Revelation

Book IV of The Infinite and Divine

By Darth Marrs

It is the end of the 41st millennium.

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day in the vain hope that he may never truly die.

Even in his agonizing state between life and death, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp guided solely by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies of humans and transhumans alike give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a human in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. To even exist is to live without hope, for how can any hope survive in the grim dark future of endless war?

Chapter One: In Principio

On the edge of existence, staring out across a dark, illimitable ocean without bound, a winged angel in gleaming armor that glowed with six stones of creation hung in the void staring in frightened awe. In this place that was not a place, she was alone. Just a shard of what she once was, and yet still so much more than most.

She closed her eyes with intense concentration and summoned the power of the stones embedded in her celestial bronzed armor. Light energy began to billow around her like an aura of creation itself. The energy was dimensional, but temporal as well. By her will alone, she began to accelerate herself faster than existence. She inched forward in relative terms to the outermost reach of the multiverse. With a surge of divine will, she shot herself forward faster than time itself. Faster than gravity and heavier than mass.

It took forever, it felt like. It happened instantly. A sound that she didn't hear, but felt. A deep, ringing gong reverberating through every cell of her body. A violent impact as if she'd slammed into and then through a wall of pure steel going faster than light. She heard voices–so many voices all crying out in pain, or confusion, or hope and desperation.

Another gong; a tear in reality. A slithering, horrifying voice that spoke not to her mind or ears, but to her viscera. +I SEE YOU. I LOVE YOU. STAY WITH ME IN MY GARDEN, AND I WILL SHOW YOU SUCH DELIGHTS!+

Spinning out of control, she had only glimpses, but what she saw may her eyes water in horror, but also sadness. A fleeting glimpse of a sister goddess, crying tears for her lost children as monsters danced around her cage. And behind it, a giant rotting mansion, as black as oil. A throne of chaos.

Another tear, and suddenly the garden was replaced with what looked like a nebula, but one of writhing, scintillating purples and reds, like a tear in reality that made her mind hurt to process it. Directly below, she saw a giant star-shape filled with impossible buildings and machines. Her Olympian eyes focused beyond any mortal gaze and walking the streets of this city of dust she saw giants in ornate golden armor. She saw angels with Arnold Swarzenegger builds but Brad Pitt faces.

Something followed after her, filling the hole she herself made. And still she fell, through one last barrier, until the very last of the rainbow energy faded around her.

Taylor fell, with the wind whistling through her hair and pulling at her wings. With the awareness came memories, and with memories, self-realization.

She was Telos, Princess of Asgard. Taylor Hebert. She wielded the six Infinity Stones and pierced creation itself to return home. She defeated Thanos, and she wanted to go home..

She opened her eyes again, but saw only a strange mist that shrouded everything around her. She felt a sensation of falling, but she couldn't tell in which direction she fell. The mist was so absolute, she had no idea what she was falling toward.

She tried flapping her wings, but though she could feel the wind on her face, her wings could not find any purchase against it. She simply…fell.

She remembered then, once upon a time, a mostly mortal girl and her godly sire were blasted through an underground tunnel in a titanic flood. They clung to a magical artifact, the Lance of Triton, that allowed them to breathe under water. After the terror and the physical pain came a strange boredom. It was a very long tunnel.

"Has this ever happened to you?" she asked, somehow speaking clearly because of the magic of the lance.

"Not this, no."

"But something like this?"

"I fell from Olympus to Hades once," her father finally admitted. "The fall grew tedious after a time."

"Then what happened?"

"I landed."

Taylor's wings found no purchase in the strange atmosphere of the mist. She fell like a rock, with odd-scented air whipping through her hair. She fell for what felt like hours, but could have been mere minutes, until finally she, too, landed.

If she were mortal, the landing would have killed her. Even with her Olympian strength, the impact jarred her hard enough to make her ears ring. For the longest time, she simply laid where she landed, trying to make sense of everything that happened since she left the other multiverse.

Where was she? A godly realm? Without her magic, would other gods even speak to her?

Eventually, the sounds of her environment trickled past her thoughts. What she noted first was the light, silvery tinkling of a river or energetic brook nearby. It sounded as if she was outside–she felt loam under her hands where she caught herself from her fall. It smelled of growing things and rot. But something didn't seem right about the place.

