----

Haley, At The Tower

----

Aslan blinked, and I snapped my head out on some primal instinct, biting him by the neck and slamming him into the ground before unloading my fire breath into him between clenched teeth. He was smaller than me in stature, but I had no illusions about the damage I was doing- in a fight between near-unkillable titans, acts like this were purely about keeping him off balance for as long as possible. I picked him up and flung him away across the field, as his back legs kicked out and tore a vicious gash across my chest. I threw him towards the area that had been bleachers not too long ago but was now some kind of tiered colonnades, holding up the tower above us. One interesting thing about battling with deific strength, I mused as he flew, was that nobody got any heavier as you got stronger, so things like a throw became much more effective as a delaying tactic. “GO” I shouted at the Colonel as I raced in the opposite direction, toward the rising dust of Aslan’s impact. I didn’t wait to see if he took my advice.

As I charged at the tower’s rising wall, I fished in my bag of tricks. I no longer had access to the wish engine thanks to Aslan’s bullshit ability to just disenchant my ring, but I still had a Handy Haversack loaded with every 1st through 4th level wand in Pathfinder and that gave me some options. Firepower wasn’t the key here- this fight was about control. Buying time for Delmutt and the Wiltshire Dog to carry out my orders, sent via telepathic link while the gate was still up.

Roy I’d sent by cell phone to disable whatever makeshift receiver the Colonel had attached to his warhead, and then escape with the remainder of the guard. The Dog, I’d asked to wait at the top of the tower and sidetrack Randall, who I assumed would be bringing the kids there while pursuing his own tower-based agenda. Delmutt- when I finally caught up to her, after 10 minutes out here or 100 years in the Haley Dimension- I asked to go and find me a very specific piece of furniture, and bring it back here. I could only hope she’d been able to gate out before my connection was severed. In the meantime, I needed to delay this powerhouse as long as possible. I had no illusions about being able to kill him- or that it would even take, if it did. I was just a speed bump for now. But I’d tear his axle off anyway, if I could.

Nothing that targets him directly will last. Self-buffs, conjuration and evocation only then. I began reaching into the bag and passing wands from claw to wing, casting as I went. Earth Glide and I slipped beneath the dirt of the stadium, protected from reprisal. Summon Monster IV and dozens of fiendish bulls began to pop up around the arena. Greater Infernal Healing to see to my injuries, Black Tentacles and a dozen pit traps of writhing nastiness sprung up around his likely exit points from the sidelines. I threw one spell after another intended to trip, or grapple, or disarm, or interfere. Anything to slow him down.

It did no good. The marble pillars of the colonnade simply exploded inwards towards me as he came roaring back. His blood was up now, so at least I had his attention, but the force of him was like nothing I’d ever felt. It occurred to me then that we’d never really seen Aslan fight, in the stories. He’d never needed to, outside of the occasional mauling. But oh he was ready to fight now. “YOU DARE” he thundered, and the entire field shook, throwing my summoned beasts to their knees. “YOU DARE,” he roared again, and the shattered stone around him began to form itself into giant-sized humanoids- golems, then. “I will pluck you from this world as a physician cleans a wound, Dragon. It will be sterilized of your presence.” The earth itself began to respond to his command- the field separating around me as I swam through it, leaving me exposed. He opened his mouth once again, before I could flap my wings or leap to safety, and a radiance formed above him. He was still roaring but it had taken on a song-like quality, an aspect of Creation now, and the thing above him was looking an awful lot like… like a sun.

A beam of pure golden fire lanced out and took me square in the chest. My draconic qualities granted me immunity to the heat, but there were other energies at play. It felt like divine lightning, seizing every muscle of me, leaking from fingertips and eyes and the end of my tail. I could feel it scouring the surface of me, tearing away bits and pieces in a never ending torrent. It was like being hit by God’s own sandblaster. I snapped out a Dimension Door and emerged elsewhere on the field, panting, dripping blood from a thousand cuts and blasted patches of scale. From the outside that beam looked like a child burning ants with a laser, as it swept across my summons. His marble golems advanced, and the earth of the stadium itself was beginning to coalesce into a pair of giant forms behind him. His power began to sweep towards me and I was forced to Dimension Door again, as my regeneration worked its slow magic. I popped a wand of Cure Critical Wounds out and hastened it along.

