The Last Watchmen

by Christopher D Schmitz

  “You are no god!”

  “No? Then I shall kill him and take his place!” Dione bent over the body of his fallen psy-nar general and removed the unit’s onyx faceplate revealing a surgically twisted and mutilated visage. “Foolish mortals. You cannot kill my beautiful Leviathan. He cannot be permanently switched off by an EMP, no matter how powerful. This cage of flesh houses my brother.”

  The demon prodded the beast’s sutures until the silent Leviathan spastically awoke and stood to his feet. Leviathan drew his blaster pistol on Dekker and ineffectually squeezed the trigger. Tossing the useless device aside, he drew his swords from their scabbards.

  “I am quite surprised,” Dione continued, “that you’ve managed this long, Dekker Knight. I hadn’t expected a toy powerful enough to disable my shielded units. The newer mechnar units were shielded against that, you know. But I shall quite enjoy one final feast—the blood of Watchmen tastes almost divine, and how long have I prepared for you?”

  “You’ve got it backwards,” Dekker called over the wall. “All these years I’ve been hunting you.”

  “Well, then that’s settled. The onus is on you—the failure is not mine, but yours. All have served my purposes: the arboleans, the Watchmen, the foolish MEA. Today was inevitable. Today I claim my destiny. Today I destroy the great machine and claim my own throne—built upon the rubble of its destruction!”

  Shaw poked his head over the wall. “They’re just standing there,” he whispered to Dekker. “Blast them with the big gun,” he urged.

  “It’s the last cartridge. I’ve got to be sure,” Dekker said. “They’ll get closer. They won’t leave until we’re dead—and dying’s just not an option for me.”

  Dione continued, “Do you know the taste of blood, son of Jude, husband of Aleel? I tasted the blood of your loved ones while you were too impotent to stop me! Just as you were too feeble to prevent the annihilation of the off-world colonies—I’ve sent my forces to mop up those stragglers you sent to Mars. Can you feel it? Do you taste the despair in your soul? Your precious book was destroyed; I felt it an hour ago: the sudden absence of light.” She cackled, trying to draw Dekker out into the open.

  “At least your father succeeded in protecting the book. You failed him… his mission. You couldn’t even keep a single book from destruction—no wonder you couldn’t protect your unborn child!”

  Dekker whirled around the edge, drawing the archaic, illegal firearms he always kept strapped at his lower back in reserve. Firing from each hand, Vesuvius and Shaw followed suit. They emptied the last of their ammunition as their bullets trailed after the two enemies.

  The demons ran wide, opposite circles around the Jerusalem wreckage, their own blades in hand. Dione leapt across the pile of stone and sliced through thin air—where Dekker had just stood.

  Leviathan jumped, flipping over Shaw and Vesuvius. He bent backwards inhumanly, swinging his blade at the Watchmen’s vitals. Vesuvius blocked and pursued. Shaw threw his empty weapons aside and drew huge knives from their boot sheaths, each the size of a forearm, and ran to press the attack.

  Dekker yanked Solomon’s sword from its scabbard and clashed with his enemy. Dione eyed the pommel. “I recognize that weapon—the bane of all my ilk—but even it can’t save you. That old technology is long since forgotten; no one alive can wield the Ring of Aandaleeb.”

  “I only need the sharp, pointy edge,” Dekker spat, lunging for the demon.

  Dione swatted the attack away. “Yes? And what if you kill me? What then? What of your race, your species?”

  “There are others! Humanity has dispersed over these last three hundred years—you can’t possibly find us all.”

  “No? But you forget that I only need to kill you—to silence the last Watchmen.” Dione blocked Dekker’s blow and kicked him backwards. “Or perhaps you believe you can just restart the human race with her?” Dione glanced at Vesuvius.

  The redheaded fury was a flurry of motion; her and the psychic Leviathan traded blows. Leviathan countered and blocked, trading attacks as if the motions had been perfectly rehearsed. Shaw stepped in and out of the fray—his assaults more easily read by the psy-nar.