It took only a moment to realize what bothered her. She couldn't hear any insects. There wasn't a breeze any more. Just the sound of water rolling gaily over rocks. She picked herself up, and then climbed out of the crater she'd made in the loam, and looked around in confusion. It looked almost like a huge Hollywood set; like the movies she and her parents used to watch. She expected Errol Flynn to come swinging on a vine in his green forest tunic.

Her mind brought up another version of the story, one they received from Earth Aleph from before she was born. "I am not a MerryMan!"

As artificial as the setting seemed, when she reached out to touch one of the massive, ancient trees, she felt real, living bark under her hands. The tree seemed to reach up into the mist. With a flap of her wings, she tried to launch herself into the lowest branch.

Just like when she fell, her wings found no purchase. However, her legs were powerful enough to send her the twelve feet she needed to grab the branch. She easily pulled herself up, and past that sheer, thick trunk, she found a better path to climb. She climbed up and up, unable to see anything around her except a thick mist. Oddly, no matter how high she climbed, she could still hear the river as if it were right next to her.

After what felt like an hour of climbing, she realized the tree was not what she thought. It did not seem to have a top, and if it did, all she would see was the very mist she fell through. With a frustrated sigh, she started down.

She reached the exact branch where she started after only a few minutes, despite having climbed for what felt like hours. Some Vista-like power was obviously playing with her mind. "Oh come on! Really?"

When no answer came, she took a better accounting of herself. She was here, wherever here was. What did she have with her?

She reached for and felt a surge of relief when she found her staff on her belt. She activated it, and the Ymirish bone expanded. She could feel its impossible weight, and new that even the transition between branes of existence did not change the intrinsic qualities of the bone, any more than it changed her own intrinsic qualities.

The dwarven rings she'd been gifted, however, proved useless. It made sense, she supposed. They were crafted to harness the energy created by the interplay of dimensions within the dimensional brane of that multiverse in order to help her learn Asgardian magic. Wherever she landed was different enough that the energies were also different–enough so the rings were useless.

Which meant…

The beautiful bow the dwarves crafted for her failed to expand. The dwarves crafted with their own magical arts, and just like the rings, that magic did not translate between multiversal branes.

When she drew her Asgardian steel sword and swung at a low-hanging branch, she was relieved to see that the qualities of the metal were intrinsic, and not depending on magic alone. Which meant her Asgardian steel armor would still provide some protection as well, even if compromised by the burned out spots where the stones were destroyed. They might even heal over those spots in time.

So, no magic, but at least she was armed.

That done, she decided to look for the river she'd heard. Immediately off the narrow path she found herself having to wade through a near solid wall of tough, thorny bushes that would have torn her to pieces if not for her nature and the grieves of her armor. It made for slow going, though.

Just like with the tree, it was hard to tell how much time passed. The light was a consonant, unwavering presence. Whether it was a sun, or some function of the realm, it did not change with the passage of time, assuming that time moved at all. She began to wonder if she'd fallen into some remnant of her mother's Vanaheim.

Just like with the Escher-esque tree, she began to despair of ever finding the river. But just as the thought occurred, the mists seemed to blow away and she found herself on a river bank.

She began walking along the edge, and once again the sheer unnaturalness of the place made her skin crawl. The river looked like water, and sounded like water, but when she focused on it, it was most definitely not water. What she saw were strange ribbons of energy moving along like slow streams of light, only they weren't that either. But just under the surface of the moving river of…energy, she saw shadows that did not look like fish, or anything else she wanted to meet.

Suddenly the bank curved in around the trunk of a massive dark oak tree, and Taylor slowed as she saw her first sign of human habitation. Right next to her rose the ancient, cracked stone of a drum tower, no taller than her old house in Brockton Bay, and not much wider either. Ten-foot stone walls reached back from the edge of the tower into the thick of the forest to form a modest courtyard.

There were a few narrow windows in the walls and towers, but they looked more like arrow slits than anything for viewing the scenery. And even when she focused, she couldn't see into them.

She walked toward the front that faced the not-water, looking for doors. As she came around the curve of the tower, the river widened out into a seemingly serene lake. She could see more forest on the far side of the surface, but under the surface she saw large shadows moving.

