Excerpt: fen

     She watched without eyes. Grey skies above boiled like a witch’s cauldron with promise of a storm, soon to break. Heavy, hot winds moaned through the otherwise silent canyons of the Eternal City, its streets full of motionless pedestrians and snapshot-still automobiles. Birds, seemingly caught in instances of flight were poised -wings outstretched- in the very moment of escape as the foreign invaders brought their violence to the urban landscape. All this she took in, watching without eyes -hearing without ears- and knowing that it would extend for an eternity unless she took some action, any action, to rid herself of its enfolding, smothering chaos.

     From within the third floor window of a quaint, early-Twentieth century Bostonian Brownstone, the wertham adjusted its black bowler and withdrew into the shadows.

     Below, the battle exploded with the ferocity only mortal knights and eternal Legends could muster.

     Perched on an outcropping only a half day’s march from the Hinterlands, the New England style city was at once quaint and disturbing, now made all the moreso by the two armies clashing in its still streets. Its inhabitants, still as long as one looked at them directly, going about their business oblivious of the war being fought in their midst but still threatened by the conflict waged all about them.

     Bursts from Nemo’s air raid balloons would topple a dozen wertham at a blast but more would swiftly take their place. Like insects they poured into the streets from the surrounding countryside, intent upon making this city their latest beachhead in their war against the Legends and mortals. But the shrapnel, the collateral damage, was heavy.

     The business-suit clad enemy were silent and steady; their strength in more than just their insidious limbs, needle-like teeth, or horrible, faceless visages. Their numbers seemed endless. And for all the forces that stood in their way -be it the knights led by the stalwart Askeladden or their monstrous allies in the form of the undead Bay-Kok- the faceless monstrosities kept on coming.

     “Where is the General?”

     Richard shouted out to Askeladden plaintively and swung his sword through the neck of another albino, pinstripe-suited adversary. The wertham’s head came off with a messy rip. The creature’s forward momentum carried it into the knight, pushing him backwards. He swore and kicked forward, his steel-toed boot catching the thing and hefting it off to one side to sizzle and disintegrate.

     “Boots! The wertham General: where is he?”

     The Nordic Legend, an ash-covered young man looking quite out of his element against the hoard save for how many followed his lead, just shook his head. “We don’t know yet! None, so far!” Askeladden was honest and it was that honesty -even when he didn’t know the answer to a question- that had earned him the trust of so many, Legend and mortal alike.

     “You didn’t want it quite so easy, did ya?” Kinsey quipped. He ran up next to Richard and brandished his laser sword. Unlike his friend and fellow knight, he opted for a science fiction look to his battle image.

     “Yes,” Richard snapped, “Yes, I fucking well did!” With that, he whistled loudly. In the distance Caliper whinnied in response.

     The white unicorn, its black mane like liquid obsidian matched by its horn and tail in stark contrast to its hide, came galloping up the avenue between enemy and ally, alike.

     “Richard, what’re you...?”

     “Finding their damn General,” he interrupted. With a single motion, Richard swung himself up on Caliper’s back, knocking back a wertham in the process, and galloping towards an open plaza in the distance. If he could get some height on the battle, perhaps to the top of one of the taller buildings, perhaps he could see the wertham General; see the creature that was directing the rest of them. Take out that one and dealing with the rest would be much, much easier.

     “Richard! Stay with the group!” But already Kinsey’s words were being left behind him as his fellow knight, exhausted and tired, plowed forward through and past combatant after combatant for the far side of the battlefield.

     The sting of teeth bit through above his greaves on his left leg and he felt the vice-like grip of the enemy on his thigh. It was almost comical to see the creature: a skinny, suit-wearing, bald albino with no face -nothing but a thin-lipped mouth filled with crystalline, needle teeth- climbing up on his charging steed, losing its bowler hat. But that comical image wasn’t funny; not after twelve years of fighting. The wertham weren’t funny-looking creatures that mimicked a long-deceased, mortal psychologist anymore. Not in Richard’s eyes; not in any knight’s eyes.

     They were demons, pure and simple.

