The Suvudu Science Fiction and Fantasy Character Cagematch continues.  So far, Cale has faced and eked past Johnny Rico, from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and Jean Tannen, from Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora.  Now he runs into the Kim Harrison buzzsaw, facing Rachel Morgan, from the Hollows series.

As you can see from my previous write ups, I’m trying to string these together into a coherent story.  Putting together these write ups is fun, but trying to connect them into a single, overarching story makes them even more fun — let’s call it “Erevis Cale’s Excellent Multiversal Adventure.”

*Cue Wyld Stallions guitar riffs*

Anyway, Cale’s going to need every vote he can get to move past this round, so, if you’re a Cale fan and/or are enjoying the write-ups, please head on over, have a read, and then vote.

The opening of the write up is below.  I hope you enjoy.

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Lightning painted jagged green lines on the starless vault of the Shadowfell’s sky. Thunder rumbled, a deep groan, as if the world were in pain.

And Cale supposed it was.

Shadows roiled around him, their dark churn a reflection of his thoughts. He stood on a balcony in the highest tower of his basalt citadel, staring up at the glowing gash in the sky.

The rift hadn’t shrunk. Cale had murdered two people, thinking that would close and end the crossovers that were destabilizing the multiverse. But the blood he’d spilled had been a libation to indifferent gods. The rift remained as it had been, several leagues wide, glowing green and blue and yellow, a bruise-colored hole in the fabric of the multiverse.

If it weren’t closed soon, he knew, it would consume everything. Everyone everywhere would die. The multiverse would end in nothingness.

He had to learn more of its origin.

Intoning the words to a powerful divination, he smeared shadows across the air before his face, read the meaning in their pattern, in their swirling whorls and spirals. Words came to him, alien words that originated on alien worlds, names of beings he never should have known: Kylar Stern, Revan, Kelsier, Rachel Morgan.

And every name was a symptom of the multiverse’s sickness.  All of those beings stood between him and his ability to seal the rift.  The rift….

He focused the energy of his spell on the rift, looking for a magical signature, anything that would tell him of its origin.  And he soon had it.

His spell pulled a presence from the shadows, showed him the cause of the rift, the towering, dark presence that loomed behind it all, a being with the power of a god, a being whose name Cale now knew.

Anomander Rake.

Rake was responsible for the rift.  Rake was responsible for everything.

Cale would have to find him, and then find a way to kill him.

But others stood in the way, beings Rake was using to thwart any attempt to stop him and seal the rift.

Cale would have to kill them first.

He picked a name at random from those he had learned.

Rachel Morgan would be the next to die.

He drew Weaveshear, hooked the foci of his divination onto Rachel Morgan’s name, and so learned the location to which he must travel.

Thunder rumbled anew as he drew the darkness about him, stepped through the shadows, and went off to kill.

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Please click here to read the rest and then vote.  🙂