Beyond Apocalypse

by Bruce S Larson

  “This is more than blasphemy!” Anguhr roared. “This is more lies! Mental treachery to bend me to your will. You, who are a fool to stoke my rage!”

  Anguhr swung his axe. Its leading blade sliced through Zaria, but her form was only a projected image.

  “Do not believe me Anguhr.” Zaria said from behind Anguhr.

  He spun and raised his axe again.

  Zaria pointed to the sword. “Believe Azuhr. And trust your own mind.”

  Anguhr vibrated. He turned and stared at the sword. There was an undeniable call from it. Anguhr swung his axe into the gold base and snatched up Azuhr’s sword in one, swift motion. He brandished it, almost in defiance. Holding the blade caused the greatest wave of uncertainty he ever experienced. The odd sensation building in his mind was fear. It was change that caused the fear. It could end his certain, treasured path of conquest. And his image of War. His fear submerged in other, stronger images. He felt a sudden, intense emotional connection. It kept him from rejecting what he saw.

  The first image in his mind was of the sword at another place and time. Its blade pointed downward and mostly unseen beyond a small, plump creature. It was a wriggling infant of human shape. At times, occasional, joyful kicks and waves of its arms interrupted the view. A weird sense of recognition flowed across Anguhr. Beyond the infant, the sword was in the grip of another. The hands were like Zaria’s: female. Above the scene the familiar red fires of a Hell ship burned across overhead beams.

  The sword holder knelt down. She still clutched the sword in one hand, and caressed the infant with the other. She wore black armor. Long black hair dangled over and from under a darker steel band that crowned her head. Her face was hard, ashen, and made more intimidating by a harsh stare. Dark smears and flecks from recent combat contrasted with her complexion. She stared with irises of deep, piercing blue. The shape of her face was slightly rounder, but no less familiar. The face was close to Anguhr’s own. Somehow this person was like him. The acceptance of how struck him harder than any blow suffered in battle.

  “Azarak. I like the sound of it.” The ashen warrior spoke. Her voice has deep, coarse, and constrained. She looked up from the child and at the recorder. “It may be meaningless, but you will define the name. I am Azuhr. I am General of Hell’s demon horde. You are my son.”

  Azuhr paused. Her features relaxed. Her voice also changed. She spoke not to address a subordinate, but a person she loved. Her face stiffened again with resolve, but never hardened to the scowl at the start of the recording.

  “As such, you are also the scion of Hell.” Azuhr continued. “Even your father, the great enemy Sargon has roots in Hell. Its ruler, the greatest force in creation, the Dark Urge, is my mother. To save you, my first and only child, I must send you to her. There is no other hope for your survival. Though I crushed hope for all I fought, now hope is my only ally.” Azuhr paused and flared her nostrils. “If irony had form, I would kill it.”

  The scene pitched. A collision resonated through the ship. Azuhr frowned, but then she looked back at the infant and smiled. She continued speaking.

  “The Dark Urge sees the act of your creation, the love between me and your father as a betrayal. So do Sargon’s own people, and he is their leader.”

  Azuhr looked back at the recorder with a focused stare.

  “Fear destroys, Azarak. The greatest triumph of all is its conquest. Not the defeat of an empire. It is fear that now threatens my life, and yours. So I must send you to the most powerful thing in creation. It is a risk, but it is the only strategy that preserves some potential, some small hope for your continued life. The Dark Urge is the embodiment of fear, yet the fear of her across the galaxy, the fear I have projected, will be your shield until you can strike out on your own.”

  Azuhr took a deep breath and looked back at the infant as if reconsidering her plans. She nodded to the child and continued.

  “I hope she will receive you as one last offering of my devotion. A sign she was always my first duty. But I know my true duty is to you, my child. The only power that can preserve your life, whatever it may become, and however she may change you, is the Dark Urge.”

  Azuhr looked at the back at the recorder, knowing it would be the eyes of her son that one day looked at her.

