A Dream of Summer Rain: Chapter 45

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***

Dresden appeared on the horizon a mile away. A fleet of twenty armored cars backed up by a squadron of tanks drove over the roads, heading towards the tiny town. Gwen rode at the back of the pack in her winnebago, Joshua at the wheel. Hannibal and Alice rode in an armored car to their immediate left. The horizon drew closer, and the wall of people guarding the town limits came into view. 

Ghouls, all of them. 

The tanks opened fire. 

Walls of Entropy were erected and blocked the artillery. 

When most of the ammo had been expended, and the dust had settled, a pack of feral ghouls charged towards them. They came in a massive wave, fangs and claws, backed up by purple Entropy missiles. They struck tanks and cars and reduced them to dust, while more ghouls fired off conventional firearms in support. Fireballs and decay and bullets and missiles launched at each other, and Joshua drove directly into it. Gwen and Quentin both rolled down their windows, picking off ghouls with headshots from their hunting rifles. A deformed ghoul, a twisted nightmare of hunger and hellfire, landed atop the hood of their winnebago, and Joshua twisted the wheel. The car spun without slowing down, and the ghoul was thrown off. Joshua slammed the break, then drove over the ghoul that had fallen off and crushed its skull. 

He turned the car back around, only for five more deformed ghouls to launch themselves at them. Gwen aimed and fired, but landed only a chest shot. She ran out of ammo, and by the time she reloaded the ghoul was pulling her out the window. 

“TODESHANDER!” she cried, palming the ghoul’s face. The life drained out of him and he fell to a heap on the ground. Another ghoul leapt at her immediately, and she fired off her rifle point blank into his face. “How we doing, Josh?!”

“Slow going!” he replied. They weren’t moving. Gwen looked to the front, and saw the tide of ghouls on top of them. 

Hannibal’s car came around and flanked them, and Alice jumped from the car armed with a flamethrower. She screamed bloody murder while incinerating the immediate horde. “That one’s for free! Now move! They’ve carved us a path into the town, we’ll be right behind you!”

“Noted!” Quentin exclaimed, his head poking out the same window as Gwen’s. “Much obliged!” 

“Sit your asses down,” Joshua said. Quentin did nothing to chastise him this time, simply sat down on a seat with Gwen as Joshua slammed his massive foot onto the peddle and plunged them into the breach. They crashed directly into the line of ghouls still guarding the town limits, then past the line, into Dresden, Hannibal and Alice shortly behind them. 

Lacy, Danny, I’m coming for you, Gwen thought. I won’t let either of you down again. 

***

Lacy charged first, hurling lightning at Alistair while forcing him out of the wreckage and into the town. Alistair backtracked, sliding over the dirt, towards the trees, and summoned his shield. The Entropy and lightning canceled each other out while Lacy closed the gap between them, and her dagger slid through Alistair’s hand and lopped off several of his fingers. The King gasped, grunted, then pivoted and slammed a foot into Lacy’s side, knocking her a dozen feet to the side and skidding over the ground. She pulled herself up to find Alistair slamming a fist into her. She rolled over on the ground, narrowly out of the way of another fist, and sliced his leg at the back, between the knee and the ankle. His black blood stained the green grass. 

Lacy thrust her dagger at his stomach, but his Entropy shield kicked in and the knife disintegrated. Alistair swung a clawed hand at Lacy, and she jumped back, pushing out with wind to gain some distance. He was trying to be conservative with his Starlight, avoid burning too much and getting too feral too quickly. He was good. “I’m better,” Lacy said, trying to make herself believe it. 

“That so?” Alistair said. “You think yourself better than me?”

Lacy wore her best smug grin, trying for the levels of condescension she’d seen so many times on so many faces throughout her life. “I know it. Come on, big man, you think if I weren’t I’d have made it this far? I mean, you’re good, sure, but I’m the Storm on the fucking Horizon.”

Alistair laughed. “I’m glad for you, that you’ve come so far and finally accepted yourself.”

Lacy knew in her heart she meant this: “You’re goddamn right! The Storm is HERE, MOTHERFUCKER!”

Alistair laughed, and laughed, and laughed. And Lacy screamed, if at nothing else besides the desperation of the whole scenario, as they fought with nothing but their fists, dancing around each other as their Stars did the same overhead. She screamed as she threw punches and blocked punches and took punches, she screamed as she kicked and was kicked.