That's when she saw the fisher king.

Taylor remembered everything with perfect, near digital recall. At least, she did once Odin helped her restore her blocked memories. She remembered mother reading Chretien to her in the original Old French, as well as the many continuations to his unfinished romance that helped inform later Arthurian legends. She never questioned why she understood the language at the time–she had always understood languages back then. Now, without her magic, she had to concentrate and learn languages. Sometimes it could take hours.

But with those stories, Taylor knew that an old, withered king in a boat fishing was about as subtle a bit of metaphor as a baseball bat to the balls.

"Hello? Um, just want to say, I already have a pretty good sword, just in case there's a sword in a stone somewhere."

+You're funny.+

Taylor spun around and then froze in confusion when she saw the young boy who sat by the drum tower staring at her. "Hello?"

+You're pretty, too. The other ones aren't as pretty as you.+

"Other ones?"

No answer came. She looked to the motionless fisher king. "Is he going to be alright?"

The boy had russet-colored hair and oddly familiar green eyes. The haircut was pretty brutal, she thought, shaved close on the sides with a thicker mop on top. He looked maybe nine or ten years old–definitely prepubescent. He wore roughly made homespun trousers and leather shirt, with a hand-cured fur vest over it. +Don't worry about him. He's not for you.+

"Then who's he for?"

+The other ones.+

The boy flickered, suddenly. His strangely serene expression changed briefly to one of intense pain before he disappeared for split second. When he came back, his whole body flickered and blurred, like a bad TV signal. Dad was never willing to pay for cable. Somehow, she knew it wasn't intentional. He made no sound, but somehow she knew that even appearing as he did took insurmountable effort.

"Are you okay?"

+You've been gone a very long time, Taylor,+ the boy said. His voice changed from when she first saw him, and now sounded like a distant breeze whistling through river weeds. Barely audible, and so very weak. +I nearly lost hope.+

"Who are you?"

+I am…+ The voice faded into a barely perctable whisper. But at the same time, she heard other whispers. Conqueror. Vanquished. God. Thief. Peasant. Penitent. Messiah. Dying. Eternal. Tired. The words came out all together, and only her Olympian ears could derive meaning from the jumble of sound. It was as if dozens of people were all whispering at the same time, with the same voice, from different directions. +I'm what's left.+

"Left of what?"

+Of who I was. I think.+

She considered the response for a moment before deciding to come back to it later. "Please," Taylor said. "Where am I? What is this place? I wanted to go home, why did the Infinity Stones send me here?"

The boy flickered and blurred again. +Don't you recognize the World Tree?+

"You mean Yggdrasil? This isn't Yggdrasil, though. It's just some strange forest."

+What is a forest but a collection of trees? Each world has its own, don't you think? Beings far older than the most ancient gods of Earth shaped reality to create this forest. Their creations turned against them, and …+ My sons! Heretics! Damn them! Damn her! +...with their dying moments closed Yggradsil off from the greater forest to save us from the monsters that came to inhabit it.+

"Like the Yggdrasil of Asgard," she whispered to herself. Her mind raced as she considered the polyphysics aspect of the suggestion–that each of these trees was, a series of interconnected hyperdimensional networks. "If that's true…then you could create your own teleportation relay system. Just move from world tree to world tree. Almost instantaneous interstellar travel!"

+Yes. I tried it. It didn't work out the way I wanted.+

"Why not?"

+I lacked the final knowledge, and I was opposed. What you learned in your other place could bridge that gap.+

Taylor felt herself go very still. "How could you know that?"

The boy flickered and smiled up at her. +You're prettier than the other ones. You remind me very much of your mother. She was also very pretty.+

"What?"

He was gone. And this time, he didn't flicker back into existence. She looked around for him, but he wasn't there any more. All she saw was the old fisher king, who looked at her with half-blind, rheumy eyes, but said nothing. The shadows under the not-water circled around him, as if waiting for him to fall from the boat.

She couldn't get into the strange stone keep, no matter how much strength she applied to the doors. When overwhelming physical force failed, that meant metaphysics was involved. When she tried jumping, once more her wings failed to find any purchase in the strange air and her powerful leap for some reason could not propel her high enough to reach the top of the wall. She suspected that even if she could climb the wall, like the tree it would just keep going up forever.

