“No,” Percival agreed. “It’s not a theory at all. It’s real. And it’s inourhands.”
“Step back from the sword,” Roy said, not sure whether he was speaking to himself or to Percival. He could feel himself being pulled toward it, like an invisible hand had oozed out of the blade and was lassoing around his torso, tightening its grasp, drawing him ever forward. “Step back—”
“Iwantthis, Roy!” Percival shouted, his voice cracking. “Ineedthis.”Everybody wants something to be remembered by,he’d said in the catacombs. He clutched the edge of the desk with his right hand, a pillar to hold his frame. He seemed trapped, enmeshed in a war between vulnerability and resistance. “You can’t take this from me, Roy, not this.Please, damn it, not this—”
“Let me do it, then, Percival,” Roy screamed, not caring how desperate he sounded. He wanted so badly to leap forward, to hold Percival back and away from the sword, but he was revisited again by the eerie, premonitory sensation that its scabbard was decorated with thousands—or millions—of unseen eyes, watching him with predatory, ravenous hunger. Then he staggered back, horrified. “How many times must I repeat myself?”
Percival sneered. “Enough to stop me. We came here to do this. You said yourself you need to be doing something. Well, this is it, Roy. This is the doing!” He looked back at the sword. He took firm hold of the curved scabbard and tugged on the hilt. The blade didn’t come free, though it hummed from within its casing, as though in answer to his efforts. He tried once more, the muscles in his arm flexing, a trickle of sweat coursing down his forehead. Then he relaxed his grip. “Don’t say a word, Roy. Please, don’t do it.”
Roy disobeyed, but instead of disputing with Percival, he gave him an instruction. “Try twisting them in opposite directions,” he said, his pulse pounding at the hollow of his throat. “The hilt and the scabbard, I mean. It’s what—it’s what my brother used to do whenever he practiced his sword work.”
Percival looked annoyed, but he followed the directives. Instantly, the scabbard fell to the ground with a ringing whine, exposing about four feet of midnight-dark metal outlined with a lambent silver glow. A faded hum, true to Percival’s claim in the catacombs, issued from the blade. He hefted the sword into both his hands and grunted at its weight, astonishment sweeping across his face. He tottered back and forth for a moment, tracing an arc of light through the air.
As that slender beam of radiance came toward Roy, he was struck by a wave of disorientation so mind-bendingly painful that he blacked out for a second, or maybe it was a minute, and was then battered by a crushing vertigo. The world seemed distorted, twisted out of shape. He had no longer than a second to look through this shattered version of reality before that indistinct humming rose to a deafening, ghostly scream. The din went on and on, seemingly infinite, so wretched and feral compared to the clamor that had emanated from the walls of the crypt and from the creature that had first accosted Roy.
It came to him then that never in his life, until this moment, had he known real terror. As he thought this, Roy ran a hand down his chest, H-I-S-T-O-R-Y scarred into his skin, and still felt the truth of this feeling now. He had sensed the wrongness of the sword since he’d laid eyes upon it, yes, but now he knew the difference between sensing evil and seeing evil. Now he knew he was too late to do anything about it.
He took in a shuddering breath, so deep that he was sure there was no air left in the room for Percival to breathe. Somewhere beyond the tears blurring his vision, though, Percival was lurching from foot to foot, the sword clutched tightly in his shaking fists, his teeth gritted and his eyes firmly locked on Roy’s. The look of mingled guilt, horror, and fascination on his face was almost too much for Roy to bear.
But he didn’t have to, for not even a moment passed after he’d met Percival’s gaze before everything went dark.
From within the darkness, however, a rapid succession of nightmarish images rushed by, all laid over Roy’s vision. He was lying upon the summit of a mountain littered with corpses and toppled flags, slashed open from his neck to his groin. Crows were pecking at the flayed flaps of his stomach, partially masticated ropes of intestines hanging from their beaks. A cold, howling wind blew across the mountain, bringing with it the stench of blood, gunpowder, and smoke. His dying screams were swept away by the breeze.
