Nightside 06 - Sharper Than a Serpents Tooth

it hated that most of all. Its filthy thoughts wormed through my mind, stoking the anger and outrage it found there… but I had felt its corrupting nature before, and I fought it back. I hadn't come this far to bow down to a spiteful machine.
    And yet, even under its madness and its rage, I could feel the Speaking Gun yearning for my mother's touch. It wanted to go to her and nestle in her hand, and do terrible, awful things for her. I gripped the Gun so tightly my whole hand ached, and never once took my gaze off Lilith. She laughed soundlessly at me, and took a step forward. I aimed the Speaking Gun carefully, and pulled the trigger.
    And nothing happened.
    I tried again and again, but the long canine tooth that served as the Speaking Gun's trigger wouldn't budge. I shook the Gun, and even hit it with my other hand, but it did no good. In my mind, I could hear it laughing.
    "The Speaking Gun won't work on me, John," Lilith said calmly. "It will never operate against the wishes of its creator. Just a little safeguard I had built into it, back at the Beginning. It loves me, you know. It aches to serve me, and make me happy. Such a good son… Unlike you. Give me the Gun, John. It was never meant for you. And in my hands it will respeak your most secret name and remake you into the respectful, obedient son I always intended you to be."
    She held out her hand, and the Speaking Gun jerked in my grasp, as though desperate to go to the one who would let it do what it had always wanted to do.
    I couldn't let her take the Gun. So I raised my gift, and forced it to find the one way in which the Speaking Gun could be destroyed. The answer was simple: by making it speak its own secret name backwards, and uncreate itself. My gift fought me, and the Gun fought me, but I had come a long way in the past few years, down a long hard road, perhaps to prepare me for moments like this. I bent all my will and all of my soul against the gift and the Gun, beating them down step by step and inch by inch, until finally the Speaking Gun choked out a single awful sound, then howled in despair as its very existence was reversed and undone. Uncreated.
    My hand was suddenly empty, and I staggered and almost fell, wiped out by such a tremendous effort. I felt as though I'd just lifted a mountain with my bare hands, and turned it over on its side. Lilith grunted suddenly with surprise, and clapped one hand to her bare side. I studied her warily, but she just smiled back at me.
    "Why thank you, John. For returning my flesh and bone to me. I'd forgotten how much I missed that rib till I had it back again. You always give your mother the best presents."
    "The Speaking Gun is gone," I said. "You can't remake me without it, which means you can't remake the Nightside. So, it's over. Your precious scheme is dead in the water. Stand down your armies. This isn't your Nightside any more. You don't belong here. Just… go away, and leave us alone."
    But she was already smiling and shaking her head. "You always did think too small, John. The Speaking Gun was never that important to me. It was just there to make things easier for you. It would have been a more… merciful method, that's all. Now I'll just have to do it the hard way. And don't you dare cry. You brought this on yourself. The Speaking Gun was never intended to be my main weapon against the Nightside, John. That was, and is, you. That is why I gave birth to you, after all."
    "What?" I said. My mind was numb, from too many reverses. "I don't understand…"
    "Of course you don't. I arranged for you to inherit one particular gift from me, John, so I could make use of it when the time was right. I will make you do what you were born to do. I will make you use your gift to find for me the perfect form of the Nightside, the original uncontaminated model that I always intended it to be, and when you've found that for me I will enforce that version on all the world."
    "I won't do it," I said. I tried to look away from her, from her deep dark eyes, and couldn't. "I won't do that!"
    "You don't have any choice, sweetie. I decided your fate before you were even born, working on you while you were still forming in my womb. All through the first few years of your childhood, I built a geas deep within your mind, so I'd be able to use it in this place, on this day. A geas to bend your will to mine. That's why you've never been able to remember your early years with me. It became necessary for me to leave the