Chapter 30 – The Margin of Error
The trap was perfect. The logic was sound.
But they had forgotten one rule of the writer's craft: A Draft can be rewritten.
In the concave hollow of the Weeping Pass, Uzo watched the Eclipse glide closer. She was confident. She thought she was the hunter.
"NOW!" Uzo screamed.
Ronnie yanked the wire.
CLICK.
The magnesium charges detonated.
The Graveyard of Harmonics turned into a supernova of star-white light. The polished concave wall behind the army caught the blast and focused it into a blinding beam, incinerating every shadow in the valley.
For a second, the Eclipse screamed. Her bandage-wrapped form unraveled, burning away like old paper in a furnace.
"We got her!" Ronnie yelled, shielding her eyes.
Uzo looked down at the Lexicon, expecting the page to settle into a blank white silence the sign of a finished story.
Instead, the page was violent.
The ink was bubbling, refusing to dry. Words were appearing and crossing themselves out in a panic.
Target: The Eclipse
Status:Stet.
(Note: The Draft refuses to be discarded. Narrative continuity is forcing a rewrite...)
Uzo's blood ran cold. "Stet." It was an editing term. It meant 'Let it stand.' The world itself was refusing to delete her.
"Wait..." Uzo whispered.
The blinding light didn't fade. It hung in the air, absolute and oppressive.
And in that total brightness, something impossible happened.
The Eclipse didn't vanish. She condensed.
Where there is bright light, there is the potential for the sharpest darkness.
The Eclipse realized she couldn't hide in the space of the valley. So she hid in the only place left.
She hid in the shadow of Uzo's own eyelashes.
Uzo felt a sudden, freezing needle in his left eye.
"ARGH!"
He stumbled back, clutching his face. His vision went black in one eye, filled with the sensation of cold ink pouring into his skull.
"You fool," the Eclipse's voice hissed not from the cave, but from inside Uzo's head. "You gave me the perfect ink. The brighter the page, the darker the word."
SWISH.
A black spike erupted from Uzo's own shadow on the floor.
It aimed for his throat.
Kaelen moved. Faster than thought.
The Knight of the Blot slammed his arm in the way.
SHUNK.
The shadow-spike pierced Kaelen's Dead Iron armor like it was butter. It went straight through his massive forearm, pinning him to the stone wall.
"Kaelen!" Uzo gasped, seeing blood black, oily Null-Ink spray across the white snow.
The light from the flash bombs began to fade. The shadows returned to the valley.
But they were wrong.
The Eclipse had infected them.
Every shadow in the valley the shadow of every rock, every Barbarian, every weapon began to boil.
They detached from the ground.
Hundreds of 2D silhouettes stood up. They looked like paper cutouts of monsters.
"You tried to erase me with light," the Eclipse laughed, stepping out of Uzo's shadow. She was taller now. Sharper. Her daggers were serrated. "But you only sharpened my definition."
She raised a hand.
The army of shadows mimicked her.
"Kill them all," she ordered. "Edit them out."
The shadows lunged.
This wasn't a fight anymore. It was a massacre.
The Mute warriors swung their heavy clubs, but their weapons passed harmlessly through the 2D monsters.
The shadows, however, could cut.
They slashed the legs of the Barbarians. Men fell, hamstrung by their own reflections.
"We can't hit them!" Ronnie screamed, parrying a shadow-blade with her Dead Iron dagger. The impact jarred her bone. "Uzo! Plan B! What's Plan B?!"
Uzo scrambled back, dragging the Lexicon.
Plan A was total light. It failed.
Plan A2 was total darkness (The Void). But that would just feed her.
He looked at Kaelen.
The Knight was pinned to the wall by his own shadow. The Eclipse walked toward him, her blade dragging on the stone.
"The big one first," she purred. "I will red-line his name until there is nothing left but a smudge."
Uzo's mind raced in split minutes.
Think ,Think Think, Think, ahhh what the heck should I do ooooo?
She is Syntax. She is Geometry. Shadow requires a surface. A Shadow requires a sharp edge.
He looked at the melted statues.
He remembered Kaelen's story from the campfire.
The First Men... The Resonance...
"Light didn't work," Uzo muttered, watching Kaelen roar in agony as the Eclipse began to carve runes into his chest. "Light just gave her contrast."
What kills a shadow?
Blur.
Motion.
Vibration.
If a canvas shakes violently enough, the image painted on it loses its form.
Uzo stood up. He grabbed a Mute warrior's shield a massive disc of Dead Iron.
He didn't throw it.
He slammed it against the canyon wall.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space.
The Eclipse flinched. Her form flickered for a microsecond.
Uzo saw it.
The "Blur."
"THE SHIELDS!" Uzo screamed, his voice tearing at his throat. "DON'T HIT THEM! HIT THE WALLS!"
The Barbarians looked confused. They were dying.
"BEAT THE DRUMS!" Uzo roared, channeling the command through the Lexicon. "RESONATE!"