The wind was knocked from her, and she wheezed. Alistair stood over, raised his palm, and uttered, “Toter. Engel.”

A portal appeared on her left, and Isabella and Danny slammed into Lacy right as the angel almost hit. The angel instead killed a tree right behind her, and Lacy laid on the ground beneath her compatriots. 

***

A forest stood in the way of Main Street. So they parked the winnebago where the forest began and readied themselves. Gwen looked at Quentin, as he finished putting all his weapons into his coat, to Joshua as he assembled all his blades into his buster sword. “You guys ready?” Gwen asked, cocking her shotgun. 

“Yay verily!” Quentin said. 

Joshua grunted. 

“Alright, let’s-”

A voice stretched across the town square reclaimed by nature. “Welcome home, dear.”

Gwen froze a moment, and gradually pulled her gaze towards the source. The years had been good to her mother: she had to be pushing sixty but could pass for a decade younger. Only a few shocks of gray mixed in with her brown hair, and her body still primarily lean muscle rather than fat. She carried a tommy gun at her side, casually walking up to them with it in hand, managing to look glamorous in a flowing orange and red Sovereignty cloak splattered in crimson and obsidian blood, and nonchalant despite her weapon being bigger than her midsection. 

“Mom,” Gwen said. Tears welled up in her eyes, and decades worth of painful memories flooded her throat and the hollow at the front of her head. 

“Yes,” Caroline said. “My daughter. I’ve been waiting to see you again for so long.” 

“So have I,” Gwen confessed.

Quentin put himself between Gwen and her mother. “Hello, Madam Koenig-Albrecht.”

Caroline smirked- Gwen wasn’t sure if the red lips were makeup or bloodstain. “It’s just Albrecht. My own side of the family only ever had so much use to me. Alistair was the one person with whom I’ve ever truly belonged.”

“Ah. Well then you’ll understand me when I say what I am about to say: my name is Quentin Jeong. I’m a member of the Damocles Guild… And I suppose now I am among the highest ranking senior members. And I wish to marry your daughter!”

“... And this is… You’re asking my permission?” Caroline squinted. 

“No. Merely declaring my intent,” Quentin said simply. 

Caroline chewed on that for a moment. “I won’t judge your taste in men, daughter mine, if for no other reason than my own mother has always struggled to afford me that courtesy. Even now, if you can believe it, while she presently supports our ambitions.”

“Well I’m glad we could come to that much of an understanding,” Gwen said. “Is there a version of this where we don’t have to fight?”

Caroline chuckled. “I’m afraid not. You decided that when you killed Arthur, when you killed Tristan and Isolde and Morganna, and when you killed Elaine.”

“Just like you decided it when you brought Danny here, when you raised him the way you did?” Gwen said. “Do you have any idea what you put him through?”

“Yes. Of course I do. I’m an empath,” Caroline said, very slowly, as if she were addressing a handicapped child. “What I know now, what I should have known then, was that he was too weak for any of it to work. The seventh child of two seventh children- you’d think he’d be made of stronger stuff. I cannot even begin to tell you how disappointed I am in him. And in you.”

“Yeah, that fucking figures.”

“Language, dear. You should really-”

Gwen fired her gun. The round soared over Quentin’s broad shoulder, then grazed the top of Caroline’s. She dropped her tommy gun as she winced in pain, fresh blood coming out to further decorate her robe. Caroline balked as she clutched her shoulder. “Very well then, Guinevere.”

Ghouls began to pour out from the buildings around them, all armed with melee weapons. They met the ghouls in a fray, fighting with swords and axes and knives. 

“I don’t have time for this,” Gwen grunted. 

A fresh spray of bullets launched through the air and punctured the heads of a half-dozen ghouls like water balloons. A black SUV screeched out from the south, Alice Carmichael firing a semi-automatic rifle like a madwoman. The SUV crashed into a heavily-deformed ghoul emerging from a nearby house, and Alice and Hannibal dove out with fresh shotguns. 

“YOU WANT SOME OF THIS, MOTHERFUCKERS!” Alice screamed. 

“I THINK THEY WANT SOME OF THIS, THE BASTARDS!” Hannibal screamed, unleashing a rain of artillery.

“Then go,” Quentin said to Gwen. “Save Lacy. Save Danny. Kill your father. They need you. We can handle this.”

