The Beggar Queen

There weren't always dragons in the Valley.

From atop the driver's seat of a sorcery-propelled wagon, Cole "Silverhand" Thompson stole a glance at the sky -- where a dozen black-winged, serpentine dragons twisted and dove in the crisp, winter air over what had once been the San Fernando valley and greater Los Angeles.

Hell, there weren't supposed to be dragons anywhere.

But almost three decades ago this week, the dark fey -- all the idiotic fantasy clichés he'd thought were so stupid as a fourteen-year-old at the time -- had spewed out from their sorcerous, multi-dimensional rifts and conquered the world. In just two short years.

Since then, Earth had become a waking hellscape that human old-timers had ruefully dubbed New Mordor.

Ergo, it was now an actual thing to sometimes witness dragons flying above walled Unseelie strongholds such as Lost Angels, the caustic fey's new name for Los Angeles.

But he'd never seen so many in one place at the same time. It made Cole nervous, even if the beasts were several leagues distant.

Dragons meant elven banelords. They were the only Unseelie powerful enough to control the beasts. And there were apparently at least of dozen of the dread nobles presently in Lost Angels.

On the bench beside him, Rhunheld, a dwarven woman with ash-blue skin, spat onto the gravel road, nervously scrubbing her bald head with one hand.

"Feck," she mumbled.

Their scheme had required her to dress like a noble. No big stretch since she was the exiled "princess" of a duergar kingdom in Colorado. Her cream-colored blouse of stink spider silk shimmered beneath leather suspenders. Green corduroy pants and alligator skin boots completed the outfit. Cole and the two other humans in the wagon were dressed in the well-worn, secondhand clothes that human slaves usually wore.

At first, Cole thought the duergar had cursed because of the dragons and their dire import.

But the woman's scowl was directed at the road ahead.

As he looked in that direction, the gears inside his neck's mounting collar made a slight grinding noise. Which they weren't supposed to do. He made a mental note to get them checked out when he and his companions had found a more private place to stay inside the city.

It had taken Cole and his three traveling companions a full day and a half to descend into the L.A. basin and get within even a mile of the West Gate. It seemed that every wild, outlander Unseelie for a one-hundred-mile radius -- the vicious boggles and swamp hags and shiv-cacklers and other fey horrors -- had arrived in the valley for the upcoming Conqueror's Day festivities. The caravan of carts, wagons, and supplicants waiting to enter the city had stretched for miles.

Now, as they topped a crest in the road, they saw why.

The good news was that they were almost to the city entrance. The bad news was that a battalion of hobgob soldiers were conducting a full inspection of each and every vehicle before it could enter.

In general, hobgobs had a face that looked like a cross between a flat-snouted warthog and the ugliest damn dog you ever saw. These guards wore black, Unseelie steelshell armor and carried massive battleaxes. Cole had no doubt that the emblems etched into their breastplates would mark them as minions to Lost Angels' ruler, High Lord Clint Hollywood.

The Unseelie had adopted human-language aliases to avoid revealing True Names, often with ludicrous results.

"Can't let'em search us," Rhunheld said under her breath.

"No shit, sherlock," Cole shot back. He instantly regretted the harsh words, but the dark dwarf let it pass.

They were all on edge.

Because, secured away in Cole's backpack was a pouch that held the key to destroying the Unseelie.

"What should we do then?" Sakura asked from where she sat in the wagon-bed behind them. Her left hand was buried in one pocket of her leather duster, no doubt holding her magnetic rail pistol in a white-knuckled grip.

Pre-invasion, people would have called her Japanese.

Nowadays, she was just one member of an endangered human species that the Unseelie called trash.

In contrast to Sakura, the fourth and final member of their group, Frederick, was of unknown ethnicity. True, he never talked about his past, and they didn't ask. But also, the oozing sores and abscesses that covered him from head to toe made it impossible to tell what he'd once looked like.

Unseelie magics did not agree with human DNA. Aggressive, often terminal, mutation was the price all human warlocks paid for their power.

On his seat at the back, Frederick pulled the hood of his pus-stained sweatshirt over his poxy head.

"We fight," he hissed.

Wow, big surprise that the man with a death wish wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. They were pretty much surrounded by a gibbering crush of Unseelie tourists, all of whom would be more than happy to rip them to shreds at the least provocation, dwarven "noble" be damned.