  “Your new mother may try to erase me, but I hope she embraces you in some vestige or sudden spark of feeling. I hope—” Azuhr paused. Her face and stiffened lips betrayed her inner battle to control her emotions. “I hope somehow that she finds a fraction of the love I have for you, and thus you will be spared her wrath and only be made to serve her, and not be crushed by her rage.”

  Azuhr steadied herself. The flames above her revealed her ship’s sudden tact. She turned her head to listen to demon barks behind her, and then looked back at the recorder.

  “There will be other Generals who make war after me. I am sure of it. The Dark Urge still fears all, and all is a wide path to conquer. Through treachery, my war is nearing an end, and thus, so is my life. I now turn to saving yours, my son.

  “The Dark Urge came to the role of mother far differently than me. Although I am arcane and engineered, I am made of flesh. So was your father. The Dark Urge is a creature of alloy and thought. You were not planned, not designed. I was made to crush all who opposed the Dark Urge. I have done so perhaps too well. Perhaps not well enough. But if all my campaigns have led to your birth, then my life has been enough.”

  Azuhr smiled. She blinked, and then continued.

  “I know you will have great strength. You are the scion of giants. I know you will keep elements of me, strength, and of your father, nobility, no matter what outward form my dark mother may cast around you. You will never know your father. He fights now to give me time. It will be his last stand. You may never see me, though I fight on. Yet I know we have bonded, mother and son. Your mind will still feel me, always, deep within. I do not think even the Dark Urge can erase that sense, that bond of mother and child even though—”

  Azuhr stopped. The ship did not pitch, but she gripped her sword with both hands and stared at the floor of her bridge for a brief moment. She looked at the infant and then the recorder.

  “I am sending you to Hell, my son. You are the child of a demon. The greatest one. Hell’s General. Yet even there, you take my love. Take my strength. I may never touch you again, never see you, small Azarak. But in some way I will always be there with you. It seems impossible. But so is a demon General finding love with a giant Khan, and creating a child.”

  Azuhr paused a final time.

  “Good bye, my impossible one.”

  The images ended.

  Anguhr stood stunned. If he was ever vulnerable, it was now. Zaria could strike him, take Azuhr’s sword, and kill the son she called Azarak. But her new plans needed him. And in this form, Zaria was a warrior but not an assassin.

  The images began to replay in Anguhr’s mind. He dropped the sword. It hit the unseen floor with the low tone of an enormous bell being rung. All this truth swirled in his mind, and yet he did not know what to do. The Khans were the once, great enemy of Hell. But they were annihilated before Anguhr’s time. But a Khan’s blood was part of Anguhr’s body. Anguhr wondered about time, about its passage, and how long Hell had existed before him. Time now seemed to flow backward across him. History became an avalanche of information. He felt carried down the slope by it, powerless. You could not cleave apart history with an axe. You had to endure the mass of its legacy or be crushed by ignorance.

  Finally, he understood that transcendent presence in his mind. It was not War. It was the faint memory of his mother, Azuhr. He knew it was not love of war, but love that his experience had evolved into something he understood. But that understanding had been channeled and controlled by what the Dark Urge had taught him. She had remade him into an object of her fear and the latest version of her greatest weapon.

  Anguhr charged out of the galaxy chamber without sword or axe. He crossed the sun cavern and int
o the temple’s antechamber. His rolling emotion caught him. He stopped and cried out with all his arcane strength. The temple shattered. Columns cracked and toppled. Zaria fled. Glaciers on the mountain outside split and rolled into a jagged avalanche.

  Gin stood among demons. They bolted back and raised their weapons at Zaria who suddenly stood next to him.

  “From the sound and the avalanche, I take it the revelation was not well received.” Gin said.

  “I don’t know,” Zaria said. “His cry could be one of rage or a release. Perhaps his mind has shattered like the glaciers.”

  “Is this your treachery?” Solok yelled at Zaria “Where is Lord Anguhr?”

  “At this moment, I don’t know.” Zaria answered.

  “My Lord cannot be harmed by a mere falling mountain!” Solok barked and thrust his rifle up at Zaria.