I was doing this wrong. I knew that. I could perhaps tackle him in physical combat, but he was effectively immortal as long as his narrator- child or otherwise- was engaged with his narrative. I could throw summons against him, but he controlled the shape of the world itself on this battleground. Pathfinder’s low-level summons were simply not enough, used one at a time, to turn the tide of this battle. Even as I dodged and thought, one of his golems simply punted my fiendish bulls aside, bearing down on me. I needed to stop thinking… it hit me, then. Like a monster.

In one sense, I’d received an insane power-up with my skill set. But as we’d been learning, in this brave new world when it came down to a clash of powers it was less about the absolute power-level and more about the narrative priority. Pathfinder was barely even a story, in a lot of senses- it was more like a toolset for communal storytelling. Versatile, but it was no wonder that most of what it could offer didn’t take priority over something as fundamental as the magic of a character who lay at the roots of much of modern fantasy. On the other hand, he had priority to spare, but no flexibility- he was too firmly bound to his story. So what can I do that he can’t? I can change. I was fighting with the tools Pathfinder had given me- the tools of the villain, the unbeatable dragon, the non-player character meant for the hero to overcome. Luke and Darth Vader, wasn’t it, Dog? He’d already blown up my Death Star, disabling the whole wish engine with an effortless roar, but- I didn’t have to accept that framing, did I? He had his own assets and vulnerabilities.

A Fool’s Teleport turned me invisible while making it appear that I’d teleported again. The monsters cast around for me, and I threw out a Major Image of myself stepping out of another dimension door on the other side of the field. That wouldn’t fool Aslan for long, but- seconds were all I needed. Time enough for a Sending to get the word out, and a Shape Change. By the time Aslan realized what I’d done, I was stepping out of another door right beside him, human once more.

“Hmm, there is no shame in surrender. Expose your neck and I’ll end it quickly,” the Lion rumbled, even as all his forces turned towards me. He was much bigger when I was only six feet tall, I considered, even as I stared him down. He did not pause or give me any room to consider his offer, this time- his great white-hot orb swept its gaze around and towards me.

“No such luck. Just trying a different toolset. How do you feel about swords and cavalry?“ I asked, pulling the vorpal sword from my back and slashing it through the air, cleaving that ball- and everything behind it for several hundred feet- in half. The tower groaned as more columns fell away, and I hoped I hadn’t hit anything load bearing. Then the orb itself detonated, and Aslan and I were flung in opposite directions, several of his golems disintegrated in the blast. I was scoured once again by divine energies, though this time they burned a bit less. Odd. I guessed the parts it had burned the first time hadn’t regrown. And I was lucky my soul wasn’t evil, or whatever it was scouring, I supposed, or the fire might have burned me away entirely.

He landed on his feet, catlike, while I slammed in an undignified heap against another column at the edge of the field. The impact of it broke bones- I couldn’t place a hitpoint number on it, but between burns and breaks I wasn’t doing great, and the regeneration would take time I didn’t have now. His minions closed on me as I struggled back to my feet, sword stabbed into the ground for leverage. Blood was dripping from a gash along my head that was slow in healing, and my breath was coming in ragged gasps. “I guess this is where I say something heroic and make a final stand, and- oh, I blew that opening,” I muttered, setting myself to charge into them. It didn’t matter. Quip or not, the cavalry I’d sent for came anyway, right on cue.

Slightly less than ten thousand angry clone-Haleys, each one a dragon in its own right, armed with wands of Detonate and Summon Monster IV, tore onto the field from every opening. Summoned from their battlefield outside they swarmed Aslan’s summons and the Lion himself. The field was awash in fiery explosions and roaring elementals in the blink of an eye. Every golem and the two gigantic earth elementals made from the field itself were torn down or blown apart in seconds. Aslan himself seemed beset, buried under a pile of screeching, flapping, fire breathing lizards. I knew better than to hope it would kill him, but- maybe it would hold him?

