Burnout descended the Pony Mountain path in silence, thinking about what Lethe had just said. He was making his way in the ever-darkening night toward the Ford Bison truck he'd left halfway down the mountain. Lethe's words came back over and over.
I'd like to help you kill Ryan Mercury.
Burnout could feel the tension roll through him. A tiny shiver of anticipation hit him then, and he laughed.
"Do you find my decision to seek someone's death as humorous?"
"In a sick way," Burnout said. "It's ironic."
"Ironic or not, my offer should not be taken lightly. And it does not come without a price."
"What price? I don't have anything left to give but my life, and that would kind of defeat the purpose, don't you think?"
"You are not entirely devoid of possessions."
For the first time since discovering the spirit, something in its voice brought a chill to Burnout's circuitry. "Keep talking."
"Let me tell you a story."
Burnout climbed down a sharp incline, sliding in the wet soil. "Just get to the point, Lethe. I'm not in the most patient mood."
"Indulge me, Burnout. You are lacking information that could make the difference between life and death for the entire world, and I think it's time you knew the whole truth."
Burnout stopped in his tracks. "I thought you were always honest with me. That I could trust you. Now you're telling me you've been holding out on me?"
Lethe's voice was stern. "Since the time our association began, I have come to respect you as a warrior and to value you in many other ways. Even as a friend. However, the information I'm about to impart to you is of such magnitude that I could not have shared it until now. Even as close as we've become, I only tell you this because the situation is desperate."
Burnout grunted, and continued his journey back down the mountain side. He hoped Ryan hadn't discovered the Ford Bison. Without the truck, traveling would be much slower and far more exhausting. "All right," he said. "You've got my attention."
"You are familiar with the Great Ghost Dance?"
Burnout snorted. "I used to be a mage, remember." From what Burnout could recall, the Great Ghost Dance was a massive sacrifice led by Daniel Howling Coyote in the early years of magic. Many shamans had sacrificed themselves in order to power the ritual magic that had wakened the Earth and caused many volcanoes to erupt.
Lethe's voice dropped through Burnout's IMS. "When magic of such magnitude is performed, it has an effect on the other planes of existence. It raises the level of mana into a spike that travels across the metaplanes."
"You're losing me, spirit."
"Let me try to show you."
Lethe was silent for a minute. An image welled into Burnout's memory. He stood on a gigantic outcropping of rock. The outcropping stretched for an unimaginable distance, spanning a bottomless abyss.
Across the abyss at the farthest reaches of his sight, he noticed the other side. And he felt revulsion as he looked. A revulsion that grew into terror. Into horror, until he knew that the distant, tiny figures that writhed around on the opposite cliff were utterly evil.
Then came a glorious sound. The beautiful song of a goddess who stood on the very tip of the outcropping. Just over the Chasm. She sang and a bright white light spread out from her, immobilizing him. In the glory of her song, he forgot who he was, he did not care. He merely was. Blissful. Content.
Basking in the perfection.
The vision faded.
"I see now," Burnout said after a minute. He ducked his head to avoid low branches, and scrambled down a grassy hill. "But what does it have to do with me?"
"Let me finish. The occurrence of the Great Ghost Dance has upset a very delicate balance in the meta-planes. As the level of magic rises, our plane and the plane of these creatures grows slowly closer. In time, the distance will be close enough that the evil will be able to cross unaided."
"How long?"
Lethe sighed. "A few thousand years, at the least."
Burnout grunted again. "So we go back to my original question. What's this got to do with me?"
"The Dance has created a bridge of sorts. It spans some of the distance to the other side. Even now, the creatures are building a bridge of their own. If they are allowed to complete the narrow gap that remains, they will invade this world in force, thousands of years too soon. Well before mankind is prepared for the upcoming war."
Burnout whistled. "Frag. How long until that happens?"
"Could be tomorrow, could be a thousand years."
Once again, Burnout stopped in his tracks. "You're telling me that at any moment our world could be overrun by a metaplanar enemy?"
A long pause followed. "Perhaps, but there is one who stands against them."
"The goddess."
"Yes. Her name is Thayla, and her song is so beautiful that it is like fire to them. Thayla's song is of perfect purity and goodness; it is a golden light of such power that normal beings are trapped in its beauty and cannot move. To the creatures from the other side, it is the most painful thing they can imagine. While she sings, they cannot move forward with the construction of their side of the bridge."
"So as long as she keeps singing, this world is safe."
"Yes."
"That still doesn't answer where I fit in."
"There are those on our side of the Chasm who are trying to silence her song, and she is weakening. She needs the Dragon Heart to destroy the bridge."
Burnout didn't respond for a moment, he just kept moving. They were almost to the Bison. "So the Kodiak was correct when he said that the Heart was either the salvation-or the destruction-of the world."
"Yes."
Burnout grunted. "Well, frag 'em. This world hasn't done me any favors."
"I am truly sorry about that," Lethe said. "But this is important, and it means a great deal to me."
Burnout held up his hand for quiet. They had reached the Bison.
The vehicle sat exactly as they'd left it. Burnout scanned the ground with his low-light vision jacked up all the way. There were footprints all around the vehicle. He circled the Bison, but couldn't discern any booby traps. No hanging wires, no infrared detectors.
He stepped closer, and through the hole where the front door had been he could see the small note taped to the vehicle controls. Cautiously, he walked to the side of the vehicle, all his enhanced senses attuned.
"You notice any magic tricks on the vehicle?" he asked Lethe.
"No. There are no wards or magical traps of any kind."
He reached into the vehicle and gingerly pulled the note from the controls. And in the light of the just-rising moon, he read it.
"It's not over, Burnout. I've got your number. And some time, when you least expect it, I'm going to pay you a visit. You've got no cover, you've got no identity, you've got nowhere to run. Hide, if you think that will do you any good, but you've got to know I'll find you. When I do, Burnout, I promise, you'll die slowly. Circuit by circuit, synapse by synapse. You have no idea what you've done, and for that you have my pity. Still, pity won't save you, chummer.
"Until we meet again. By the way, tell Lethe hello. If I have my way, he'll burn in Hell right beside you for betraying the cause."
Burnout crumpled the note in his hand, rage boiling through him. But this rage was different from the hot anger he was used to. This was a cold hunger that would only be sated by Ryan's lifeless body bleeding at his feet.
Burnout stood in the moonshadow of the great pines, the dappled silver playing over the ground. "All right, Lethe. You're right. The Heart is no good to me, at least not without you, and Mercury isn't going to rest until we're both history. Tell me about this deal."
"It's simple really," the spirit said. "Though I think your hatred for this man is beginning to affect me. The deal is: you promise to help me take the Dragon Heart to Thayla, and I will deliver Ryan Mercury into your hands."
Burnout laughed. "What makes you think you can do what I can't?"
"Burnout, my friend, you do not know Mercury in the way I do. I have fought alongside him, I know his strengths and his weaknesses. I was there when he succumbed to the seductive power of the Dragon Heart and claimed it for himself. I knew then that he could never be trusted to carry the Heart to Thayla. Without that his life is forfeit to my goal."
"How do we defeat him?"
"Whenever you have faced him, you have confronted his strength. As much as I dislike the idea, it's time to confront him where he is the weakest."
"And just where would that be? As far as I can tell, Ryan Mercury doesn't have any weaknesses."
"In the sprawl named Washington FDC there lives a woman named Nadja Daviar. She is Mercury's one weakness. If you have her, then you have him."
Burnout's laughter carried in the night air, and all around the Bison the woods were deathly still. "Deal!"