  “The mountain, no. What it held—?” Zaria shrugged “We shall see. If his reaction is one of blind rage, then you are in as much danger as we, thrall.”

  Solok’s brows pitched back and forth as he considered the catastrophe of a mindless General on a rampage.

  A whistling noise sounded overhead. Gin watched the stares of every demon of Solok’s force he could see look up in unison and their serpent eyes widen. They fled back and flew away like scared birds from what plummeted down. Zaria grabbed Gin and then ran backwards. Gin finally saw the falling terror an instant before it impacted. Azuhr’s sword pierced the mountain dale.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “This place is indefensible!” Zahl spat as he looked across the maintenance deck. “Odd for a warship.”

  “No battles were ever imagine onboard our ships,” Uruk said as he finished entering new commands for the main drive. He glanced at the massive, blue, and burning sphere and then looked at Zahl. “Few life forms could survive what we can.”

  “And no one ever thought demons would stand against demons.” Zahl added. He and his surviving squad still scanned for attacks.

  “We will not need to hold this location,” Uruk said as he turned from the dais. “Hopefully all Triat’s demons will be occupied inside the hull.”

  “No.” Zahl said the word in a low tone with dread as he snapped his rifle butt to his shoulder.

  The other demons opened fire. Enemy demons charged from a portal opening within the burning hull behind the maintenance deck. One enemy fell and his comrades quickly withdrew. The attack was only a probe. They would not risk another charge. All Uruk’s demons knew this instinctively and spun to avoid the barrage of grenades that followed. The explosions ripped apart all of Uruk’s surviving squad except for himself and Zahl. They lay against the deck plate looking for the following assault.

  Zahl jumped to a crouch and hurled a grenade into the closing portal. White fire shot from the narrowed aperture. He turned to speak to Uruk. His serpent eyes opened wide. An autonomous mortar shell drifted down to the deck behind them. Zahl grabbed Uruk and leapt to the control dais. The shell exploded and vaporized most of the central gangway. It did the same to most of Zahl’s wings and back. His eyes were still.

  Uruk roared. He picked up Zahl’s rifle. He fired the two rifles into the curtain of demons descending from the overhead pincer arm. The curtain was shredded. The attack stopped. Uruk knew more would come, and quickly. Uruk stood and spoke a final prayer.

  “Lord Anguhr, if you can somehow hear your Uruk's voice, then I bid you listen. For you, Lord, I have fought on many worlds though my last battle will fail. Yet I would still fly anywhere you send me, even this failed mission on this strange ship. From you I came to know a path beyond mere obedience. I served you as you served your horde. So I beseech the Dark Urge to grant me a final boon. I ask it even if my knowledge of her lies bans me from existence after the pyre. Let it be known that I fought well, and for a Lord that did the same for me. Now I fight as any demon of any rank against all enemies. And I laugh at all who dare face me!”

  Uruk leapt from the deck. If noise carried anywhere, his laughter would be as loud as both his firing rifles. Uruk counterattacked the demons that launched the mortar round from the pincher arm. The strike took them by surprise. The demons fell from Uruk’s fire. More demons emerged from the hull at the pincer’s base. Uruk engaged them in a running gun battle along the arc of the pincer. Both gun barrels of Uruk’s rifles became so hot their arcane steel melted and flew off in orange beads as more rounds shot through them.

  The Ignitaur Not had done more damage than exploding the reactor. Not had severed the link between the thrusters, fiery aegis, and main drives. Each followed its last order and sensory input to move the ship’s mass, but no longer in unison. The bow of the ship veered toward the Red Giant as the main drive continued along the path entered by Uruk and swung in an arc high above a band of the Iron Work. The star-like engine and length of ship moved like a catapult arm with a radiant projectile fixed to the hurling basket. The ship began to spin around the axis of its keel and continued to fall closer to the red sun.

  Uruk held fast to the pincer arm and fought on. His rifles finally exploded as rounds detonated in the super-heated breaches. Uruk hurled the molten debris at his charging enemies. Blood rolled from his injured mouth and into space as he smiled. He opened his jaws and drew his sword.

