Hub City Blues

The Arrivals – Tales of The New Earth (3)

Posted by Ebonstorm on August 14, 2012

Posted in: Chapter, Short Story. Tagged: alien, apocalypse, Beijing, Chen Zhan, China, ebonstorm, invasions, leapers, plants, science fiction, Tales of the New Earth, tanks, Thaddeus Howze, The Arrivals. 2 Comments

Chen Zhan woke this morning like she had for over twenty years, quietly, slowly and with great care. Her back muscles were stiff from sleeping on the smooth and cold marble floor of the office building. She was feeling every bit of forty this morning and was beginning to feel despair forming deep in her bones.

She grabbed her things, a serviceable backpack, an improvised flamethrower and began to move out before the sun rose. This was not her favorite hiding spot but she was forced to take cover when a swarm appeared without warning. After waiting, it was too late in the evening to go out, so she lit a fire burning unused office supplies and likely never to be used again office chairs. The fire was not for her, however. She hardly felt heat or cold any longer.

The fire she had lit across the room was surrounded by several of the white leapers common to this area. Nasty creatures, they lay in ambush for stray body heat if they caught you walking outside. They paid her no attention as the fire and warmth was the only thing they could sense. The fire made her invisible to their limited awareness.

The leapers had taken to foraging for people in office buildings now but were easily tricked by making a long burning fire during the night. In the early days, they would stalk the fire and leap into it thinking it was prey. It took a number of months before they learned a fire was not something to eat.

Fortunately, they did not seem to possess the reasoning to ignore a fire for another source of heat nearby. Chen theorized if she could make a fire burn long enough they might starve to death. They had a powerful metabolism and there would be at least one or two of them that might die during any given night. She knew they were related to the wandering trees but could not tell how they were related.

Chen made her way into the stairwell and lit her flamethrower. She didn’t expect any trouble this early, since most of the plants and animals in this part of the city were quite sedentary early in the day. She expected to be finished foraging and in her safehouse before they became more active.

She hadn’t seen another person for almost six months now. She knew people were still out there because it wasn’t possible to leave Běijīng anymore. She could see their tiny fires and wind-up flashlights after dark. If they weren’t careful or stayed in one place too long, she would eventually see leapers or flyers surround their hiding space and then she wouldn’t see those lights anymore.

It was hard in the beginning. She had been with a small group of students that had learned the secrets of living on the land, finding a way to live with the wàiguó rén shù or alien trees. The group was composed of young people who had come to the city to work from the farming communities outside of Běijīng. Back then, factory work, while hard offered some relief from the absolutely grueling labor of living on State-subsidized farm. Farming communities were not well paid and graft ate into every penny they earned even as they provided the bulk of food used in major cities. That changed when the hēi shù, the black trees came. That was much later, one of the worst times in her life. Almost as bad as the first day they arrived.

It was overcast and smoggy just like any other day in the city. Back then, factories worked twenty hours a day, darkening the sky with their output. The State called it the price of progress and we accepted it. On the way to her university, Chen heard a strange sound. She first thought it was military planes, they had become more numerous in the last few months as part of a defensive posture to the West’s actions in India. She would have paid it no further mind except it grew louder and appeared to be coming from everywhere in the sky at the same time.

Buildings suddenly exploded all around her. First one building, then another, then another, they were all around her. She was not sure which direction to run in. At the center of the explosions were strange strobe-like lights, each flickering with a blinding intensity. Chen fell down in the street and lost consciousness. When she woke, people stood transfixed in the street. She thought she was experiencing a dream because she saw trees uprooting themselves and attacking people who were standing still.

The nightmare continued as even the grass came to life, strangling people out running or exercising in the park. Chen staggered through the city, each new thing more terrible than the one before it. What made it even more surreal was the lack of protest. Few people screamed even as they were being eaten before her very eyes. Chen ran into a building that had not be damaged by the bombardment. The flashing lights continued through the night. By dawn, they stopped. Then the real horror began.

* * *

Chen walked past a tank covered with blossoms coming out of the barrel, decorating it, reducing it to an ornament. The tank was covered in a fine red and white moss and from a distance appeared to be nothing more than a flower-covered mound. She knew this particular tank well.

She spent the first night trapped in a building and refused to leave until she saw tanks coming into town. Leaving the office building she had taken shelter in during the first night of the Trees, she had run toward the tank, thinking it would offer her protection. An amplified voice told her to stop and return to her shelter.

She froze and in that moment, a half dozen of the fastest moving trees came between her and the office building door. The tank turned its turret toward her and fired. The sound deafened her and her hearing would never return completely in her left ear.

The round exploded behind her as one of the trees lobbed pumpkin-like gourds thorough the air. The tank was struck and spidery threads flew out and covered it. A few seconds later, the door on the top opened two National soldiers climbed out. They were covered with white filaments that slowly consumed them and then they stopped moving seconds later. Chen got up and ran for her life into a nearby skyscraper.

The alien landscape had all but erased a good portion of everything in the main city of Beijing. But strangely it avoided the freeways or heavy concentrations of concrete or other dense building materials. Chen had been a college student and she was studying architecture before the rén shù arrived. Now she could not see anything recognizable as a real building except for the very tallest of structures and the Great Tree.

The Great Tree could not be a real tree as she understood them. It violated several rules of natural design. It was taller than any tree could ever be. In her schoolwork, she learned a tree could never grow taller than 130 meters. It was physically impossible due to constraints in water movement, need for water and root and leaf density. Even the tallest trees in the world, the Redwoods were know to not grow past the 130 meter limit.

The Great Tree grew right in the middle of the business district and with her binoculars she could see it had grown right up out of the ground. It had giant branches that stretched into nearby buildings and it stood next to the tallest building in Beijing, The Fortune Plaza which was known to be 260 meters tall. She estimated this rén shù to be over three hundred meters tall.

She didn’t know what the Great Tree was, but she was certain it was no mere plant. It seemed to have its own weather, the top of the tree was always enshrouded in a cloud and its dark leaves, almost black in the brightest part of the day made her think of mirrors. The trunk of the tree was had regular patches along it surface that seemed to have radial lines throughout the truck.

These seemed to act as a form of reinforcing structure. Chen suspected these structures were made from nearby buildings. Many of the smaller ones near the great root complex had collapsed and from a few trips she had made to the root complex, those buildings were completely drained of any metal. Chen would not be going toward downtown today as activity in the root complex grew more active as the weather heated up.

Her goal today was to head to another camp she had set up across the city. The leaper population had begun to grow too large and soon a campfire would not be enough to keep them from finding her in the dark. All of her equipment was relatively new from foraging at any of the stores in the area. The plants made an effort to stay in the light and their creatures, a relatively new development would rarely venture out of line of sight from any open, outdoor space. If you could create or make a space indoors away from any doors or windows, it was relatively safe. They lost a lot of people in the early days learning that simple rule.

There weren’t that many people when Chen finally came out of the building a week later. The streets were deserted. Chen was dirty and had been using the sink in the closet for a bathroom. It was the smell that eventually drove her from the room and into the hall. It had been days since she had heard anyone screaming. She had locked the door and stuffed towels into the space beneath the door. She heard a woman dying on the other side of the door, begging for Chen to open the door. She couldn’t do it. She wanted to live. She promised her mother that she would do whatever it took to make it in the city. Chen Zhan slid into the corner of the service closet and closed her ears and her heart to the screams. She hoped they would stop.

Soon enough, they did.

Relego Relegi Relectum

Posted by Ebonstorm on July 22, 2012

Posted in: Short Story. Tagged: ebonstorm, father, future, mother, prediction, prognostication, reversion, science fiction, social media, software, technology, Thaddeus Howze. 1 Comment

It was the end of social media and business technology software. We promised it would change the world in a way no other social media tool ever could. We believed it could change the future.

Yes, you heard it right. This technology could see the past and with some degree of accuracy predict the future. The startup company was ambitious and believed they could market the ultimate social media tool. The tag-line was “it knew where you were and where you’re going.”

The capability had always been around. The bits and pieces were actually around for decades, but no one knew what to do with them. I dropped out of college at MIT in my second year. I kept trying to tell them what I was seeing in my mind but no one understood.

I decided to build it myself. I found an early quantum computer; by this time they were cheap and still barely being used. They were able to process an enormous amount of data but were not being used for much other than weather prediction and my weatherman was still better than most of them. But weather was too granular, what we wanted was climate. The ability to see and gather a wide array of information and extrapolate the possibilities. Refine the opportunities from what was possible to what was possible and eventually to what was probable.

I wrote the software myself, stealing time from my father’s company supercomputer to model the software. What I did was merge all of the previous internet data into a data construct marking every time stamp, every video file, every second of recorded time for any individual. After all we live in a surveillance society. Privacy was dead or so they kept boasting.

It took me nearly eight years to finish the software and I hired several of my father’s friends to work on the hardware components separately so none of them truly understood what they were building. Another five years passed as I began integrating data from the internet and any private networks I could buy access from. I spent my entire inheritence, a sum of nearly two billion dollars.

The first test were integrating the quantum computers merged with a vampire program that absorbed every scrap of information about anyone entered into the database. It promised a chrono-temporal viewing of anyone.

I used myself as the first test subject.

What was I doing on September 15, 2105? The holosuite lit up and showed my parents house when I was just eight years old. Mom, oh god, I haven’t seen her in so long. She was cleaning up after some party. She had help of course. Margaret was helping her and I was asleep on the sofa gorged on cake. The footage is gritty relatively speaking, using the housecameras of the time. Where did it find this data? Was it reconstructing it? Or was it on the mediasphere somewhere on an ancient series of servers arrays?

The software was supposed to be relaying the timeline data to me from the source, but the code might have still had some bugs in it. The time code worked along with the timestamp but the source data fields were not filled in.

Margaret was my mother’s personal assistant who helped her with the businesses she ran while my father was plundering the world. There was no sound with the video. I wish I could have heard my mother’s voice. She died a few days after this video was made. Or so I thought.

Margaret and my mother seemed to be having some words and I could tell they were fighting. I panned around the room but the angles were limited. The conversation seemed to get heated and my mother stomped off. Margaret sat down and finished a bottle of wine sitting on the table. When my mother came back she was holding her data pad. I interrupted the stream to find the data on that pad and the reconstruction came in. It was a termination contract with pay!

Margaret put her thumb on the page to assent. As my mother turned her back to her, Margaret hits her in the head with the wine bottle. Unlike movie bottles, it doesn’t break. My mother seemed momentarily stunned and tries to turn around. Margaret hits her again, this time with conviction.

My mother hits the ground and doesn’t move.

Margaret makes a phone call and within thirty minutes my father comes home. The whole time she just sits there and drinks. She doesn’t even look at my mother.

My father comes in and does the unthinkable. He hugs Margaret. Then he kisses her. I couldn’t believe my eyes. What comes next was even more unbelievable. He bends down and checks my mother’s pulse. I think she was still alive. He pinches her nose and covers her mouth. She struggles weakly.

My father gets up, walks over to Margaret and backhands her to the floor. He points up at the camera and searches for a remote. He cuts the video.

He told me she died in an accident.

He was always so dutiful to go to her gravesite and leave her flowers. Margaret married him and became my stepmom.

She always told me how much she loved me.

I looked at the machine and realized I had to know what it would do when asked to predict the future. What does my future hold for September 15, 2135, the anniversary of my mother’s death.

It shows my father and Margaret standing at my mother’s mausoleum, talking quietly together. The cameras have sound now. “He has been working on a project for nearly ten years. It has been the most productive he has been since his mother passed. It’s good for him.”

Margaret looked at him, she was still pretty, but all I can see is that look on her face as she swung that bottle for the second time. “He just stares at me when he comes to the house. He won’t talk to me or anyone else. He goes down into his lab and works. Comes up again three or four days later, stinking and crazed. I want you to get him his own apartment.”

“He told me his project was going to be the ultimate social media technology, giving people the opportunity to see their lives in a perspective they never had before.” My father almost sounded proud.

“Hello Dad. Margaret.” I see myself come into the mausoleum and I know something is immediately wrong. I never wear white. White is the color of death in my culture. I am wearing a white suit with a black shirt and black shoes. My hair hasn’t been this neatly cut in nearly a decade. I look like a fashion model. “I am glad we could be here for the anniversary of Mother’s passing. I wanted to show you my software. I think she would want you to see this. I just released it to the world at large.”

I show them the night Mom died. Neither one says anything.

“Where is this software now?” My father’s voice was trembling.

“Everywhere. It has been churning through the internet, every government database, every corporate database, every server farm on Earth. Privacy is dead. So I figure we might as well put everyone’s secrets on display.”

“What have you done?”

“Bankrupted the world. A world without secrets, a world without the ability to hide its past, a world unable to forgive its sins, is a world that will never last. I have put this software into every computer everywhere, so any question asked will reveal the future with a high degree of accuracy, and the past with almost pinpoint precision.”

Margaret looks at me and screams “How does this help anyone?”

It won’t. “It just gets rid of the hypocrisy that we are all doing what we do because it matters, because somehow our noble efforts raise up humanity as a collective whole. Because that is a crock of shit and you know it. We have used our money to keep us rich at the expense of every poor person on Earth. Save the speech. Let’s go outside. There is something you will want to see.”

We step outside and I can see my father reaching into his jacket to pull out his handgun. “Look up Dad. You see those trails? Those are bombers with the final solutions. Someone has decided their secrets mattered enough to destroy the enemy who knew revealed them to the world. Don’t worry, in a few minutes, our nuclear stockpile will be launched as well and everyone will have a ring side seat to the end of the world.”

“How long have you had this machine, son?”

“I have had a working prototype for well over five years now.”

“Did it ever occur to you to ask what made us do what we did?”

“Why would I? I already knew everything I needed to know. I had already seen the past, again and again. You killed her and you didn’t even shed a tear.”

“I’m sorry.”

“To hell with your sorry. Look up Dad. I just killed the fucking world. Do I look like I care?”

My father was a genius. I always knew I took after him. I just never realized how smart he was. He looked up at the camera in the frame of the mausoleum. “I know you are looking at this, likely for the first time and thinking this will make everything okay. Your pain will go away and the world will end and everything will be made right. But it won’t. Killing everyone else because you think the world sucks is one way to solve the problem but not the only way.”

“Who are you talking to?” I screamed as I watched the bombers closing in overhead.

“You. Right now you can’t listen. I hope you will then.”

“You can know too much. You can be burdened with too much knowledge. Ultimately all social media will burn up and burn out not because people won’t love it. They will burn out on all of its information, even the agencies who crave our data will eventually come to realize there will be too much to eat, a never-ending meal, gagging us all.”

I could hear the bombers as they began their approach, their munitions dropping from the sky, screaming as they fell.

“Listen to me. I made mistakes. I have had to live with them. Don’t make the same mistakes we did. You will only have five years to regret your decision, right now. Don’t regret. Put this down and live a life worth having.”

He takes his gun, shoots Margaret, then me and as the munitions fell, himself. The cluster bombs lit up the cemetery and the camera went out.

I was sweating and realized he was right. I ran out of the basement leaving the computer running.

“End simulation.” I used the device to look into the past and then the future. I disabled the ability to look and permutate the future and removed the granularity of searching for individual video streams as a means of creating the ability to allow families to keep a running video of tender moments, nothing graphic, nothing terrifying, nothing other than the most precious memories.

The software was wildly successful and my father’s companies were made fantastically rich. I will inherit them after his death in an auto accident on his way to the cemetery six years from now. He and Margaret are tragically killed.

I was not surprised.

I kept the prototype.

The Great White Spot

Posted by Ebonstorm on July 16, 2012

Posted in: Chapter, Hayward's Reach, Short Story. Tagged: climate change, global warming, great, Hayward's Reach, hurricane, Jupiter, satellite, science fiction, space station, speculative fiction, spot. Great Red Spot, weather, white. 3 Comments

From space, it looked like a ball of blue and brown; blue oceans swirled with windblown whitecaps and the occasional tiny island could be found, but most were scoured clean by the Last Storm. You couldn’t see much of the surface anymore because of the cloud cover. The white polar ice caps were tiny buttons on the top and bottom of the globe.

During the year, they appeared and disappeared. If you took a vantage point from the lone satellite of this blue planet, you would notice on the night side that no light was emitted, no radio transmissions to disturb your electromagnetic slumbers. It was a quiet planet circling a nondescript yellow-white dwarf with eight other planets and assorted planet-junk. Strangely enough, if your vision was sharp enough, you would see hundreds of artificial satellites circling the planet.

You would see communication satellites beaming signals to each other, reminding each other where they were to ensure signals moving from the ground to other places on the planet were not interrupted. They never received those signals any longer, since there was no one to send them. There were many global positioning satellites, each designed to know every single street and every square inch of the planet and tell you where you were at any moment in space and time, anywhere on the globe. They hadn’t had a single query for a over than a year.

Military reconnaissance satellites watched key sections of the globe for threats to countries that no longer existed. Linked to those satellites are space-based weapons platforms using a variety of technologies to deliver death from above. These weapons sat quiescient, unaware of their lack of targets.

Two satellites were still doing their jobs. The first was a weather satellite. It still chugged along, gathering information about the only weather phenomenon that still mattered, the Last Storm. Yes, there were still record temperatures all over the world. Yes, flooding was occuring in all the places men once lived. Island nations had disappeared under the rising water levels. Polar ice caps has already disappeared. Coastal cities were all but erased. These satellites noted all of those things, but lately, the only information it tracked was called the Last Storm.

It came into existence nearly ten years ago. Weather satellites made the pivotal discovery of the Last Storm in 2096, when it was just a tropical depression in the South Pacific Ocean. With winds in excess of three hundred miles an hour, no one viewing it at the time, knew they were looking at what would eventually render the planet a lifeless wasteland.

