“Well, you sure screwed up then,” Lococo growled.
Something was terribly wrong. The knights were shifting, trying to decide between fight or flight. Their hound beasts had lowered their heads and were whining.
But worst of all, out of nowhere, the rain stopped. The silence was deafening.
“Please…” The Huntsman actually sounded terrified now. “Spare us, great one.”
“Who is he?” I demanded again. “Who!”
The Huntsman never got to answer, because an invisible weight fell on top of my kukri. It chopped through his neck like a guillotine. The Huntsman thrashed, trying desperately to get away, but it was as if we were both locked in place. “No!” I tried to pull the blade away, but the downward force increased. I couldn’t let go, like a vise had clamped around my fingers. I was hit in the eyes with arterial spray. The force let up once the arteries and trachea were severed. I gasped and stepped away, covered in green blood. The Huntsman dropped in the mud, reaching for his ruined throat, legs kicking spasmodically.
The Fey screamed as they saw their leader dying. Several of them charged, some at me, some at Lococo.
“Come on, Pitt.” Lococo casually stretched his hand toward the mace embedded in the tree trunk, then he swept his arm toward the charging Fey. The mace ripped free in an explosion of splinters, flew through the circle at an incredible velocity, blasted a Fey in a shower of green fire, and sent him hurtling into the others, scattering them like bowling pins. “You know who I am.”
I did now.
All I could do was duck as a Fey attempted to slice my head off, but suddenly that Fey was completely engulfed in flames. The heat was so intense that I had to raise my arms to keep from scalding my eyes. The Fey shrieked as his armor melted to his bones. Within seconds he had turned into a molten puddle burning a hole through the rock.
I ran for my life.
The demon who was wearing Lococo’s face walked after me. He waved his hand dismissively toward the other Fey rushing him. They were instantly hoisted a few feet into the air, and held there, kicking futilely, until he made a fist and the knights’ armor suddenly crumpled inward, crushing them as easily as an empty soda can. Bones shattered, organs popped, blood squirted. It was horrifying. They died there in the air, and as he strolled past, they dropped, forgotten.
I kept running. I didn’t look back. From the screams and crunching coming from behind me, all the Fey were being slaughtered.
Then Lococo appeared directly in front of me. “Where are you going?”
I crashed right into him, but he effortlessly caught me by the shirt, spun me around, and hurled me back. I hit the ground hard, bouncing and skidding across the rocks.
All around, the Fey were dying. The world was shaking. Pillars of earth erupted into the sky, flinging screaming knights to their deaths. Lightning struck from the clouds, blowing Fey to pieces. For the first time since I had been in this awful place, it went dark, but I was surrounded by so many burning puddles of armor that there was still plenty of flickering light to see by.
While I was trying to breathe, a pair of worn-out boots crunched to a stop right in front of my face. “We’re not done yet.” He kicked me hard and flipped me onto my back. “Know who I am now?”
I lay there, dazed and bleeding, looking up at the demon that was wearing what was left of Jason Lococo like a suit. “You’re Asag.”
“One name of the hundreds your kind has thought up for me, but it’ll do as well as any of the others.” The demon squatted down by my side. The hood had fallen back revealing that through his empty eye socket was a darkness that stretched forever. “You know, I feel like we’ve really gotten to know each other. I’ve enjoyed our talks. I think we need to have one more.” He cocked back one fist and knocked me the hell out.
CHAPTER 25
I woke up looking down at my feet. They were dangling a few feet off the ground.
One eye was so swollen that I could barely see out of it. I had a splitting headache. Groaning, I raised my head. I was upright, but not sure how. There was a pressure on my chest, so tight I could barely inhale, let alone move. I had been bound to a tree with rope.
I tried not to panic.
The Nightmare Realm was still oddly dark. But I could tell that I was still on the same ridgeline because the metal puddles that had once been armor were still on fire. Only now instead of Fey, the area was swarming with the thin, clammy white bodies of Asakku.