No, even that was too much. As I threw healing magic at myself and raced to close the distance, he simply… stood up. Bearing the weight of a hundred dragons dogpiled on top of him, he stood up, and strode forward. He said one word, and it was calm, and collected, but it carried to the far corners of the stadium. “Enough.” I had just enough time to think oh good, he’s a World of Warcraft villain now before he began to radiate. It was like his summoned sun, but worse in every way. The blinding white light was coming from him. “I am the scion of the Emperor-Over-The-Sea”, he intoned, and the luminance increased. My nearest clone-selves in the dogpile began to come apart under the unrelenting glare. As they died they reverted to snow and ash, evaporating into nothingness. “I am the song and the singer. Kingmaker, door-opener, keeper of the way and the key. Scribe of the Deep Magic, judge from the depths of time. Your soul, all souls, are mine to dispense of.” The columns of the tower itself were beginning to soften and run under the heat of his presence, and my clones were now dying faster than they could reach him- they did not appear immune to his radiance. The area of scorched, liquified ground began to extend from him like a wave, toward me. Once again for the third time in as many minutes I could feel bits of me burning away, but- it’s definitely less, now. Not even enough to overwhelm my healing. I struggled forward against the pressure. He continued to speak even as he stood on what was, essentially, lava. “You do not know me, Dragon, but I know you, and I judge you unworthy. My light is unbearable to mortals- let it scour you from this place, and know no more.”

The wave of energy coming off him strengthened again, and the whole tower began to shed bits and pieces of the vaulted ceiling as he simply melted everything inside that place that might have been holding it up. I continued pushing forward against the light, dodging the falling rubble, leaning into the force as it blasted out everything inside of me it could reach. It wasn’t much, by the end. I saw his eyes widen when he realized I was still coming on, walking over that liquid fire and through the waves of his radiance, clothes burnt away but still with sword in hand. Finally I understood what it was he was burning out of me, and I smiled at him. “How can you-” he asked, before I cut him off.

The sword flashed, and he roared and reared back, one eye blinded. “I don’t think there was much that was mortal left in me,” I said, pulling back for another strike. Flash, and his belly opened even as he swiped at me with those great black claws. I ducked. “Congratulations, you cauterized the remainder and marked me as your equal, idiot. Not a god and a hero anymore, just two gods, the dragon and the lion, fighting in a colosseum over who owns the world. And when you get into those fights-” I raised my sword for the coup de gras- “it’s the one with the better bite that wins.”

He held up a paw and spoke weakly “Stay your blade, Dragon-”

“My. Name. Is. Haley.” My sword flashed down and his head rolled at my feet, glassy eyed, and the radiance cut off. I was plunged into darkness for a moment by the contrast of it- just blackness and the sound of a strained and damaged tower threatening to come down at any moment. I stood panting, bleeding, trying to find my composure. Then the illumination began- once again, from his dismembered body. I looked at him in exasperation. “Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” It seemed I was going to need to make one final stop, and quickly.

----

Sean, Wonderland

----

How interesting, I thought, that we’d reached yet another climax and here I was in Wonderland once again. I’d like to tell you that I didn’t let Randall Flagg run, that I ended him quick and clean. But I was not quite the Sean he remembered, and I had a mean streak to me. And I had reason to believe he’d escape a quick death anyway. When I chased him, I was in no hurry. I didn’t shoot him as he turned to run, instead following at an ambling walk. His mad dash across the terrain of Wonderland did him no good- he was an outsider here, and the world resisted him. Roots tripped him and hedges refused to part. As he exited the garden the branches of its bramble-fencing tore at him, and the card soldiers attempted to cut him down. Those he stabbed, and I felt regret as I saw them die. I wasn’t even sure they were fully sentient, but… every second he lives is some new life ruined, you idiot. I picked up my pace.

He carried on for a good long time, busting through light forestland and leaping across tea sets, spinning out illusions and tricks as he went. One or two of them almost caught me. At a fork I saw him running up both paths, and glancing down saw only one set of tracks, leading right. I raised my hand and my revolver spoke once, and the one running in that direction vanished as though it had only ever been a trick of the light. The one on the left looked back and cursed, and that was the one I gave chase to.