Now, it covered half of the northern hemisphere at any time, and blocked the sun from a quarter of the planet. Swirling above the planet is what, if there were scientist left to name it, a Great White spot circling the surface of the Earth, similar to the Red Spot on Jupiter, just hundreds of miles across instead of tens of thousands. A storm of matchless ferocity and intensity. It drove sand debris into the air at almost four hundred miles an hour.

The other satellite still doing anything significant, had only one man left on board. The last known survivor of the human race. His name was Sergei Balmasov. He was no longer living in the classic sense. He sat and looked out the observation window of the new International Space Station in muted horror; his mind broken.

He once listened to the wideband radio as the world came to an end. He listened as people called for help that would never come. He listened while radio stations told people not to panic, gave assurances that the storm would turn away from Hawaii, then as they ordered evacuations of South Pacific islands, and as the storm erased those islands, and crippled those evacuations, he listened to the death tolls.

As it approached Hawaii, he listened to the military channels as they considered what to do when they realized there would not be enough resources or time to rescue everyone there.

He wept as the military turned their ships around and returned to the United States. When Hawaii stopped transmitting, he turned off his radio to silence the horror, at least for a time. He could see the Storm from space as the world turned beneath him.

When he woke the next day, and turned the telescope toward Hawaii, it was gone.

Ships that had been fortunate enough to leave Hawaii early in the warnings were not safe. The storm overtook their ships. One hundred and twenty thousand sank as their ships were capsized in the torrential storm.

The remaining population died in the storm awaiting rescue ships that could never come. Hawaii, born of fire, home to people for five thousand years, was washed away in a single night, all of her people returned to the sea. The Last Storm slowed for a time and it was thought it would expire at sea, its forces spent. And while its winds slowed, it did not stop. It simply grew larger, much larger.

Sergei had no time to grieve as the storm approached California. Hearing about Hawaii, Californians fled to the mountains as meteorologists predicted the storm breaking against the Rocky Mountains. As it came within a thousand miles of California, the rains began. It approached the coast of California, its terrible winds drove tidal swells of water which hammered the coast turning any building on the coast to splinters.

The fifty-foot swells had never been seen before and thrashed the coastline, drove water into the streets of both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Torrential rains caused people who did not believe what they had heard about Hawaii to re-evaluate their position and they ran for their lives, for all the good it would do them.

The roads to the mountains were jammed with cars and trucks. The storm was inexorable. When it reached the coast, the winds were in excess of two hundred fifty miles per hour. Nothing made by man could withstand such winds. Skyscrapers lost windows, cars were flipped and carried for miles, trees uprooted, homes swept away by winds, rain, and waves. All convential wisdom about storms was lost as this monster approached the mountains.

As the storm reached the mountains, everyone’s hopes rose, even as they ignored the carnage. The mountains would break the storm; it would run out of energy.

Instead, it did the unexpected. It turned south, but did not die.

Los Angeles was the next major metropolis to be swept away. The storm was being fed by the Pacific and kept moving south. As the edge of the mountains receded, the storm proceeded east into the Gulf of Mexico and continued to grow. Most of Mexico to the borders of Costa Rica and South America were completely inundated by water.

Refueled by the heated waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the storm’s power increased, and with its increased size, it affected the Southern mainland states and basically erased them, from Nevada to Florida. Nearly one third of the population of the United States was destroyed in the first forty hours of the Last Storm of the century. Nearly all of Mexico and Costa Rica were decimated. Tens of millions were believed dead.

As the storm pulled away from the United States, its size increased again, absorbing water from across its entire area, and energy from the very warm waters of the Atlantic. It swept across the Southern tip of Europe, but even that tiny brush destroyed most of the UK, Greece, France, Italy, and all of the Mediterranean. At this point, emergency signals crossed the globe, with everyone trying to determine where the greatest need for emergency service would appear next.

It didn’t matter. The storm would soon be everywhere.

The storm grew larger and more powerful, as it re-crossed the Pacific. Considered a national emergency by every government on the planet, humanity rallied in a effort to stop this threat. This was a sign of too little, too late. Climate scientists sat quietly in the briefing, chafing that they had been unable to convince the world governments of this final inescapable result of global warming. Being right was of little consolation.

It was considered such a threat, militaries threatened to throw nuclear weapons into the heart of the thing. Physicists tried to warn the military against this foolish act, trying to remind the military that a storm this size was already more powerful than every nuclear weapon on Earth with every second of its existence. But desperate men would try anything.

A great carrier, the Independence, last of her kind, caught in the storm and unable to escape, decided to use a nuclear device, but was destroyed before it could make the effort.

People fled wherever they thought they could go, but climate models had begun to reveal a startling truth. The storm was by now so large it could feed from any ocean, anywhere, at nearly any time, until it ran out of energy. Climatologists theorized it would become a permanent fixture on the face of the planet. Those climatologists called it The Great White Spot. It swept across the Earth over twenty-five times before stabilizing at its current size of one sixth of the globe. The remainder of the planet was covered in perpetual cloud cover that remained that way for another six years.

Sergei listened to the radio until the signals grew less and less. Communications from the ground lasted two more years, but by the year 2103, he could not detect a single radio message anywhere on the planet. He held out hope that somewhere, somehow, mankind had survived. Until the cloud cover broke enough to see the planet.

Until today. Then he wept like a child.

The mountains were gone, ground away by the five hundred mile an hour winds. The Rockies, the Appalachians, the Himalayans had been scoured from the planet. Nothing made by man had survived. The Earth was smooth and uniformly brown. He stared, looking for any landmarks. Nothing remained.

Sergei lasted his last year eating the stored food onboard the ship. The satellite alone could keep him alive for five years easily, but his mind was shattered by what he saw. In order to cope, he used climatological models from weather satellites under his control to determine that the Great White Spot would last for another twenty years in the best case scenarios. In the worst, it might never stop.

Sergei Balmasov, on the tenth anniversary of the Last Storm, and the last human being left alive anywhere, opened the bottle of vodka he had carried aboard all those years ago, and drank a toast. He finished the bottle in about an hour. He set all of his notes into the computer and set a radio broadcast into space, repeating what he had learned about humanity during their last days on Earth. He stepped into an airlock without a suit, closed the door behind him. He held his breath while he cycled the lock and jumped out into space. With his dying breath, he chose to look upon the Earth.

His message, to anyone who might one day come across our once-blue planet, was a tombstone marker. “Here lies the final resting place of the Human Race. We saw the future, but could not embrace it, until it embraced us. May God have mercy on our souls.”

The Aspect War (2)

Posted by Ebonstorm on July 11, 2012

Posted in: Chapter, Hayward's Reach. Tagged: Anansi, Cairo, eagle, ebonstorm, Egypt, Hayward's Reach, horror, Horus-ka, invader, Kemet, modern urban fantasy, Ptah, short story, star, Thaddeus Howze, The Aspect War. 2 Comments

Hail the Spirit Army

Ptah laughed.

The sun rose over what looked like the city of Cairo. The early morning light cleared the horizon and was bright and sharp, stinging the eyes with its searing, illuminating essence. The duskiness of night, suddenly evaporated in a single moment, stark and striking. The land had an alien presence as if it were someplace else, far removed from humanity, and in its way, it was. This was not Egypt of Earth, though it resembled it very closely. The markets slowly rising, people going about their tasks, farmers working the land, fishermen gathering their nets, weavers gathering their reeds, bureaucrats readying their papyrus, pharaohs discussing the affairs of this place, this Kemet, the perfect Egypt. This was the land of legend, of the thousand and one Arabian Nights, a place of mystery, populated by the spirits of men, lead by the god-born and protected by the remnants of the once-great gods of this place. And in this place, Ptah, grandfather to the gods of Kemet, saluted the morning Sun, his brother-son, Ra as his laughter trailed off into the morning.

His laugh was punctuated with the rhythmic stride of running alongside a well formed young man of twenty five or so, it was so hard to remember, it seemed as soon as you got to know them they died, but he liked this young man, full of questions, heresy and rage, eager to take on a world that had done nothing good for him. He had grown strong during his training with Ptah, his body and spirit forged by his time in the Desert Outside of Time. This place was in the boy, filling him with its essence, becoming a part of him, the silence, the vastness, the stillness of the desert, hiding its secrets from all but the most knowledgeable. I brought him out here one last time to reveal the last great Secret to him. He deserves to know where his Fate will lead him.

“What do you mean the gods did not create the universe?” Lumumba gasped in the warming desert air. His incredulity pasted on his face along with the sweat and windswept sand of the early morning air. “Everything I was ever taught, no matter the religion, indicated that the gods, or God or whatever we worshiped created the universe and everything we know in it.”

Ptah ran effortlessly alongside Lumumba, his bare feet barely touching the hot sand, his short and powerful frame clothed in little more than a pair of biking shorts. His night black skin, shown with a shimmer of sweat and a mild musky scent rose from him, otherworldly and intoxicating. “I, or someone like me, I forget which, was said to have created the universe, and populated it with my sister-wives and brothers who, then, in some manner created the world, then the animals, populating it finally with people who, of course, look like us, and ultimately worship us and we share our wisdom with our children and we all live happily ever after, or something like that. What’s missing is the detail. And the truth of the matter is that no god, old or modern has any interest in humanity knowing the truth of our origins.” Ptah, smiling Ptah, was for the first time since Lumumba met him, was not smiling. “Rest a moment.”

“Thank you, I needed to stop. You say I don’t need to breath or eat or sleep here, but I always feel just as tired as if I did.” Lumumba sat down on a nearby rock and caught his breath, sipping from an old canteen he wore on his belt.

“And you will, as long as you believe you need to. You have come here for almost fifteen years and still do not understand the nature of this place.” Ptah’s smile returned to his face as he turned toward the morning sun.

“And how would I ever learn it’s true nature, oh mysterious one, when you do everything in your power to make sure I never truly understand this place?”

“The question is the answer.”

“That is exactly what I am talking about Ptah, you never tell me anything useful. Just print that stuff on some fortune cookies and we are in business.” The tone is light and bantering, as this was a conversation that had been chewed on before same as the rough unleavened bread they shared.

“Perhaps the idea is to convince you to think for yourself. There may come a time, when such free lunches will be not forthcoming. It will be time for you to leave us soon. We only have one more teacher for you to see.” Ptah was ever-smiling but his face seemed to have another, more subtle, cast this early morning as perhaps a secret burden weighed heavy upon him.

“Another teacher? We had been spending so much time together lately, I assumed there was no other teaching left for me, your august company excluded.” Lumumba’s mind cast back to his early days in the Desert. Lumumba stared at Ptah and considered just how long he had been coming to the Desert with its silver sands, strange oases, and perfect palms. The Desert also hid a collection of eclectic folk who wander its sand sea dunes, hidden from the rest of the afterworld.

These were wonderful people who trained him in everything from any kind of survival to dining etiquette, combat both open handed and with a wide array of weaponry, ancient or modern, a variety of languages, he could speak nearly two dozen now, without an appreciable accent. He had met people from nearly every culture and every part of the world. They all seemed to be part of the Desert no matter where they were from originally. Everywhere he went, and he was beginning to think, every-when he went, Ptah knew everyone and everyone knew him. There were several times his trainers appeared to be from a range of times, from the Visigoths to Vietnam. It hurt his head to think about it so he just learned to accept it just like everything else he did when he was with Ptah. It was Ptah, and Ptah told him when he met him, to expect the improbable, prepare for the impossible and accept that just about anything could be true, somewhere.

Ptah would take him across the Desert, running, they never rode a vehicle unless their teacher used or needed one. Ptah kept telling him that he wanted the essence of the Desert to sink into him. Since he never really explained it, Lumumba let it go as the random nattering of a senile deity nearly eight thousand years old. Once they reached their teacher, Ptah would leave and promise to return. Eventually he would and the lesson would be over. The teacher was never surprised, but Lumumba was never aware of how they would know. Lumumba was never able to tell what time it was and since his watch refused to keep accurate time in the Desert, he eventually stopped wearing it.

This had been their ritual with the occasional trip to the City, as Ptah called it. But as usual, nothing done with Ptah was simple, easy or made any sense at all. Every trip to the City, started with a trip to a clothing store where they were both fitted for what amounted to period costuming. There were several different shops but they all seem to do the same thing for Ptah, create stylish clothing that was better than the biking shorts or worse, that skirt thing that Ptah tended to favor. Once he put on a suit, he appeared to be quite substantial and deadly serious. Leaving the clothier, Ptah would head into the city proper and find a particular building, and upon opening the door and passing through it, Lumumba and Ptah would find themselves transported to where ever or whenever, their costumes dictated.

Trips to the City, and by proxy, where ever the doors lead were almost always trips that revolved around learning some obscure lesson that could have been delivered by Ptah in the Desert, but it appeared that Ptah enjoyed his jaunts as much as Lumumba secretly did.

“Yes, you have a final teacher, but he cannot be trusted, and rightfully so,” Ptah said. “Today is your graduation day and I bear gifts for this day.” Reaching into his backpack he pulled out five rods about the length of a man’s forearm. On the end of one of them was the head of an eagle. The other rods were ornately festooned with cartouches that Lumumba recognized as the Battle of Horus against Set. “Put it together, using your Ka, like I have shown you.”

Lumumba focused his will and his Ka leapt to his command, surging forward and was visible in his fingertips as he held each section of the staff together and smoothed over the separation point until the entire staff was a single piece with the Eagles’ head on the top end. The staff was weighted, but perfectly so, and Lumumba’s spinning of the staff, appeared effortless. He began a staff ritual weaving the staff in a complex series of movements, that while they appeared random slowly began to form a barrier in the area painted by the staff. After a few more seconds, the sands near the barrier began to rise about knee level and stayed there wavering as if under the effects of anti-gravity.
Ptah walked up to the barrier and studied the work, allowing his divine senses to study his protégé’s work. It was perfect, the young man’s mastery of his Ka showed a marked improvement even since the last time they did this type of Work. “Explain the basis for our sorcery.”

“Sorcery using the Ka harnesses the pure spirit of the caster and is best used for creating constructs and barriers that protect the body and the mind. This is the purest of the spirit forms of magic. It is also the fastest cast, and has the shortest span. It also works well between realms and suffers the least degradation in the realms of Men. Creative use of Ka can often mean the difference between life and death.

“Good, good, go on.” Ptah was secretly pleased that his lessons had been received so well. The manifestations Lumumba was creating were without flaw.

“Mastery of the Ba, or blood magic allows for powerful offensive magic. But since you cannot harm without harm, Ba requires a sacrifice of blood or bone, yours or someone else’s. Down the dark path is Mastery of Ba, since many of the necromantic arts can be found there.” Lumumba manifested the Claws of Ra and cut into his palm allowing a tiny flow of blood. Wiping his blooded hand across his new staff, the head of the staff suddenly sprouted a short two foot spear tip comprised of blood red light. Swirling the weapon, he sliced into the face of a nearby rock, cleaving through it. “The problem with Mastery of Ba is its continued requirement of sacrifice to maintain it. To use this blade, for instance, would require a constant application of blood and in a long battle, that could be dangerous to one’s health.”

“Very good, what is next?”

“Sheut Mastery is the control of the shadow side of all things. By interacting with the shadow of an object or a person, it is the same as interacting with that object. With Sheut, I can temporarily control the will of a man or destroy or move a physical object that does not possess a living will simply by interacting with its sheut. Mastery of the Sheut is one of the most difficult of magics because, subverting a living will is forbidden due to its karmic costs. However, Sheut is a powerful force if one is attempting to destroy unliving objects since they cannot object to their Sheut being disrupted by a sorcerer of sufficient strength. This is also a magic that works well in the world of Men because it does not violate the Compact and reveal the existence of magic. Sheut is a very flexible form and there are sorcerers who practice nothing but Sheut because of its wide range of applications from destruction of matter to animation of objects.”

“Two remain.”

“Ren Mysticism, or the Mastery of the Name. Bequeathed by Brother Thoth and Sister Isis, Ren Mystics seek the secret names of all things. The secret name of a person or object allows complete mastery of that object, weaving the threats of reality and control to the mystic using it. This is why we keep our secret names to ourselves and only reveal them to those who love us best. To know the Name of a thing or person allows the greatest power over an individual, mastery of their very soul forces and life essence. A powerful Ren Mystic can slay the living and raise the dead. This power barely works in the world of the Living due to the disruption it causes in the Compact, but in Spirit World, it is one of the greatest powers possessed by the learned. You have taught me to guard my Name and the power that could be had if someone knew it. I have never told another soul. I have woven the threads that might reveal my Name tightly within my essence to make them proof against mortal divination. I have learned to read the threads of all things in order to find their secrets as well.”

“And the last?”

“The Forbidden Power of Akh. Practitioners of this power create imperfect resurrections of formerly living beings. There is no rule that says these creatures could not be beneficent servants but the power seems generally sought to return men to life with a form of immortality placing them beyond the reach of Death. It is forbidden because almost all who seek this power become corrupted while under its influence. Life is for living and when one’s allotted time is due, one graciously leaves the world and returns to the Cycle here in the Desert Outside of Time, awaiting a return to life in the future. Using the Forbidden Power disrupts the cycle and imbalances the Spirit World. With sufficient imbalance, the two worlds fall from balance and can both be destroyed. Hence the prohibition of this very dark art. All who use it, with only the tiniest of exceptions are slain and their creations destroyed. I have learned it, as you have taught it, to return the dead to the Cycle and to disrupt the creations that utilize that art. I am never to pervert the dead to create Akh-life, except in the defense of a greater good.”

“And as far as I am concerned, there is no greater good that would warrant such a creation, but to not teach it to you would make you vulnerable to anyone who knew it.” Ptah was pleased that this, his greatest gift, had been received well and it would be used wisely.