     He could feel its teeth already sinking in through the thick leather he wore, past his multiple layers of protections that his will insisted were there in this mental landscape. All this happened in the blur of a moment. As he shifted his sword around he could feel dullness start to sink into his mind. His heart rate began to slow and color seemed to drain from the world ... from the very emotions he used to fuel his fighting and battle. It wasn’t emotional defeat that was creeping into his bones, it was worse: it was the very essence of what drove him -the essence of his spark of creativity that allowed him to see and face these creatures on their own turf- that was being drained out of him. It was ingesting his very spark of imagination.

     But he’d had wounds like this before and he’d survived them.

     With a swift motion, he brought the sword sliding down between himself and the wertham at his side. With a snicker-snack, he sliced through its teeth and part of its face. Bone and flesh peeled away amidst a squeal and flush of black ichor. If it had been anything other than a monster, an animal or even a creature that resembled a monster from the copious horror stories that populated the books he loved to read back home, he might have felt a twinge of regret. But, no: this was a wertham: there was no negotiation, no middle ground, and no mercy.

     It fell into the dusty street behind him, still gurgling on its final breath and the taste of what his mind had had to offer it. A last meal, Richard thought, grimly. But I’ll heal.

     He spurred Caliper on and soon, broke out beyond the edge of all combatants.

     The city looked like a snapshot of the nineteen twenties along the Atlantic seaboard. No one knew who’d originally dreamed it up but it had stayed here, perched on the edge of the Hinterlands, for decades: frozen in time, its inhabitants only moving and progressing when no one was directly looking at them. Legends called it the Eternal City. When knights came here, they dubbed it Celephais after a short story about a city with no yesterday and no tomorrow: only the promise of an eternal now. To see it smashed and demolished by war ripped into Richard like a thousand daggers.

     He had to find the wertham General and put an end to it.

     Now.

     A rumble of thunder rolled through the empty streets and Richard felt his heart begin to race. There were portents in the Legendlands that were ignored only at a traveler’s peril. The weather was always rife with them. Even though still feeling the dull-witted effects of the bite, he wasn’t so stupefied as to fall prey to what his colleagues called “horror movie stupidity”.

     Slowing Caliper to a canter, he scanned his surroundings carefully and kept his sword at the ready. The city was inherently harmless; he knew that from plenty of visits here, before the current attack. On top of that, wertham weren’t creative with their attacks. They merely ambushed and used their superior strength. But a General...

     It must be near.

     A swirl of wind caught his eye, lifting dust from the cobblestones in an alley to form a dust devil that drifted lazily out into the piazza where he brought his black-horned steed to a halt. Caliper’s hooves echoed on the brick eerily. Still eyes from the frozen residents of Celephais all seemed to watch from their daily activities, preserved in time like figures in a painted tableau. A flutter of wings beating the air startled him. Looking up, he saw a frozen flock of pigeons nearby, captured in the moment of his stare. His heart had begun to race as a flicker of lightning lanced across the sky and a secondary rumble of thunder shook the windows in the Eternal City. The feeling in his bones grew worse.

     He did not dismount. If worst came to pass, he could do better on his steed and, if overwhelmed by one of the former Legends-cum-wertham he could escape far more readily on four hooves than on two legs. He was confident in his skills -he’d dispatched his share of adversaries in this war, before- but there was something about this that was eating at him. Something deeper than simple isolation from the other knights and the recent attack was weighing on him.

     Shadows moved in the corners of his vision and even the distant sounds of battle seemed to become muffled by the sound of blood pounding in his ears.

     Shadows began to lengthen from all sides, reaching out from the base of buildings towards him. Caliper whickered in fear and Richard knew this was a seriously bad idea.

     Through the muffled sounds of distant combat, a single series of sounds echoed on the cobblestones and reached Richard’s ears.

     Click ... click ... click...

     They echoed about, a sharp, periodic tapping of metal on stone, accompanied by soft steps of feet. Disorientation from shadow and wind from the roiling clouds of oncoming storm shook him. The dread that had sunk into him slowed his response, keeping him from turning around until the stranger was nearly upon him. When he did, he was almost surprised to see the suited form of one of the enemy.

