayed that way, open and staring, even when she stopped moving. She did not move again.
On the balcony above, Dame Vaako had taken it all in. Waiting, waiting for just the right moment. Waiting to be sure.
“Now!” she yelled at her consort. “Kill the beast while it’s wounded! Now.”
Ceremonial poleax in hand, Vaako leaped from the balustrade, landed on the floor below, and raced toward the throne.
Wallowing in agony, unable to pull the deeply set spike from his back with either physical or astral hand, the Lord Marshal saw his commander general rushing toward him. Hope surged above the pain.
“Vaako . . . help me. . . .”
Halting, heart racing, Vaako stood above the older man, staring. Then he raised the ancient but still serviceable weapon. Its blade edge, beautifully and reverently maintained, glinted in the somber light of Necropolis.
The Lord Marshal’s expression changed from one of expectation to one of complete disbelief.
“Vaako?”
Taking aim at the neck of the man lying prone before him, the commander general’s fingers clenched convulsively on the staff of the weapon he held. At the same time, the Lord Marshal’s astral body surged clear, away from any possible death blow. Separated, it could rejoin and rejuvenate its physical self even after a seemingly fatal strike. Then appropriate chastisement could be meted out to the traitor, after which . . .
Riddick was there, standing over the astral form. A minor inconvenience, that turbulent part of the Lord Marshal knew. No ordinary weapon could harm an astral body.
Only too late did it realize that the dagger that swept down in a sweeping arc was the one that had been pulled from the back of Irgun the Strange.
Instinctively, the Lord Marshal’s physical self snapped away from Vaako’s blow. The downward slicing blade sent sparks flying as it struck the floor, leaving a gouge behind it. The Lord Marshal’s physical body then automatically rejoined his astral self, despite a cry from the latter.
And at that precise moment of physical and astral convergence, Riddick finished his swing, sinking the supernal blade clutched tightly in his fist up to its hilt in the Lord Marshal’s conjoined skull. Mouth gaping, instantly now made Full Dead, the Lord Marshal fell forward to the floor. As he did so, the blade that had been sunk into his brain broke with an audible snap.
From above, realizing what had happened, realizing how in the blink of an eye it had all gone completely, utterly, terribly wrong, Dame Vaako screamed as if she had been stabbed herself.
“Nooooo!”
And further back, and higher up still, a certain inquisitive Elemental noted the unexpected outcome and did not quite chuckle to herself.
“Now what would be the odds of that . . . ,” she murmured, though none were present to overhear.
On the scarred surface of the planet below, the citizens of Helion Prime stared up at their tormented sky. It was as if a strange calm had suddenly settled over the world. The vast, intimidating torus of energy that had appeared above their capital city had begun to evaporate, as if it held bound within it nothing more threatening than water vapor. The mouth of the conquest icon was closing, and the ships that had assembled around it breaking formation, rising toward outer atmosphere, and dispersing.
Ziza looked up at her mother, who glanced down and smiled reassuringly before looking skyward one more time. One last time, perhaps. As for the little girl she held tightly to her, Ziza was thinking of a man. Gone now, her father. Or just possibly, she was thinking of someone else.
Within the throne room of Necropolis, no one moved. Time itself seemed suspended. Never one to stand still for Time or anything else, Riddick pivoted away from the Full-Dead body of the Lord Marshal and stalked over to where Kyra lay fallen, eyes wide and open, staring at a place where, hopefully, there was no pain.
Exhausted, disgusted, empty, he ignored the hundreds of intent eyes that were fastened on him and following his every move. Nearby, Vaako, realizing what had happened, realizing what it meant, let the ancient poleax he still held fall to the ground. In the silence, its metallic clattering was the only noise.
Moving to distance himself from Kyra’s body, Riddick slumped into the first seat that presented itself, which happened to be the throne. Of Necropolis.
Gradually he became aware of more than eyes upon him. In seconds, his drawn expression changed from one of bitter anguish and resignation to utter astonishment at the sight before him.
Everyone in the Necropolis—every man and woman, young and old, experienced and new—was kneeling. Kneeling before the new Lord Marshal. Which was when it struck him. Something he had heard several times before. Something he had believed, had known, would only apply to others. Fate, it seemed, had one more surprise in store. One more great, cosmic joke.
“You keep what you kill . . . ,” he murmured under his breath.
APPENDIX
Historians’ Note on Pre-Necroism
Let it be noted that our grasp of pre-Necroism history is still incomplete, some of the early firsthand accounts of this epoch having been lost in the course of the conflicts of the Fourth Regime. Blessedly, other accounts remain in our possession. Yet ever since pyro-encoding became the accepted norm for documentation, our ability to interpret such writings has been compromised. We are hard at work on these documents. When deciphered, doubtless they will yield more information about the glorious and ever-expanding Necromonger Empire.
Truly it is important work. The sixth Lord Marshal has ordained that, when our work here is done and the known ’verse is properly cleansed, a great monument will be erected at the shoals of the Threshold. This monument will be inscribed with all our known history. It will serve as a dire warning for any other race that may cross over from some as-yet undiscovered ’verse, to turn them back forever.
—Cevris, Historian Principal 212 A.D.C.
Austeres and the Outcasting of Covu
Genetically at least, we can chart our beginnings to a modest group known as the Brotherhood of Austeres. Devout themselves, they believed that all other known religions were too iconic, their histories too soaked in blood, their teachings too dogmatic and without room for personal expression. The Austeres were monotheistic and isolationist. They sought distance from the other worlds of man that they found so corrupting. Though they numbered only in the thousands, the
Austeres were strong in their belief that theirs would prove to be the one true faith.
Traveling long in ships with conventional drives, they lost many of their numbers to the rigors of the journey. But ultimately, the Austeres made planetfall and colonized a world they named Asylum.
Quickly, dissension arose. Covu, an important scientist-philosopher, began teaching the then radical belief that there might be more than one God— indeed, that there might be as many Gods as there were “universes.”
One must remember that the Monoverse theory held great sway at the time. One God seemed ample for the job of overseeing one ’verse, large though it must have seemed.
Covu decried monotheism as an unnecessary vestige of Jesusism. He believed that it should be shed with other Christian trappings already left behind by the Austeres. For this stance, Covu was persecuted by the Austeres. When he declined to recant his positions, deemed heretical, the Austeres tortured Covu day and night, and the abuse was so relentless that Covu lost the ability to feel pain.
Soon the Austeres turned their ire on Covu’s family, torturing and killing them. Covu would have died at the hands of the Austeres, too, had it not been for the few followers—Covulytes—who had been drawn to his teachings and who helped Covu to escape.
Outcast, Covu wandered space with the corpses of his wife and children. How long he journeyed is unclear, but eventually Covu made a discovery of unimaginable import: a rift in known space that constituted a crossover to another ’verse.
It was the Threshold itself!
The Covulytes were afraid to approach this strange and turbulent corner of uncharted space. Only Covu pushed ahead, perhaps driven by the need to lay his family to rest in a place that would remain undisturbed by the Austeres.
Only minutes later, Covu returned—yet he seemed years older. Too, he seemed stronger, more resolute in his words and ways. Speaking to his astounded followers, Covu claimed his family was no longer dead, that they had risen and walked again in the ’verse on the far side of the Threshold, a glorious place he called “UnderVerse.”