Hell, they'd been stuck behind a cart full of goblins for half the day and the bastards had spent the whole time chanting "Goo-boys! Goo-boys!" and brandishing rusty buck knives at them.

That, and yanking down their pants to fart -- sometimes worse -- directly in the oncoming path of the companions' vehicle.

"We turn around," Cole said at last.

Rhunheld curtly shook her head. "And go where? We still have to get into the city somehow."

"Give it to Rhunheld," Sakura offered. "Maybe the guards won't search her."

They all knew the 'it' in question was Cole's pouch and the ensorcelled jade statuette it contained. They'd spent nine years searching for it. There'd been twelve of them at the start of their desperate mission.

They were the last.

"And even if they do," Sakura went on, "will they know what it is? We barely do. Why should they?"

"We can't risk everything on a 'maybe'," Cole responded. "We're too close."

Sakura didn't look convinced, but she was clearly out of ideas.

This was quickly going sideways. And the plan had been so simple too!

Pose as an Unseelie master and her human slaves. Common enough, that. They had executed the same con more times than he could count.

Drive in through the city gates.

Lose themselves among the Unseelie masses.

And destroy nearly all the Unseelie in a one-hundred-mile square radius.

On Conqueror's Day.

"Shit!" Cole stopped himself from slamming his gloved left hand -- the silver one -- down onto the driver's bench in frustration. The clang of that impact definitely would have drawn unwanted attention. "We should've known they'd tighten security for the festival."

Four wagon-lengths ahead, a squad of hobgobs were rousting a pair of lower caste dire elves from their shabby carriage, throwing open the couple's trunks and suitcases and roughly pawing through their things.

And, according to the Unseelie caste structure, duergar were considered far more inferior than dire elves. Cole and his group would be lucky to leave the inspection with the clothes on their backs.

Decided, Cole grabbed for the wagon's chrome and silver-plated steering lever, prepared to ram it into high gear and get them the hell out of there.

But before he could shove the stick intro drive, a low, urgent whistle drew his attention to his left.

At the base of the wagon wheel, a filthy, brown-haired human girl of maybe twelve, dressed in tattered clothes, urgently shook her head up at him.

"S'all coolsie, chuffer," she whispered. "Stay coolsie."

He barely understood what the hell she was saying given the slang and her thick Cali accent. But he certainly knew what it meant when a beggar approached you.

"Feck off," Cole hissed beneath his breath. "We don't have any money for you. Understand? Not cool-zee."

She rolled her eyes in derision. "Nah, nah, you got it wrong, chuffer. Ain't whatchu think."

Before Cole could stop her, she'd scrabbled up the wheel to balance deftly on the footboard between him and Rhunheld.

She bowed. "Trust in me, good fellas, and I'll have ya on yer way into the city in no time, rickety-spittle."

"Dammit!" Cole hissed. He and the dwarf lurched forward almost at the same time to shove her off the wagon, little girl or no little girl.

Which was when she flashed them the hand signal -- in a language, like old ASL, that every rebel operative was required to learn.

The symbol for their insurgent leader, General Jack.

Talk about feeling smacked upside the head. For a time, he just sat there blinking.

Behind him, Sakura chuckled softly.

"Girl," Frederick whispered from the rear. "I nearly boiled you from the inside out."

"Who are you?" Cole demanded.

"We got a friend in common." She glanced around, clearly worried about eavesdroppers, and mouthed, "The Archivist," like it was some True Name that would instantly bring the entire fey horde down upon them if she voiced it.

According to Professor Mead, formerly of MIT and now a member of the General's war council, the statuette Cole and his team had stolen from the Putrid Vicar of Kracken Swamp was allegedly a powerful weapon of mass Unseelie destruction. But they needed the Archivist to show them how to use it.

The beggar girl bowed again with a flourish. "Name's Tally Bee. Comes to guide ya to yer lodgings, I have."

"In case you haven't noticed, we're seconds away from having all our shit thrown into the road. Won't need any lodgings after that." The guards had started tackling the raucous Goo-boy goblins. Literally. Which at least would buy Cole and his insurgents some additional time.

Tally Bee dismissed his concern with a flutter of her lips. "Pfff. Nots to worry, chuffer. I gots you covered."

And much to his bewilderment...

She did.

