by Matt Turner
He snapped his eyes open as something heavy slammed into the trunk just in front of his face. Looks like I’ll be eaten first, he thought in despair as the weight slammed into the bark again. A network of cracks formed in front of him as the weakened tree began to give way. Come on…
A fist suddenly slammed through the bark, ripping a hole in the tree. John blinked in surprise as the dim light from outside briefly blinded him. “What?” he asked in dumb astonishment, just as Tituba leaned forward, seized him by his exposed shoulders, and bodily ripped him from the depths of the tree. “What is—”
His former lover did not respond as she slung him over her shoulders, turned, and ran. She sprinted through a forest of broken timber and scattered branches, the refuse of his fight with Legion. The monster must have noticed them running, for it let out a screech of rage and there was a great cracking of wood as it reached out for the two of them.
“Tituba,” John gasped as she sprinted away from the wreckage of the battle. “Why?”
Even if she had said something, he would not have understood it, for it was at that very moment that the airship crashed into the wreckage behind them. John heard a great roar, looked up just in time to see the wall of debris and fire flying at the two of them—and then the shock wave hit, and he was slammed into unconsciousness as the explosion threw him far into the wreckage of the city.
41
The studded mace whipped forward, the flames that Leviathan had sent reflecting off the steel barbs built into the weapon. Closer and closer it came, screeching through the smoke-stained air, until it was just a hairsbreadth away from Simon’s face, about to split it open—
A bolt of lightning coursed over Simon’s shoulder and crashed into the heretic’s chest. It hit with the force of one of the Kingdom’s beam-cannons; one second the Cathar was there, and then the upper half of his body was completely gone. The mace clattered to the ground as the heretic’s legs crashed backward into the mob below. Another bolt of lightning followed, then another, and in less than a second, the mob of armored heretics that had beaten Simon down were nothing more than a few smoking piles of bone and burnt flesh.
“What in God’s name—” Simon said in utter disbelief. He spun around to see a familiar smirk of triumph on Amaury’s face.
“Don’t thank Him,” Amaury grinned. “Thank her.” He jerked his thumb to indicate the gray-eyed woman standing beside him.
Simon gaped in astonishment, for the woman standing before them had the head and face of Manto, but the skeletal body of one of the undead heretics beneath them.
Manto raised a skeletal hand in front of her face and closely examined it. “Not perfect.” She frowned. “But it’ll do.” She casually raised the hand in front of her and blasted a bolt into the burning mob below. Bone and armor shattered from the coursing energy that burst from her; it made a chain of lightning from heretic to heretic to heretic, linking them together in a web of death.
“What?” Simon gasped as a hundred bodies exploded into dust. “But—how?”
Amaury gently pressed his hands against the back of Manto’s neck. A web of veins and arteries slowly extended from where the meat of her head met the skeleton below, wrapping around her bones in a complex network. Even as Simon watched, the first traces of muscle and skin began to form on her new arms. “I wasn’t sure it’d work either,” Amaury admitted. “Never done a head transplant before.”
Manto released bolt after bolt into the undead army below them. It wasn’t even fair; the heretics could do nothing but blindly shuffle forward as her power smote them down in droves. “There isn’t just pain in Judecca,” she said grimly. “There is power too, if you know where to look.”
Simon gazed down in awe at the chaos engulfing the surviving heretics. “I can see that,” he muttered.
Amaury shrugged off his ragged robe and draped it over Manto’s growing shoulders. “Now let’s see about finishing off Legion and the Prophets,” he announced. “With Manto, we can—”
Far behind them, a distant explosion cut off Amaury’s words. The three of them turned to stare at the fireball rising above the smoldering remains of the city. It grew outward, farther and farther, hurling buildings like toys into the air. The layer of smog over the city visibly parted from the sheer force of the explosion’s shock wave.
“The Titan,” Manto said in wonder. “They destroyed it?”
“It’s about to destroy us,” Amaury said urgently. He pointed up into the sky, where the great cloud of debris kicked up by the explosion had changed course to plummet back to Hell. “RUN!”
He barely got the sentence out before the first slab of debris—a wall of brick and rebar that had somehow retained its shape—crashed into the ground barely fifty meters away. It exploded like shrapnel, tearing the remnants of the undead mob to shreds. But another boulder was behind it, and dozens more behind that. The three of them turned and desperately fled as an entire city rained down on them.
42
“We have him!” Legion screamed in rage and frustration.
Somewhere below Lao, he could hear the heaven-man hacking away at the vast maw that Legion was trying to envelop him in. It was impossible for Lao to make out what was going on, but it seemed that Legion was on the very edge of victory. Lao hesitated with his hand inside the cloth bag that he had brought. If he timed this perfectly, he could bring the Master two prizes—and one of them an inhabitant of Paradise! Come on, he thought desperately. The shriek of the falling airship above was deafening…he only needed a few seconds…
“WE HAVE HIM!” Legion screamed out again. There was an audible clash of teeth slamming together as they slammed their mouth shut, and Lao’s heart leapt in exhilaration—it had worked; the heaven-man had been captured!
Just as he reached into the bag and began to wrench out the precious cargo within, Legion let out a squeal of irritation. To Lao’s astonishment, the mouths around him opened to vomit out liters of blood—and then a massive gash opened up in Legion’s scaly skin barely a meter from where Lao sat.