  Leviathan blocked Vesuvius’s overhead strike and batted her aside momentarily. Redirecting, he delivered a roundhouse kick to Shaw’s face. Shaw collapsed for a second and Leviathan backed Vesuvius off again with a quick step, trying to fletch her with his blade, and then he whirled and leapt back towards Shaw, plunging his blade through the stunned warrior’s sternum before Vesuvius could even react.

  Vesuvius’s anger pulsed through her maneuvers. Dekker followed suit, pressing his attack against the demonic Dione. Dekker utilized the finer points of his swordsman training, parrying and counter attacking with precision, dancing through the steps with his vile enemy. Dekker blocked and spun like a whirlwind, suddenly dropping the pretense of finer skills, he swung over and over and over with wild, brawer aggression. The sudden shift caught Dione off guard and Solomon’s blade tore a wide tranche across her hybrid body.

  She staggered back, momentarily. The human flesh of Prognon Austicon hung open, bleeding down the white, wool garment worn by Dione. Her inner body, a twisted, wooden thing, remained barely damaged underneath.

  Dione laughed. She grabbed the flesh that hung from her form and pulled on it until the skin snapped off. She discarded the fragment. “I think you’ll find me rather uneasy to kill, human! I am more than man, more than arbolean avatar, more than demon architect of the apocalypse. I am all these combined!”

  Dekker swung with Solomon’s sword and knocked the demon’s jagged, stained sword high. He swung around, chipping off a chunk of Dione’s kneecap. As she staggered under the blow Dekker sliced hard through his enemy’s neck, nearly severing head from body, splitting the wooden thing like a green log.

  In tandem nearby, Vesuvius blocked with her katana and swung her swords like a bladed cyclone. The psy-nar blocked as she pushed him back, whirling again, and again—one blade blocking, the other striking.

  Leviathan dove to the side to avoid her precise, mechanical strikes. He leapt back towards her, but didn’t leave the ground. Vesuvius bit on his feint, and then drew back recognizing the maneuver even while the psy-nar slid through the gravel, following latently through on the initial ploy. In a ballistra move, he stabbed upward while flinging himself under her blades.

  Sharp blade met soft skin. Vesuvius cried out as the blade pierced her below the ribcage. Steel punctured the flesh near her heart. She and the demon avatar both fell to the ground at the same time.

  Dekker whirled and screamed. Without thinking he yanked the reliquary to bear as Leviathan skidded to a stop. The reliquary flamed forward, erupting with a wide, emerald blast of energy. The psy-nar tried to correct against the crackling, raw energy beam; the width proved too wide to react to and the eruption eviscerated the humanoid, blasted Leviathan into smoldering pieces while only singing Vesuvius’s red hair.

  Panicked, Dekker ran to her side. She lay still—much too still. Blood leaked from her torso and tears streamed down his eyes. Behind him, Dione stood to her feet and rested her wicked blade upon damaged shoulder.

  She cackled; her chest and neck torn open. “You cannot kill me,” she taunted. “It is not your destiny.” The ground shook; flaming sparks and soot rose on the hot updrafts from the desolate earth.

  “I’m sorry I was late,” a voice called out behind the sparring duo, near the lava flow at Jerusalem’s core. Ezekiel moved closer, “I had to walk a bit. My memory is fuzzy, I thought the battle was over there,” he pointed towards the glowing pit.

  “Foolish old man,” Dione laughed. “I’ve seen you before. You pose no threat. Today, I claim my destiny.”

  “Yes, and so does he,” Ezekiel stated, pointing to Dekker. He took a small, decoratively engraved metal cube from his pocket.

  “The Box of Winds?” Dione questioned. “You stole it from the divine machine!”

  “Well, more like borrowe
d.”

  Dione charged towards him with murderous rage. Jagged points extended from her fingers as she rushed, intent on shredding him to pieces with her arbolean claws.

  The old time traveler whispered a single word and Dione toppled to her side, curling into the fetal position. “The secret word,” Ezekiel stated. “One simple name binds you with greater ease than Solomon’s jewel ever did.”

  Dione shrieked and tried to stand—unable to under the invisible bonds that held her fast. Ezekiel opened the box’s lid and a rushing gale howled past them.

  Dekker covered Vesuvius’s body with his own, shielding her from the dust and cracked gravel that stormed over. He checked her pulse. It was faint, barely there; the wound was critical—fatal.