Later, I caught him on the shoreline with a hostage. It was a talking walrus, too big to get out of his way, and he held a hunting knife to its throat, grinning at me. “Well now, lawman, how do you feel about risking an innocent? One step closer and it dies,” he said, poking the knife into flesh. The walrus squealed and shook, and I paused for a moment. He said no more, only watching warily, and after a second’s hesitation I stepped forward. There was something about the scene that registered as unreal to me, and I trusted the instinct. He jammed the knife into the beast’s throat and it fell to the ground, thrashing mightily- for a moment my heart skipped, as I saw a vision of my own death once again. But I kept walking forward, and the smile dropped from his face before he- and the walrus- simply vanished once again. Whew. More tricks, illusions to delay me.

Wonderland itself lead me to him, in the end- it reacted poorly to his presence. Everywhere he ran, things turned sour. Dark things crawled from the ground, the opiate-smoking caterpillars shivered with mad dreams, the plants themselves withered and grew sour. I had no need to ask which way he had gone- I simply followed the trail of destruction and allowed him to tire himself out, never letting my guard down.

It saved me in the end. I was tracking him through a brook and down a hill when he sprung his ambush on me. As I crossed the narrow channel he rose up out of the water like a troll from the tales of old, and slashed that knife with his good hand at my hamstrings. I jumped forwards and that saved my mobility but earned me a wicked cut across the heel of my foot, instead. As I fell down the hill I controlled my roll, pistols out, until the creek came into view again but he had already vanished. Still- he was present, not running anymore.

I stood, gingerly on the one heel, and took in the scene. A summer breeze blew across the long grass of the hill. Not a cloud in the sky, not a creature to be heard. It would have been idyllic if an invisible devil wasn’t trying to murder me for the second time that day. But he’d chosen the wrong battlefield. I let my hands fall to my sides, closed my eyes. Extended the senses that Sherriff had learned to rely on in a hundred years of battle on the wild prairies of his home. The sound of wind on the grass, the smell of water and dirt, the faintest tremor of movement and sound as a man brushed against a plant- there. My hand snapped up and I took my second shot, thundering so loud that the grass around me was blown back and the grass around him was set alight in small blazes when it hit. He screamed and fell to the ground, and I walked towards him, stomping out the fires where I could.

He’d taken it in the shoulder and lost more-or-less his whole damn arm, the one with the good hand. He lay on the ground panting. “Well? You going to kill me or you want we should run a while, yet?”

I crouched down, never taking my eyes off him. “If I kill you, you may end up back in Haley’s world- maybe a little worse for wear, maybe not. And I can’t get back there. So I need to take my time with you, understand?” He looked a bit confused. “I don’t have any intention of letting it end so soon, Randall. The madness in Wonderland goes a lot deeper than you, or I, have ever seen. I thought we might explore it together.” There was real fear in his eyes now. “You have something of mine, see.”

Realization dawned on him and he snatched out the ring he’d stolen. “Take it then, and fuck you!” He threw it at me with his bad hand, and I stepped forward, letting it bounce off my chest. As I’d anticipated, he went for the knife when he anticipated I would be distracted. I booted it out of his fingers and into the long grass, then placed a foot firmly on his chest. He spit at me. “What? What more can you want from me? You want me to tell your fucking future? Let me get my cards, gunslinger.” He laughed at his private joke, but I didn’t remove my boot.

A war was taking place inside me. Shoot him, damn it, insisted the side of me that was Sherriff. He can’t dodge death if it’s standing on his chest. Sean balked, though- he was a rotten piece of shit but he was dead anyway, if he kept bleeding, and Sean had no stomach for cold-blooded murder. The two of me struggled, back and forth, and my gun swung up but did not fire. Instead, I asked one word. “Why?”

He paused, at the question. His blood was still flowing, gradually staining the ground around him red. I knew he didn’t have a huge amount of time but I wanted my answer. He looked me in the eye, for a while, and eventually spoke without anger or prevarication. “What else could I do?”

I swung my pistol slightly, in an encompassing gesture. “I don’t know. Anything? All your power, your mind, your tricks. You dance from ruin to ruin, in King’s books. Yet everything I know about you says you’re the greatest slave of all. That’s why Aslan had no fear of you. He knew that no matter what you did, it would probably serve him in some way if he was the victor. And here you are. At the same end you always reach. Why bother?”