The two had been walking and talking for some time away from Memphis and Ptah had been manipulating their path until they had come to what appeared to be a great forest along the edge of the Desert. “That is the Great Forest. A manifestation of all of the World’s greatest forested regions, jungles, rainforests, and other planted regions. We are expected there. As they approached the Great Forest, the smell of immense age wafted from the Forest. The air of the Desert was dry, crisp with a light metallic taste, the forest’s scent was cooler, mustier, like an old closet filled with woolen sweaters, still but not unpleasant.

As they grew closer, the size of the immense trees became more apparent, from a distance they appeared to be the size of a strong man, but when they were closer, it was clear they were much, much larger. It would take twenty men, arm to arm to encircle even the smallest of these trees. The trees vanished into the sky and covered the sun allowing only the tiniest spots of light to reach the ground. Great eagles were also seen flying in the canopy, each, incredibly large, some the size of a small airplane.

As they left the Desert behind and moved deeper into the forest, the sense of age only increased and they walked until they had come to an area that seemed older, the trees more bent, great spider webs were woven through the canopy, whispering their secrets, waving in an unfelt breeze.

“Welcome, weary travelers to my land,” said a great voice from apparently nowhere. Lumumba looked around but could see no one speaking, and the voice seemed to come from everywhere.

“Look up, my son,” Ptah had already found an immense stump to sit on and was pointing skyward.

Lumumba looked up and was surprised to see the largest spider he had ever seen dangling just a few feet from his head. It was the size of truck and its eight eyes, burned with intelligence. Lumumba could feel its will pressing down upon him, a physical presence, making the air thick and his movement slow. He wanted to move his hand to invoke his Ka, but he simply could not move his fingers at all.

“So this is the savior, the protector of mankind, the one we have been waiting for nearly a thousand years? He certainly does not look like much to me. As a matter of fact, I think he is an arachnophobe to boot.” The great spider moved with an alarming agility for something so large, and swung itself down to land in front of Lumumba. Its eight eyes never lost their intensity, as the spider made its way around him, viewing him from all sides. “I thought he would be taller.”

“You say that about all the heroes, Anansi. I am a respectable four feet tall and it has not held me back any,” Ptah responds with a jocular tint to his tone. This eases Lumumba’s fear of the giant spider plucking his clothing and his new staff with its glistening razor sharp pedipalps.

“Yes, boy, that glistening substance is venom; enough in each bite to slay a thousand men. A single touch from me and you would be dead before you knew it. No, I am not a spider. I resemble one, but a spider my size could not exist where you come from. Consider me the iconic representation of what all spiders imagine themselves to be, awe-inspiring, powerful, killing machines. And no, I am not reading your mind, your face says everything.”

“And let’s not forget humble and full of grace.”

“You scare the boy in your way and I scare him in mine, Ptah.”
“Did your master tell you about me, Horus-ka?” hissed Anansi as it waved its forelegs around Lumumba.

It was hard for Lumumba to listen to Anansi’s voice, it caused him to want to run away and never stop, so filled with menace, its very presence confounded his concentration. Lumumba watched as he began to sense the weaving of the threads of magic. “Yes, sir, he did mention you in passing when he talked about well known deities of the African continent. He said, you were a known liar and scoundrel. And that if I were to meet you in person, to not trust a single thing you said to me unless you swore on your ancestors first.”

“He said what?” roared Anansi, his huge forelegs waving faster around Lumumba, his body tense and hair all over his form stood erect and crackled with what appeared to be electrical energy. “A liar, and a scoundrel, not to be trusted, eh? Did he tell you that I stole the moon and the stars for man, did he tell you that I liberated all of the stories of the world for humanity, so that you would have something to do around your fires for the last fifteen thousand years? Did he tell you that without me, you would not have fire, since the gods wanted to keep it for themselves?”

The air in the clearing was still as Lumumba considered his answer. Lying to deities was almost always the wrong thing to do, since most could tell when you were. But Ptah did mention that diplomacy when discussing them was always the best choice since gods were known to be a bit thin-skinned, sensitive about their exploits and capricious in the response to how they are seen by humans. Lumumba decided to go with candor. He hoped Ptah would step in before anything bad happened.

“Yes, sir, he did tell me some of those things. He said that you stole the stars but spilled them on your way out of heaven so they scattered throughout the sky. He mentioned that you borrowed the sun because you lost your way coming out of the underworld and forgot to put it back when you were done. He also mentioned that you did liberate all of the stories of the world, but you did it so that you would have people pay you to hear them. On your way to the market, it was said that the stories fell into the river from the calabash you carried them in and were lost, found by beggars and fishwives who used them to get money from people. On the matter of fire, he mentioned that you did steal fire for us, but only because you took pity on us one day when we were freezing and you did not have a warm place to stay having been kicked out of Heaven again and so you gave us fire, so you could be warm.” Lumumba had begun to regret his decision as he felt the energy of Anansi building in front of him, its claws waving closer and closer to his body. He dared not move since the claws were sweeping all around him front to back, faster and faster.

Ptah snickered and turned away from Anansi, taking a sip of water to hide his laughter.

“So he did, did he? Anansi whispered. A deep breath followed with Anansi sounding just a little bit contrite. “Well, so that the truth be known, he has not lied. Not once. All of those things are as you say. I am a selfish deity who happens to benefit others while I am trying to benefit myself. As I have done now. He is ready, Ptah.” Anansi stopped waving his claws over Lumumba and backed away.

“I call you Horus-Ka, the spirit of Horus. Your next answer will determine the fate of men and gods. When confronted by evil, do you use the force of arms or the strength of will to resolve the problem?”

Horus-Ka looked to Ptah but his face was stony and unresponsive. “Sir, –”

“I am Anansi, The Weaver of Fate, Teller of Tales, Trickster of the Gods, Defender of Man, I am no man. Call me as I am, Kwaku Anansi,” interrupted Anansi with enough force to nearly knock Horus-Ka from his feet.

“Forgive me Kwaku Anasi, Ptah, Father to the Gods, I have been taught when confronting evil that force of arms is almost never the only solution to a problem, and that truly winning the battle relies on a keen eye, a strong mind, a full heart, a ready wit and a forceful will. I will only use force of weapons when no other avenue presents itself. This I pledge to you, my masters.” As Horus-Ka completed his statement, two circles of fire formed with a bridge of flame connecting them.

The circle around Horus-Ka was filled and surrounded with a variety of cartouches each flickering in multi-colored flame, the second circle about ten meters away was much larger and opened to a vista similar to the Great Forest Horus-Ka had seen earlier in the day with one vital difference. A giant creature seeming to be comprised of earth tore through the Forest and approached the barriers that kept the Forest and the Real World separate. If the scale were to be believed, this creature stood over a thousand feet tall, towering over the redwoods of the Great Forest. Giant Eagles and tiny men sitting on those eagles seemed to be engaging the creature unsuccessfully. One tower had already fallen and when three of them were toppled, the creature would be able to cross into the world of Men.

“That is your first great task, Horus-Ka. You must protect the world of Men. It is too close to the boundary for any of us to be of any help to you. Your gifts and your training will need to be enough. Know that the people you see there are denizens of the Spirit World, when they die, they fall from the cycle of life, never to return. They need you to stop this creature. If it pierces the boundary, it will cause a massive earthquake wiping out the Atlantic coast of Africa, South America and parts of the North American continent.”

“Who could have done this, how is this even possible? Ptah, you said that the Compact prevented magic like this from even working in the world of Men?

“These creatures do not obey the Compact and have begun their assault on our world. They have begun a battle which will pit all of the Spirit Realms and the World of Men against each other, and when the White Host, the Cold Gods and Demon of Babylon have exhausted themselves, they will destroy the victors. This opening volley will liberate the Demon and you cannot allow that. If she is freed too soon, things will not be in place. Ptah, what of your brothers and sisters?”

“They are hidden in the world of Men with no memory of who they are, it is their only chance of survival and the only chance there will be some gods left when this Scourge is done. We are the last, and Horus-Ka, son of man and gods, you must be our weapon. Otherwise we have none. As a man, you may go places even gods fear to tread. Now go, we shall buy your freedom with our lives, if it comes to that.”

The clearing was suddenly lit from the distance as beams of cold white light streaked through the trees and illuminated the webbing of the clearing. Screams of agony and rage are heard in the distance.

“I do not think they like the decorating I left for them. It is so hard to find venom laced webbing these days.” Anansi turned to Ptah. Make ready my brother, my traps will not hold them long.” Anansi leapt into the trees, and skittered across a web work hidden in the canopy. “Horus-Ka, the weavings of fate upon you are strong, I wove them myself. But you were given a thread of Fate before I met you. That fate I could not change. Be strong and in your darkest hour know that Fate is your ally, even if you cannot believe it at the time. Farewell, son and spirit of Horus.”

Ptah turned to Horus-Ka and took a necklace from his bag. It held an icon of a disk with the Eye of Ra upon it. “When I am gone, you will be unable to return here without this talisman. Only Ra will remain behind to protect the Spirit World because he is safe within his chariot of fire. All of the souls here will depend on you once we are gone. Now go. Make us proud.

“Is that it? No ideas, no clues how to defeat the thousand foot tall colossus? ”

“If heroism were easy, everyone would do it.” Ptah’s armored hand snatches a spiny arrow from the air, mere inches from Horus-Ka’s face. “I am confident you will do what is necessary. Go.” And with that Ptah pushes Horus-Ka into the second circle of flame and into his destiny.

“And now I go to mine. Anansi save some for me.”

“There are plenty to go around, my brother. You know I could not undo what Fate had given him.”

“I know, but you gave him a chance to save the world first.”

The number of lights in the forest increased and the number of eyes those lights came from doubled. And doubled again; and again. Soon the forest was lit and there was no darkness. Ptah and Anansi held the portal open until Horus-Ka arrived. Then the portal closed and was sealed, unable to be opened again. After that moment, no one without the Eye of Ra would be able to enter or leave the spirit realm. This would not help Ptah, who armored with a mighty staff whose head of Anubis, slew any that it touched instantly, a magnificent flaming helm which shot forth beams of the light of Ra, incinerating all it shown upon, whose thews allowed him to strike each hexapedal creature and slay them with a single blow and mighty Anansi, whose webs, fangs, claws, and venom destroyed dozens of these creatures a second, and it was still not enough. Both of these beings were soon overwhelmed and the number of their enemy soon exceeded their ability to slay them, formidable though they both were.

But they were not trying to win. They simply needed to buy some time. This was not the real battle. The real battle was being fought in the heart of a boy they rescued twenty years ago against a monstrosity of stone and magic. Anansi projected a blast of venom and hurled a star from the sky upon a cluster of the enemy. His venom seared their stony flesh and the star destroyed then by the dozens. But after a day and a night, he had begun to tire. Standing upon a mound of the dead, he and Ptah were surrounded and exhausted.

The six legged creatures fell back for the first time in two days. A man-like creature strode forward, lit by the light of glowing sigils. He had two winged serpents flying over his shoulders. His body was gnarled and bent, but glowed with boundless power. He wore an elaborate headdress and metallic bracers on his arms and feet. His face was covered but the area of the headdress where his face might be was illuminated with a pale light which showed the face in shadow, a long aquiline nose and a cruel sharp jawline. His voice was liquid menace and if a human were listening he would have heard a language thought dead, the tongue of the Mayan Olmecs. “Never send a dog to do a man’s job.” The two serpents turned toward Ptah and Anansi and opened their mouths. A sound like the rattling of a thousand bones of the dead being ground to dust, slowly, agonizingly streamed toward the two gods.

Anansi, reached heavenward again and pulled another star from the firmament. The star streaked toward the forest. Exhausted by this final effort, Anansi fell still holding the star only with his will alone.

Ptah’s helm shown again with Ra’s Light but it weakened and guttered. Ptah moved the last few steps toward Anansi and he could hear the star’s imminent arrival. The Great Forest was lit from above as the star grew in the night sky. The remaining hexapeds turned their eyes skyward and the Olmec directed his will upon Ptah and Anansi. And then, Ptah’s light went out and a star incinerated the Forest.

Horus-Ka arrived about two kilometers from the edge of the forest where the second barrier to the world of Men shimmered in the early morning light. There were many defenders already in place whose variety of weapons were made ready. Some were familiar to Horus-Ka, many were not. The defenders were sitting still preparing their Ka for this final confrontation. Many were invoking sigils that would no matter what happened meant their ultimate dissolution as entities on the Wheel of Life. Horus-Ka did not stop them. Each man had to make his own decision. As he walked toward the forward line, many of the men and women stopped as he passed and whispered. The monstrosity drew closer and nothing being done seemed to have any effect on it. Beams of light and mighty songs rang out, each filled with spiritual puissance. The drummers at this second line began to beat their rhythm and sing. As they sang, the swords and spears of their brothers began to glow and smolder. The creature despite its terrifying appearance was not alone. It had a vanguard of smaller creatures that attacked and destroyed any siege weaponry that might have a chance against the beast. Several mortars were already set up and ranging to the creature was being taken. Several mortar teams had already begun fire and as soon as they did, the creatures turned as a unit and bore down on those mortar squads. The defenders opened up with a variety of rifles and other ranged weapons, including bows, crossbows and atlatls. As long as the drummers played and sang, their weaponry struck the hexapeds blasting hunks of their armor away, blowing off their heads or limbs. But there seemed to be an unstoppable wave of the creatures so the defenders whittled away and slowed the wave of creatures but could not stop it.

As the creatures closed, eventually it came down to hand to hand to protect the mortar squads. Grenades were used as the creatures closed, but hand to hand was simply not enough to protect the mortar teams. As each group were eventually overrun, the creatures seemed momentarily confused before they oriented on their next target.

The mortars had some level of effectiveness as the creature was being blown apart by the explosive rounds. But the creature’s incredible mass prevented the mortars from striking a killing blow. Horus watched the battle and for a moment, just a moment, lost all hope of stopping the monstrosity. These people were throwing away their immortal lives against a threat that could not have ever been conceived of.

Then he remembered his training. Ptah had taken him to a hill one day and asked him why the enemy always sought the high ground. Looking around, he realized that when you have the high ground, you have visibility and can see all of your enemy. Ptah told him if you cannot deny your enemy the high ground, deny him the advantage of high ground. He watched the giant and realized the smaller horde moved where the giant was looking. So the great creature was providing vision to the smaller groups. Deny it vision and we might have a chance.

Looking around, he saw a small contingent of what appeared to be military leaders conferring. “Commanders, I was sent by Ptah to help. Do you have any smoke grenades or systems to deliver smoke to the creature. Ideally, smoky mortars would be ideal until I can get close enough to the creature to blind it.”

One grizzled veteran smiled and said “Aye, I think we can arrange for some cover and smoke, but if you want to take the battle to its eyes, you will need more than a spear or a staff. We were planning on saving them until the creature grew closer, but if you are willing to get closer, they might work better. We only have a few tanks and they are at the third barrier. I have twelve RPGs and six young men just crazy enough to try and use them.”

“We will have to split into two groups, one for each eye. Lay down the smoke around its head which should slow the horde and allow us to do more damage to it reducing its size as well. Concentrate your groups and keep your drummers and spell-singers back. The two groups will approach from eagle-back and make a single pass on each eye at the same time using the cover of smoke. Blinded, the horde should be much less effective. If we are successful, I want you to use your tanks immediately to lay down as much fire as possible, using exploding rounds if you can, but wait until the creature is truly blinded and the horde is pinned down as much as possible. Otherwise, the creatures will make a straight line for those tanks and they will simply not stand a chance if that happens.”

The old colonel called to his RPG teams and got four eagles ready. “I have included one spell singer on each eagle. They cannot use the RPGs but if they are singing once you fire, the RPG will be that much more effective. They understand the risk. As do I. I will be on the second eagle.”

Looking out over the battlefield, the next mortar squad was readying its weapons and the smoke rounds were being prepared. Two large rotary machine guns were placed in front of the mortar teams and some metallic constructions were also being placed down in front of this squad to give it the longest survival time possible. The command group was being ushered back to the third line, except for the old colonel. The eagle pilots had the eagles ready and the teams were boarding. Horus prepared to get on to his eagle when the old colonel spoke. “Begging your pardon, Horus-Ka, but I do not think you should be going with us. If this goes south, we need you to find a solution, already we are using the ideas you have given us and would be loathe to lose you. Ptah would never forgive us.”

Colonel, I don’t plan on telling Ptah, do you?” Horus-Ka laughed and climbed aboard the eagle. The four eagles took off and the smoke mortar drops began.

Two other mortar teams also began fire explosive rounds, this time in front of the approaching horde. The smoke spread quickly and began to obscure its vision. As the smoke grew thicker, the horde slowed its approach. The remaining forces, concentrated their fire, from everywhere, tearing into the hexaped armor. Spell singers, rallied, drummers played their hearts out, their fingers bled and they did not stop. The Horde slowed and for a moment, the firepower of the Spirit Army held the creatures at bay.

The smoke was thick and the eagles split off to fly behind the creature to set up their approach. They flew high above the smoke and aligned themselves, with a final wave, all four began their approach. The pilot, spell singer and one commando were on the front half of the eagle, and two commandos were on the back end of the eagle. The smoke was incredibly thick but as they approached the surface of the creature they could see through the smoke and began to set themselves up for the shot.

On the ground, the last of the smoke mortars had been fired and the mortars were packed up as the defenders held the line still using their guns and ranged weapons. The Horde was slowed but not stopped but now it was a retreating battle that constantly poured on the firepower. Machine guns mounted on the tanks began to fire into the horde providing cover for the retreating defenders who ran out of ammunition. As the Horde recovered, they surged forward but their sudden charge was broken by a group of warriors riding large cattle with long spears whose tips flamed red and whose shields deflected the leaping creatures, the warriors garbed in red robes, moved as one, their spears flashing and protecting the retreating spirit army members. Their fury was so great the Horde fell back as the warriors sang and stomped the ground in their approach. The cattle whose great horns were armored gored the creatures and flung them about. The spirit army rallied and began to support the great warriors and broke the rush of the Horde. For the first time today, the Horde retreated.