“Are you sure?” Gwen asked. 

“OF COURSE!” Quentin said. 

Joshua high-fived him. 

“I love you,” Gwen said. 

“And I love you,” Quentin said, drawing his own tommy gun from his overcoat and opening a spray of fire on his enemies.
Gwen charged into the forest. She saw her mother drop to the ground and avoid the bullet spray, but other than that she didn’t look back. 

Forward. Forward. Forward. 

***

Lacy and Danny’s Stars both danced alongside Alistair’s while they fought. Isabella kept him dodging, teleporting to all sides of him trying to gain an opening, while Lacy and Danny launched their own attacks as support fire. Lacy stood to Alistair’s left, Danny to the right, Isabella weaving back and forth. They fought in a field of ashes and fallen trees.

“How’s it going?” Drew asked, standing in the air above her atop what appeared to be a levitating soap box.

“Now’s not a good time, teach,” Danny said. 

“What he said,” Lacy said. 

Isabella gave a weird look. Alistair just seemed confused. 

Lacy seized the opportunity and fired a wind vortex at Alistair, her arms throbbing and her chest tight. The Stardust had been largely expended for miles and miles- everyone was stuck using their Starlight directly, burning it and feeling the pain. Alistair was a beast, howling as he burned more and more Entropy shutting out the attacks, turning more and more of the surrounding area to ash. Isabella slammed World-Carver into his shield- it didn’t cut through it, but it wasn’t decayed by the Entropy either. If that thing could land a direct hit, it might be their best bet at winning. 

Alistair was getting sloppy. In the distance, the music of gunfire filled the borders of Dresden, ghouls fighting soldiers, only a few mages present to even the odds. This might work. All they had to do was-

Alistair reached for the clouds and launched a fireball into the air, a signal flare that exploded against the darkened gray sky. And then the King of the Ghouls smiled with his wide maw of shark-teeth. “The second wave starts now,” Alistair said. “My forces in nearby compounds will march on this town now. An additional one thousand ghouls, many of them necromancers.”

Lacy suppressed a gulp as she circled him, Danny and Isabella mirroring her from different points of Alistair’s radius. “You think that’s enough to take on everyone? The national guard is here- you planning on taking on the whole US government?”

Alistair cackled, hunched over, claws scraping against the ashen ground. “Given that another of my battalions- a far larger one- has also just received the order to march on Washington DC, I must say yes. Not only my ghouls, but mages from my wife’s school as well- soon the entire United States government will be trapped in waking nightmares, paralyzed and unable to give the orders, ripe for the feasting. I’d hoped to devour the president myself, but I’ll let one of my generals handle it. Soon, this nation’s capital will be reduced to a ruin. New York and Los Angeles will follow soon thereafter, once Houses Kishimoto and Achebe are convinced by this display of power to enter the fray. Then we begin work in South America. And finally, finally, we will take our rightful place, ruling in the light, rather than scheming in the dark.”

“And the rest of the world?” Lacy asked. 

“Once we’ve gained access to America’s nuclear codes, they will fall into line,” Alistair said. “If not…  Well, nobody will miss… China. For instance.”

Lacy gritted her teeth. “It won’t work.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because we’re here to stop you!”

“This doesn’t end with me,” Alistair said. “Even if you kill me-”

“It won’t end with you,” Lacy cut him off. “You’re right about that. But the ghouls will be less of a problem. And when you’re dead, everyone will know that people like you can be defeated. And it’ll get easier to fight you and your ilk.”

“No it won’t,” Alistair said. “If anything, it will get more difficult. If I’m defeated, others will rise to take my place. They will take it upon themselves to succeed where I have failed, to prove my dream was not impossible. As I’m sure you’ll find, our lives are not just our own, and our dreams are not just our own.”

Lacy twitched with indignation. “And that’s why I’ll stop you! To end this dream you’re all trapped in once and for all!”

“Why does it offend you so much? You’ve had this dream yourself. To control the world means-”

“Getting to shut it out, I know. Never having to be hurt again. But it’s not worth it. Not when it’s paid for in blood.”

“I’m losing hope for you, Lacy. I thought we understood each other.”

“I do understand you, Alistair. Honestly, we’re the same,” Lacy said while Danny did a double-take as he positioned himself directly behind his father. “And that’s why I’m gonna be the one to put you down. Drew always said I was my own worst enemy.”