     Like all the Generals, though, this one still held one or two accoutrements of its former life as a Legend. While faceless save for its vicious mouth and dressed identically to its brethren, this individual carried an old walking stick, silver tip clacking against the cobblestones with its steady stride. Additionally, from under its black bowler fell the curls and pony tail of a eighteenth century, white powdered wig.

     The sight of an enemy gave Richard something to focus on and he pushed the baseless fear of shadows and sound from his mind and leveled his sword at the approaching enemy. The General stopped and raised its hands.

     “I believe we have something to talk about,” it said in an old, New England accent.

     Richard spurred Caliper into an immediate gallop.

     If the wertham could look surprised it did so with its actions by unceremoniously diving aside. The knight’s blade cut the air just above where the creature had stood. Only its preternatural agility had saved it from a deep and penetrating wound. Richard, though, was not about to give it any quarter nor a chance to seduce him with whatever twisted logic it wanted to unleash upon him. Generals had been the secret shame of the Legends: former members of their number who had succumbed to join the other side and through dark processes strip away the bulk of their individuality to become agents of conformity and ruin.

     Keeping the General in the corner of his vision at all times, he guided Caliper to turn and lowered his blade. If he could get back fast enough, he could remove the foul thing’s head before it could recover.

     But it was fast ... very fast.

     Clearly the walking stick was an affectation and not something needed for balance. With a lithe spring, the creature was back on its feet and turning to meet the knight with a foul hiss, needle-like teeth barred. Richard adjusted his grip and turned the blade inward, ready to swing the sword to meet an expected leap.

     But the attack did not come.

     A boom of thunder rocked the buildings and shattered windows. Electric blue and white shocked his vision and left him deaf and gasping as he was thrown from Caliper; pain searing through every limb. Darkness loomed upwards around him and his ears rushed with a cacophony of dissonance. He could feel blood and burns across his body as he stared up, not truly recognizing anything but the hurt and pain. Inside the prison of his body, he knew he should be moving -getting up and doing something- but the stunning bursts left him disoriented and gasping for breath in a dearth of atmosphere. It was as if his lungs were filling with fear and his heart beat with anxiety.

     His head pounded as, through the bursts of light and a river of blood over one of his eyes, he saw the outline of the General approach him, slowly leaning over to look down. He didn’t feel as much as see the tip of the walking stick prod at his chest and his vision shifted to gaze up at the sky. Had he tried to rise? He wasn’t sure. Everything swam in pain, semi-darkness, and blood; too much blood.

     The wertham came into view again; it’s powdered wig immaculate beneath its bowler. Its needle-filled mouth was moving, but Richard could hear no words. Probably for the best: he didn’t feel like having his last moments subject to a villainous monologue.

     Black fabric rushed past his field of vision, making him blink. Something was going on and he wasn’t sure what. Despite the pain and disconnect between his mind and body, he managed to roll to one side. (Either that or the world obligingly cracked and tilted to permit him view of what had suddenly whisked the General away from him; he wasn’t quite certain.) A tangle of limbs was there, each clad in identical black pinstripes. The clash was confusing and his mind tried to sort it out. It looked like one wertham attacking another. But such a sight made no sense.

     He blinked as much as blinking made his eyes hurt and sting with blood. He groaned and tried to move more. His breath was slowly coming back. The General he’d been fighting was pinned, now, and -indeed- seemingly pinned by another wertham bending over it face-to-faceless-face. His heart faltered against the dread and started to feel strength return. It seemed as if he was being saved somehow but his brain couldn’t parse what it was seeing.

     And then, lightning struck twice ... literally.

     A flash of heat and rumble of thunder struck the cobblestones nearby. Richard felt the blast wash over him. Debris rained down and his ears were rocked with the muffled boom, saved only by their own, previously instilled deafness. His head cracked against the stones and pain shocked through him again.

     Vision swimming, he partially succumbed to darkness again, swimming in and out of it as he struggled to stay on the surface of consciousness. How much time passed, he didn’t know. Moments, minutes, or hours later, an image swam in front of his vision and something licked at the cut above his left eye.