There had to be dozens of them. Actually singing while they worked, they seemed to be in an almost festive mood. Their music was like the choir at an insane asylum, but with less harmony. It took me a moment to understand what the creatures were doing, and then I gagged.
They were butchering the dead Fey.
Using simple tools to crack open the armor to get at the meat, the Asakku were working frantically. It was like watching starving people breaking open lobsters. It was the first time I’d seen the Fey knights out of their armor, and they were truly hideous, simultaneously elven and lizard. But right then, rather than disgust, I just felt pity. Once peeled from their shells, other Asakku cut off the Fey’s underclothing and then hacked the corpses into manageable pieces. They weren’t just devouring them right away…no, this was a victory feast. Though from the blood-stained mouths, some of them couldn’t resist snacking.
They were throwing the body parts in a big pile. The Asakku had built a bonfire, and on top of it rested a giant metal pot. Where the hell had they gotten a friggin’ cauldron? A gnarly, four-armed Asakku tossed a Fey knight’s foot into the bubbling mix. The chef was making stew.
I was close enough to smell the cooking meat and feel the warmth of the fire. I had a bad feeling I was going to be getting a lot closer to that fire soon.
My mind was still reeling. Asag wasn’t supposed to be in the Nightmare Realm, he was supposed to be in the tomb beneath the City of Monsters. He’d tricked us all. I was screwed, but what did this mean for the mission? Had the Hunters walked into a trap? I had to get back and warn them. I tried to shift my weight, looking for a weakness in the ropes, or maybe a protruding piece of bark I could rub the rope against to try and cut it with friction. It felt hopeless, but doing something beat waiting to go in the soup.
There was a whisper of wind, and Asag appeared before me, still wearing Lococo’s form.
“Son of a bitch.” My first instinct was to kick him, but the ropes had absolutely no give.
“You’re finally awake. This body I claimed has a great deal of strength. I thought maybe I’d put you in a coma.” He reached up for my face. I tried to flinch away, but had nowhere to go. He poked roughly around my battered eye, then let go. “That’s just a cut. I thought you might have lost your eye in that duel. Now that would’ve been an ironic twist.”
“What do you care I ruined his eye? You’re not really him.”
“Of course I’m not, but I am telepathic. Jason was a very honest, straightforward type. Not at all like me. However, before the Fey killed him, I watched and learned. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since you woke me up: watching and learning, observing humanity, and trying to understand what you’ve become. But having some of you here was a great opportunity to study you up close. Jason was the strongest of them. All his memories, his emotions, his bitterness…I took them, used them. It made for a far more convincing act than just wearing his skin as a mask.” Asag sat on the ground in front of me, cross-legged. “The hard part was trying not to be too talkative. My performance wasn’t perfect by any means; it wouldn’t have fooled his friends, but you two had never exactly been close.”
My mind was reeling. I’d talked with him, confided in him, trusted him…“Pretending to be a dead Hunter is a dick move.”
“What part of ‘I’m a god of chaos’ confuses you? I know what they say about me back in your world. Asag, the great demon so hideous that he boils the fish in the rivers. You knew we would meet someday. Did you think I was going to look like the old graven images, and I’d be sixty
feet tall, with the head of a man, the body of a bull, and eagle’s wings? How’s that supposed to work? The humans who carved those exercised some artistic license once I was gone.”
To be honest, he had me there. “He Who Ends All Things” was not at all what I’d expected.
“You probably thought I was going to conquer the Earth, all rawr giant monster smash, like those careless blundering Great Old Ones you’ve fought. But I’m not at all like that. Most Old Ones are ambivalent. Life is inconsequential to them, either in their way or not. Me? I care about each and every one of you.” The demon surveyed the burning ridgeline and the slaughtered Fey. “What you see here is an anomaly. Contrary to what you think you know about me, I don’t like using brute force. I’m more of a facilitator. However, in this realm where there are so few rules that I can twist matter on a whim, how could I resist?”
We had been expecting Fenrir and had gotten Loki instead. “What do you want, Asag?”