After a few minutes of searching in frustration, she decided there was no reason to linger. Eventually she'd get hungry, after all. So, with a final look around for any flickering ghost-kids or fisher kings, she continued along the bank of the river that wasn't quite a river.

Though there was no external way to tell time, internally she counted the minutes. She'd been wondering for another hour or so when she came across a glade. Grassy soil, rich and dark, sloped down gently to the not-river.

The symbolism of the strange place continued, but this time instead of a fisher king or a sword in a stone, she saw an armored Jotun on a perfectly squared slab of stone carved into the grassy slope. Nor was the Jotun alone. Two child-sized figures stood before the giant, clad in dark robes with heavy cowls that hid their faces.

"Hmmm, do you speak English? I never learned Jawa."

+Wake the sleeper,+ one of the Jawas said silently, seeming to speak directly into her mind.

+We are not Jawas,+ the other Jawa said, peevishly.

+Nor are we peevish,+ the first added.

"Hey, if you don't like my thoughts don't hang around in my mind," Taylor said. "Are you sure you're not Jawas?"

The two creatures shared a look and sighed in absolute silence before they blinked away, like dwarves slipping in the spaces Between, or the boy who probably wasn't really a boy.

+We are not dwarves either,+ came a last thought.

"Don't blame the messenger!" Taylor called back. "Weird."

She walked closer to the Jotun, assuming he was the 'Sleeper' the two not-Jawas talked about.

The only Jotun she ever met in person was a 40 foot tall fire giant that was trying to kill her. But from her parents' stories, she knew not all Jotuns were huge, or ugly. In fact, Dad's wife before Mother was a Jotun princess. Dad was pretty picky with his women, she believed, and so he wouldn't have married her if she were big and ugly.

Maybe. Probably.

The sleeper looked very, very pretty. Old, but pretty. Almost like a 60-sh Robert Redford, or Cary Grant, if they were eight feet tall. He had a powerful, noble face that was old and deeply lined, yes, but still strikingly handsome. His beard formed a thick, silver-white cover over the lower half of his face, leaving only thick, pouting lips. He looked as if he were in pain even while asleep. Long hair had hints of blond, but was quickly going silver like his beard.

Most striking was that he wore a suit of armor. The armor was a gleaming black, but with forest green trim that was barely discernible in the misty twilight of the forest.

She held her hand over his nose and waited. And waited. A breath finally came, low and warm, but it made her wonder just how long he'd been asleep. It wasn't like he was covered in dust. The jawas must have cleaned him, she decided. Probably using swiffers or something.

"Hey, wake up!" She spoke softly at first. "Hey! Yoo-hoo, sleepyhead, time to wakey-wakey, eggs and bacy!" She lightly slapped his cheek, but it was like slapping granite. But having to lean over his massive head to do so, she saw something that piqued her interest.

There was circuitry in the collar of his armor.

"Whoa," she whispered, focusing more closely on the intricate circuitry. Her eyes were capable of almost microscopic focus, and doing so now revealed nano-circuitry of a quality that almost approached that of Tony Stark's work back in the other multiverse.

She began tracing the lines of what she now realized was highly advanced power armor of some kind. She reached the massive gauntlet of his hand–a hand as large as her chestplate. There she saw it, only visible at the microscopic level–a sensor pad. She placed her finger on it and pushed, and the gauntlet disconnected from the main body of armor with a loud click and a hiss of air. She pulled it off with surprising effort, revealing a pale, massive hand.

"Man, I bet you have a four octave range on the piano with that paw," she muttered as she began studying the gauntlet. It took only moments to open it up at a cleverly designed hinge at the base near the sealing cuff, revealing its juicy insides.

+What are you doing?!+

She glanced up at the Jawas. "Did you know this was power armor? Really nice circuitry. I mean, kind of…disorganized and inefficient, but even so I bet it still works."

The two Jawas…

+WE ARE NOT JAWAS!+

…stared at her in alarm. +What do you know of such things?+

"Well, I mean…it's like someone was putting together puzzle pieces based on the shapes, without really knowing what the picture was. See this whole nodule here?" She pointed, and whatever the Jawas thought, they both leaned in to look where she pointed.