The eagles made the final dive, the wind roared in Horus-Ka’s ears and the pilot raised his hand to indicate the time to fire. The spell-singer began her song, clear and crisp despite the wind, her song to the men, focused their attention, hardened their will and they for a moment forgot they were a thousand feet in the air, terrified of a creature from their most terrible nightmare and were less than one hundred meters from that creature; what a song, literally pure magic.

The eagle banked and the eye loomed into sight. The pilot dropped his hand and everyone fired. The eagle banked again and pulled away as the explosions sounded behind it. The creature screamed a primal sound, a thousand trumpets blaring and Horus-Ka and his team were directly in the blast.

The second team while also successful in the strike were set upon by leaping hexapeds that had climbed up the side of the creature when it saw them approaching it. Their eagle was covered with the hexapeds and the last thing Horus-Ka saw of them was the old colonel firing his hand gun and the spell singer using her magic as a weapon against the horrors and then they faded into the smoke.

Seconds after Horus’s eagle was driven from the air by the scream of the creature, tank fire rocked the air and the face of the creature suddenly had craters forming in it as the tank rounds tore through the surface of its stony skin. The smoke was driven away as the mortars and tank fire began to tear into the creatures structure.

The creature’s forward approach had been arrested at the third and final barrier and every artillery weapon fired ceaselessly. Blinded, the creature could no longer direct the horde and the Spirit Army while taking heavy losses were destroying the Horde. Drummers who were close to the horde directed their music as a weapon toward the creatures and destroyed them with the vibrations of their drumming. Many drummers died, but none left their drums, destroying creatures with spell, sword and song until the very end.

Once the creature was blinded, the concerted effort of spell-singers, blessed artillery, and the concentrated fire of the Spirit Army ground the creature back to the dust from which it was formed. The horde was decimated and hunted until the last creature could be found and slain.

Horus woke aching and bloody from his crash. “You plan on lying there all day, do you, lad,” the old colonel said as he offered Horus his hand. “The beast is dead. Your plan while completely daft, worked. Unfortunately, no one else survived but the three of us.” Horus said a quick prayer for those souls lost.

“The spell-singer says the center of this magic is nearby and thinks we should investigate. She is already looking at something, so let’s get you up and at it,” the colonel gruff tone seemed to focus Horus-Ka’s attention.

Horus looked around and saw that both eagles, and their pilots had died in the crash. The creature had fallen over and its open mouth was less than one hundred meters away. As they moved closer, the spell-singer had already climbed up into the mouth of the creature and illuminated the interior of the creature’s mouth. “Lord Horus, here is the source of this foul magic.” She pointed to a large disk shaped object about a meter in diameter. It seemed to be forged of a strange clay or rock and the patterns etched in it were painstakingly drawn and etched. “This appears to be the magical equivalent of a computer. The program is written along the outer edge and the inner structures seem to direct the magical energy allowing this creature to draw upon the energy of the land for its sinister purpose. It was meant to wander through our world and steal energy to release in the world of the living. Like all magic, it can be traced back to its source if you are willing.”

“Now what kind of hero would I be, if I weren’t? I have been waiting all my life for this. Colonel, get back to your people and contain this artifact. Learn all you can so if this thing makes another appearance, you won’t have the problem we had this time. Let’s move this thing and see what we can learn about our enemy.”

Traverse the Nexus to The Aspect War (3)

Care-lessness

Posted by Ebonstorm on July 9, 2012

Posted in: Chapter. Tagged: cognitive dissonance, depression, desperation, disenfrachisement, ebonstorm, homicide, isolation, loss, misery, politics, Rage, society, suicide, texting, Thaddeus Howze. 1 Comment

It started in the news as a meme. We didn’t understand how contagious a meme could be.

Face-biting was how it started. A single news article began the disease. Our inter-connectedness spread the meme. We all were amused by it in the beginning. Some evening news fare, something shocking, titillating to take our minds off our own problems, our lack of a job, our inability to pay our bills, our national obsession with corrupt banks or less than honest politicians.

Seemingly unrelated events happening in different countries all linked by an attack which culminates in one person biting and chewing off the face of another.

The CDC, Center for Disease Control in Atlanta was quick to issue a statement that this was not a zombie apocalypse. Just because they had made a website last year about what to do in the event OF a zombie attack, they did not want to appear to be creating a panic now that something that looked like a need to feed on human flesh had occurred.

Bath salts were, of course, to blame.

It only made sense that something no one used in any fashion other than to bathe with, and having done so for oh, at least a thousand years, should suddenly be responsible for making people in six different countries on six different continents, immediately decide, within a few days of each other to dine on human flesh. That made sense, right?

Except that Mr. Du in China didn’t use bath salts, neither to bath in, nor smoke or eat or ingest in any fashion. But that was overlooked in the news. After all, it was the eating of the people, not the cause of the dysfunction that made headlines.

Mr. Du and several of the other attackers did have something in common but no one at the time recognized it. It wasn’t important then.

We moved on past the events of quiet rage, subtle acts of suicide, less subtle acts of calm homicide as people imperceptibly became willing to do more heinous acts than they were yesterday. We didn’t notice them because they weren’t news, unless you happened to be surfing the internet to discover a story, or series of stories where highly intelligent, very stable young men and women decided that life wasn’t worth living. They made a chart, calculated the value of their living and their dying and their ability to contribute to the planet and the results were less than satisfying.

The only logical choice was to shoot oneself. So they did. They gathered the tools, the resources, organized their lives, left their notes and simply made the logical choice. Later, when their families, friends, teachers were asked, they were all said to be straight A students, great in school, had a bright and promising future. But no one told them that.

A woman in Russia throws her two children out the window. She was tired of caring for them. She does not run from the police. She appears relieved. The shock of the neighbors is evident and in a few days passes, exhausted by their constant struggle to move faster, be faster, make more money, in a world paying less money, demanding more of them than they can muster up every day to keep up for no reason they can conceive. That same afternoon, four men walk in front of a train in the same town, within a few minutes of each other at different stations during rush hour.

A group of young people scattered across the entire planet die within two minutes of each other. Twenty of them. Sending messages to friends who are not in the car with them. They know its dangerous. They believe they can drive and drink and text without consequence. Sixteen of them will die in the next hour. The others will last through the night to die in the early morning. They were not the only teens doing this, they are the only ones to die. Nine hundred others will kill other people but not die. They are unconcerned and will text again as soon as they are able, providing the legal system does not send them to jail first.

What do all of these things have in common? Food, stress, heat, less resources, more work, more aggravation, mounting terror about the future. These people are all responding the same way animals do when they are under great stress. With mounting rage toward everyone around them, if they cannot direct that rage they turn it inward and die, by any means at hand; heart attack, food poisoning, stroke, diabetes, literally eating themselves to death.

The meme is in our lives already. Spreading through our technology, our vitriol, our hatred of each other. This is a manufactured thing. Created by the people who understand what causes division and they use it to keep us unaware of what is being done. We are not believing our eyes, we are believing their rhetoric.

The meme that is killing us is our cognitive dissonance between the idea of having billions for weapons and nothing for healthcare, having billions for banks but nothing for schools, keeping corporations subsidized while children sit in freezing homes in the winter and sweltering in cities without power in the summer, closing down programs which used to enhance their lives while those special people sit in their massive mansions, with six people who sit in rooms separated by a distance of football fields and emotional chasms as far apart as stars.

The meme you see killing us was started nearly a hundred years ago and is now amplified by our technology and our inner rage, our inability to change a system of things working outside of our ability to make a difference by people who could care less if we lived or died.

The meme we are dying from is carelessness. Care Less. Looking down at your device as you walk down the street, you care less. Using your technological toy, you care less. Playing with your latest device, you care less.

Past rage, past frustration, past ennui, past carelessness, lies death for us all.

The zombie apocalypse is with us right now. It has a bright LED screen and fits in the palm of your hand.

Care-lessness © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserve

My Restless Dead

Posted by Ebonstorm on July 5, 2012

Posted in: Short Story. Tagged: deadspeaker, Death, despair, ebonstorm, electrical therapy, ghosts, laudinum, mental illness, Salem, sanitarium, spectre, Thaddeus Howze, tuberculosis. 1 Comment

I know they are coming. I can hear them, a sound, something in the background, like the winter wind, blowing outside the window of my mind; their constant whispers, their incessant scheming, their plans to make me stay with them. They keep telling me how no one will believe in my gift; they never have before. But the ghosts are whispering today about Forest Hills, a sanitarium that claims to understand people like me who suffer from my condition. They assure me, Forest Hills cannot help me, but if I just talk to them, I will feel better. They tell me I need them, and they need me.

The doctor on the phone tells me I need to come down to Forest Hills Sanitarium, one of the oldest and most respected facilities of its kind in Salem, Massachusetts. Founded by Malcolm Forest, he explains, it’s across from the Hillcrest cemetery, a beautiful view the patients found restful. The presence of the cemetery quells those who might wish to mock or otherwise speak ill of the residents. He tells me there is something about Hillcrest that keeps people civil. He says he doesn’t truly understand it but the effect has been a balm to everyone who lives there. I’ve had my own experience with the place already, but his words were…comforting. Something I knew too little of in my exile.

The ghosts flicker in and out of sight as I pack my bags. My room at the hotel has been my home for over eight years or was it ten, since my wife and child…

I need my laudanum. Where is it? Just a spoonful or two should be enough; I find a seat for a moment and the chatter of spirits fades.

Yes, he assures me they would be able to help. They have a full-time staff, some of the best clinicians available. He bragged about a new technique called “electrical therapy” which had been enjoying great success with many of their more severe patients. He lets me know I probably won’t be one of those. I am relieved. Even now electricity strikes me as a bit dangerous. It hasn’t stopped them from lighting the streets or some people’s homes with it. I have at least one ghost, Harold, who claims to have died by its light-giving hand.

There he is now. He is timely and arrives around three o’clock every day, waxing on about how wonderful electricity is and how it will be everywhere one day, mark his words, people will use electricity for everything, light, heat, moving things and machines of complexities unimaginable.

He probably died from all of the crazy prognosticating he did, rather than paying attention to his job. Harold looks up from his ranting about electricity and stares right at me. He seems different today. Then I remember it’s the anniversary of his death. He looks at me and his eyes pierce my soul. He reaches out and touches my chest. In my haze, I just sit there as his icy hand reaches out and I feel the strange tingle starting at my chest and filling my limbs. Surely it’s just the laudanum numbing me.

He floats closer to me and I can see the street behind him as if I was there, then a traffic accident behind him, I see a cable fall and land on his shoulder. His hand grabs me, reaching into my chest, over my heart and then he screams, a sound which fills me with dread. Then I feel the surge, the electricity in my body, my heart flutters; I scream in unison until I fall to the ground unconscious, smoking.

When I wake it’s quiet. Harold is gone. And so are the others, they probably grew weary of waiting for me to awaken. For a time I knew no sleep, now the periods of sleep have grown longer and deeper, some say it’s the laudanum, but I cannot, no, I will not stop its use, no matter how terrible it may make me feel, for it is only with it, do I, for a time, have peace. This moment feels different, I feel larger than myself, transcendent even as if I can see something, am aware of something I did not know before. A deep breath, I feel calm and centered. I hurry while the feeling lasts.

I make the most of this silent period by finishing the packing of my meager belongings. I have a moment of nostalgia about the place as I pack up my writing, paper, quills, and ink. I have until a few years ago sold a few penny dreadfuls to supplement my living working at the Salem Register, a daily paper whose readership has grown both in popularity and scope during my time there.

Mr. Arthur Penrose, my employer has been very generous with his help and I am indebted to his kindness. He aided me at my lowest point. I wish I could talk to him now, but I know if I don’t hurry when they return I shall lose my will to head to Forest Hills and instead slip into madness. Forgive me Arthur, when I am well, I shall return to help you as you have helped me.

My secret passion of writing and Arthur’s printing at night, of my penny dreadfuls, has allowed me to amass the funds I will be using to stay at the sanitarium. The residents of Salem may have a history of hunting witches, but they also seem to have a penchant for reading about them too. My latest work, Flying Potion was a wildly successful, if hidden pleasure partaken of by many of the locals who outwardly decry my work while secretly buying it.

I close the door behind me, leaving a letter for my landlady; of all the people in my life, she will be missed the least. Surly, short-tempered, ill-mannered but fortunate enough to have her rich husband die and leave her this hotel. Rumors abound regarding his death; only I know the truth and he tells me over and over how she poisoned his absinthe, his secret sin, with the petals of flowers most dire, the flavor was masked by the absinthe and covered her evil deed.

Even he only discovered this after his death, when he refused to leave his home to journey to the great beyond; his hatred of her transcended life and death. Even in death, he could not be free of her. Mayhap there is love in that hate as well. Few emotions stir such contrary feelings.

He haunts her and me, her for his death, me for being able to hear him as he bemoans his fate. He stands just outside her door. I can see him, waiting for her to leave for the evening repast. I shall not miss either of them.

His awareness focused on her, he does not see me leave and placing the last rent I shall ever pay in a tray by the door along with a key worn smooth with my use. I am free; my last obligations made or ignored.

The streets were hard cobbles, and I could hear the sounds of perambulators and horses in equal measure. The evening was brisk, cold, and unpleasant. It matched my mood perfectly. I kept a quick pace, reminding me of my days in the military, so long ago when I was young; idealistically believing I could change the world.

I think my cynicism had finally caught up to me like getting older did. A little at a time, in a creeping fashion, challenging me, relieving me of my youth, my hopes and in great and terrible moments, my dreams of love, of family, of self. I was a shadow of that boy, so bold, so fearless. I huddled in my long coat, my lanky body made lean by hunger, by fear, by a lack of interest in life. They found me again; maybe because I was already so close to being dead.

I saw them mingling with the living. Lovers walking arm in arm. A macabre dance, one dead, one living, both subsisting on the memories of their lives together, whispering about what they planned to do with their futures. I brought my sleeve to my mouth as I passed them in the street. I stifled a gasp as they both looked at me, almost knowing that I intruded into their private moment. I sucked in the cold evening air and rushed past them. They forgot me momentarily, returned to their conversation. The living shook their heads, the dead equally disapproved of the display.

Police chased criminals into traffic, bakers plied their craft, aromatic whispers of delicious confections wafted through the streets, turning heads living and deceased, both hungry for the moments the bread retrieved from their broken hearts and broken lives.

A shadow swept through the streets, overlooking everyone. The living shudder, not sure of what they felt. The dead stopped moving, dropped and cowered until it passed; the Consumption; the specter of Death in our times. The specter paused — kissed two passersby on the lips gently, each heading in a different direction. Both stopped to meet a group and the specter became two shadows that fell upon each group.

When the specter left, all of their shadows left with him. All save one. A hearty fellow, strong and fit, he was the only one who cast a shadow in the evening light. No one noticed except me. The specter passed me and put his finger to his lips, shushing me before moving away through the crowd. I would have been speechless in any event.

What would I tell them? You are all doomed? The specter of Death has stolen your lives whilst you caroused and made merry? I think not. If I weren’t already on my way to a sanitarium they would certainly be trying to carry me there, apace.

Fear of consumption still swept the city after several recent outbreaks. The slightest cough brought hooded looks as eyes turned toward the offender. Everyone lost someone during the last two years. Their agonies, families wailing as loved one died and children were lost haunted my days and their deaths railing against the unfairness of it all, my nights.

As I approached the edge of town, black crows laughed at me as I turned up the road toward Forest Hills. I had always known it to be there, and remembered as a child, sneaking to see it and the people who would be taken here. My friends and I saw these unfortunates, sometimes raving mad, screaming at the top of their lungs, other times quietly drooling in the care of a physician. We noted when we got close, it was hard to tell the caretakers from the cared for, as the glint of madness seemed just as bright in all their eyes.

As we got older, we stopped coming. It was the cemetery. Right next door to the sanitarium, its eerie graves grew to be a much more terrifying place as we learned about the restless dead; tales told to us by our friends and families of children who went missing if they tarried too long there after dark. And as some of our family members found themselves as residents of Hillcrest cemetery, we considered the place less and less a refuge from our parents and guardians. But Forest Hills maintained its mystique as a place of damaged people and the madmen who cared for them.

I would make one more trip there as a young man before vowing to never come back. I took my wife there after the death of our daughter. I watched her die at the age of six, a shadow of herself. Her mother, my dearest Diedra could not, nay would not, leave her side for days at a time. I sat with her when I could take her mother to her bed. Our daughter, Martha was a child we had not expected to be able to have. Diedra had been barren for the first ten years of our marriage. We were deeply in love and our inability to have children sat poorly with us even as we struggled to maintain our relationship during those early years.

And then, a miracle, she was with child; I never saw her more happy, more radiant. The magic of being with child always seemed an exaggeration to me, hyperbole spoken by women to keep them cheerful during the hardships of childbirth, but Diedra truly was alive, more so than she had ever been in all the time I knew her. I cherish those days knowing what was to follow.

Martha was born on time and Diedra was inseparable from the child. She doted on her and for most of Martha’s childhood; no one could have ever said a child was better loved. But one night, that same night, Diedra and Martha returned from the market. They went together and when they came back to the house, they had a stranger with them. They did not see him. I was not even sure I saw him. As he came in with them, he shushed me, his finger to his lips and I was dumbstruck, unable to speak.

They talked about the market, her bird-like chirping in syncopation with her mother’s musical voice, he stood in the corner of the house watching with glittering eyes; a stare hungry with anticipation. I closed my eyes for a moment and when I reopened them, he was gone. Only his chill remained. That night Martha developed a cough we at first thought was just a summer cold and that it would be gone as swiftly as it came. But that wasn’t true. That same cough came to many of my neighbors soon after.