     “Ca ... Caliper...” he rasped.

     The shadow pulled back to a faceless face wearing a bowler. A long, sinewy tongue snaked back into a mouth full of slender, needle teeth bracketed by a set of perfect, white canines on the top and bottom. Something different. Something ... unique.

     “No,” it said. “But not everything is as it seems.”

     Another General.

     It looked up abruptly, turning the front of its blank face to the distance. Then, with its insect-like grace, it sprinted away and vanished from Richard’s vision.

     Within minutes Kinsey and the others surrounded him. Askeladden, “Boots” to his knights, looked concerned and called for medics. Richard could still barely hear any of them unless they spoke directly into his right ear.

     “They’ve broken an’ run,” Askeladden said. “Y’ did it, lad. Again, the underdog saves the day. Y’ scared off the General!”

     Richard tried to shake his head but the medic made him lay down and forced him not to speak. He had several broken bones and a large number of burns on his body. And while he’d have to give his full report to the Legend, later, until then he had to lie still and let his nurse do her work.

     Kinsey, true to his long-time friendship with Richard, stayed with him the rest of the day and into the night.

     Sleep finally took his friend from him and Richard fitfully reflected on the activities of the day. He’d nearly died and the one to save him -the only one to reach him in time- was one of the enemy. It hadn’t been the first time doubts had plagued him about fighting so long in this escapade. The last time the wertham had waged their war on humanity, there had been no knights to intervene: the Legends had gone it pretty much alone. This time, they’d involved mortals and everything was up in the air. But that last time, it persisted for centuries. Would he even live to see the end of it?

     Stifling a groan, he rose from his cot and left the medical tent. The nighttime air was pure and cool. He was still in great pain and his wounds would take months to heal both here and in the physical world. He would be returning there in the morning. But for now, despite his exhaustion, he just couldn’t sleep.

     He stumbled forward on crutches borrowed from beside his bed, into the camp. Mortal knights slept or sat beside fires, ignoring him for their own quiet discussions or contemplations. Here or there, small dreamsqualls could be seen rising and falling from the bodies of those who were deep in slumber. Their images, conjured into brief being would rise and fall like gossamer realities projected onto fog over them before dissipating on the night winds. Only those who were deepest in sleep and dreamed the most conjured these and it was deemed polite not to stare at this insights into someone’s personality.

     Richard turned away as one man’s supple wood nymph of a squall lingered momentarily -beckoning anyone who would watch, forward- before squealing like a teenage cheerleader and vanishing in a puff of vapor.

     Across the camp, he saw some more wakeful activity. Curious, he hobbled in that direction. As he neared he heard voices raised in song. He stopped. It was another one of the rollicking songs intended to whip up morale and muster them to fight in support of the concept of imagination. He shook his head. The circle of knights also had a few Legends amongst them: a centaur and some general creatures from Japanese lore. The Westerners were helping the Asian Legends translate the words and phrases into Japanese despite everyone, here, speaking the same “language” of intent and myth.

     “Jingoistic nonsense,” he muttered.

     “Seems that way sometimes,” a voice at his side said.

     Richard jumped. Beside him stood a man, perhaps in his late forties with long, cascading curly hair, graying at the temples. He carried a weathered guitar case and wore a small pair of round glasses. He didn’t meet Richard’s gaze directly but seemed to flit from his shoulder to shoulder.

     “Sorry; I thought you heard me approach.”

     Richard shook his head. “I’m still a bit deaf on the left side; took a bad hit, today.”

     The man nodded. “I see.”

     The stranger settled into silence and fingered a necklace set with a large, amber stone set in the end. He seemed to have shifted his attention, now, to the song. He listened more intently. Richard watched him, curiously. He seemed a bit ... off.

     “You Ok?” he finally asked.

     “Hm? Oh, yes; I’m fine. I just arrived this evening. I’m just trying to see what you saw in the lyrics.”

     Richard frowned. “What?”