#

"Fascinating," the Archivist said. He was a large feathery bear creature that Tally Bee called a bugaboo. Cole had never seen the like in all his forty-four years. Presently, the giant Unseelie hunched over a magnifying glass the size of his head, examining the jade statuette -- a mobius ring covered in runes. A wide lab table extended to either side of him, covered in test tubes and beakers of bubbling orange fluid. Several coils of copper condensate tubes twirled up around large bottles marked 'poison'.

Apparently, all of it was fake.

In addition to gathering arcane knowledge and lore, the Archivist was an avid collector of old movie props. The warehouse was chocked full of shelves and shelves of papier mache doo-dads and plaster of paris what's-its.

"He's been saying that fer the last hour!" Rhunheld grumped from where she and Frederick were playing cards at one end of "Al Capone's" dinner table. Given the warlock's oozing appendages, the Archivist had covered the prop in a tarp. The cards were theirs.

Tally Bee was perched up on a third row of shelves. A stacked audience of fierce, wooden tribal masks silently watched as she juggled glittery plaster eggs.

"Wonder why he's helping us?" Sakura whispered to Cole as she applied homemade "slickery" fluid to Cole's neck mounting. He sat bare-chested on a folding chair. Lantern light shimmered gold and silver off his metallic, automaton parts.

He being the Archivist. Most Unseelie were naturally reticent to aide an insurgency that wanted to wipe them from the face of the earth. Rhunheld was an exception. The General had signed a treaty with her.

Cole shrugged in response. He really had no clue.

It had taken them the rest of the day to navigate Lost Angels' crowded streets and reach the Archivist's relatively secluded manse.

As victors, the Unseelie hadn't so much razed Earth's existing buildings and structures to the ground as they had refashioned them to their own warped liking. City blocks of skyscrapers had become walled fortresses of glass and steel, with flying buttresses of barbed wire and spiral minarets of mangled rebar. High Lord Hollywood specifically had topped his sprawling compound with the pagoda-shaped roof that had once adorned L.A.'s famous Chinese Theater.

Higher caste nobles had transported mansions from the 'burbs into the cities to be as close as possible to their High Lord's domicile. Even among the nobility, there was a pecking order -- a shifting one at that -- that was reflected at any given moment by the proximity of a noble's dwelling to their High Lord.

And so, the caste hierarchy continued outward, from manse to single-clan homes, with their bone-shingled exteriors, walk-in closets, and his-and-her puke buckets -- to shanty shacks where those of the lowest caste, with the least amount of noble blood lived.

Brood-clans often attacked one another, so city walls were a necessity -- usually built from chunks of concrete and the shattered skeletons of vanquished foes, cemented together with an infusion of fey magic.

Lost Angels had been filled to the brim with Conqueror's Day revelers. However, as the human rebels' wagon had shouldered its way through the teeming crowd, Cole had barely registered any of it, still shocked that the beggar girl had gotten them past the security cordon.

"Hey there, Tom-tom," she had called out to the lead hobgob when the squadron drew near. "How's yer brood-mare's goiter? Heard tell it was bigger than yer doodle-oo!"

The head guard sneered at the girl's apparent insult, gnashing his sharpened, white tusks.

She in turn clasped her hands to her chest and batted her eyelashes at him in an exaggerated pose of innocent good will.

All the more shocking then, when Tom-tom waved them through without a single hairy paw being laid on their belongings. Or on the girl's scrawny neck, for that matter.

Later, when they were safely beyond the city gates, Tally Bee had leaned over and whispered to Cole, "Tom-tom bet bigtime on Cassious Bloodhammer, before Bloodhammer got..." she ran her thumb across her neck "... shit-canned. Gots himself some big boy debt, if you knows what I'm saying."

He didn't know exactly, but he understood the gist.

This girl --

Twelve-year-old girl!

-- had somehow leveraged Tom-tom's gambling debts to gain them entrance through the gates.

Cole was both impressed at her cunning and leery she might just as easily exploit her knowledge of them.

Back in the prop warehouse, Tally Bee "popped" three eggs into her mouth in succession with a slight-of-hand trick that made them seem to disappear.

"So, you a cheen man?" she eventually asked Cole. "Like, in all the places?"

Cole frowned. People always asked about his dick, or the lack thereof.

"No, not a machine man, at least not like the automatons the High Lords parade around at Springtide. And no not in all places."