After a time, no one left home, many because they couldn’t, the rest didn’t dare. We huddled in the dark waiting and hoping to not hear another wail in the distance. Sometimes a day or even two would pass. No matter their distance I could hear the dying passing into that final night. I woke from dreams, dripping sweat and going to my daughter’s room to see my wife sitting with her.

He came for her nearly six months later. She appeared to get better briefly and could talk but never maintained any strength. We could see it was only a matter of time. Every second was precious. During those final days, the two of them were bound together and for a moment I could see them in a way I had never before. They were truly one single being stretched between two lives. Martha lived because Diedra had willed her into existence.

When Martha died He was at my door. The same strange man, in a black suit this time and a long overcoat and hat. He knocked politely. I knew who it was before he knocked. His footfalls echoed along the street and he made several stops before he came to our house. I heard the cries of fathers mourning their sons and mothers their daughters. Children collectively screamed for parents who would never answer their calls. He was dutiful and spared no one. Nor listened to any impassioned pleas. I lived on the last house on the street. I counted his steps. They resounded like thunder in my head. I answered the door.

Diedra came to my daughter’s door. Martha had slipped back into a fever and was hot and sweating. Her coughing released blood and the gurgling in her chest returned this time worse than ever. Her agony was apparent. Diedra looked as if she would bar his way.

He took off his hat and coat and helped Diedra to a chair. The look on her face spoke of her resignation. He touched her head and went into Martha’s room. I followed.

A terrible cough racked her, she sat up in bed and heaving… blood flew everywhere. He never appeared to rush and as he came to her side at the bed he eased his hand behind her back and propped her up. As soon as he touched her, her coughing stopped and her breathing eased. Her eyes opened and they were clear and bright for the first time in days. She reached out to me. I took her hand, covered in her dark blood in the candle-lit room and held her for those last seconds. He let her go and she fell back to the bed.

We walked out the door, I was covered in blood, he impeccably clean and his face composed, no emotion could be seen. Diedra released a sound, I had heard far too often in these last days. A gut wrenching sound, which brought tears unbidden to my eyes and then she slumped over from her chair. He reached out to her and I interposed myself between him and her, catching her in my arms. Her sobs were quiet things as if all the sound she could make had already been made.

He turned to look at me and his look spoke to me. Give her to me.

Never, I replied my eyes burning with hatred of what He was and what he had done.

She will still come to me. She is broken now, his outstretched hand said.

Then I will mend her. Get out. I put my back to him

He slowly, ruefully, put his hat and coat on. As he walked out he looked back once more. A glint of emotion, for only a second, shone there. He turned his collar up and strode off into the night, leaving the door open, allowing a cold, ill wind to sweep away what was left of both Martha and Diedra, that night.

Diedra neither ate nor slept in the days after Martha’s passing. She lay in bed, barely mobile, barely conscious. She would even soil herself and I cleaned her as best I could. I made food for her, she did not eat. I talked to her. She did not speak, nor even acknowledge my presence. I would leave to work, finding her right where I left her upon my return. I would do this for nearly a year before the murmurings of the town became a hideous roar of disapproval. Living in her filth they would say, barely sane they would say, a madwoman to come murder them in their sleep they would say.

I did not dignify their ranting but I knew if she did not eat beyond the tiny morsels she took to sustain her, she would soon perish. The last night she was with me, I prepared everything she had ever loved, packed it and cleaned and dressed her. She was little more than a marionette, standing there in our house, following my voice, barely any life in her at all. I explained I would be taking her to Forest Hills. I told her it was best for her. They would be able to care for her, feed her, and keep her clean all day long. This was what I had been told and I believed them. That morning we shuffled our way up the hill, surrounding by a spring morning after a long and harsh winter. I hoped this would soothe her somehow but she could not see it.

They took her in, the place was drab but clean. The other clients were well cared for and while there was the occasional shout, no one seemed ill-treated, as I had heard in gossip from many of the townsfolk. I would come to see her on occasion but she seemed not to know me any more than the staff that tended her and after two years, I vowed never to see her or this place again. As I walked from the sanitarium, I looked into the cemetery and for the first time noticed the sounds coming from it. I had always heard them but only recently realized where they were coming from.

That day and every day after it for fifteen years has been a living hell.

The dead spoke to me now all the time, telling me of their troubles, of the in-laws, of their displeasure with how they were buried, or what they would have done better if they had lived, or about the specter and his black suit, and what they would do if they ever had the chance to confront him. This constant chatter drove me slowly mad. I tried ignoring it, I tried talking with them, I bargained with them, and I pleaded with them. I became an addict to drown them out, using laudanum at night between leaving my job and dawn before I returned to my work.

I made my peace with them until now. Once I got to Forest Hills and their electroshock therapy, I would be free of their incessant nattering and would again know blessed silence, the silence of the grave. Yes, graves before I knew of the restless dead.

Imagine my shock when I reached the top of the incline to find Forest Hills in ruins. From the looks of it, a fire had taken place. But why hadn’t I heard of it? The remains of the building looked as if it were nearly a decade ago. But it simply couldn’t be the case. The cemetery next door also seemed to have suffered from the ravages of time, overgrown, with both weeds and ivy growing over the tombstones. The evening sun was nearly setting and I could see the town from the hilltop, the blood red light colored the otherwise drab buildings of Salem.

I suddenly realized I did not hear anything. No cries, no tales of woe, nothing. I looked back at the sanitarium and it was restored to its former glory. He stood in the doorway. She was with him.

Welcome to Forest Hills. You will have plenty of work to do here, Speaker. He held out his hand and his welcome was clear to me. Diedra taking both his hand and mine ushered me into the door. I saw Martha running down the corridor to me and she leaped into my arms. He closed the door behind us and I could swear I heard the sounds of a great fire somewhere in the distance. The light from the fire filled the frame of the door as he ushered us away into the darkness. (3,759 words)

Equinox: Homecoming (3)

Posted by Ebonstorm on June 28, 2012

Posted in: Chapter, Equinox: The Last Scion, Serial, Short Story. Tagged: Adam, deadly enemies, ebonstorm, Equinox, Equinox: The Last Scion, forest, Gaia, Hub City Blues, magic, misfortune, Ms. Hart, short story, shotgun, the Hell Hart, travel, wolf. 1 Comment

My best name was less than seventy years ago; Kathrin Hart. It was the late 1940’s, and I had crashed in Paris during the Resistance. I was part of a special cargo being delivered to the front to hold the Allied forces at bay in Normandy. My plane was shot down along with its deadly cargo. During the crash, my memory was lost, my uniform destroyed. He took pity on me thinking I was one of the locals who had been near the plane when it went down.

He was a G.I. reinforcing a small town during World War Two. At our initial meeting, unknown to both of us, I was a tool of the Reich, my powers turned to their purpose. I had been recruited and exploited as a weapon of war. Our time together was brief but tender. Before the week was over, the two of us repelled another more terrible menace of the Reich which had escaped the crash and run amok, consuming the townspeople, nearly to the last man, woman and child. During the conflict, I died, along with almost all of his men. He was haunted by the carnage.

He did not know my powers would transcend death and I awoke during the night. My memory returned and I returned to the Reich to exact my vengeance. Even as I tore through Hitler’s bunker, I could not put this man out of my mind. The Allies were disappointed when they came to the bunker and passed Hitler’s death off as a suicide. There was something about him; something dark, something brooding. I recognized his Power, though I did not know its name.

He did not know. He could not see the other lives he had lived. Like rings in a tree, he had many lifetimes, each of conflict, and of suffering. He had lived many lives, each renewed by his dark connection to his power. Our powers were complementary, so we were drawn together, time and time again, our lives mixed sometimes as lovers and other times as deadly enemies. This time we started as enemies and ended as lovers. When the war ended, I found my way to him in the States and we married. Again. It was the beginnings of a mistake. Small at first, but it grew over time.

My presence, my Heart, my Light, triggered his Shadow and soon we had to move. Our powers were not in harmony, they could never truly be. Each time we grew comfortable, misfortune would follow us and people died. As his power grew I realized he was not just a child of Shadow. He was a Power. A repository of a Great Gift. As powerful as I had been, it would be nothing if his awakened. His power had a name and I pretended I did not know who he was.

During the sixties, his powers were fully active and we could walk between shadows no matter where they were in the world. If he could visualize a place, we could go there. Where once I could fly in hours, he could move in seconds. His powers soon equaled mine. Within a decade, they were greater. I knew nothing good would come of this.

I waited for our doom, our Houses to intervene, dark powers to appear, but our threats remained mundane and we grew complacent. We even went to Woodstock, laughed, got high, and traveled as if we were normal. We crossed the country in his hand-maintained VW bus with half a dozen other hippies. We made our way quietly through history until we met her. She was at Woodstock. I should have recognized her but we were happy not using our gifts. It had been so long, we thought everyone had forgotten us.

She was beautiful. Her hair was an afro, full like the head of a dandelion. She wore a simple halter and shorts and I remember her legs were the most amazing I had ever seen. Her body was brown like mahogany and her smile was a thing of warmth and sunshine. We were both drawn to her and we spent the day just getting high and enjoying the perfect day and weather.

We danced, sang and it was as if we had always known her. We lost our friends earlier in the day so we spent the night parked, making love till the dawn. When he and I woke later in the day, she was gone, but both of us were more at peace than we had been in years. After Woodstock, things changed in the world. Suspicion and fear became the order of the day. But for us, things seemed good, too good. We were happy for a time, able to enjoy our peace until she came back to us, nearly a decade later.

Her second visit was nothing like her first.

She came to us on a farm in Iowa. We had moved there hoping for a cessation to the slowly increasing attacks. They were strange, intermittent, without a pattern, at first. Racists with an axe to grind. A cross-burning, shootings from the road, refusals of service in nearby towns. We never protested. We didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. I was a blond haired, Caucasian woman and he was a powerfully built African American. People were often hostile when we came to new places, especially during the late seventies, but people adjusted and usually left us alone after a time. But not this time. Their ire and their attacks increased. We turned our farm into a bunker and stockpiled weapons. These attacks were not the issue. They were a symptom of a greater disorder. The people were a projection of forces seeking us, hoping to draw us out. We waited, armed, expectant and patient.

And then she came. It was during a terrible storm, lightning flashing, tornado-like winds howling. We had retreated to the house to watch the storm looking for patterns or portents in its fury. She came running out of the woods toward the house and I recognized her immediately. Other than her clothes, she had not changed, as if less than a second had past between when she left us and now. She was carrying a small child with her.

As she staggered in from the driving rain she collapsed after handing me the baby. She seemed to be in another world, barely maintaining her awareness of us. She dropped to the carpet as if she were dead. He caught her and laid her gently on her back. Hidden by the baby were terrible slashes in her belly. Deep lacerations but they bled slowly, much slower than any wound that deep should. We were no longer waiting. Trouble was here.

He picked her up and struggled with her tiny body as if she were a great weight. He placed her on the sofa. I cut away her jacket and opened her shirt and saw her body had been terribly savaged and the injuries were across her thighs and back as well. Whatever did this was powerful and large. The claws were the size of his hands. He checked and rewrapped the child while I tended her wounds. We both had significant experience with injuries and often worked as doctors or paramedics. The child was about six months old and in perfect condition. After checking him out and satisfied to his health, we made ready. Whatever drove her here would follow. Soon.

When they came we saw them slowly approaching the house. They were wolves but the forest belied their size. Each was the size of a pickup truck. Their mouths open, lips pulled back, showed their razor sharp fangs, already bloody, each drip accented by the flashes of lightning, growing steadily more frequent, lasting longer and the crashing of thunder indicating the storm was directly overhead, no time between light and sound. With all the noise the strangest thing was the fact the child didn’t wake. As if lightning was something he was used to hearing.

My husband walked out onto the porch with a sawed-off shotgun, filled with a mix of blessed silver, lead, iron and salt in one hand and a rune-carved machete in the other. “Stay here. Keep them safe. I’ll be right back.” He walked out and the three giant wolves strode up to him within twenty feet and stopped. They were easily nine feet at the shoulder. It was simply impossible they should exist. But they were not from either of our Houses. This was an unaligned force. We had no idea of what to expect from them.

“We don’t want any trouble.” As if talking to giant wolves was something he did every day. I sat with my Winchester rifle pointed out the window. I had already picked my target. His posture indicated which he would tackle first.

“Give us the woman and the child and we will leave.” A gravely voice, I could hear it even at this distance, a sign of its magical puissance.

“Can’t do that.” His hands remained at his side, weapons slick in the rain, his shirt sticking to his wide back.

“Then, there will be trouble.”

My husband said nothing, but his body tensed imperceptibly, waiting for them to gather their courage. They seemed to sense his power and were in their way, cowed by it.

The wolf to his left bared his fangs and hissed. “Is that your final offer?”

“Yep.”

“Then die.

“You, first.” As the wolf lunged, both barrels of the shotgun went off directly in its mouth. It screamed as it threw its head back, and smoke rose from it as it fell into the snow.

He turned exuding a crazy menace, smiled and asked to the remaining wolves, “Who’s next?”

The second wolf, as large as the first lunged forward and my .380 caught it cleanly in the eye. Ensorcelled, the round tore through the creature’s iron-hard flesh and ground its brain into mush as it scattered inside of the wolf’s skull. It stood for a moment, almost in disbelief and then slumped forward.

While the second wolf was falling to the ground, he leapt forward and his machete struck the wolf but against the iron hard fur, it blunted the force of his blow. The wolf surprised by his attack, bounded backward. My husband continued to roll forward toward the beast, trying to keep his momentum. He crouched before the wolf, who paused.

“We will not leave without her, so die.” The last wolf howled and the force of the sound shattered all of the glass in the house driving it instantly into the room as shrapnel. In that instant, I forsook my appearance of normality and moved.

I could see the glass, each shard of it as it turned into projectiles showering the room. I could sense those that would be a threat and struck them from the air with my spear, which manifested in my hand, extending my reach. The wide bladed tip swatting away each malevolent sliver. For me, time slowed. First one, then another, and another. My spear flickered in an out of existence, appearing only when lightning filled the house, ever louder, ever closer.

I was struck by dozens of shards, the beast’s magic weaponizing every pane of glass, each shard, cursed with the power to tear into unsuspecting flesh, each trying to gain a purchase. My manifested form was covered with my spiritual armor, screaming out to any of my House, that I was here; our decades of hiding were over. A few slivers penetrated, but nothing stopped my focus, nothing stopped my execution. I did not know this woman but I knew it was important to save her. I worried for my husband but I had to focus. Outside, things had gotten much worse for him.

He had raised his machete, touching the earth rune, so the wave of sound was deflected over him, but even a glancing blow had been deadly enough. The sound shredded his clothing and stripped him bare. Only his blade prevented his flesh from suffering a similar fate; only tattered rags remained.

Pointing the blade skyward, lightning found him, casting light and darkness everywhere. He disappeared from sight, and reappeared in the shadow of the beast. Lightning sparked, hopping back to the heavens and then back to him as if he were a tesla coil, trying to reconcile itself with his strange movement between where he was to where he now stood. The lightning roared with this violation of physics. The wolf was in the path as the lightning sought him out. Springing into the air, he stabs the sword into the side of the beast as the lightning finds them both. The final thunderclap is deafening.

The lightning abruptly stopped. The rain subsided soon after. The woman lay quietly, her breathing slowed, the child lay next to her, blissfully unaware of what happened. I got up, after removing shards of glass from by body and walked to the window. I could see my husband getting up, smoke still rising from his body. He turned and began to stagger toward me. I flew to him. He was still hot and he shone with a quiet luminescence. While we walked back to the house, the door opened up and the woman was there holding the child in her arms.

“We can’t stay here. Others will follow.”

“Who are you, what did they want, and why is it every time we meet, I end up naked.” His words were meant to be light, but his tone was deadly serious. These were questions he wanted answers to, now.

“My name is Gaia. And this,” holding the baby out for a second, “is your son.”

Jump to Native Daughter (4)

The Aspect War (4)

Posted by Ebonstorm on June 23, 2012

Posted in: Chapter, Hayward's Reach, Short Story. Tagged: diner, ebonstorm, greasy spoon, Hayward's Reach, horror, Mammon, Max and Momma's, modern urban fantasy, short story, Sidhe, Thaddeus Howze, The Aspect War, travel, Tyche, Unseelie Court. 3 Comments

Only Here for the Food

Mammon ate.

It did not really matter what he was eating, only that he did. Mammon was always eating. No, that’s not right. Mammon was always hungry. No amount of eating ever seem to fill him up. He was always engaged in some sort of feasting. And when he was not eating, he was drinking to excess. It didn’t matter what he drank, it did not satisfy him. No matter how much money he had, it did not stop him from wanting more.

The greasy spoon, Max and Momma’s, was poorly lit with widely spaced bulbs hanging from wires on the ceiling. Each was shrouded with a greasy hood that directed light down onto a hardwood counter top that stretched nearly the length of the restaurant. The table spoke volumes with its well-worn rings where glasses sat, year after year, consolidating moisture on their sides and depositing it on the wood, to sink in, leeching color but adding character.

The floor, barely visible, was a linoleum tiled affair, whose placement was less than perfect, allowing sand and dirt from the men and occasionally women who walked through those doors to accumulate between them, slowly abrading them, smoothing them, establishing permanent tracks through them near the tables bolted to the floor; no amount of mopping ever made them look clean. It was as if the tiles prided themselves on being as dirty as the patrons who frequented this place.