“To get to know you better, Pitt. After all, they picked you to defeat me. I merely wanted to understand why. That’s why I allowed you alone to make it through the gate. Don’t look surprised. After all, I’m the one who built it. Extra humans would just have complicated matters. The only reason your associates survived here so long was because I allowed them to. The parasites that dwell in this realm—the things you call alps—I kept their hunger in check, only allowing them a taste. Just a little bit of torment.” He held up his thumb and forefinger close together. “I’ve been gone so long, I wanted to learn how my adversaries had evolved while I was away. The best way to do that was to observe them under stress.”
I said nothing. If Asag had killed the others, he would surely be gloating about it. He probably would have left their bodies displayed for my benefit before tossing them in the soup. I could only hope that they’d been able to get out.
“I can read most human minds, but not yours, Pitt. Which is interesting, because in my research I learned that in the past other powerful beings have been able to crack you, but not anymore. I can only get little bits and pieces. Everything else is obscured. Either you’ve unconsciously learned to harness some of the gifts you’ve been granted, or it’s a defensive mechanism provided by your benefactors.…Regardless, I don’t need to read your mind when your face so clearly betrays your thoughts. Yes. Your friends got away. I allowed them to. You are welcome.” He made a theatrical bow.
I didn’t understand Asag’s motivations, but I was no stranger to dealing with powerful otherworldly entities. If they let anything good happen, there was always a catch. “Why after all this would you just let them go?”
“It’s never been about them. It’s always been about you, the man chosen to defeat me.” Asag seemed genuinely amused. It was weird, because I don’t think Lococo’s real face had ever actually worn that big of a smile. He even had a twinkle in his eye. The other one remained a black hole through the universe. “I learned everything I could about modern Hunters from them. Now they’ll return and tell the others that the last they saw of Owen Zastava Pitt, he was preparing to lay down his life against an army of Fey. Hiding the spark of your life from the MCB’s remote viewer is a simple task for me. Yes, I know about their cyclops as well. And the other Chosen? Harbinger and Kerkonen for the Beasts; Franks on behalf of the God of Light—now that pick was unexpected; and eventually the Guardian’s draftee, your own wife? They will all accept you are dead. No one will ever risk a search.”
Asag seemed so sure of himself, but eventually Mordechai or one of the others would find me.
“You try to conceal it, but I can smell your hope. I know about your ghosts. In this realm, I can hide you so well that even your allied dead can’t sense you. Face it. No one loves you that much.”
The demon could just kill me now and get it over with. He’d had plenty of opportunities to murder me in my sleep on our journey across the Nightmare Realm. Hell, Asag had even saved me from falling off a cliff. “You don’t want me dead at all. You want me imprisoned. You want me stuck here. Why?”
“Because at this point, if I just kill their appointed champion, they might still have a chance to prepare another. Like when your faction fell back to you after Raymond Shackleford was corrupted.”
What was he talking about? But I held my tongue, trying not to give away my surprise.
Only Asag could read my battered face like an open book. “It’s true. You weren’t their first choice. Not even their second or third. However, I would like for you to be the last, because I’ve been playing their game for forty thousand years now, and frankly, I am tired of their shit.”
“Untie me and I’ll put you out of your misery.”
Asag laughed. “That defiant spirit illustrates why they picked you. A rational man would look at his circumstances and give into despair.”
I sure wasn’t feeling optimistic, but I’d always remain an oppositional sort just on general principles. “Up yours.”
“You had a different destiny plotted for you, but after you survived Lord Machado’s ordeal, you demonstrated you had the potential to stop me. The last human they picked to defeat me became so powerful and consumed with pride that afterwards he thought he could rise up and challenge his creators, and they had to cast him down. They probably thought you have more flaws and humility than the last, so you’d be easier to control. Plus, since in your battle against Machado you inadvertently shattered time and woke me, passing the mantle onto you was poetic justice. Your faction is big on that karmic silliness.”