“That’s true,” Drew said. 

“Who is Drew?” Alistair said. 

“A good man,” Lacy answered. Danny needed a distraction while he scaled the tree behind Alistair, the one standing tree left in the area. “Something you’ve always refused to be, even though you had the means and you had the choice. But instead you chose this. Don’t you get it- you’re just letting your family continue to hurt you by doing this!”

“My family is everything to me,” Alistair said. “I honor them through my actions.”

“And why do they deserve to be honored?”

“Because they are family.”

“Shut the fuck up, Dad,” Danny said, jumping from the tree and landing on Alistair’s chest while Isabella carved a portal. Danny grabbed hold of his father and exploded with fire. Alistair shouted as he ignited, and then kicked Danny in the gut and sent him flying. Danny landed on his elbow, crying out in agony as the bone snapped clean. 

Isabella appeared to the left of Alistair and put World-Carver through his ribs, and the charred ghoul swept-kicked her and pried the sword loose. He tossed it to the side, then grabbed Isabella by the leg and crushed it below the knee. She screamed, and Lacy’s vision went red. The pain in her arms and chest evaporated momentarily as she released a hail of wind, and Danny, from his sitting position, mixed in a fireball and created a burning whirlwind. Alistair stood against it, struggling to kill the flame as he bled black. 

A bullet sang through the air and tore through Alistair in the same spot as the sword-wound. A white-haired woman emerged from the woods, led by a white Star, holding a shotgun in one hand and World-Carver in the other. “What’s going on, old man?”

Alistair laughed. “Is it your turn to berate me now, Guinevere?”

“Nope. Just here to help kill you.”

“You’re here,” Lacy said, relief flooding her.

“Yes, finally, you’re here so you can abandon these poor children again,” Alistair said. 

“Shut the fuck up!” Lacy and Danny both said. Isabella just gave him the finger from her position on the ground. 

“You’re going to defend her? After she abandoned you both, knowingly, willingly? You say I wish to honor a family that doesn’t deserve it, but I never abandoned anyone, unlike her.”

“Gwen came back for us,” Lacy said. “She didn’t have to, but she did.”

“She didn’t even know I was alive,” Danny said. 

“Is that what she told you?” Alistair said. “That’s really quite amusing. Both that she said that, and that you believed it, apparently.”

Gwen shot at Alistair four times, each round absorbed by the Entropy shield at seemingly no cost to the Ghoul King. 

“Of course, she doesn’t want you to hear this,” Alistair said. “She doesn’t want you to hear about how she knew you were alive, Daniel. She heard your cries beneath the ashes on the night she killed your siblings. She heard you, and she turned and ran because her fear of me outstripped her love for you.”

Lacy blinked. Danny’s breathing went shallow and sharp. 

Gwen said nothing, did nothing. Her heartbeat spiraled out of control, a schizophrenic rhythm underscored with shame.

It couldn’t be true.

“And as to you, Lacy O’Sullivan,” Alistair said. “What do you think brought her to this town, all those years ago? It was you. She was meant to bring you into this conflict all along. She recognized you the moment she saw you. And once again, she was more afraid of me than anything else, and so she ran.”

Gwen was frozen solid. All around them were sounds of death and chaos: guns, screaming, slashing, burning, exploding. All the hideous, violent noises of the world, and for once none of them were close to Lacy at all. It was almost as if they couldn’t have possibly been further away. The only one that was close was Gwen’s thunderous heartbeat.

“That’s not true,” Lacy said. “There’s no way that it’s…”

The lack of response she received, plus Gwen’s ever-rising pulse, were all the confirmation she needed. Even still, Danny said, “It’s true. I can feel it.”

Everything went silent. Everything faded. Everything but Gwen. 

The reason she’d been there, that night Drew died… That night Lacy has asked Gwen, begged her, to let her go with her, begged her to free her from her prison, the night Gwen had refused saying Lacy’s wasn’t ready… Gwen had been supposed to take her all along. It was Gwen who hadn’t been ready. Gwen who had been too scared to do anything this whole time. 

It was Gwen who hadn’t been willing to move forward. Gwen had known- Gwen had known this entire time about both of them, about everything, and still she-

She-

All of the lies burned inside Lacy’s mind at once. All of the disappointments and all of the resentments and all of the little fires of hatred.