Speaking of the hard men and women who worked at the docks and shipyards nearby, they filled this place wearing their denim jumpsuits or their rubberized suits with their rough hands and rougher manners. They stank of fish, or cargo boxes, or the sweat needed to move that cargo, clean those ships, or weld those seams. This was their place, their watering hole, and had been so for seventy years; it had weathered two depressions, three recessions, five wars, twelve presidents, and had the pictures on the wall to prove it. There were pictures on the wall of Momma and Max through the years, showing up with some of the more colorful visitors, mobsters, mayors, and occasionally, during a voting season, a senator or two. Max and Momma’s was an institution, a place venerated by time, outside of time, hence Mammon’s visit.

He wore a suit. A simple, but expensive cut, it hung poorly on his lanky frame. His Rolex glimmered sickly in the poor light, as if its quality were diminished by the company he was keeping. That company felt the same way. Most of the dockworkers and the mobsters eating in the back did not appreciate his intrusion into their humble world with his suit-and-tie effete nature. Nowadays, Mammon barely weighed eighty kilos, no matter what he ate. He had to have his clothes tailored for his spare frame, but his recent success in the stock market had provided for all of his needs. This last decade had been very, very good to Mammon.

The owner, Max, was of another mindset completely. He was always happy to see Mammon, who always ate a large meal with a bunch of sides, tipped well, and always came back. Max remembered him when he Mammon was a lot larger, too, needed his own table, and nothing he wore fit very well. In the last ten years after his last heart attack, he had lost weight consistently and was now all skin and bones. Momma thought he had cancer or something. But it certainly did not affect his appetite or his eatin’ manners. Lord, that man was a slob while he ate.

Mammon consumed his burger with gusto, its drippings pouring out from between his fingers and staining the sleeves of his very white shirt and expensive jacket. He favored this place over the fast food places in the city proper because so much more flavor oozed from each bite. Lawrence Simmons, the current spiritual residence of Mammon, consumed everything in excess.

Lawrence had always been a glutton, and when Mammon found him, he was the picture of unhealthy living. Greasy food was his preference, and his two heart attacks and triple-bypasses ten years ago showed his dedication to his poor diet. His weight was a massive 250 kilos, just small enough to keep making it out to his favorite fast food restaurants using a heavy cane and a steady gait. Mammon ate at a lot of fast food restaurants in the city proper, and he was well known at all of these places. He noted between bites that almost all of these places had a staff with eating problems. The more he visited those places, the fatter their staff became. It was a slow, but steady process.

In his favorite place only a few blocks from his home, the owner had a massive coronary and had to close the place down. Unfortunate. Hence his trip to Max and Momma’s. Mammon tried not to eat here too often because he was, in his own detached way, fond of Momma and Max.

When she came in the door, his mouth was full of food, but the silence that fell over the place was complete. Women stared at her, wondering what she did to keep her figure; men stared, trying to imagine themselves next to that figure. She was wearing a close-fitting motorcycle suit that resembled body armor, and was carrying her helmet under her arm. The armor plates on the suit were painted a dark red and the fabric of the suit was a dark gray. As tightly as her suit clung to her, her hair, night black, glistening, hiding secrets, waved freely about her head and shoulders, smelling of night jasmine and honeysuckle. She strode across the room, her pace unhurried, and several men, who thought they had a chance to woo her, immediately rose and tried to approach. Mammon did not notice her.

The first, a rakishly handsome fellow, slid from his seat with some grace, but as he took his first step, his foot was caught on the edge of one of legs of a chair, and he fell flat on his face. His friends, properly sympathetic and sufficiently lubricated, exploded in gales of laughter, and the rake stood up and redirected himself toward the restroom, with the same aplomb as a cat falling off the sofa asleep and immediately pulling itself together as if nothing happened. He was less than successful.

The second gentleman, seeing the catastrophe of the first, decided he would wait until she was close enough to him that he could simply stand up and make his presence known. Unbeknown to him, there was a life preserver ring on the ceiling as part of the nautical motif of the place. That ring, which had been mounted forty years ago as a part of a boat that was lost during a storm and was the only thing recovered, slipped from its very secure housing and fell onto his plate, splattering him with its contents. She never noticed him.

She continued toward her goal as the tenor of the place returned to normal. Max rushed out to help clean off the poor fellow now covered in his dinner. “Hello, husband.” Her voice was a strong yet sultry contralto, the purr of motorcycle with the throttle barely let out.

“Hello, Ty. That’s ex-husband. Didn’t you get the paperwork?” was Mammon’s choked out reply from around his second monster-sized, avocado-bacon burger with grilled onions, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, with a fiery, custom horseradish spread; this was one of Momma’s finest works, worth every penny. “You getting the checks okay?”

“Yes. Can I sit down?” She did not need his money, but she never sent it back. She knew he said it just to be a bastard.

“Oh, sure. Take a load off. To what do I owe this pleasure?” Mammon noticed she held back what she was really feeling.

“Spare me, you barely know I am here; there is a burger in your hand. Your universe is just that small at the moment.”

Ouch. “You know me too well. That’s why I married you.” Mammon’s smile was evident as he remembered the good times they did have all those years ago.

“Funny. I was thinking that was why I divorced you,” her tone seemingly playful, suddenly changed and became very low and serious. “I hate to interrupt your recent fascination with food, but I need your help.”

Mammon looked at her incredulously while he finished the last of the gastrointestinal delight that was the Belly Buster. He wiped his hands on his napkin, which looked at this point like the victim of a slasher flick, and asked “What kind of trouble could you be in that a convenient accident could not get you out of?”

Mammon remembered how he met her all those years ago in a casino in Vegas, partying, smoking, gambling and winning. She was beautiful then, terribly beautiful, and she used it like a weapon. Men were nothing to her but playthings. Her only real interest was their money. She never gambled with her own money back then.

She was lucky, most of the time. She was also careful with her winning, never too much, never too fast, never too often at the same casino, just enough to stay under the radar, but he was fascinated by her string of “luck” and followed her to three different casinos, before he made his move. Their relationship evolved just like both of their lifestyles, extremely fast, too much partying, too much drinking, and the sex–the sex was outstanding. He wore the skin of a wealthy young aristocrat with time, strength, and virility on his side.

They were married at the El Rancho Vegas in Las Vegas in 1960. The owner of the hotel, suspected of being a mobster and a killer, took a liking to her. He cornered her somewhere and told her it was in her best interest, since he owned El Rancho Vegas, to consider dumping that zero and getting with a hero. She never took threats well. Two hours after they were married, the place accidentally burned to the ground. He was never found. The cause of the fire was never discovered.

It took Mammon another ten years to learn that accidents like that happened to anyone Tyche didn’t take a liking to.

At a séance in the seventies Mammon discovered that they were both descended from mythic beings and were lesser powers themselves, hence their attraction to each other, the synergy in their lifestyles, and the effectiveness of their occupational abilities. His psychic abilities were great and he warned them of a coming conflict. They did not take him seriously. He was killed mysteriously before they could learn of their true identities. They forgot about his warning.

The seventies were even more wild than the sixties. Swinging and cocaine were big then, and what they did not spend on sex and coke, they spent on crazy fashion, big hair and bigger sunglasses, crazy bell-bottoms, and the eventual fall of Nehru jackets.

Then the eighties came, and there was so much money to be made, Mammon worked all the time, and as Mammon progressed, so did society and its need for greed. He learned that his power affected humanity at a global level, and the more he wanted, the more they wanted. He simply did not have time for Tyche, and she drowned her sorrows in other men and new designer drugs. They fell out, moved out, cried on the phone, made up, had great sex, got back together, then rinse and repeat. This went on all through the eighties until The War.

They were drafted. Their side lost and Mammon was killed. Until then, they lived their lives in relative unawareness of their true powers and abilities. With his resurrection, his powers and memory returned fully and so did hers. Whatever had bound him, had bound her to him and only a happenstance of fate kept them together all those years.

He could only assume he had been rescued and resurrected by another Power. He was never clear who saved him without absorbing his aspects. While he did not fear death, dissolution, the loss of self was another thing entirely.

He had hoped to lay low after his rebirth but Tyche’s renewed taste for the finest things in life brought her to the attention of Gluttony, a lesser Aspect who wanted to claim Mammon’s powers. He was forced to battle Gluttony, who was hoping to expand his dominion into the realm of money. Gluttony lost the conflict, and Mammon was forced to consume him and take his power instead.

Growing more powerful, but was now in dominion over another realm, he became a Glutton as well. He was drawn toward food in ways he had never been before. As Mammon, he was in dominion over Man’s obsession with money, now he was in dominion over personal greed and gluttony. It changed him. In his nature, Mammon ate well, the finest foods, no matter their cost; now the Glutton in him would eat anything, anywhere, even out of a garbage can. During the early years of this new power, he simply could not stop eating everything in sight. He burned through body after body, until he got the power under some level of control.

Tyche also left him. Obsessed with the new understanding of her powers, she became a hedonist and a sensationalist, always seeking the next thrill. They fell apart during his eating-from-garbage-cans phase, and when he resurfaced in this body, some ten years ago, she was sickened by him, fat, smelly, and completely disgusting. Tyche had also changed during those years. She learned that while she had amazing abilities and no human could match her in any physical, mental, or emotional contest, she was simply at the lowest level of power among her kind. She chose to return to her life on Earth. In her mind, it was better to slum as a power than to live among gods as a weakling.

“It is the Selig Court,” was her whispered reply.

“I can’t help you; you know that. Nobody can.” The Selig Court was a power in its own right. They were not related to the Aspects, who were their family, or the modern gods, who were offshoots of other godlike beings or demigods. Instead they seemed to descend from the terrible Old Gods, once beings of immense power, until they were thrown down by the angelic White Host in the twelfth century.

The Old Gods were savage and brutal. No one missed them except the Selig Court, a group of humans or near human hybrids blessed with the power of their gods, the magic of their gods, and the tempers of their gods. They were romanticized in much of modern literature as tricksters and incompetents, but they were far more dangerous than that. Any writer who claimed otherwise probably had not met one in the flesh. If he had, he would have learned that the best thing they could do for you was to kill you. Everything else was far worse.

It was probably no accident the White Host nearly destroyed them during the Great Pogrom. Their fall from grace seemed to reduce their power significantly, and they retreated from the world into nearby Shard Realms, harassing humans in the following centuries, bringing plague and the like until the early nineteenth century. They were rarely heard from these days, and in the case of most modern gods, thought to be a myth to frighten children with. Mammon was old enough to remember them and what they were like. He wanted nothing to do with them.

A blind man came through the door with a large service animal and made his way into the restaurant. His service animal, a dog breed of an unknown pedigree, but a bit larger than normal, led him through the restaurant to the back to a table near Mammon and Tyche. He was conservatively dressed, nothing flashy, but nothing that you would remember, either. His look was one to make you forget you ever saw him. Damn.

“They’re here,” he whispered to Tyche and looked toward the blind man.

He sat.

The blind man ordered his meal and Mammon noticed his smooth and fluid movements, not too conservative, but with no overt flourish. He seemed to use just enough of all types of movement to relay information and expectation, without being too forward or too reticent. His waitress flushed while she took his order, and rushed away without knowing why. Her breath was ragged and she was excited to be serving him. When his food returned, his plate was perfect, and she took great pleasure in describing his food’s location on the plate.

Mammon looked at the service dog and noticed how it eyed the waitress hungrily, as if she were an appetizer he could not wait to consume. A slow lavish lick of his tongue across his snout indicated his anticipation. While the dog was licking his lips, his master had slid his hand behind the waitress and was skillfully and discreetly massaging her buttocks. She blushed more, but did not ask him to stop. Tyche looked a bit annoyed. Mammon knew why.

“A one-time friend, perhaps? Jealous much?” he whispered to Tyche.

“Go fuck yourself, Mammon,” was her angry reply. But the heavy sighing that followed revealed what she would not say.

After the waitress left, smiling and blushing, the man turned to his meal. Mammon noted that he had not removed his shades, but they did not detract from his appearance. Even in the wan light, he could tell the man was incredibly handsome, with a strong chin, a sharp nose, and slightly pointed ears. His hair was fair, a whitish blond that hung past his neckline in a jagged cut. It did not make him appear foppish; instead, it gave a savage look to his appearance. When you looked at him and his dog, you noticed the similarities to both their hairstyles. Mammon remembered a People magazine article saying that people tended to look like their dogs.

He was widely shouldered, but his clothing belied his bulk, making him appear smaller and less well defined. It was hard to know if it was the clothing or a glamour that aided in that illusion. “Sir, could you be so kind to pass the horseradish? I love a bit of spice on my burger. I can tell that you do, as well. It is easy to recognize a connoisseur like yourself.”

Mammon grabbed the cup of horseradish and moved toward the next table. “Here you go, fella. You see pretty well for a blind man.”

“Sight obscures, the heart reveals. Take a seat, Great One; eat with me.”

“Are you invoking hospitality?”

“For this meal, yes, you and your wife-sister are safe from me and mine,” the blind man’s voice was like a choir, melodious with choral overtones. He sounded as if he spoke with more than one voice.

No matter what he thought of it, Mammon knew what had to be done; etiquette demanded that he be as polite as his host. “Brother to the Fey, how may I be of service unto thee and thine? My wife and I are at your service,” the words fell like ashes from his mouth, dry and bitter. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing? What appellation is used to designate your august person?”

“You may call me the Fire Hound of House Caleban,” was the quiet reply.

“A noble house, to be sure.” House Caleban! What has she done? That is the Royal House Caleban, the current leader of the Selig Court, led by the insane king Fagan, also known as the Firelord, and his equally insane queen Edana.

“Great One, I am loath to bring such an unseemly matter to your attention.”

No, you are not.

Be quiet, Dog.

Do I look like a dog to you?

As a matter of fact, yes. Now silence.

Yes, my dark master. I hunger.

Soon, my pet; you will eat soon.

“There is a debt owed to my house by your wife, the Lady Tyche.” The seemingly blind man reached down to his hamburger, slathered it with horseradish, and put it under the table. His hand came back empty in a matter of seconds. Mammon never saw the animal move.

Oh, Tyche, what did you do? Did you break this man’s heart? Did you steal from him? What would you have done to owe the Selig anything? What can I do? Mammon began to sweat, not from eating, but from the fear of a conflict with the Selig. “Can I ask what offense she has given?” Propriety indicated that he should not ask, that he should offer restitution, but he wanted to know what happened, and he could not ask her now.

The man leaned forward and turned his face toward Mammon. “She wagered in a Selig Court and tried to cheat a member of the royal family.” The venom was unmistakable. “The Old Ones demand recompense in blood and souls.” For the first time since he arrived, he appeared menacing, a creature of the Fey, hunters of Men.

“What price would you ask?” Mammon knew this was a risk. Allowing them to name the recompense meant they could ask for anything they deemed reasonable. “I know the games of the Selig Court, and they are often filled with mischief and chicanery.”

“Well said, Great One.”

Indeed, I think he is calling your bluff, oh master.

Silence, Dog. He will meet my price.

How do you know?

He values little in the world, but we know that this woman still means something to him. He will pay.

Why him, master?

Of all the Great Ones, he has the most to lose and the least retinue protecting him. He is practically human. Using him, we will kill them all!

“When she came to the Court, she claimed to understand our relationship. She became my Consort, and she said that she would abide by our rules. She used her power in my house and would alter our games of chance. I lost valued retainers, their lives forfeit by her manipulations. I invoke blood and souls.” His calm façade had begun to crack. His mellifluous voice trembled with intensity.

Inwardly Mammon laughed. Tyche had that effect on Men, no matter who or where they were. “As you know, Brother to the Fey, I have no kingdom to speak of, nor retainers to give unto to thee for service. You have no use of filthy lucre, for which I am known best, so I would ask how you would expect payment?”

“In souls, of course.” His voice was low and threatening, and it pissed Mammon off. “And we expect them now.”

Tyche was aghast. “What are you expecting him to do, make souls for you?”

“His method of payment matters not, only that he pay now. We will accept Essence as an alternative if payment in souls cannot be done.”

Mammon was enraged. Their game was clear now. This was flat out extortion. Much of the magic made by the Fey in our world was illusion. Illusion normally cannot hurt you, but if you are unable to see through that illusion, it could be fatal. With the addition of Essence, they were able to make permanent and real magic, events that affect the real world, no matter where they were, no matter what the laws of physics say. Tyche would not know this; it was before her time and beyond her power. She could not give Essence, only use it. Essence was the true currency of the Aspects and the Gods. With enough of it, you could bend the world to your whim.

He balks.

He knows the laws, he will pay. There is still the incentive…

As Mammon seethed, the rest of the room grew more focused on their food. Conversation stopped, concentration increased, each mouthful a tiny bit of worship. They consumed their food with a gusto reserved for the starving, and they ordered more. Mammon did not speak, and the Fey did not rush him. Food was being prepared faster and faster, and the patrons ate more and more. The kitchen ran out of food thirty minutes later. They did not stop when the food ran out. They licked their plates and clamored for more. They ordered coffee and desserts, since they were already prepared on the counter as a variety of cakes and pies. Pies wedges flew around the room like tiny shuttlecraft, docking with any mouth in sight. Mammon closed his eyes, his rage increasing.

Tyche looked away from both of them, ashamed. I will find a way to make you pay for this; I don’t care who you are the son of, or what land you are the prince of. No one owns me and no one saves me. This is the last debt of mine my husband will ever have to pay.

When the cakes and pies were done and the coffee and tea were gone, the patrons started in on each other. There were no screams. Each consumed his neighbor with the same gusto he had the pie a moment before. There was ripping and tearing of flesh. Blood flowed. Each customer seemed rapt within an ecstasy of consumption. Madness glittered in every eye, but no one stopped. Entrails were rent from bellies. They filled themselves until they were completely gorged. In fifteen minutes, there was no movement in the restaurant.

The dog watched and whimpered.