     “You know: ‘jingoistic’.” He looked back towards Richard and shrugged. “Since I wrote them, I figured I’d see if I could detect what, specifically, was the problem. Maybe I can fix it.”

     “Oh, geez, I didn’t mean to insult you. I mean, it’s a good song; a classic, even...” Richard blinked for a moment at his own words, reality dawning. “Wait a sec. You wrote this?”

     The mortal nodded. “Years ago. It was one of my first when the war was just beginning. I was trying to tap into how it felt to be fighting for something so big, so important, and so deep. So, you know, I think I can understand what you mean about how it sounds. It’s a bit superficial, these days ... isn’t it?”

     Richard was stunned. “You’re the First Herald?”

     For the first time, the stranger looked him in the eyes. It almost seemed to cause him pain. He looked very uncomfortable doing it, as if he had to force himself to do so. Uncertainty criss-crossed his face and he chewed his lower lip. “I guess that’s what they call me these days. I just called myself Amber.” Shakily, he put out his hand.

     Richard took it and shook it, slowly. “Holy shit,” he said. “I ... I don’t know what to say.”

     Amber took his hand back and shrugged, no longer looking the knight in the eye. “Nothing to say. We all do our part.”

     “Yeah, but you were the first! You were the one the Legends reached out to, to start recruiting knights when all this first began!”

     Amber coughed and shook his head. “Yeah, well, now I just make the rounds to keep up morale and write more songs to inspire others. I’m not that special.”

     “’Not that special’?” Richard grinned. “You were the very first; that’s gotta count for something!”

     Amber shrugged noncommittally. “Not really. They came to me first because of my condition, not because I was any more creative than anyone else. There were probably hundreds of others, too, who would’ve served their purposes. I just got lucky.”

     Silence fell between them. Richard felt some of his earlier unease return. It was one thing to doubt his place in this war and where it was going but to hear the man who had helped start it all downplay his own importance in it speak as if his own part in it was less than brilliant, well...

     “What do you mean by your ‘condition’?”

     The herald sighed and looked at his feet. “I thought everyone knew,” he said under his breath. Still, he did not elaborate for at least a minute. “I have schizophrenia. They reached out to me because I didn’t need to be reached out to. I could already perceive the wertham and the rest just because of how my brain worked. Most knights need training and a strong imagination; they need belief. I didn’t need any of that.”

     The simple words sank in and Richard felt a chill spread out from the pit of his stomach. Here it was, then: the simple truth. He, and all the others, had been following a schizophrenic into battle. When all was said and done, they’d been following someone who hallucinated. He’d heard people who’d called the First Herald “Amber: the Schizophrenic Herald” but that was just another title; a fannish handle like so many others.

     Or at least that’s what he had thought.

     “I hope you understand that with medication, it’s completely controllable,” Amber was saying when Richard paid attention again. “I’m not some kind of monster.”

     “No, I ... I understand,” Richard lied. “Look, I’ve got to get back to the medical tent. I shouldn’t even be here right now.”

     Amber nodded. “Well, I’ll be around to help lift morale for the next few days,” he said, looking Richard in the eyes with a slender, genuine smile. He patted the knight on his arm. “You know, what you do is important. You’re braver than me; I really believe that.”

     “Thanks,” Richard said.

     “Thank you for your feedback on the song lyrics,” Amber replied.

     The tone in his voice sounded genuine. Richard didn’t care. He had to get out of there ... get away from everything.

     He limped back to the tent, put on his armor, and gathered his belongings in the pre-dawn darkness. Kinsey woke up just as he was leaving and whistling for Caliper.

     “Rich? Whereyougoin’?” he mumbled, still half asleep.

     “Away.”

     With that, he pulled his wounded and battered frame onto Caliper’s back and galloped away from the sunrise towards the dark wall of the Hinterland that separated the Legendlands from the mortal world. It was second nature to focus his will and open a column of light to illuminate the path across the broken earth ahead of him. Every now and then he would pass fragments of broken dreams and lost myths in the darkness. Here a lost doll, there a forgotten manuscript ... all of them swirling in the darkness that was the buffer between the waking world of mortals and the eternal land of living Legends.