She shrugged like it was no matter, then smacked the back of her head three times. Three glittery eggs emerged from between her lips to rejoin her juggling rotation.

"Ready?" Sakura said to Cole, wiping slickery from her hands onto a rag and straddling his legs to face him.

"Yowsa, gets yerselves a room, chuffers," Tally Bee barked at them and broke into a lewd cackle.

"Grow up," Cole scoffed back. Then, when the girl actually looked hurt, he forced a smile. "We prefer a wagon-bed."

"Uuuugh!" Tally Bee groaned and clutched her heart like she was mortally wounded.

Sakura ignored them both. A pair of goggles with thick green lenses dangled around her neck. Now, she put them on and turned her attention to his sternum, where a three-by-four inch hatch was fused into the flat bone. Four clockwork gears were set into the hatch. Sakura used one finger to turn them in the proper combination. Soon, they fell into alignment and the hatch swung open with a click and whir.

Despite the goggles, Sakura shielded her eyes from the harsh, red light that radiated out.

"Gah!" Tally Bee cried, surprised by the bright beam, and comically tumbled backwards off the shelf.

Cole couldn't help but chuckle.

"Hold still," Sakura chided.

Her vision had apparently adjusted, and she picked out a blunt, chrome-plated needle from her belt. Gingerly, she probed the music box-sized cavity inside and the glowing, ogrim bloodstone it contained.

Even in a world that had been upended and reshaped by Unseelie magics, Cole was a relative oddity.

Whatever eldritch forces made up the Unseelie's very essence was fundamentally incompatible with modern electronics, at the quantum level. On that horrific day when they'd burst forth like a plague across the continents, it had been as if they had unleashed a catastrophic EMP wave throughout the world. Humanity's digital defenses -- its advanced targeting, smart weapons, AI's -- basically its entire ability to fight back had fried in an instant.

Very early on, an Unseelie banelord, Doctor Lucius Headsman, had enslaved Cole and had quickly introduced him to the fey version of mechanical engineering. And not in a taking-a-poor- human-under-his-wing kind of way. No, the good "doctor" had ruthlessly experimented on Cole for over half a decade, ripping his body apart and stitching it back together. Fusing clockwork gears and pulleys into sinew and bone. Reanimating Cole's dead body and keeping it alive by attaching the sorcerous, ogrim gem to it. In the end, a good thirty percent of Cole's body had been replaced by Unseelie mechanics.

Like Cole was some goddamn Disney animatronic.

Or Frankenstein's monster.

The one saving grace was that Lucius had considered himself an "artiste". So instead of leaving Cole's internal gears, tissue, and organs exposed to the elements, the banelord had encased them in riveted, silver and gold filigree panels shaped to look like the body parts they had replaced.

Cole had never felt such joy as he had on the day he had killed that motherfucker.

"Woah, calm down there, hoss," Sakura said, bringing him back to the present. "You'll blow a gasket."

She was in the process of closing up the hatch and he caught a glimpse of the pulsing, angry waves of light emanating from the ogrim gem inside him.

He took a deep, calming breath. "Sorry. Everything check out okay?"

"Best as I can tell, not being a sorcerer and all."

She gave him a quick peck on the lips and rose.

Tally Bee had returned to her shelf and now gave him a knowing double-thumbs up.

As he put his flannel shirt back on, Cole sent a good-natured sneer at her that said, "ha-ha".

But damn the girl was perceptive for her age.

Because he and Sakura had been lovers for these past many years. Were in love. Sakura knew him inside and out. Quite literally.

"Well," the Archivist said at last, standing and brushing off his hands, "very interesting indeed. But I'm quite famished. Shall we eat while I relate the details? I've prepared a grand feast on carny row in celebration."

Cole really didn't want to wait to learn how to use the statuette any longer than he had to. Not to mention, he was road-weary, and yes, dammit, a little horny after having Sakura on his lap for the last half hour.

"Love to," Rhunheld said before he could respond. "We appreciate your gracious hospitality."

As Cole retrieved the mobius loop from the Archivist and secured it in a pouch on his belt, he thought he saw a flicker of chagrin flash across the Unseelie's face. But it was gone in an instant. And what the hell did he know about bugaboos anyway?

As it turned out, ignoring the Archivist's discomfort was the worst mistake he'd ever made.