“I do not know you, Brother, and I do not like you. I do not care that you come from the mightiest family amongst your kind. Your payment is complete. Never darken my doorway again.” Mammon held out a coin, apparently made of a dark metal. “Take it and go.” He slammed the coin on the table, and when he did, the bodies in the room writhed one last time, released a gasp, a sound so fell, so saddening, that for a moment, even the Fey was moved; his hound turned over on its side as if it had been struck by a club. Then the bodies fell onto the floor and died. A soundless echo swept through the room and centered on the silver coin. It burned with a black light.

‘Ware milord, that is bloodmetal!

“Great One, you realize that coin is iron.” The prince raised an eyebrow but remained otherwise motionless.

“How you get it home is your business. You have been paid. Our conversation is at an end.” Mammon stood up and looked around. His power pulsed within him. He was looking at the wall of photographs of different patrons through the years. Striding to the far wall, he pulled the picture of Lawrence Simmons, Max, and Momma from the wall. He stared down at the picture, lost in that moment of time. The smell of gas began to permeate the restaurant.

Tyche touched his hand, and when she did, she felt the Hunger, the unrelenting hunger that crashed through his being every moment of the day, a hunger so powerful you would eat out of a garbage can, you would eat filth off the street, you would chew off your own arm to make it stop. She gasped, but held on. “We have to go, Mammon. Now.”

A fire started in the kitchen as the blind man, now wearing black gloves, picked up his walking stick, grabbed the coin, and kicked his dog.

What was that for?

Because I can. It burns me. I will make him pay.

“Great One, before you leave, my mother the Queen said that you would take this from her, that she owed you a favor she was prepared to repay. But to do so, you would have to travel to Avalon. Take this favor, so that you will know no obstacles on your road to Caer Caleban.”

“Tell your queen to go fuck herself.”

“She said you might say that. She said to tell you that the High Queen of Babylon, Tiamat is awake. She said that would make you come to her.”

“Tell your Highness that the Queen of Babylon is long banished and long dead; she died when Babylon died. I know. I was there. And good riddance to her.”

The Prince of Caleban threw the favor at Mammon who had turned his back and begun walking toward the door as the fire spread. At the last second, it was Tyche who snatched the favor from the air, inches from Mammon’s head. They were standing in the doorway. When he touched it, the magic was released.

The restaurant exploded. Mammon awoke in the street with Tyche unconscious near him. The restaurant was in flames and completely unrecognizable. The prince was also gone.

He had not felt the touch of that magic in five thousand years. Such a tiny drop, too, smaller than the head of a pin, but its destructive power was unforgettable. The daughter of the Aspect of Destruction, creator of earthquakes, the summoner of volcanoes, the master of fires and the destroyer of cities, mother to monsters, and killer of gods. The signature was fading but unmistakable and impossible: Tiamat lived.

Mammon got up, picked up his photo, knocked the broken glass out of the frame, picked up a half eaten donut from the curb, threw Tyche over his shoulder, and began to contemplate a visit to the Queen while he pondered the unthinkable.

Traverse the Nexus to The Aspect War (5)

The Aspect War (5)

Posted by Ebonstorm on June 11, 2012

Posted in: Chapter, Short Story, The Aspect War. Tagged: angel, Archangel, ebonstorm, fantasy, Heaven, Lucifer, Thaddeus Howze, The Aspect War. 2 Comments

Fallen Angel

Lightning flashed.

The Archangel Michael waited. He heard the warning claxons, not heard since the Great War and extended his senses to the Guardians at the Four Gates. Each had turned its attention skyward. They all locked onto a streaking meteor blazing brilliantly over the horizon heading toward the Celestial City. He moved toward the center of the city and rose skyward, his two wings slowly carrying him into the storm of Heaven. Rain covered him once he was beyond the radiance and he welcomed its cooling embrace. He felt too little these days, filled with the administrivia of managing Heaven. The unknowns of battle were his meat and drink, figuratively speaking, since he rarely ate or drank. This new threat was what he was made for.

The fireball moved fast, fast enough to be nothing but a threat. The outer defenses did nothing, as he had asked. He sensed they would not be enough as it approached them. He saw them cringing as it flew overhead, with a heat terrible enough to burn an angel. Heaven made ready below him and Gabriel stood by beneath him should he not be enough. There had never been a threat that ever took more than two Seraphim to deal with except for Him. And this, this clumsy thing was not his way.

Michael summoned his power and his two wings became four and his two eyes became four. Flame began to rise from him and his four wings became six and his four eyes became six and flame began to come from them. He increased in stature and his glow cast a light onto the Celestial City. He opened his mouth and began to sing in the tongue of Enoch, the language of Angels and could hear the Litanies of Heaven being sung below him, and the city harmonized with him.

He moved away from the city and flew out over the wall, gaining speed, preparing to stop the fireball before it even reached the city. The Four Guardians activated their Enochian patterns and the City’s radiance hardened, a great shield protecting the walls of Heaven and its attendant suburbs. Michael streaked away from the Celestial City, a brilliant star, as tiny as the fireball was huge. He could feel the heat. He could smell the smoke as it passed through the air, miles away, he could feel life. It was alive… He could hear it screaming. Seconds away, he prepared himself for the impact.

Jehoel watched awestruck as Michael streaked away.

The skies above Heaven were momentarily lit with the light of a thousand suns. Multiple streaks of lightning covered the dark sky. These flashes were arrhythmic but constant, and the rumble of thunder cascaded ceaselessly. There were clouds but their movement would be strange to an onlooker. If one were to watch one would see this was a never-ending storm, moving constantly. It always rained here. Sometimes less, often more, but it never stopped, and had not for at least six and half centuries. Moving through the cloud cover and dodging the lightning were tiny flying figures, some human in appearance, others not so much, heading to and from a magnificent city of immense size in the distance. Its magnificent spires and minarets, towers and cathedrals, skyscrapers and monoliths all glowed with a pure radiance that soothed the weary flyers, or walkers who approached the city and came within its glow.

This city provided the only other light visible in this place. A steady source of golden light similar in tone and warmth to a gently rising sun. The only difference was the light did not illuminate the darkness past a few hundred miles from the city proper. Beyond that region was darkness, only punctuated with the never ending flashing of lightning in this permanent darkness. There had not been a sunrise in Heaven for almost seven hundred years.

A flying cloud of winged eyes dipped down from the sky and approached the Easter Gate. The breathtaking speed of its approach was noted by the sentries and by the city itself. The cloud of eyes began to slow as it came down to the Eastern Highway and merged with the oncoming traffic. The Celestial City proper is a huge structure, a perfect cube, but there were the Celestial suburbs as well and these stretched on for hundreds of miles outside of the City walls. To imagine the City properly one would have to image a cube on one of its points, half above the ground, half below. There are dwellings in both halves of the city and all types of entities lived there.

Jehoel Softspeaker was returning to the city and hated the traffic that had been growing worse in the recent decades. She was an Angel of Mediation and returned from a negotiation with nearby Paradise Realms discussing terms of merger with the Celestial Host. She had been unsuccessful in convincing these other paradises to join with the Host in the coming War. Elysium wanted nothing to do with the war. They would not commit any of their divine resources, energy or heavenly servants to the cause. The Celestial Host was not trying to coerce anyone into serving, at least not yet. There were many angels negotiating on the behalf of Heaven, each going to realms they were familiar with and welcomed.

Jehoel was told to return to the city and report the results of her trip. Waiting in traffic would take several days before she would be able to enter the city, and while she waited, she Sang. This close to the Celestial City, everyone sang while they waited to be admitted. The walls of the city comprised of precious stones, resonated, reflected and refracted the songs of the approaching visitors or residents. Each stone of diamond and with flecks chalcedony returned the exalted songs of Heaven to its visitors in a way that soothed their souls, warmed their bodies, calmed their spirits and ensured everyone, no matter how long they waited, no matter how cold or tired they might be, were in a perfect state of bliss when they entered the shelter of the city.

The songs, each different, each unique to the singer created a greater harmony as they were woven together in a magnificent chorus lead by the wall’s sentry angels. Clockwork mechanisms were seen patrolling the walls of the city. Great machines that resembled a variety of natural creatures, great lions with greater roars to match, capable of melting steel, bears with huge paws with stone rending claws, and clockwork eagles flapped their mechanical wings in the rain, circling the city in every rising spirals, each wing the length of a football field and capable of shaving the edge of a diamond. Heaven was known for its automatons of clockwork, each a veritable work of art from an Angel of craftsmanship and their attendant servants. Each piece was completely unique, and possessed of a singular nature that allowed each to come to life and fulfill a task assigned by the Angel upon their completion.

This song was heard throughout the realm as an echo in the soul of every person who came to Heaven. It was the Celestial Beacon and often when humans were in the act of dying, they could hear and see the Beacon as a tunnel of light they were drawn inexplicably toward. When you arrived here, you had to walk, down one of the cardinal roads which approached the city on one of its four points where each gate directed you into the Celestial City where you began your new life as a servant of Heaven. The Celestial Beacon was nearly irresistible to anyone who arrived in Heaven but if you chose to resist it, you were able to reach the only other destination here, Sheol, the City of the Archangel Lucifer Light-bringer. This other city has a variety of names, Dis, the City of Brass but it was most commonly known by its residents as Hell.

There are other Paradise Realms for the non-believers and with those the Celestial Host were in good relations with, had portals to those Heavens were accessible from here. As the primary religion remaining after the Compact on Earth, nearly all souls passed this way before they went to their personal Reward. Unaffiliated souls were able to be directed to whatever Afterlife they believed in but they were processed at the halfway point between Heaven and Sheol. Nothing is known of those souls that are processed there and the Angels there do not speak of it. Traffic between Heaven and Hell was always a constant as souls that had been released from hell were slowly migrated toward Heaven and newly arrived souls that needed the cleansing fires of Hell were directed there. All in all, an efficient arrangement.

In the central processing center of Heaven, where the spirit energy of prayer was processed and stored for later conversion into illiaster, cocoastrum and aether, there was a problem. This problem had presented itself in fits and starts for the last decade, but recently, it had grown to new proportions. Enough of a problem, that it needed someone to look into it, preferably by someone who would not make the problem worse, be seen by Humans and thus cause a religious event. Once upon a time, such a schism might not be such a bad idea, but now schisms divided resources that should be spent best on the Celestial Host, not on any rival gods or god-lings, trying to make a comeback against the Holy Church.

She fell.

A shooting star in a place that has not seen stars for the dark clouds that perpetually cover it. Unconscious and unaware of her peril, as she fell, she burned. She burned, not from the fall but from that which made her fall. A machine unlike anything she had ever seen. She had existed as long as the Celestial City and had never seen anything like this thing. It was more fearsome than the Malakim, warrior angels to heaven, whose wrath and ferocity have few equals, more horrific than the great Iron Golems, with their hidden hearts, that protected the Gates to Heaven and whose gaze, when released, destroyed all things, mundane or celestial. But the greatest wounds she suffered were caused by the devastation of a place that had never truly know war, until now. The destruction of the Lands of the Great Spirit tore her heart as she plummeted to the ground in her own rain-soaked Heaven. Her mission to the Lands of the Great Spirit were more than a failure…

She arrived in The Happy Hunting Grounds expecting what she always experienced there. Blue skies, except when it was needed to rain, warm days, and the sun shining overhead. It was a place so beautiful that if she did not know this was Heaven, a particular heaven, she would think she was back on Earth. The great plain below her was always covered with buffalo migrating from west to east covering the ground from horizon to horizon. This was her memory of the place, beautiful, grass-covered plains with verdant wildlife, and spiritual beings enjoying their ease in this paradise.

It was not what she saw when she crossed The Veil Between Worlds.

There was a pyramid, immense and coal black, standing in the Great Plain where all visitors to the Realm first appeared. Jagged bolts of black lightning leaped from it and struck the ground around it. Where it struck, creatures made of stone and glass, six legged, vaguely horse-like rose from the Earth. Ferocious, these creatures immediately joined the fray. Their screams chilled her blood, and their speed, grace and lethality became immediately apparent as the creatures engaged anything living within range. The black pyramid had doorways open upon it sides and creatures streamed forth like black locusts or black ants, and anything touched by these clouds was stripped to the bone in seconds.

The ground rumbled constantly as if it were experiencing an earthquake. Distant mountains already aflame with fire and smoke erupting. This was a paradise realm, volcanoes were simply impossible here. The air was choked with sulfurous smoke. The fields of grass were blackened with burns and the buffalo lay as charred skeletons across the plains from horizon to horizon. There were no spirits in repose, they were in battle against a variety of foes, whose eyes burned with a bright light akin to searchlights. And the things those lights touched, burned. She hovered in the sky above a battle, her hundred eyes taking in everything, the wind, the smoke, the flames, the battles both on the land and in the air.

She heard the howl of Coyote and saw the flash of lightning from the Thunderbird. They were surrounded, standing guard over the bodies of the Great Bear and the Rattlesnake. Each in their iconic forms, they were twenty to thirty feet tall. Each of them glowing the power of the Great Spirit of this place, each a guardian of their people’s spirits. Those spirits were fighting for their very existence against enemies whose skin was like stone, dark and heavy and deflected the lightning from the Thunderbird’s flapping wings. Coyote howled again and the creatures stopped their advance, shook and exploded into shrapnel fragments destroying their brethren who were proof against his howl. The Thunderbird’s flapping wings created a great wind driving the shrapnel away from the gods’ defensive position.

The Great Bear rose to his feet, having taken one of the black pyramids strikes directly to his chest. Towering over his enemies, bleeding profusely, he released a mighty roar and waded into his enemies again. The spirits of Men were here along with these godlike icons of this realm. They wielded magic and weaponry, ancient and modern with great effect but the enemy was numerous and powerful.

Medicine men summoned lightning from the burning sky, striking the ground with great explosions, casting defensive spells from their tribal staves against the burning light of the hexapeds. Tribal women wielded clouds of feathers from their headdresses as flying razors slicing into the armored hides of the enemy. The women conjured and the Earth opened and swallowed their giant enemies.
Horse thundered into the fray, his shining and sharp hooves flashed and dispatched enemies in a single strike. And yet with Coyote, Snake, Bear, Boar, Horse, Crow, Eagle and Thunderbird, all iconic gods of this realm, they were unable to stem the tide of the battle. The best they could do was to hold their own and refuse to give ground.

This battle raged for days. Nonstop. More Men appeared, more weapons appeared. No quarter was asked for and no was given. The horrors were supplemented by the hunched forms of man-like creatures each with huge hands, misshapen heads, each with the strength of ten men. There were monsters that flew and breathed a liquid fire all over the battlefield. Others bled acid, some had flaming vision. One by one the gods fell.

Bear fell first, surrounded by Men he led into the fray, they held their ground protecting him. Bear had engaged several of the enemy’s larger ogre constructs and slew them all. He began to move toward the center of the enemy line, confident he would be able to disrupt it. His bear men, wearing an armor of bearskin, channeled his ferocity and his power, each of them filled with the strength of a great bear. He lent them courage and ferocity and they took the vanguard toward the structure the invaders arrived in. The men fought with great axes headed with razor sharp obsidian. They were once legendary warriors in life and in spirit they were even greater.

The tower targeted Bear again and black bolts flew like arrows toward him. His men leapt to his defense and time and time again blocked the blast, each giving his life for a few more yards. Bear drew closer to the center of the battle. The tower redoubled its efforts, and soon Bear was forced to take those strikes himself. He never stopped moving and mere feet from the largest of the ogre-like giants leading the battle, he was struck with six black spears of lightning. So fierce was the strike, for a moment, the entire area was hidden in darkness. When vision returned. Bear was dead. His men fought on but without the ferocity of Bear they were soon overrun and trod into the mud.

Snake crushed creatures and spit venom across the battlefield but he was the next to fall. Large winged dragons dropped down from the sky and savaged him and all were unable to reach him so embattled they were, all they could do was watch. Snake wrapped his coils around the aggressors and bite one of them who died as the venom burned through it. The remaining dragons released their liquid fire and Snake burned and died. In his death throes, he squeezed the life from the remaining three dragons. The dragons and Snake thrashed about and when the smoke cleared the dragons and Snake were still.

She watched, her hundred eyes remembering every detail, every creature, every structure, every shadow, every movement, spell, construct, machine and every sound that took place on the battlefield. But she took no other action. It was not her way, nor her duty. She had already predicted the outcome of this battle. Her actions would not change that outcome, only delay it. This information had to be returned to the Celestial City, so she watched and waited.

Raven and Coyote fought side by side, while the Thunderbird and Horse had been split apart from them. Boar lead a group of humans and buffalo against the enemy and they managed to reach the foot of the pyramid. A cloud of darkness exploded from one of the open doors and the darkness covered them. When the cloud disappeared, only bones remained. Boar was unaffected and proceeded to climb the pyramid. Lightning struck him as soon as he touched the pyramid, but his rage was all consuming, so he kept climbing, even as the lightning carved holes in his flesh, he kept climbing. His screams were heard all across the battlefield and were so horrifying everyone stopped and turned to watch. As he reached the main door on the pyramid, a man stepped out. A tiny man compared to the giant form of Boar. He had two flying snakes over his shoulder, each with scales of iridescent black and huge feathered wings. The snakes open their mouths and a terrible light surrounds Boar. His movement slows and his tusk stops mere inches from the strange man in the red cloak. The two snakes scream again and Boar is blasted into chunks of stone that land at the foot of the pyramid.

There was nothing she could do but return to the Host armed with this information. She could feel the Raven and Coyote sealing the realm and any passages to other nearby heavens. She knew that if she planned to leave, she would need to leave now. The Thunderbird bought them time by intercepting the lightning strikes directed at them and reflecting them back into the enemies legions. Instinctively she knew this was nothing more than a test. These creatures could have won this battle days ago, they were simply testing their capabilities against this relatively weak Paradise. They would be seeking stronger test subject soon.