     When the light ahead expanded from the column of light that spread from his will, he guided it to where he last entered the world. For years, knights had used the Legendlands as a shortcut through their own world. When one knew how the two realms mapped onto each other, they could navigate through one to enter into the other in another place. But right now, he just wanted to get back to the place he’d left in such a hurry two days before.

     Ahead, he saw the rough stone pillars marking his destination: the Overlay.

     Hurting, he dismounted just outside a ring of stones within tall cliffs rising a hundred feet on all sides about them. Caliper whickered nervously, as if sensing his master’s discomfort and dismay. Absently, Richard patted his steed’s obsidian mane and began to trudge, heavily, into the ring of stones.

     It was here, overlaid upon the mortal world that the Legendlands were at their thinnest. It was the realm of dreams and fantasies; mere gossamers in which any whim was concrete and where some knights could even shape their world. It was here that Richard preferred to transition from one world to the next.

     He trudged up a long, grassy slope towards the single willow tree growing in the center. The heaviness of the past days made it feel as if his feet would sink into the ground and never emerge. Piece by piece, he pulled off pieces of his armor, dropping them in the grass. Leaves from the willow tree seemed to follow suit, yellowing as if in autumn and spiraling to the ground. By the time he’d climbed the mound to its base, it was in full, golden fall colors. Turning, he slumped against its trunk and bowed his head against his chest, shield at his feet. He drew his sword and planted it, defeated, at his side. Caliper walked into the circle of stones from the base and neighed.

     Richard paid no attention.

     “Well, isn’t that iconic,” came Kinsey’s voice.

     Richard sighed. “Go away.”

     “Not a chance.” The towering stones and cliffs began to fade and the grassy mound slowly sank. “You don’t get to leave me in the lurch and then say ‘I don’t want to talk about it’. What’s going on?”

     Richard raised his gaze. Kinsey’s Asian features were normally soft but, right now, were hardened by the fast ride he must have made across the Hinterlands to catch up with him. He shook his head. “It’s not what you think.”

     “Right now, I don’t think anything,” Kinsey replied. “But I’d like to know what’s going on, Ok?”

     The cliff walls slowly opened with windows as the mortal, physical world became visible. A courtyard took its place; the only thing the same being the willow tree with Richard at its base.

     “It’s ... it’s not something I can describe.”

     “Try.”

     Richard sighed. “I don’t think I can keep fighting,” he finally said.

     A sarcastic grin crossed his friend’s face. “See? Was that so hard?”

     “Yes,” Richard replied. “Because it wasn’t the full truth! Because while I don’t think I can keep fighting, I’m not sure of the full reasons! I feel like I don’t really belong here; like this battle isn’t really mine!”

     Kinsey snorted. “How can you say that? You’re fen: one of the ultimate dreamers ... a member of fandom! You’ve gotten to fight in a war to defend dreaming against the ultimate expression of the mundane! Of course this fight is yours!”

     Richard shook his head and slowly got up, limping forward. “Like I said, how can I explain it to you if I don’t understand it, myself?”

     He put a hand on Kinsey’s shoulder for balance and squeezed lightly. “Listen, I’m not jerking you around and I’m not going all emo on you. I ... I just don’t know where I stand anymore. I’ve experienced things that I’m not sure I should be experiencing. Does that make sense?”

     “It’s as clear as mud,” Kinsey muttered.

     Richard smirked. “Look, I need to get to my room and lie down. Ok? Then I need to make up a story and get to a doctor. Can you help me with that at least?”

     Kinsey looked at his injured friend, the burns and wounds just as real here as they were in the Legendlands. He nodded. “Of course. You don’t even have to ask.” With that, he put Richard’s unbroken arm around his shoulder and helped him through the courtyard door into the hotel.

     It was early morning on a Sunday over Labor Day weekend. A banner was being taken down from the lobby by the registration desk with the words “Welcome to Contastic 21”. They’d missed most of the convention having been called away to fight in the battle of Celephais but it had been eye opening for Richard.

     Now, he just had to figure out what to do with his revelations.