Or ever would again.

#

The carnival row that greeted them was something straight out of Cole's childhood. Flashing lights. Stalls of brightly colored games. Bells and whistles and hurdy-gurdy organ music. Lit by moonlight, a giant clown head and its accompanying two-story, dark ride trailer flanked the other side of the row. All of it was powered by a single, fey-fire orb that sat on a pedestal near a tall plywood cutout of King Kong.

A long trestle with a red silk tablecloth had been set up amidst it all. Cole assumed the Archivist had thralls, but they were nowhere to be seen. Tally Bee had also mysteriously gone missing. Regardless, the servants had covered the feast table in platters of steaming meats, loaves of sesame bread, roasted parsnips, and several pies topped with whipped cream. And most importantly --

"Ale!" Rhunheld hurried to a chair, not waiting for the rest of them before unstopping a bottle of beer and pouring herself a healthy portion of the frothy stuff.

"Oh," Sakura said with real delight, "how wonderful!"

For a time, Cole couldn't speak at all, too over-whelmed with emotion. With the memory of a childhood, of their entire world, that had been turned to shit.

Soon, they'd all have their revenge.

"My congratulations," the Archivist said when they'd settled and poured themselves ale or wine, each to their likes. No surprise, Frederick was a huge drinker and had already started on his second glass of burgundy.

The bugaboo raised his mug. "To the discovery of a lifetime!"

"To getting back what's ours!" Rhunheld chimed in after they'd drunk the first round.

They slowed down after the third, or fourth, toast and dug into the food. His very first bite of the marinated parsnips made Cole's mouth hurt, they were so good. He could not remember the last time they had had real food. Sakura grinned over at him and took his hand under the table. Squeezed it hard.

"All right, my friend," Rhunheld said around a mouthful of turkey leg. "Spill it."

The Archivist considered them each in turn, growing somber.

"You will be happy to know that you are correct. The statuette is in fact a weapon of sorts."

"Hell, yes," Cole said grinning at Sakura. All these years, all the losses and danger ... it had all been worth it. He saw the same sentiment reflected in her eyes.

With his free hand, Cole patted the pouch secured on his belt. Felt the solid weight of the jade clink against his silver fingers.

"Indeed," the Archivist continued, "a very powerful weapon." He paused again, this time glancing above them to the night sky. He saw something there that clearly made him nervous. His voice quavered when he spoke.

"Which is why I cannot let you have it."

Sakura's limp hand slipped from his fingers an instant before Cole's head came crashing down onto his plate of half-eaten food.

And then he blacked out.

#

He woke to the thumping sound of massive, flapping wings somewhere above. The Archivist shrieked in fear and dismay when a huge, gale wind rattled plates and toppled glasses. Then, there was a crash, the extended crack of a plywood game stall busting apart...

Beneath the weight of a ... ? He wasn't certain.

Still, he was with it enough to understand that they had been fucking betrayed.

Soon, Cole heard the crisp footfall of a single pair of boots striding toward them.

"Where is it?" a female voice asked, cold and commanding.

Cole fought with all his might to move. To open his eyes, dammit!

"Cheen man, he gots it, milady."

The girl! Christ, the girl too?!

His anger gave him a surge of energy. Enough to open his eyes to slits, at least.

He was looking at the closest end of the table, gravy formed a film over his vision.

Beyond, he saw that a dragon had in fact crushed one of the farthest game booths upon landing. Its wicked talons dug into the wreckage of painted wood and mangled wrought iron. Its gigantic, serpentine head bobbed back and forth on a sinewy neck of glistening onyx scales. Its blood-orange eyes blazed with voracious appetite and fury. Like a snake, it tasted the air with a forked tongue, revealing razor-sharp teeth easily the length of Cole's arm.

An elven banelord had arrived, then.

As he watched that mesmerizing sway, he felt the ogrim stone's achy, putrid magic start to seep into his bones and blood, slowly revitalizing him.

It filled him enough strength so that when he heard the trod of the female's boots draw close --

He lurched up from the table even as he whirled, howling in anger, ready to grab the Unseelie noblewoman who stood behind him by her scrawny neck and --

She was too fast for him.

He saw a brief flash of concern in her cold gray eyes, before she leapt backwards and threw up her hands.

Purple sorcery, like rot, engulfed him.