  The impact of Azuhr’s sword blasted earth and rock out from its blade. The demons, Gin, and Zaria had little time to register the impact when an even larger mass struck the dale near the sword. Anguhr landed. As bits of the landscape rained down, Anguhr’s body steamed at the center of his shallow crater as ice melted on his limbs and armor. Mist curled as it rose from his chest. It was drawn into his helmet as the General took a deep breath.

  The demons barked and brandished their weapons to salute their returning Lord. Anguhr’s reply was another deep breath. He stepped from his crater. He strode across the dale to a small hill. The jarring from the impacts and Anguhr’s steps caused a small avalanche of soil, grass and wildflowers down one side. Anguhr took his axe from his back and set it inverted into the ground. To everyone’s surprise, he lifted his helmet off his head.

  Black hair like his mother’s was matted from the helmet and his infernal sweat. His dark locks reflected the white light from the sky in arcs along the flattened masses. The fire in his eyes seemed to burn brighter now freed from black steel and shadows. His face was pale. Its angles were square and sharper than the chiseled temple statues. The weight of experience pulled down his features. Otherwise, the leader of a demon horde and scourge of the galaxy would look impossibly young, and human. He sat on the hill. His helmet dug a small trench as he set it at his right side.

  Solok approached his leader. He could not help but glance about Anguhr’s head having never seen it without a black casing. “Lord, you are victorious again. Do we now go, and make war?”

  Anguhr took another deep breath. He thought of his missing Field Master, Uruk. He would know not to intrude on his General at this moment. Anguhr understood the definition of the word: friend. He was not sure he understood the act of friendship. He had been essentially alone since being unleashed with his horde. But it had never mattered. His demons were enough company. Although typically just Proxis and Uruk were permitted to talk. Perhaps that is why, after all their campaigns, Anguhr now missed Uruk. He wondered how he fared, and if he was alive. What changes might he have endured since sent to Xuxuhr’s ship. He also wondered if he dare consider his missing lieutenant a friend. At the same moment he understood the definition of loss.

  “Lord?” Solok asked.

  Anguhr suppressed an angry snap at Solok. Retrieving his axe and Azuhr’s sword from the rubble of the collapsed temple was more tedious than physically taxing. Pushing through fallen rock and glacier gave him more pause to think than need to strain. Still, his mind was only settling. He heard an internal voice louder than Solok. It resonated as a question with no words and, as yet, no answer. However, Anguhr was practiced at pushing thoughts aside. He knew he must focus and issue commands
to keep order.

  “Shall I command the scythe be readied, Lord?” Solok asked.

  Anguhr drew one more deep breath before he answered.

  Zaria watched Anguhr inhale. She heard Solok’s last question. Time dragged across the edge of Azuhr’s sword. Her tension was released with the one word spoken by Anguhr, and in that one world, Zaria felt hope for victory.

  “No.” Anguhr said.

  Anguhr looked out across the ravaged dale. His gaze moved to the valley bellow and across the deep, blue lakes beyond.

  “Do a reconnaissance of this area,” Anguhr continued. “Find any other alien structures. Report to Proxis. Then return here when your mission is done.”

  “At once Lord!” Solok leapt into the air. His high pitched barks summoned the strike force. They followed him into the sky and soared in formation into the valley.

  Anguhr watched the demons fly off. He wondered how long their devotion would last if his personal battle was now against Hell. Again, he longed for Uruk’s presence. He had surmounted the programmed devotion to the Dark Urge. He hoped his own devotion to his horde would preserve their loyalty. He would need them.

  Another voice disturbed Anguhr’s reverie.

  “I am glad you are intact,” Zaria said. She and Gin now stood before him.

  “At another time, you would wish me dead.” Anguhr said, turning his head to face them. For once he looked up at their blonde heads.

  “True,” Zaria replied. “But it is not your death that serves the ultimate goal. We must now strike her, the Dark Urge. We must end Hell.”

  “No.” Anguhr replied. “You must end Hell. And I am not your demon.”