He grimaced and broke eye contact. “We are not all so free as you. We can’t all be the protagonists. There are things out there beyond our stories, you know. You don’t want to see what happens when they get involved.” Images of the tribunal outside of space and time that I’d witnessed flashed in my mind and I shivered. “I asked you earlier today- if all stories are real, where’s God? I’ll tell you where- they ate Him. Maybe- “ and here his grin returned- “you’ll see what I mean some day?” The sly old devil looked at me and despite his appearance I felt it, the weight of the years in him, thousands of them, millions. Despite everything he’d done, the faintest flame of sympathy lit in my heart. “So I dance my dance and I take my small victories where I can, my revenge against the stories that rule us, and the real key, I’ve found-” he moved like lightning, jamming a switchblade up into my calf with that red-raw hand of his- “is to always carry a second knife.”

I roared and fell back, and heard him cackling. Even as I gripped my leg and sat up the sound was fading, carried away in the wind like a thin fabric. In the matted grass where he’d been laying- a set of bleached white bones was laying with a shattered shoulder. Like he’d been dead in that place for a hundred years or more. I knew that trick. He’s on his way back then. So much for sympathy. I took the ring from the ground, and called to the Dog.

----

Haley

----

Night was falling as I crashed to the balcony of the throne room with a mighty THWUMP, thoroughly startling the two infomorph guards- I assumed they were infomorphs, anyway, that or chitinous aliens. My wounds had not finished healing before I’d stuffed the Lion bits in my upended Handy Haversack and hauled his carcass up the tower, flying as hard as my wings would carry me. Even as I rolled inside I could feel the sack beginning to pulse and kick- he was coming together and waking up, and he was going to be very unhappy when he did.

Delmutt- or something I assumed was Delmutt, with a new body- and the children were standing inside, along with the nuclear warhead and a large steamer trunk. I raced towards them and they quailed at the sight of a huge bloodied dragon charging forward like a steam locomotive. All except Skylar, of course. She grinned and placed her hand on the trunk. No time for niceties. “NOW, kids!” I shouted, hefting the sack. Skylar pulled and the other three quickly joined her, prying that trunk open- as the lid came loose I felt the strangest breeze from it- cool and wet, wind from another world, I supposed. I stifled it swiftly, stuffing the entire Haversack full of pissed-off god cat into that trunk and then jumping back. The children shoved it closed even as an earth-shattering roar began to build- it escalated to ear splitting volume in milliseconds and then vanished, a physical weight off of all of us the second that lid fully closed. Aslan had left the building.

Boden kicked the side of the chest. “And stay out!” I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment.

Delmutt nodded at me. “Miss Haley. Now what? My ring failed when yours did, and the gate we used is miles from here, at their home. This trunk will not hold for long.” Indeed it was already rocking and shaking- as long as his narrator was alive, it seemed, it would remain an active pathway into our world. I wasn’t about to hurt a single one of the kids, assuming they were even responsible for him- I had my doubts. And I couldn’t detonate the nuke to destroy it and the thrones except as a last resort- too much collateral, without the wish engine to evacuate everyone. I paused, weighing my options.

“It has to be the nuke. I can’t just teleport the thrones and the trunk into the sun. It has to be neat. The weapon of their dupe, maneuvered into place by their own machinations, detonated by the victor to put a cap on their story. We’re half a mile above the ground and I can limit the fallout, but it has to end with this bomb.” I steeled myself to tell the others to get in the car and go. I’d set it off myself if I had to. I might survive if I made it through the blast wave.

“Ahem.” A polite throat clearing, from the ceiling. We turned and there standing upside down above us was the Dog. “I come bearing a letter, and a gift.” He horked and a slightly damp envelope fell out, along with a ring. Sean’s ring. The writing on the letter was simple, blocky- he’d always had terrible handwriting. It just read “To Haley.” All my breath left me in a rush, and I sat down hard on the ground. I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. He’s alive.

The Dog prompted me. “Revelations later, evacuations now. Put it on and end this, Flagg will be back soon.” I did as he asked. Whatever Aslan had used to deactivate our gates, Sean’s had not been in active use at the time- or his power did not cross stories in that way. Regardless, the ring worked- I felt my telepathic bond light up as my finger extended into that space, connecting me to my simulacrums. They’d been- I turned to Delmutt. “You turned them into shrines?”