“Lacy,” Gwen said. “Please listen, I-”

“You just keep piling on the lies,” Lacy said, broken glass filling her throat, lightning bursting out of her fingertips.

“I know, and I-”

“I forgive you,” Danny said. 

Lacy twitched and tore her gaze over to Danny. “What?! How? How can you forgive her after she abandoned you!?”

“How can you forgive me after what I did?” Danny whispered. 

Lacy’s chest bobbed up and down, eyes wide, hands shaking. A half-dozen feet to her left, Isabella was looking at her with fear and concern and… Pity. Lacy hadn’t expected that. She wasn’t accustomed to it. And Gwen simply stood there, drinking it all in. Not running away anymore.

“We’re not better than her,” Danny said. He hitched his thumb at his heavily-breathing, heavily-bleeding father behind him. “But we have to be better than him. Forgiveness has gotta start somewhere.”

“He’s gotta a point,” Drew said.

Lacy closed her eyes. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit- this was still part of Drew’s test. Forgiving Danny was the easy part. This, though… 

She looked back to Gwen and met her eyes. 

“I didn’t know about Elaine until afterwards. I should’ve told you,” Gwen said. “I should’ve told you lots of things. I’m sorry. But please. Let me make it right.”

Lacy listened to the world, and found rhythm in the disparate noise. And looking at her mentor, looking at the pain and guilt plain to see on the face of someone who was trying so hard to be better, Lacy said, “Okay. Fine. You wanna make it right? Let’s start with the problem we all have in common.”

Gwen smiled, nodded.

“How unfortunate,” Alistair said. “I was really hoping that would go somewhere.”

“What was it you used to say about family not fighting each other, old man?” Gwen said. “It was really quite funny.”

“I suppose, as you would say, this isn’t truly a family.”

“No,” Gwen said. “It is. As much as we all hate it. And I think it’s time that all came to a head.”

 Gwen picked the sword off the ground and tossed it to Isabella, just in time for Alistair to fall onto all fours and begin to scream. He went awash with red light and purple light, no longer discerning between the two, no longer caring by the look of it. He summoned his Toter Engel, and Gwen did the same with her own, the two spells colliding. Danny added his own fire, backing his sister up, creating a red and white kaleidoscope of light and death and agony as cosmic forces collided and the fires of creation and destruction themselves intertwined. Danny and Gwen stood by each other, screaming and laughing respectively as they pushed back against Alistair’s attack, against his shield, against his will itself. But still Alistair stood his ground, his attack holding, his shield holding, even as he lost more and more of himself to the beast.

Lacy reached once more for lightning. Last push- she would have to make it count. 

Something tugged Lacy’s sleeve- Isabella, balancing her weight on her good knee, supporting the other side with her sword. She lowered herself onto the ground and held World-Carver up to Lacy. “I think I finally figured it out, what I’m supposed to do with this, why it called out to me. Something to justify taking it in the first place, some meaning for it all.” 

“What are you-”

“You have to get in close to do any real damage,” Isabella winked.

She carved a portal in the air and tossed World-Carver through it. Lacy nodded and dove in after it, and appeared in the air right above Alistair. She fell through the sky, twirling and spinning as she grabbed hold of World-Carver. The air warped around her as she fell, and yet she felt like she was flying. Finally, nothing had a hold on her. Finally, she was free. Her Star circled her as she dove, and she let it come closer than ever before. It was part of her, and yet she was more than it, more than all the things that made her up. She was Lacy O’Sullivan. It was her name, and her life, and her Destiny, and she was proud of it, dammit. 

She reached for Starlight, ignited it, channeled lightning through her hand and electrified the black blade of World-Carver. It was an extension of her, given life through her magic, channeling raw power. Blue Starlight engulfed her as she screamed a triumphant scream. 

Beneath her, Alistair had lost himself completely, no longer screaming but simply breathing and grunting as he struggled to keep his children at a distance.

Lacy caught up to him, got in close. The lightning shattered the last of his shield, and the blade tore through his skull and destroyed his brain. 

When Lacy landed on the ground, the King of the Ghouls was dead at her feet. 

The rainfall amplified, washing away blood and ashes, washing the pain away from Lacy’s tired body. She fell to her knees and prayed over Alistair’s corpse, prayed for his soul now that his struggle had finally ended, prayed for her own soul after all she had done.