  The Earth groaned and the bones mixed into the gravel trembled. They snapped together at the joints and reformed human shape. An army of moaning skeletal warriors assembled from the dust of Jerusalem. A massive army reshaped itself from the rubble of the previous disaster. The mass of boney executioners converged upon the self-proclaimed god, Baal Dione.

  She struggled free of the invisible binds and staggered to her feet; Dione futilely hacked and slashed at them. They reformed as quickly as they broke and overwhelmed her with their vast numbers. With no more than an indifferent groan, they dragged Dione towards the center of the destroyed city and pulled the screaming demon hybrid down into the magma pool.

  The demon gave an otherworldly shriek under the heat and then silence as a bubble of lava burst and enveloped both the beast and the army that drug her below like somber pall bearers.

  Silence suddenly reigned and Ezekiel walked over to the last Watchman. “I told you earlier that ‘today we would defeat this monster,’” Ezekiel said softly. He put a hand upon Dekker’s shoulders as he held the dying woman. “I’m just sorry that ‘today’ was much longer for you than it was for me.”

  Dekker looked around. His body ached—but more, his was soul-weary. Everything was gone—he had no more left to give. Dekker watched the last of the skeleton army walk into the lava flow and disappear into the crevasse where it bubbled up.

  “I don’t understand.” Dekker looked at Ezekiel, frustration spread across his face. “I’ve read the prophecies, the book. I know how the end is supposed to come, and it’s not like this. This is wrong—all wrong!”

  “Exactly!” Ezekiel proclaimed cryptically. “And that’s why you are destined to do what you must. This reality is rogue, corrupted, though not ultimately without purpose.”

  The old man spoke softly and compassionately. “Your destiny is to preserve the whole. One facet of all reality must pass, one distorted piece of a shattered mirror removed—reset, but the great reflection will persist, the ultimate must still continue—like a tree that needs pruning from a withered, diseased branch…”

  Dekker cut him off mid-platitude. “Yeah. I get it. I understand.” He cradled Vesuvius in his arms. “But I don’t think much else matters to me at this moment, though—even protecting the divine machine. I’m just so… tired… spent.”

  He hugged the limp Vesuvius to his chest. “I love you Vivian Briggs. I always have.” He kissed her, smudging the blood that had begun to pool at her lips’ edge.

  Dekker laid her down to rest. She gasped momentarily, choked on her breath as she stiffened, and then died.

  Ezekiel silently stood next to Dekker. Only the distant cracking of stone and the dissonant rumble of the quaking earth interrupted it.

  “It’s time, isn’t it?”

  Ezekiel nodded. He closed the box of winds and placed it in his pouch. “Goodbye, my friend.” In a puff of smoke, the old man ceased existing in Dekker’s dying plane of existence.

  Dekker kneeled next to Vesuvius and opened his beat-up satchel. He pulled Ezekiel’s final gift from the bag and smashed the box against a rock. Dekker pulled a long cylinder from among the splinters: a long, triple-sized cartridge designed for the reliquary. He rotated it until he found the sigil etched upon it, a sigma variant: Final Sigma.

  He ejected the Omega shell casing, the one he’d used to kill Leviathan, and inserted the long, triple-shot. Dekker grinned at the shells ordering. This was the only lower-case letter in the series—the final sigma, a Greek alphabet character that only came at the end of words. Ezekiel had played a sort of ironic joke on him; did the letters indicate that he knew every detail, every shot fired, every decision leading up to this while making none of them? Was everything planned, ordered, known—or was it predestined?

  Dekker still wasn’t sure that he understood much of anything. He stroked Vivian’s hair one last time—he was only sure of his feelings for her. The words of his father echoed in his ears, a triple load could destroy everything, it could break reality itself.

  Dekker looked at the reliquary, then one last time at his dead Vivian. He pointed it skyward and pulled the trigger.

  ***

  Ezekiel gently placed the box of winds back into its location within the divine machine and opened it, releasing the pnuemic power back into the proper channels. The realities had no doubt endured momentary chaos in its absence. He cast a gaze to the far end where the machine moaned, grinding under the intense heat—the thing neared critical state.

