13. The Old World

With their carriage destroyed and the coachman dead, Viktoria, Alyce and the Doppelganger continued their journey on horseback. Viktoria and Alyce shared a horse while the Doppelganger had her hands tied to the pommel of her own saddle. Viktoria was still unsure of the creature's intentions, so Alyce kept her revolver across her lap, just in case.

Gently coaxing her horse ahead, Viktoria pushed through the brush, and the trio came upon a shallow recess in the bluff wall, artfully concealed from causal discovery by trailing vines and bushes. Provisions were stored here - lanterns, clothes, dry food, and a long canoe. Viktoria was not surprised to see there were three changes of clothes and three pairs of boots. Her client had told her where to find these provisions, and the old woman seemed unnaturally sure of the future.

“We start out across the swamp from here. According to my client’s notes, it shouldn’t be much farther,” Viktoria said. Alyce dismounted and Viktoria followed. As Viktoria unsaddled her horse and stowed their gear in the canoe, Alyce helped the Doppelganger off the horse.

There was little talk as the three prepared the boat. During the ride, Viktoria had developed a certain fondness for her mysterious lookalike. She had made no attempt to attack or escape, and had bombarded Viktoria with questions that were almost childlike in their directness and boundless curiosity. What was Viktoria's full name? Where did she come from? What did she like to eat? Drink? Would the Doppelganger like the same things? If the Doppelganger thought of a joke, would Viktoria know the punch line? (It turned out the answer to that was almost always yes, and that the Doppelganger's sense of humour was every bit as risqué as Viktoria's. Alyce had had to put her hands over her ears more than once). They tried simple guessing games, and although Alyce had done as well as might be expected, the two Viktorias seemed to have an unearthly connection. There was a lack of guile and openness about this other her that made for a refreshing change, Viktoria thought, and wondered about what her life might have been like, what she might have been like, if things had worked out differently for her back in 'Frisco. This strange mirror-image might be her window to the might have-been, although she still thought better of untying her.

They geared up for the trek across the swamp. After a short break to rest and eat, the canoe was loaded with the last of the supplies, and they set out. Using a long pole, Viktoria pushed the canoe through the water, Alyce at the prow and the Doppelganger, hands still bound, between them.

A canopy of gnarled trees grew up out of the fetid swamp. The tree trunks were a tangled knot of boles and buttresses that loomed out the murky waters like fossilised kraken. Some of the trees were large enough that the canoe could pass through the tangle of roots and beneath the tree itself. Eventually, they reached a clearing in the swamp, and the night sky opened up. It was uncharacteristically clear and filled with stars. Viktoria was reminded of the carving the old woman had drawn on the tabletop, back at the Qi and Gong.

"Where we are from," Viktoria said as she drove the canoe onward, "people see heroes and heroines in the stars. What do your people see up there?"

The Doppelganger looked to the sky, a far-off look in her eyes. "The death of this world. A story to frighten our tots, and worry the old, when decay and madness were invited in, and ruin came with them."

Both Alyce and Viktoria gazed up.

The Doppelganger pointed as she spoke. “That one is the Hourglass. Makes her sound almost appealing, although she's anything but. The Maw. When I was young, I would have nightmares about that one.”

"I don't know what it is like on the other side of the Breach, although maybe one day I'll take a look, but I imagine you have lots of clever people there. You must, I suppose, to do all the things your kind have done, but clever people can be blinded by themselves. They get so impressed with their own cleverness they imagine they can solve any problem, rise to any challenge. There was a time when this world was full of clever people, too. They were masters of magic and technology. They brought about an age without sickness or suffering. They found ways to live without end, and some of them grew bored with their long lives and, being clever, they found dangerous ways to waste their time.

"But what was a thrilling dip into dark waters for some became a headlong, breathless plunge for a few. They found deep within themselves the worst perversions and most terrible desires, and knowing no limits they turned these things outward, on their fellows, and revelled in the misery they caused. They subjected the people of this world to cruel experiments and depravity, and decay, illness, and pain abounded once again.

"So powerful did these individuals become that they seemed to be gods, and the people of this world had no defence against them. Great machines of war were levelled against them, and great armies were amassed. But no force could stand against their mastery of the arcane or the potency of their science. The machines of war were swept aside like children’s toys, and entire armies were slaughtered in the blink of an eye."

The swamp was silent as the creature spoke, as above the canoe the stars slowly turned.

"The desperate people of this world exhausted every available force, combating the growing tyranny of the cabal. With nothing left to them, they began to look beyond the boundaries of this world, into the vastness of the night sky and through the veil that divides this world from others. It was there that they found a hope for salvation.

"Or so they thought. The survivors built a great machine. This machine was a doorway between this existence and another. It was a breach in the great barrier between worlds. But this was not like the breach into your world. This one opened into the realm of death itself.

“What the survivors had discovered was that death was not simply our term for the natural end of all things. Death was real. Death existed, in the same way that light and energy exist. The reason living things die is not some benign circle of life, but because death is a force that is woven into the fabric of reality. It has a sense. A purpose. It is drawn to life, and there is no stopping it.

"When the survivors opened the breach, Death itself was loosed on the world. It destroying the tyrants one by one, yes, but it was a cancer that infected the whole of the world, and kept on growing. The breach between this world and that one couldn’t be repaired. It brought madness and corruption, transforming this land into what you see today. For the people that survived, their minds became poisoned, and they became all but extinct. Only those who embraced the madness growing inside them managed to survive."

“They became the monsters they sought to destroy," Viktoria said.

The Doppelganger sighed. "Worse. Some of those old tyrants still clung to existence, living on as disembodied spectres. Though their bodies had been destroyed, some managed to linger on, trapped in a nether existence from which they yearn to escape. Their powers are weak, and their influence is subtle, but it is all around us. And none more so than here."

“We have arrived,” Viktoria whispered, with a certainty she knew came direct from her twin.

Alyce stood and pointed out across the dim water. Rising above the knot of trees before them were seven crooked spires that clutched at the sky like a clawed hand. "There! That must be it."

Phillip Tombers had named this place Kythera. None of these three knew that name. To them, it was a temple dedicated to desperation, a machine that produced the very substance of death. As they approached, the jagged limbs loomed higher and higher above them, but distance was deceptive in the swamp.

“How tall are those things?” asked Alyce, slack jawed, and Viktoria had no answer but to carry on.

“The one you seek is coming, sister,” the Doppelganger said, crouching close to Viktoria. "The creature December is close."

“What would you have me do?”

The Doppelganger held up her bound hands. “I was made for this fight. Free me. You cannot face him alone.”

“No allies,” said Viktoria reflexively. “No partners.”

“I see,” the other her smiled. "Just you, then."

Viktoria nodded. “Just me.”

Then, a growing rumbling caught her attention and she steered the canoe into the cover of some low branches draped with grey-green moss.

To the north, the swamp only had weeds and grasses atop it, and they could see for some distance across it. There, heading in the same direction as they were, was a large steamship. A great plume of smoke rose from its stacks as its paddle wheels turned, sending out a wash of green waves behind it.

“Were you expecting company?” Alyce asked in a whisper.