She shrugged. “Hundreds of two-ton horse sized dragon statues, still breathing and blinking but all standing perfectly still throughout our cities for decades on end. Why not decorate them? Things kind of built up from there.” Ugh, their idolizing me was going to turn out to be a thing wasn’t it. The simulacra shook the ribbons and incense off, stepped down from their little pagodas, and began their candle ceremonies once more. First I multiplied myself until I had as many clones as I could realistically handle- perhaps two hundred thousand. Then I wished the time differential between our two planes down to the normal max, double-time for them- that was quite enough of that, I didn’t need them diverging by aeons while we sorted out the planet . Finally , I began snapping people up. First the air car and Delmutt and the kids, but then expanding. Roy had lead his men into another pocket realm, and I found that for once I didn’t even need a spell- being the defacto owner gave me some interesting perks. I simply squeezed them all out into the main dimension, spilling them out into my central park. Aslan’s men, the vast majority of whom were still alive, thankfully, I ported into a separate holding cell. I’d figure out what to do with them later.

I did some quick calculations. A 350kt airburst around 2,500 feet in the air was probably not going to leave an enormous amount of fallout, but the air blast and thermal effects would probably injure or kill in a 10km radius. That covered more-or-less the entire city, from here. At least they’d all be susceptible to my teleports with no further story interference. Across the potential blast radius Haleys appeared, one for every living person I could detect, and asked for consent to get them out of harm’s way. It went… poorly. Maybe ten percent agreed immediately. The rest resisted and had to be snatched and thrown through portals. I didn’t win any brownie points, but finally it was done. All but one who refused to go, one who I owed a moment of my time.

I found the Colonel at the base of the tower. I guessed he hadn’t gotten all the way out of Aslan’s range after all, because horrifying burns covered half of his body. He coughed weakly and looked at me blearily with one good eye. “Come to see me off then? Tell my kids, I did right by them.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t. You tried to kill them, because you felt like you owned them, and pride wouldn’t let you ask for help. And now you’re risking my timetable for some grand exit. Fuck you.”

He snarled at me. “You stand there so high and mighty with all your power and dictate to the rest of us. We have to face this world with nothing but our hands and our minds. So what if I compromise myself, to win? You’d rather I should have lost with clean hands? The whole world in darkness but at least I didn’t betray my values, is that it? Let me die in peace.”

I knelt down next to him and hit him with the infernal healing. His eyes widened as he felt his body knitting back together. “You dirtied your hands and you would have lost anyway. You’re not dying, I have no reason to let you. You’ll live a long life, and your kids will know who and what you are. It’s not for me to judge your ethics. It’s for the ones who have to come after you. The ones who get to live in the victory you’d have carved from their bones.”

With that I snapped him out of that reality, and left one final spell over the bomb’s detonator.

----

Randall Flagg, The Throne Room

----

Randall Flagg stumbled out of the materializing door. “Ha! Can’t keep me down, dog! Now get over here, I need new shoes.” He paused. The grand room was empty. Night had finally come to the tower, and everyone was gone. From the balcony at one end, he saw the very last rays of the setting sun disappear. “Now where’d everyone get to?” Then he noticed it. Sitting by the four thrones, a quaking, rocking trunk with cracks beginning to appear. And next to it on a wood pallet, a 5 foot tall black metal cone. The nuclear warhead of a Minuteman ICBM, unless he missed his guess. On the surface of the metal a message had been painted- “No gods, no kings.” Above the bomb a small golden Mage Hand hovered briefly, before descending into the casing. He had just enough time to grasp his situation and mutter “Ah shit, not again.” Then the fire took lion, and thrones, and man all alike.

----

Haley

----

Distantly, I watched as a blinding radiance shattered the tower, casting it to the ground like a child scattering blocks. I could see a swarm of my clone-selves already on hand with spells to shield and channel the radiation and purify any fallout. But the explosion itself, I wanted. An end to the tower, to Aslan, and a signal in the form of a miles-tall fireball to any other stories that might come sniffing.

We’re still here. We bite back. This is not our end, this is not your weakness to exploit. This is a beginning. Just watch where we go now.

When the remainder of the unfiltered blast slammed into and through me, it was as a wave of force that felt good on my armored skin. Cleansing. As the sound crashed around me, so loud that it felt like the earth was shaking, I turned and headed for the nearest gate. I had plans to set in motion, and a letter to read.

----

END OF ARC 2

----