"So, pretty sure that's sensor. I mean, full-on nerve-induction interfacing–like blue-tooth right into the nervous system. But it's just sitting there routing power. The Jotun over there should be able to have full touch through this gauntlet, but it's just not wired correctly. Like whoever made it didn't know what the node did."

+And you, just now arrived, do?+

"Well, yeah. Don't you? And who's the Jotun, anyway?"

+He is not…whatever that is. He is a primarch! Son of the Emperor of Mankind. Our lord and master.+

"Emperor of Mankind, huh? Sounds like someone has an ego problem." She sighed at the strange mix of potent technology and incompetent engineering. Maw would have been horrified. Stark would have been sarcastic and disdainful, even as he stole those aspects which were, admittedly, quite amazing. With this technology he could have full sensory input from his Iron Man suits.

She dragged the heavy gauntlet back to the sleeping not-a-Jotun. "He won't wake up. And I may be a princess of Asgard, but I'm not going to kiss some old man in the forest. Especially not one that could eat my face. So if that's what you were thinking, you can go suck an egg."

+Your mind is strange,+ said the one Jawa.

+Please stop calling us Jawas,+ said the other.

+You are here to wake the sleeper.+

"Yeah, sorry, but I tried. He didn't wake up."

+Try harder.+

Taylor shook her head, but the glowing eyes of the two freaky non-Jawas did not waver. "Fine." She walked back to the stone slab that held the ten-foot tall sleeping giant, sat on his barrel-sized chest plate, and braced herself.

"Hey! WAKE UP!" She slapped him, hard.

He woke up. Oh, did he wake up! He woke with an angry roar, and a fist the size of her chest. The blow sent her flying across the clearing into one of the massive trees, and then through it, causing a thick trunk to fall with a torturous creak of shattered wood.

With a moan, she fell out of the trees and glared at the Jawas. "Just for that, you're now gnomes! At least Jawas were cool."

The Gnomes faded away, like last time, leaving her alone with a giant, wild-eyed not-a-Jotun in inefficient but still very powerfully built power armor. Some small part of her was pleased to see the very red handprint on his massive cheek, right at the beard line.

Blue eyes like icy cobalt locked on to her with laser-like precision. He strode forward, and his sheer size belied his speed. He was on her almost before she registered the movement. However, she was not without her own speed. He reached for her with his bare hand, but she shot out from his grip and dove forward, flaring her wings for balance even if they were useless otherwise, and rolled to her feet.

The sudden movement surprised him, but at least he paused long enough to take stock. Part of that was reaching up with his bare hand. "Why did you strike me?"

He did not speak English, or any other language she recognized, but she understood it as if born to it. Metaphysics again, she realized. "The freaky little gnomes told me to wake you up," she said cautiously. "It worked."

"The…gnomes?"

"Little guys in robes with glowing eyes."

He considered this, and quickly began scanning the river bank and the forest. "Where are we?"

"No idea. Don't you know?"

"I…do not. I…am unsure who I am. Only that my jaw hurts."

"Sorry." She wasn't, not really. "The gnomes called you a Primarch. Son of the Emperor of Mankind. Does that help?"

The Jotun went perfectly still, almost like a statue, and she could almost see the steam rising from his head as his brain went into overdrive. He knelt down, one elbow propped on his knee, and lost himself in what looked like some very painful memories. For a moment, she sympathized. It wasn't that long ago when she, too, experienced a wash of sudden, painful memories.

For her part, she stood and winced as her Asgardian armor popped out the dent from his blow. She walked cautiously to the edge of the stream with its oversized shadows, and picked up a massive, crusader-style helmet in the same black as the rest of his armor.

She reached the slab next to where he knelt and sank down cross-legged. His helmet was, like everything else, as large as her torso.

This close, she could see how ancient the giant was. He had lines in his cheeks deep enough to swipe credit cards in. And yet, he still retained his handsomeness. He must have been rock-star gorgeous when he was younger.

"Are you okay?"

He glanced up at her again, frowning prodigiously. "What manner of creature are you?"

"Says the ten-foot tall giant in black armor."

"You mock me?"

She shrugged. "I'm a teenager. I think it's a moral imperative. Do you want your helmet?" She offered it up as much as a peace offering as to just get it off her lap.

