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Chapter 19: BATMAN!

Chapter 19: BATMAN!

"And how did you recover your lost memories?"

"By having the fucker that killed me killed in return." He tapped the falchion against his shoulder. "When an Abomination consumes part of a soul, those memories remain inside it. Cull the Abomination, and whatever it stole is released. If enough of you still exists to receive them, they return."

"All of them?"

"Most, if you’re quick. Memories change the longer they remain inside something else. Sometimes they return damaged. Faces become unclear. Voices sound wrong. A year of your life might come back as a few scattered moments."

"And if the Abomination isn’t killed?"

"Then the memories remain with it until they’re digested or torn apart by something stronger."

Mara remembered the Second Rank reaching through her body. Its fingers had touched something no ordinary hand should have been able to reach, pulling fragments of her life into the open air.

Her memories might still have been inside that creature when the frost-wielding Reaper culled it.

Perhaps that was why nothing had seemed missing afterward.

"You hunted down every Abomination that killed you?"

"Every one I could remember."

"And how did you kill them?" Mara asked. "After all, you’re the Batman of this world. The no-kill rule and everything."

Rook frowned. "What’s a Batman?"

She waited for the grin.

It did not come.

"You’re not being serious."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Batman. The superhero."

"Is that something from your world?"

Mara stared at him. "My world? What are you talking about? He’s from a comic."

"I know what comics are. I’m asking whether that Batman came from your world."

"There aren’t different worlds."

Rook looked at her.

Mara waited for him to make some lame joke about it.

He did not.

The forest suddenly felt quieter around them.

"There are worlds?" she asked. "As in alternate realities?"

"Almost everyone believes they’re the only ones in the universe." Rook stepped across a fallen section of wall, its stones bound together by pale roots. "Then they die and discover that the universe is rather large."

"How many worlds are there?"

"I have no idea."

"But the people in the Eleventh came from different ones?"

"Some did. Most worlds are similar enough that it takes time to notice. Same languages, same tools, similar history. Then someone mentions a kingdom that never existed where you came from, or a war that ended differently, or a famous person nobody else has heard of."

Mara looked at the back of his coat. "And Batman doesn’t exist in yours."

"Not that I remember."

"That may be the worst thing you’ve told me about your life."

"I was cut into pieces and slowly had my memories eaten. And this is worse?"

"Yes, way worse..."

Rook snorted. "Anyway, back to the point. I didn’t Cull the Abominations that killed me. I couldn’t. But I made them very easy for someone else to finish."

"How?"

"The usual way." He counted upon his fingers. "Bind them. Cut off anything useful. Break their limbs. Tear open the stomach if it has one. Pin them beneath something heavy. Then wait for another Reaper to do the one thing I can’t."

"So you hunted down the creatures that killed you, beat them until they couldn’t move, then allowed someone else to take the Cull."

"That summarizes it nicely."

"How could you hunt something after it killed you?"

"Carefully."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It was difficult early on," Rook admitted. "I’d return missing memories, weapons and sometimes enough of my body that walking took a while. I had to learn how each creature hunted, where it nested and what mistakes I had made the first time."

The falchion came down from his shoulder as he moved around another narrow trunk. Rook used its tip to lift a thorned vine out of Mara’s path.

"I never died to the same Abomination twice," he continued. "Thankfully, it’s almost impossible to forget how you die. So, I always remember... though never the first time. So dying to an Abomination once was enough to teach me what didn’t work. Whenever I went back, I went prepared."

Mara ducked beneath the vine and waited for him to release it. "Really?"

"Yes."

"You lose the first fight, disappear, study everything about the enemy and return with a ridiculous amount of preparation."

"That is generally how preparation works."

"Prep time," she murmured. "You really are Batman."

"Does this Batman also carry a coffin?"

"No."

"Then I’m already doing better."

"He has armor, secret weapons, vehicles, hidden bases and enough money to purchase the Eleventh Bastion."

Rook considered that. "I suppose the coffin could use wheels."

"That isn’t the important part."

"It would make hills easier."

"You’re also just as rude as him."

"Whoever this Batman is, he sounds like a cool guy."

Mara frowned. She wanted to deny it, but the words refused to cooperate. "I can’t argue against that. You’re nowhere near as rich as him, though, so you lose a great many points."

"Wealth sounds less impressive when you’re dead."

"He’d probably find a way to remain rich here."

"Then I dislike him."

"You liked him a moment ago."

"I’ve received new information."

They continued beneath the tangled canopy, following whatever direction the broken compass claimed to offer. The trees remained unsettlingly still around them, yet the conversation had taken some of the weight from the darkness. Mara no longer flinched at every distant creak. Rook, for his part, seemed less interested in bringing the subject back to death.

After a short silence, he asked, "What sort of weapons does he use?"

Mara turned toward him. "Batman?"

"Yes. Tell me more about this comic."

"For real?"

"Why not?" Rook inspected the compass, struck its side twice with his thumb and turned toward a narrow opening between the trees. "It beats walking in silence and talking about death."

"That was mostly you."

"You were the one asking questions."

"And now you’re asking about Batman."

"A much better subject."

Mara studied him for a moment, wondering whether he was genuinely interested or merely trying to prevent her from returning to what he had lost during those hundreds of deaths.

She decided not to ask.

"Well," she said as they continued toward the unknown, "Batman was a child when his parents were murdered in front of him."

Rook glanced at her. "I thought we were done talking about death."

"We haven’t reached the part where he dresses as a giant bat."

He faced forward again. "Continue."

For the first time since leaving the Eleventh Bastion, Mara smiled without forcing it.

And for the next several miles, while the trees listened from the darkness and the compass pointed nowhere at all, she told a man from another world the story of Batman.