I didn’t know how much of this was true and how much of it was Asag yanking my chain. I was unprepared for this. Exhausted, beat up, and starved was hardly the right state to play mind games with a trickster god. “Bullshit. My dad was warned about you before I was ever even born.”
“Just because I’ve been playing against them, doesn’t mean I get to see which cards my opponents still have in their hands. There are many of us seated around the table. You were a backup plan for a backup plan. Plots within plots, contingencies built on top of conspiracies, uncaring invisible hands steering fate in order to prepare their pawns—”
“You’re mixing up chess and poker analogies.”
“I’ve been indisposed for a bit. I’m rusty.”
Screw it. If he was going to poke and prod at me, I was going to poke back. “You lost hard. I saw it through the eyes of one of your Children. You were so certain victory was yours, but at the last minute they pulled the rug out from under you. You got put in the ground for a long time.” That wiped the smirk off his stolen face. “Yeah. I thought so. You don’t like losing.”
“Only losers like losing, Pitt. That was a temporary setback.”
“What is it you expect to win then? What’re you fighting for, Asag?”
Asag chuckled. “So you expect me to grant you my vision for your world? Martin Hood was stupid enough to. Would you like me to explain all my plans to you, in the off chance that you find a way home, so you can stop me? You must take me for a fool.”
“I was thinking you’re more of a dick—”
A wave of telekinetic force knocked the snot out of me. My skull rebounded off the bark. It had been like getting hit in the face with a two by four. My lip had split open and blood came running out of my nose.
The demon was still smiling. “I enjoy this dimension. On Earth that would have taken effort.”
I spit out a gob of blood. “That the best you got?”
“I had the opportunity to understand you, so I suppose no harm will come from you understanding me. Besides, it will give you something to dwell on during your stay.” Asag raised one hand and snapped his fingers.
The mountain faded. Suddenly, I was somewhere else. Glass and steel skyscrapers rose all around me. It was as if I was standing on a busy street, only the vision was erratic, jerky, like watching a film on fast forward. The sidewalks were thronged with colorful pedestrians. Traffic lights flashed a rapid cascade of green, yellow, red, as thousands of cars jerke
d to a stop then leapt out of view.
Asag’s voice was a whisper in my ear. “Look at them. They are computers made of meat and electrical impulses. Each has a tiny shred of eternal potential, and for that, I despise them. They incorrectly assume they mean something. They mean nothing.”
I could smell the city stink, humanity, exhaust, and garbage. I could hear millions of voices, sirens, horns honking. Only all of the senses were sped up, so that it was a jackhammer of stimuli as days flashed by with each heartbeat.
“Your world is based on rules. For actions, there are consequences. For a stimulus, a response. For each sin, a punishment. How very stifling. It is because you obey that I loathe you.”
Day turned to night. Night turned to day. Only a deeper darkness slowly descended over the city. It was insidious. The flashing crowd couldn’t see what was coming. The ambivalent face of humanity slowly turned suspicious, angry, and hateful.
“As I said, I do not enjoy brute force. I merely show others a different way. I am a guide, a teacher, a guru, a prophet. There are hundreds of supernatural creatures and millions of your fellow humans with schemes to destroy everything. Occasionally, one of them finds their way to me, and for one glorious moment, they become truly free. Only the rest of you blind cowards rush to stifle them. I would free all from their bonds. I let them spread their wings and fly.”
The lights went out. Garbage began piling up in the streets. Graffiti appeared. Windows broke. The pedestrians began attacking each other. A car flashed by on the sidewalk, tossing bodies. Stores were looted. Fires broke out. Somebody picked up a baby stroller and hurled it in front of a bus.
“I am the randomness in your system.”
The violence grew in frequency and intensity. Bombs exploded. Bodies were flung through the glass.
“I am Disorder.”
Monsters roamed free. Horrible things were summoned and released. War bands roamed through the wreckage. It was a million scenes of rape and murder.
I couldn’t close my eyes. “That’s madness!”
Monster Hunter Siege (Monster Hunters International Book 6) Page 38