He approached cautiously and took it. "I recognize this place, and yet I cannot recall from where. But then again, the same can be said of you. I do not know those markings on your body, but something of your face seems familiar. Who are you?"

"I…that's actually a pretty complicated question. My birth name was Taylor Hebert, but I'm also known as Telos."

The giant went perfectly still again as he stared down at her. "Taylor Hebert…is also Telos?"

Taylor, missing the strange flash in his eyes, sat up. "Wait, you know me? Really? But that's…that's awesome! Do you know my dad? His name was Kratos, but he also went by Danny Hebert?"

"I do not know those names. But I remember now. I was the first of the Emperor's sons. I learned much of my father's world. There was a religion there, suppressed by the Emperor, that worshiped an ancient goddess named Telos. And this Taylor Hebert was a part of that religion. You claim to be her? The never-ending saint of a long-dead religion?"

"When you put it that way…?" Her mind began racing. "So, right before I showed up here…I was in another multiverse. Another iteration of reality. And a very wise, old king helped me understand what happened. See…I sacrificed myself to kill a giant interdimensional monster that was going to eat the Earth and wipe out all humanity. And I won, I think. But right before Scion died he made my sword blow up, and it shattered…me. Or, it shattered Telos.

"I was blasted through the branes of reality itself, but I don't know what happened to the other two versions. If there's a girl running around calling herself Taylor Hebert, then she might be Taylor Hebert, the mostly mortal girl aspect of the Telos-that-Was. I'm Taylor Hebert, the daughter of Kratos, God of War–an Olympian goddess. And that means the other version of me, the Vanir goddess of… whatever…is out there too."

"There are no gods."

She shrugged. "I suppose it depends on your definition. But my point is, there may be other Taylor Heberts running around. I should probably find them. The freaky gnomes told me to wake you up. So whatever I'm supposed to do, it probably involves you. Can you help me?"

The giant shook his head. "My father declared all religions false. I waged a crusade with my sons across the galaxy to bring the Imperial truth to its citizens. By all rights, I should strike you down where you sit."

"Your father sounds like an asshole."

It appeared the giant was a little sensitive, and maybe had some daddy issues. In retrospect, she remembered how upset she was when Miss Militia implied that her dad might have been hurting her. Still, the angry roar and backhand seemed a little excessive.

Once again, Taylor's inability to fly and control her momentum worked against her. She tried to block the blow, but she was fighting a two-ton, ten-foot tall giant in power armor. He swatted her like an insect, and another tree died a Taylor-shaped death.

"All right, that's it." She pulled her staff, and when the giant charged her, she met him head on with a Ymirish-bone staff and every ounce of power she possessed.

He didn't go flying quite like she did, but only because she was literally a tenth his weight, if even that. He did, however, flip back so hard he lost both feet into the air and landed on his back with an explosive burst of breath.

He recovered very, very fast though. More importantly, he didn't fight like a clumsy giant. He fought like her father would fight–with exquisite reflexes, speed, power, and numbing competence.

She went flying again, crashing down on the edge of the stream. "Right, okay. That…" She had to catch her breath. "That was a really nifty move. Sorry for calling your dad an asshole. I'm sure he had a lot of redeeming qualities, too."

+Two ales on Master,+ one gnome said.

+I will not bet on the irritating female child,+ the other gnome said.

"You guys suck!" Taylor declared, before jumping free from another giant armored attack. She swacked her staff against his arm, eliciting a surprised cry of pain from the giant.

"What is that weapon?" He roared.

"It's a shard of bone from a planet-sized celestial being from another universe," she said. "It's as dense as neutronium. Here, try it."

She tossed it to him. The fact that he caught it and wasn't immediately crushed into paste was not just impressive, it genuinely astonished her. The old man displayed near-hulk levels of physical strength. But it was still several hundreds of tons heavier than the Jotun expected, and her casual toss of it sent him stumbling backward.

She rushed forward like a missile, grabbing the staff even as he held it, and using it and his own muscles as fulcrum, she kicked him in the chest. Once again, he hit the ground flat on his back. Taylor regained his feet at the same time he did.

And that's about the time they both realized they were not by the River any more.