Froze him in place.

He screamed and struggled, but he was stuck fast.

"Tol' you he was a tough one, milady," Tally Bee said from somewhere out of sight. The Archivist was somewhere with her as well. He could hear the creature's mewling.

The elven dreadlord in front of Cole curled her lip in disgust. Long white hair. Pale skin. Terrible, cruel beauty. She epitomized all the evil he'd been fighting against his entire adult life. The scrollwork insignia on the breastplate of her ornate, steelshell armor claimed her as one of the Beetle Queen's brood.

There was only one Unseelie Hive-mother at any given time-- the numero uno bitch, grand poo-bah of death and decay. The Beetle Queen ruled all Unseelie, everywhere.

"Turn him off," she commanded the beggar girl.

He probably should have felt some overwhelming sense of fear in her presence. At knowing he was about to die. But he felt mostly numb -- as if the Archivist's poison had hollowed out the last of him, and the ogrim sorcery had turned him into a true automaton.

Which was probably a good thing. Because as Tally Bee scampered over to him, Cole caught sight of the others.

Rhunheld was face down in a pile of mashed peas and raisins. Frederick leaned to one side of his chair, ooze and wine dripping in rivulets onto the ground.

Sakura.

Oh, gods!

Slumped against the table. Mouth frothing.

Eyes staring into endless nothing.

He couldn't even sob, though he knew he should be heartbroken. He felt that detached.

They hadn't even considered that they might be betrayed.

Some heroes they had turned out to be.

Goddamn lambs to the slaughter.

Tally Bee shoved him down onto a chair and turned his head away from his dead friends. Purposeful or not, he wasn't sure. Her expression was hidden from the banelord, and he was surprised to see ... regret there.

"Never shoulda done this in front of me, chuffer," she said, ripping open the front of his flannel shirt.

It only took her two tries to get the right combination. But for some reason she kept her finger on one edge of the hatch to keep it closed.

"Why the delay, thrall? Turn him off!" the banelord commanded, drawing closer perhaps to clout the beggar.

"As you say, milady." She winked at him.

The ogrim gemstone inside his chest blasted them all with blinding light. The banelord shouted in frustration and surprise. Cole hoped the distraction might weaken the spell that imprisoned him. He hauled on it with everything he had.

But it didn't budge.

Waving her hands in front of her, the Unseelie lord stumbled forward until she'd reached him. Digging two fingers into the ogrim gem cavity, she ripped it from his chest and clutched it in her hand to stifle its glow.

Something popped inside him. Fluid. No, blood, he realized. No longer contained by the sorcery, it gushed from his mechanics.

"The girl! Where's the girl?"

His head felt heavy. He could barely keep it upright. But he saw that it was true. She was gone.

"Never mind," the elven lord spat. The jade statuette's pouch, still full, seemed to have fallen to the ground. Curious. But his thoughts were growing hazy and thick.

The banelord snatched the pouch from the growing pool of Cole's blood. Then, with unnatural strength, she dragged the bulky Archivist back into view at the table. Cursing, she threw the pouch down in front of him amongst the poisoned food and drink.

"Show me how it functions!" she screamed.

The Archivist didn't respond at first. He just kept crying and moaning. She beat on him, and beat on him again.

But Cole had lost interest.

Because Tally Bee peered out at him from the mouth of the giant clown. Once more, he might have been surprised to see grief in her expression. But that kind of observation belonged to someone else, not him. He was numb from the waste down.

And dying.

Sorry-sorry! Tally Bee emphatically signed at him from the clown's shadowed maw. They knew you come! No other way. Traitor among --

But she didn't finish the thought.

Because the banelord finally roused the Archivist.

"SHOW MEEE!"

"Yes, your grace," he blubbered, upending the pouch. "I will, your grace!"

A glittery plaster egg, not the mobius ring, rolled out of the bag and across the table.

He didn't bother to look. He knew Tally Bee was gone.

And the one thing that did break through his growing detachment -- as he bled out and his body grew cold and numb -- was the bleak hilarity of it all.

Oh, Christ on a cracker!

The fate of the entire world literally rested in the hands of a twelve-year-old beggar girl!

And his laughter even drowned out the banelord's raging screams.

It was the one last gift of defiance Tally Bee gave him.

Until it carried him into the blackness.

And he knew no more.