The vision shifted. He was standing upright this time, strings of his blood-spattered hair tangled and knotted across his face. He clutched at his chest, protruding from which was the blunt head of an axe. With one hand, paralyzed by nerve damage, he brushed aside his fringe and saw a grinning man bolting toward him—
Another vision. An arrow whizzed through the air, too fast for Roy to thwart, then plunged deep into his eye and shattered the back of his skull—
Another vision, and another, and another. He was a victim of innumerable atrocities, a vessel for pain. He did not recoil or resist. There was no place for retaliation in this spectral world, no room for kinship or freedom or love.
In one vision, Briar was holding a knife to his throat, the same knife Gabriel had used to carve H-I-S-T-O-R-Y into Roy’s chest, and had her fist wrapped around his hair. She pulled harder, and a drop of blood slithered underneath his tunic. Then she slashed the dagger across his throat. Crimson blood first frothed then flooded out from the parted skin, painting a red veil over Briar’s face. Her lips split into a grin, and as that grin broadened, the blood darkened into a syrupy black sludge—
Another. Roy was kneeling before Percival, who was dressed in only his trousers. A belt, outfitted with an arsenal of well-polished blades, hung loosely around his waist. He pulled out a dagger from the belt, lunged forward without thought, and then rammed the dagger deep into Roy’s left nostril. The cold iron burrowed through his nasal cavity, filling his head. Something must have given way, because a clear, flatcrackechoed through his skull, and he tried to reel back and cling for life, but his entire body seemed to have cramped up and—
The world—therealworld—rushed back with increasing clarity. He was back in the Orphic Basilica, in a room within the Museum of the Elder Scribes. Percival had brought him here so they could experiment with some weapon. Asword.
Scatterbrained, Roy scrambled to his feet, realizing only then that he’d crumpled to his hands and knees. He panted, his breath short and tremulous, his heart pummeling his rib cage. His vision had cleared, but his disbelief was so strong that for a while he could not properly discern what he was looking at.
Percival was standing in front of the desk, staring incredulously at the sword, which had clattered to the ground. He had one hand raised before his eyes. He shook his head, his gaze settling on Roy. “I didn’t...” he whispered. “I didn’t know what would happen, Roy, I—”
A cord of restraint Roy had not been previously aware of, but could now feel thrumming through his entire body, snapped. Not quite thinking of what he was doing, he ran at Percival, sidestepping the unsheathed sword, and grasped him by the throat with a strength he hadn’t known he possessed. Then he thrust Percival down upon the desk, leaning over him.
Percival forced out a rough, half-drawn breath and attempted to claw at Roy’s forearms but only succeeded in running his fingers down Roy’s wrist.
Roy squeezed tight, tears streaming down his face. “What did youdo, Percival? What did youdo?” He clamped his fingers down harder on Percival’s throat, sobbing. “Tell me!Tellme or I’ll snap your neck, you fucking bastard!”
Percival scrabbled weakly at Roy’s arm again, the light in his eyes dimming just slightly, his stuttering exhalations blowing back the sweat-dampened curls that had fallen across Roy’s face. His bloodshot, bulging eyes swung from side to side with mad desperation. His fair skin was turning a distressing shade of purple. But it was the look of utter powerlessness upon his face, the look that Roy had worn every time Gabriel shoved pages torn from Roy's favorite books in his mouth to muffle his screams as he was beaten, that made Roy eventually see reason. It was that look that made Roy let go.
He slumped on top of Percival, who was wheezing and coughing beneath him. Percival wrapped his arms hesitantly around Roy, then tightened his hold as Roy started sobbing into Percival’s shoulder. Percival lowered his head, his soft lips hovering just near the hairs at the crown of Roy’s head.
Roy banded his arms around Percival, curling his fingers into his hair. “What... What did you...” He could not seem to stop saying the words. There were no other explanations within his reach, and so there was nothing else to say.
Percival clasped Roy’s cheek, tipped his head up, and wiped away Roy’s tears with the pad of his thumb, his eyes tracing the movement. “It wasn’t me.”
“The sword was in your—”
“How could I have done that, darling?” Percival whispered. “I am of flesh and blood. I am as human as you.”
Roy sniffled and staggered back to his feet. He was about to topple backward when Percival pushed himself up from the desk and gripped the front of Roy’s tunic, holding him upright. But as Roy regained his balance, Percival’s left thumb slipped across the outline of his scar, the second or third letter of H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. Roy shoved Percival hard in his chest, casting his gaze away.