  The infrastructure glowed red under the friction and the other parts began to screech and shudder. He watched the precarious juncture, the connectors between the arm of this reality facet and the great Ultimate. The myriad of surrounding branches also neared critical condition—and then Dekker’s branch suddenly snapped off, splintering.

  It fell into the great other nothingness, crumbling into dust as the reality unwound; the heat and danger dissipated. The great machine again immediately began humming: the gentle sound of the universe in perfect motion—stability restored.

  Ezekiel continued watching the broken juncture. From its shattered joint formed a new bud: something fresh. Not the same as the old reality, but not entirely different.

  He smiled at the unforeseen event—unsure if he’d experienced it before or not. Ezekiel should have suspected as much, the divine refused to abandon the lost line. The machine was good, a pure product of the divine, untainted by humanity.

  With stability restored, his time within the great machine had ended. He peered into another facet and saw that it was another Ezekiel’s time. The old traveler did not mind passing the mantle; he desperately needed the rest and missed Anathoth.

  With a puff of smoke, Ezekiel returned to his own dimension and time—a simpler one—and as far as he was concerned, the correct one.

  ***

  Dekker scooped up Vesuvius from where she lay. Cradling her in his arms, he carried her to their room and placed her in bed. She never could stay awake whenever they watched news broadcasts. The state of their planet was a mess, but such things never changed—maybe that’s why she didn’t fret and could sleep through the media’s embellished hysteria—such was the default of the world.

  Covering her with a blanket, he pulled it up over her feet so they were exposed to the cooler air. She couldn’t sleep with her feet under the blankets; it was one of many quirks he loved about her. Reaching around her neck, he unclasped the chain that held an old serpent amulet, a wedding present handed down to him by his late father. His first wife, murdered a number of years ago, had also worn it. Dekker placed the item atop her dresser.

  He walked over to the lamp nearest the wall to shut it off and glanced at the wedding photo that hung on their wall. Vivian remained as much a fire-haired beauty now, six months pregnant, as she was two years ago on their wedding day. He looked closer at the group shot of the wedding party, just now noticing the oddity in the background. The image captured a strange old man standing far away in the park observing them with unbridled interest.

  Dekker didn’t know who he was, but he felt oddly connected. For a hazy moment, everything seemed a bit off, like his mind had emerged from a fog. It felt like a premonition, an all-too-real dream. The feeling passed, but he couldn’t
quite shake the sense that something else, something otherworldly, had just happened.

  He looked down at his wife. She snored ever so slightly in her sleep, like some kitten that had completely zonked out.

  Brushing a stray hair from his wife’s face, Dekker’s queer feeling dissipated. He knew this was his ultimate reality. Dekker did his best to follow in his father’s footsteps, keeping to the path despite the trials of life within the corrupt system of the MEA.

  They would succeed. After all, he was Dekker Knight: leader of the Watchmen.

  Dekker’s Dozen #00X

  Epilogue

  The demon Dione reached her charred, ruined appendage up from the roiling magma and grabbed a fistful of cooled igneous. She pulled her mangled body from the molten stone as the strength of her hatred and rage drove her forward.

  Blowing winds cooled her scorched body, now shrunken and twisted like an emaciated carcass made with wooden bones. The material of Prognon Austicon had completely burned away, leaving only the stuff of an arbolean seed-avatar.

  Dragging her wrecked form across the busted gravel, the ability to verbalize her rage had been stripped by the heat when the lava burned away her vocal cords. Dione stared daggers at Dekker Knight who sat in the distance. The Watchman hunched over his fallen woman.

  Dione could feel it, sense the moment within her spiteful spirit—that meddling time-traveler had fled the condemned planet—abandoned the entire realm. That part of the divine which she could sense had entirely dissipated from this blighted plane; only Dekker remained in possession of any kind of light.

  Baal Dione crawled nearer, still forever away at this pace, and seized the blade dropped by their dead teammate, Shaw. She clutched it in her withered hand. The need for vengeance urged her onward. Dione could still achieve her goal. Given one more minute, she could still usurp the great power, silence the words, kill the great machine, destroy God!

  Her black heart panicked as Dekker rammed the final sigma cartridge into his celestial weapon: the reliquary. She could not reach him in time!