As the fight raged on around him, Mal suddenly felt himself dissociate for a moment. There hadn’t been time to process the chaotic series of events that had led him here – his…her death, reincarnation, and subsequent exhortation by the Angel of Death - to this mysterious chapel built in another realm, where two distinct realities separated in space and time somehow converged into one.
Time. What an odd thing. Lyric seemed like a faded memory, a dream that drifts into forgotten nothingness upon the break of day. Vashir might as well have been a story read to him as a child for all the reality it held to him now. Porter could well be a name carved into a gnarled oak, a distinct memory once, but a relic for later generations to mull over the significance and importance should they take the time to notice at all.
He had been all of them at one time, or so it had seemed. But this…this felt different. He had marveled at the weight of the sword Kaffarah in Porter’s delicate, manicured hand and he had personally wielded the raw psionic might of the godling Vashir, but here in this church he could actually feel the cold steel of Green Trust in his hand; his arm physically lurched with the powerful kick the gun gave when it fired; and he could actually smell the acrid bold smoke wafting from its barrel when the bullet left the chamber.
Smell! That was what was different. Sure, he had “smelled” before. He faintly remembered the sandalwood and amber oil that Porter dabbed upon himself daily. He could nearly recall the overly perfumed ladies of the night in the brothel where Thrice had plied her trade. But he was also aware that these sensations were merely relayed to him by the programming, a series of 1’s and 0’s designed to relay the illusion of reality but not reality itself. But now, Mal could truly smell the world around him: the earthy scent of Blacklung’s cigar; Arnie’s sweat as she raced by with her giant sword raised over her head; the slightly plastic aroma of Data’s bioplastic skin; the powerful blend of musk and oiled metal that wafted from the mighty Arban. It was almost overpowering.
In every other iteration, Mal had been there behind the scenes, as if watching on a screen, but now he was here. Here. Living, breathing, fighting for his life. Fighting to save the lives of his companions. Fighting for her soul.
Her! He felt the rage of a dead man flare within him at the mere thought of Selise as the specter of Vashir recalled the deaths of his friends Naga and Sora at the woman’s cold and deliberate and treacherous hands. Sure, she had been under the sway of the Dragon Queen, her metamorphosis into the White Rider only beginning, a seed of evil watered with the blood of her former friends. And here they were, fighting for her soul. The Frost Queen, White head of Nuatuhl, Rimefang, Icy Claw of the Dragon Queen.
This must have been some time before her ascension – descension? – to the right hand of Tiamat, as space and time jumbled together in a Gordian knot, tying past, present, and future together in this place between worlds. Mal knew that space and time wer…
A rough hand on his shoulder snapped Mal from his reverie and he snapped to in an instant and found himself face to muzzle with Arban, who regarded him with a look of concern and anger. “Get your head in the game, man. Fight’s over.”
Mal looked around and watched as the demonic forces that had assailed them only moments before slipped into shadowy ash and wafted away. He had missed it somehow, lost in thought in the midst of battle. He mumbled a soft apology and turned to regard Selise, still upon her knees, lost in prayer. Fighting to save Selise. Mal flashed a slight smile at the irony of it. Man life is weird sometimes.
Life. Man, that word tasted sweet in his mouth.