Chapter 16: The Wooden Beast"
A wooden lion, painted with chipped yellow paint, lunged at Ronnie. It moved jerkily, like stop-motion animation.
Ronnie rolled, fighting the nausea. She swung her chain, but in this gravity, the chain moved wrong it floated, slow and lazy.
The lion bit down on her forearm.
"Ah, hell!" Ronnie screamed, kicking the thing in its plywood ribs. It splintered, but didn't let go.
Uzo wiped the blood from his nose. He looked up or down at the Ringmaster walking on the ceiling.
He's the anchor, Uzo realized. The dome holds as long as he conducts it.
Uzo grabbed his spear. It felt heavy, like it weighed a hundred pounds.
He couldn't run to the Ringmaster. The distance was distorted.
He had to cheat.
Uzo looked at the weeping Tumbler, who was still dragging his broken body through the mud, giggling softly.
Uzo grabbed the Tumbler by the collar of his diamond suit.
"Going up," Uzo growled.
He spun. The centrifugal force fought the weird gravity.
He hurled the Tumbler not at the Ringmaster, but at the baton.
The Tumbler flew through the air, flailing.
"Wheeeee!" the broken clown shrieked.
The Ringmaster's eyes widened. "Rude!"
He sidestepped, but he had to stop spinning the baton to dodge his own man.
For a split second, the purple light flickered.
Gravity snapped back to normal.
Uzo didn't waste the second.
He launched himself off a tree root. His legs burned, screaming in protest. He vaulted into the air, spear lead.
He wasn't aiming to kill. He was aiming to silence.
The Ringmaster raised a hand, a wall of invisible force forming.
Uzo slammed into the barrier mid-air. It felt like hitting solid glass bones in his shoulder ground together.
But Uzo was close enough.
He stared through the barrier, inches from the Ringmaster's face, He saw the pores in the man's skin, the madness swimming in his dilated pupils.
Uzo slammed his open palm against the invisible wall.
He didn't shout a word, He didn't use a spell.
He just pushed his own will into the barrier.
"Quiet."
The barrier shattered like a mirror.
Uzo crashed into the Ringmaster. They tumbled out of the air, hitting the mud hard.
Uzo was on top instantly. He dropped the spear and started throwing punches.
Left. Right. Left.
Ugly, desperate punches. He felt the Ringmaster's nose break under his knuckles. He felt teeth crack.
"Call it off!" Uzo roared, grabbing the Ringmaster by the throat. "Drop the dome!"
The Ringmaster lay there, blood bubbling past his lips. His top hat was crushed in the mud.
He looked up at Uzo, wheezing.
And then... he smiled.
"You think..." the Ringmaster whispered, blood staining his teeth, "...that I'm the Ringmaster?"
Uzo froze.
The man beneath him began to dissolve. His skin melted into white greasepaint. His bones turned to sawdust.
In seconds, Uzo was straddling a pile of empty clothes and a wooden mannequin head.
A decoy.
Clap... clap... clap.
The slow applause came from the edge of the clearing, outside the purple dome.
The real Ringmaster stood there, leaning against a tree, peeling an orange. He looked bored.
"A, for effort," the real Ringmaster said. "But you really must work on your perception. The show is over there."
He pointed a gloved finger.
Uzo turned.
Ronnie was on her knees. The wooden lion was gone.
But standing over her was a massive figure. Seven feet tall. Wearing a strongman's leopard-print singlet.
He held a massive barbell, but the weights on the ends were actually boulders.
The Strongman raised the boulder-barbell over Ronnie's head.
Ronnie looked up, dazed, blood dripping from her arm. She couldn't move in time.
"End of Act Two," the Ringmaster said softly.
Uzo scrambled up, but he was too far. Twenty feet of mud between him and Ronnie.
He couldn't run fast enough.
He couldn't throw the spear fast enough.
Time seemed to slow down.
The Strongman grunted, muscles bunching as he prepared to crush Ronnie into paste.
Uzo didn't think. He didn't plan.
He reached into his pocket and grabbed the Lexicon fragment. He squeezed it so hard the leather cut into his palm.
He didn't speak a word of unmaking.
He spoke a word of displacement.
"Switch."
The air cracked like a whip.
Uzo felt a hook behind his navel, jerking him violently through space.
Instant nausea.
Then, impact.
Uzo wasn't standing in the mud anymore.
He was kneeling where Ronnie had been.
And Ronnie was twenty feet away, sprawling into the mud where Uzo had stood.
Uzo looked up.
The boulder was falling.
He had just enough time to raise his forearms.
Just enough time to regret everything.
CRUNCH.
The boulder slammed into him.
Darkness didn't take him. Pain did. A white-hot, blinding supernova of pain.
And then, the silence took over.