As she turned to go, She could feel the will of the Enemy directed upon her. She made ready her magic and could feel Heaven on her mind as she tried to Transit. Her computations indicated she would not make it. In those seconds, she compacted all of her observations, conjectures, calculations, her dreams, her love and her life and sent them before her, a sigil streaked away into Transition; being without mass, it could transition instantly. The black pyramid extended a great cannon from the point and swiveled it in her direction.

She flew faster turned her eyes toward the sky. It was only then did she realize hundreds of other pyramids were descending on the Happy Hunting Grounds. Only one had devastated nearly every major deity in residence. They would not know this. She had to make it home. The Great Cannon fired and she was enveloped in flame.

She transitioned into Heaven, taking the flames with her.

Michael became aware of a waveform approaching him and stopped. He was far enough from the suburbs of the Celestial City for the confrontation. As the waveform reached him, he realized what it was: the Resonance of an Angel. The last will and testament as it were; all they knew, all they dreamed, all of their life was encoded in the Resonance. It was hers.

He braced himself and flew directly at the fireball, he would have to time this just right. At the moment of impact he separated becoming Guardian Michael and Warrior Michael. Guardian grabbed her from within the fireball and slowly descended to the ground, she was covered with burns, and all of her eyes were closed. Her wings were burned off. Her flesh crackled and sizzle with the energy of her life-force oozing out of the cracks. He covered her in his Light and she was soothed. But Michael was not very good with Light so he could do little for her but ease her pain, and protect her from his Warrior.

Warrior extended its four wings and blocked the path of the fireball and the sky lit up with its pallid sickly green color. Warrior thought he could control the explosion, his powers were strained to their limit. Moving through time, he summoned other versions of his temporal self and they combined their powers increasing his ability tenfold, but even that was not enough.

The sphere seemed to only grow stronger the longer he delayed it. Warrior extended his awareness into the flame and saw this weapon only grew stronger the longer it was delayed in reaching its target. The weapon only grew more powerful the more energy he put into trying to stop it. Whoever this was, they knew the defenses of Heaven too well. The Guardians at the Gates would have tried to annihilate this only increasing its power. They counted on someone trying to delay or attack it with energy weaponry. He knew he had only seconds to decide how to deal with it. Since he had already summoned his temporal selves he knew instinctively that time was the element needed. He directed his power and his temporal selves into moving the object through time but not space and his temporal selves surrounded the object until it would have reached the Celestial City. In those seconds, the Guardian erected a shield over himself and her. Nothing would penetrate it. He only hoped the Warrior would not need it more.

The bomb detonated lighting the skies of heaven in every direction, and a fierce shockwave swept from Warrior Michael’s position. Gabriel ran from the gates of the city and moved as if time had no meaning. He streaked through the bomb blast debris as if it was not moving. The Gate Guardians directed their vision toward any debris that moved through the clouds and destroyed it before it could reach the outskirts of the suburbs. Gabriel took five seconds to reach the Warrior as he fell from the sky. Warrior Michael had lost an arm during the explosion and was blackened and burned. His wings were shriveled and mere wisps of their former greatness.

Guardian Michael was also unconscious. His left arm was also gone and he was covered with burns, but he protected his charge from any further harm. Gabriel angry that Michael had insisted on doing this alone was incredulous as his Light began to heal the catastrophic injuries Michael had suffered. Michael was an Archangel, what could do this to him?

Jehoel Softspeaker, along with everyone else standing outside of the Celestial city cowered as the super-hot winds blew through the streets, miles from the bomb blast seen in the distance. She had not been the only agent to return unsuccessfully. It would appear our enemy has decided to let the Host know of their intentions.

Heaven was at war.

He fell.

He plummeted from Heaven, with only two of his six wings still with him. He left his other four with his other selves protecting Her. Gabriel would be furious. Guardian Michael was still aflame from the unknown soul-fire weapon. Sensing the threat, he carried it away from Heaven aware of a hidden payload as yet undelivered. He could feel the frustration roiling inside the weapon, trying to combine itself, attempting to decide what to do, being foiled from its target. He could sense its consternation, feel it building toward a quiet rage, the further from heaven he took it.

In his translation from the Eternal City, he fell through Time and Space, the weapon trying to escape him had unanchored them from both. He would not be shaken off and could tell he was no longer connected to anything he knew. He had shrunken his previous sense of the universe and had become aware of only this particular moment, aware only of his need to disperse this weapon.

The weapon tried to free itself of him. Changing it shape it became a dodecahedron whose sides were as sharp as razors. He held on. It became viscous acid, burning him, he held on. It became a deadly gas, whose touch would sear the flesh from anything living, its toxicity burned him, seared his cocoastrum-laden flesh, tearing from him, his magic, his gifts, stealing from him all that was of the White Host. He held on.

Heaven fell away and he could no longer hear the Great Storm and its perpetual lighting and thunder and the light of Heaven receded as he reeled into the Darkness of the Void. The Eternal City was safe. Nothing this weapon could do now, could harm it. A pang of regret as a moment of foreknowledge revealed to him, the loss of Heaven and never returning to it. All that mattered was to take this weapon as far from the Eternal City as possible.

He struggled to hold on to what he was, but the weapon was more powerful. His choice to leave part of himself behind and sacrifice this guardian aspect was the right one. He could sense the Great Divide and piercing it he could feel the Earth and the World of Men far below him.

The cold of space meant nothing to him once. Now he was aware of it, a brief respite from the weapon tearing at his essence. He tried to steer the weapon toward the ocean but his strength flagged and Eurasia spiraled into view as he plunged into the atmosphere, thick, heavy, phlegmatically slowing his descent. It would not be enough. If he could not destroy this before it touched the Earth, Eurasia would no longer exist.

He sensed the flow of Time around him again, and his perfect awareness of himself in relationship to the All returned. Two minutes. He had two minutes at this speed before he reached the ground.

He reached inside and realized he would need to give everything for this. The fireball was glowing brighter after it touched the air and lit the sky for thousands of miles. A change had begun inside the weapon. It had begun to alter itself for its final form. A long tail of fire followed it as he reached inside of the weapon and tried to wrest control of the core of the weapon from reaching its final state. He grabbed it. He realized he could not control it, nor could he Send it anywhere, his strength was gone.

He placed it within himself.

He gathered the vestiges of his strength and connected himself to Heaven to channel the power of the Host one final time. The weapon’s sentience realized what he was doing and tried to prevent that connection, stabbing him with fire thorough out his body. It did not matter. He did not let go of the flaming sphere. His wings pressed against it, surrounding it, enveloping it. He held its igniting weapon inside of his ethereal form, protected from its arming core. The weapon raged, thrashed, screamed in a booming voice heard in every direction for five thousand miles, and he did not relent. His mind began to shatter as the weapon tore him to pieces, his ethereal body surrendering its manlike shape for its more divine countenance of energy.

His energy surrounded the weapon, bound it, controlled it, shaped it and seconds before it plunged into the great forest of Tungunska, he forced it to release its bound energy, and the explosion flattened the forest. Not a tree was left standing for over two hundred miles. At the center of the explosion, the trees were literally vaporized for almost fifteen miles.

There was a vortex of swirling energy that glowed there and wrestled there for ten days. He held that unholy fire in abeyance as his mind failed him. All he had left was spirit. His spirit was unrelenting and in the end, it was enough. The few men, wayward vagrants who managed to cast their gaze upon this battle were driven blind if they stared for more than a few seconds. Most could not help themselves. Only the most pious realized and turned away.

Later, when scientists arrived at the center of the explosion, they expected a crater. They found none. They expected radiation. They found none. They expected to find a reason for this event. They found none.

All they found was a man, who lay near death at the center of the explosion. He was naked, scarred beyond recognition, without clothing in a Russian winter. No one knew who he was and he was expected to die before sunrise of the following day. He did not.

He did not speak, nor know his name, he was blind and deaf to the world. The old woman who saw to his care and would come to love him in the following years would name him Mikhail.

Traverse the Nexus to Chapter 6

Flying Potion

Posted by Ebonstorm on June 3, 2012

Posted in: Short Story. Tagged: copper vessel, ebonstorm, fantasy, flying potion, horror, magic, music dances, sorcery, strange arrangement, Thaddeus Howze, travel, vacation, Whitechapel, witches. 3 Comments

Lamiarum Unguenta (Witches Unguent):

“By boiling (a certain fat) in a copper vessel, they get rid of its water, thickening what is left after boiling and remains last. Then they store it, and afterwards boil it again before use: with this, they mix celery, aconite, poplar leaves and soot. Then they smear all the parts of the body, first rubbing them to make them ruddy and warm and to rarify whatever had been condensed because of cold. When the flesh is relaxed and the pores opened up, they add the fat (or the oil that is substituted for it) – so that the power of the juices can penetrate further and become stronger and more active, no doubt. And so they think that they are borne through the air on a moonlit night to banquets, music, dances and the embrace of handsome young men of their choice.”

Giovan Battista Della Porta. From De Miraculis Rerum Naturalium, Book II, Chapter XXVI (1558 AD)

“Hurry up, girls. The bobbies are on their way.” Margaret’s glamour had worn off as she walked into the door, slamming it behind her. Her hideous hook of a nose arched out over her wide mouth, distorted by her decades of constant magic use.

She was beautiful once, with wide blue eyes and rosy cheeks, those days long behind her, her flaxen hair now knotty wisps covering her now sunken eyes and hollowed cheekbones. Her dress, ragged, something taken from the body of an unfortunate who made a fine tincture last year.

“You know better than to rush me, Maggie. Flying potion isn’t something you rush to get done. The fat has to be rendered just right.” Elswidth was standing over a caldron in the middle of the common area, with a strange arrangement of bottles, beakers and piping winding around the room. She turned a tiny spigot as droplets of rendered fat fell into the dark fluid in the ceramic bowl he held in her other hand. “Ah, such a sweet scent.” The room was in complete disarray, tables and chairs lie broken. Scraps of clothing and dark spots fleck the dimly lit walls. Elswidth’s eyes reflected the poor candlelight like a cat’s.

“Was that Malcolm?” Margaret asked? She sniffed conspicuously, eyes narrowing in recognition.

Elswidth looked over her shoulder, “why yes it is, how did you know?” Her cats eyes open wide, drinking in every scrap of light. Margaret’s dirty shift and shuffling gait stirred up dust in the hall, each speck twinkling in the light of the full moon from the common room’s skylight. Margaret’s squat and wide form filled the narrow corridor leading into the common room.

“I’d know that sweet, buttery scent anywhere. Did you save any for me?”

“Why would I do that? How else did you expect to make it to Prague unless I used all of him. Look at you, fat as a cow. You would be lucky to make it halfway there.” Elswidth spit on the floor and kicked a dirty shoe into the fire under the caldron.

“Now, sisters, there’s no reason to fight. We have had a good time in London. It has been very, very good to us, hasn’t it?” Selene came down the stairs, staff in hand, followed by three brooms and a couple of old bags festooned with strange locks that resembled demonic mouths. They opened and closed at random, snapping at each other.

Selene was young as witches go, barely a century and looked it. Still lithe, full and sensuous, she filled her sisters with both a hunger and an envy that was easy to see. Her dress, slick, diaphanous, showed her ample bosom and wide hips and it clung possessively to her, looking almost alive. A closer look, might notice its fleshy tone, it silky texture like the skin of a small child or perhaps several small children. Then you might look away.

Her eyes, dark, unpleasant, and cold, had the look of a reptile, replete with slitted eyes and flickering lids. Even with this disturbing feature, her face was like cream, smooth, flawless, the result of bathing in the blood of innocents.

“Yes, Selene, it has been good to us. We must thank Jack for inviting us. Orphanages aplenty, homeless vagrants, the sick and dying who work in the black smoke filled streets of Whitechapel have made our work all too easy.” Elswidth smiled as she thought of how many young ones this orphanage had when they came to work in it nearly a year ago. There were nearly fifty children whose parents died from consumption. Vowing to find them homes, the three women, with impeccable references, set out to reduce the population of the orphanage through what they claimed was a process of finding the children homes in neighboring countries. A third of the children were actually shipped out of the country and were never seen again. The remainder, too weak and sickly to be of any true value laboring anywhere else were rendered for their essential elements.

Margaret called her bag and broom from Selene’s magical wake. As her bag approached, she noticed one of the clasps was unmoving. Grabbing her broom, she hit the bag repeatedly and each blow opened one of the mouths until they were all howling. Once they were all open the bag also opened and she counted the tiny flasks inside. One was missing. Gripping her broom tightly she turned to Selene and lightning leapt from her eyes.

Selene turned at the last second and interposed her staff between the lightning and herself, deflecting it into the room. “Sister, you seem upset?” Her smile belied her pretense of innocence.

“You stole it, didn’t you. The only thing I wanted from this entire trip.”

“It isn’t fair you would keep such a thing to yourself.”

“You could have made your own. You are always going on about how superior your magic is.”

“But it’s so much easier to let you do the heavy lifting, for me.”

“Stop it! Both of you. Don’t you hear what’s going on outside?” Elswidth was stirring the last of the rendered fat into the blood-red elixir in the caldron. “Handle that. This will take at least another ten minutes to be ready.”

“Yes, Sister.”

Selene and Margaret stand still for a moment, and a gentle mist slowly forms at their feet. A slow groaning and creaking begins and the house shudders imperceptibly. The crowd outside the house feels a sinister dread and becomes quiet without knowing why.

Margaret wipes her hand over her face and her glamour of beauty is restored. She looks prim and proper, a headmistress of an orphanage. Selene’s dress of awful flesh, appears instead as a proper frock of black and white satin and she looks like a young woman in the prime of her life.

Margaret opens the door as the nervous bobbie was about to knock. He was very young, a face barely used to shaving. He sported a stylish mustache in order to appear older. His uniform fit snugly; likely a hand-me-down from one of the older constables. His movements and mannerisms indicate he was still not quite used to be obeyed.

“Miss Margaret, I am relieved to find you here. I am empowered to arrest you and bring you in for questioning regarding the murder of Malcolm Little, one of the last of your children to be seen here. Your neighbors accuse you of murder most foul.” His head momentarily looked back at the crowd, as if taking strength from their presence. He could hear the sounds of whistles in the distance and seemed relieved that other police would be along momentarily.

Margaret’s smile was a well-practiced thing, designed to disarm and charm, a kind of smile you can only get with decades of experience evading those who might do you harm. “Constable, that is simply preposterous. Malcolm is here with us this very evening. He will be leaving tonight with us to go to Prague. We have done exactly as we promised to empty this particular orphanage of these wards of the state. We have removed the burden they placed on this community, finding homes for them all. Come inside and see for yourself.”

“No, we shouldn’t have anyone with suspicions to have any further doubts. You are all invited into our sanctuary to see what we have wrought for the children of this part of town.” Selene’s smile beamed over the crowd of ten or twelve onlookers and they slowly moved toward the house. The bobby came into the house past Margaret and saw a well kept, antechamber and hallway that emptied into a common room, with clean and serviceable if not well cared for tables and chairs. Elswidth stood there with a young lad of ten or eleven and the rest of their bags and cloaks.

“Satisfied, constable?” Margaret voice was less pleasant than before.

“I am sorry I doubted, but I had to be sure.” The constable brow was furrowed as if he were puzzled by something but wasn’t sure what it was. Then he realized what it was. Where was their carriage. Surely, if they were leaving tonight, they would require transport.

Before he could ask, he was interrupted by the honeyed sound of Selene’s voice. She had ushered them into the common room and was now standing behind the group. “Such a dutiful gentleman and conscientious citizenry should be rewarded, don’t you think, Sisters?” Elswidth eyes flickered with mischief. She held out her hand and her broom flew into her grip.

“Wha” was all the constable could mutter before the room was suddenly ablaze. Selene’s hands were contorted into the ritual signs of flames. Elswidth’s hand gestured with the primal sign of fear, overwhelming fear; coupled with the burgeoning realization of what they were seeing, the townsfolks were all but paralyzed, their vocal cords unable to even tremble, their bladders voided. Speechless, one made the sign of the cross.

Margaret reached under her dress and pulled forth a wicked dagger; before the constable could speak again, a crescent of silver flashed in the full moonlight and his blood filled the very air, splashing the frozen townsfolk in this crimson bounty. Her clawed hand formed a binding of hideous strength; without touching him, she held him up in the air as if he were light as a feather. Carving his beating heart from his chest, she dropped his body onto the floor as her demon bag ran over to her its mouths open and eagerly accepting the steaming heart.

“Am I forgiven, dear Margaret?” Selene walked past the now burning townspeople whose silent screams filled the house, joining in with those of the children who once lived there. The sounds seeping into the very walls.

“Of course, dearest Sister. The heart of Jack the Ripper was a one of a kind prize, but the heart of an honest man and a dozen fools is a close second.” Margaret was still angry but the heart of the constable would make a fine youth reagent, and the bound souls of the townspeople could be harvested and distilled for their next disguises they would need in Prague.

They were going to be disguised as artists and live among the art community. They would need young and beautiful bodies. There were several to chose from in the room. She would forgive Selene, for now. She was too powerful to confront today, but Margaret was a patient witch. It was how she caught Jack the Ripper. She would catch Selene off-guard, sooner or later. Elswidth pets her demon bag and packs it onto her broom. Her eyes reflecting the dying embers of the locals, she cackles to her sisters, “Prague awaits.”

As the roof collapses in the terrible fire, people outside the house trying to keep the conflagration from spreading, see three shadows flicker past the bilious moon, the flash of silver buckle mouths opening and closing in its pearlescence. Only once the three of them are gone, do the screams of the damned bleed from the burning ruin and resound for hours in the alleys of Whitechapel.