Impossible, Lao thought as the flaming blade extended once again from Legion’s body, opening the hole up even wider. A man with burning eyes and a snarling visage wrenched himself free from the opening that he had cut into Legion. His eyes locked with Lao as he seized hold of one of Legion’s thrashing limbs and pulled himself out. The heaven-man’s face was soaked with blood and gore, but Lao recognized his features almost immediately.
“M-master,” Lao stammered out.
The man wrenched his blade free of Legion’s flesh just soon enough to amputate a dozen arms reaching for him. “You know me?” he asked, an eyebrow raised, as though they were discussing the weather.
He isn’t the Master, Lao realized in relief. Still, the resemblance was so uncanny…
He soon had no more time to dwell on those thoughts, for halfway across the city, the airship crashed and exploded into the section of Legion’s body still entangled within the shattered remnants of the giant tree. A million voices cried out as one as Legion screamed and thrashed—in an instant, nearly half their body was seared away. But still the explosion traveled outward, kicking up dust and rubble that pulverized Legion’s flesh into bloody pieces. A vast ripple—caused by pain, the force of the impact, or just pure terror—traveled down the length of Legion’s snakelike body.
Lao somehow saw it coming and seized hold of one of Legion’s arms with his free hand, but the strange heaven-man was too busy fending off the tendrils of flesh that still reached for him. The ripple suddenly hit, spewing both of them with blood and pulp as Legion hemorrhaged out their guts from every orifice. The heaven-man fell away, his blade torn out of his hands by the thrashing flesh-tendril that he had partly embedded it into.
“No!” Lao cried out in despair, but it was too late; he could feel Legion’s powerful flesh wilting underneath him. The heaven-man nimbly landed on the ground and leapt back into the rubble, just barely avoiding a flaming scrap of debris that would ha
ve impaled him on the spot.
“OUR FLESSSH,” Legion screamed. Their blood and mucus spilled out in rivers, painting every surface that they touched a bright red.
“Lao!” a voice cried out. He turned his head upward and saw, to his horror, Leviathan hurtling down to the ground, wings and claws fully extended. And riding on top of the beast, eyes raging with hate, was Salome. “Lao, you rat bastard,” she shouted as the demon drew closer. A massive swarm of locusts flew in Leviathan’s wake, no doubt provided for by Giles and Abaddon. “I’m gonna rip your balls off!”
Lao rather doubted that Salome had the ability to do that, but Leviathan was more than up to the task. Time to go, he decided. In Legion’s current state, they could barely even slither, let alone be a match for both Giles and Salome. Above him, Leviathan’s jaws widened as the demon prepared to release a jet of flame along Legion’s entire body. Lao had seconds at best.
Lao reached back into the cloth bag and wrenched out the head that it contained. It was fortunate that the new Horsemen had brought it to him all the way from Judecca, but he supposed luck was not a factor where the Master’s plans were concerned. “Lamech!” he shouted at the blinking head. “Take us to Judecca! To the Master!”
Lamech’s cracked lips twisted into a smile. “To Grandfather.” He laughed.
Leviathan drew nearer, the torrent of flame bursting from his scaled jaws—but it was too late, for the ground was already quaking underneath Lao’s feet. He felt himself and Legion begin to fall into the tunnel that Lamech had summoned. There was only enough time for him to give one last mocking smile to Salome before he vanished into the deepest pit of Hell.
43
“No,” Seth muttered in horror as Legion let out one final shriek. A great void seemed to open up beneath the monster, and it was sucked in in a thrashing mass of burning flesh and writhing limbs. He knew of only one being in Hell that had that power: Lamech, descendant of Cain. Which meant…
“Stop!” Seth cried out as he sprinted forward. He did not know what he could have possibly accomplished—he didn’t even have enough time to tear his heavenly blade free from the retreating mountain of flesh—but he had to do something, for the alternative was worse than he could possibly imagine.
“Heaven-man,” Legion croaked out one final time. The monster reached out for him with one last tendril that morphed into a hand at its very tip. A single eye blinked at him from the hand’s palm; the fear in it was obvious.
Seth reached out for the pleading fingers, desperately hoping that maybe he could stop all of this…
His fingertips came within a centimeter of Legion’s, and then the monster’s arm fell flatly to the ground. All around the city, the tendrils and columns of flesh abruptly went still as a great squishing sound echoed from the hole. A mountain of silent flesh lay above where the portal had once been. It’s closed, Seth realized—and it amputated most of Legion in the process. It was obvious that the vast majority of Legion’s body had been left behind in Dis, but he took no comfort from that fact.
It’s over, he thought in despair. He weakly slumped to his knees, exhausted in both body and spirit. I’ve failed.
The Fourth Rebellion was coming, and Seth, son of Adam, could do nothing to stop it.
44
JUDECCA
Legion let out a groan as their pulpy body smashed against the icy floor. “Our flesssh,” they wept from a hundred bleeding faces. “Where isss it? WHERE ISSS IT?”
Lao casually slapped aside the hands that weakly reached for him from Legion’s body and slid down to the floor below. Looks like Lamech left most of you in Dis, he thought as he eyed Legion’s shadowy form. It was difficult to say in the dim cavern, but the body that had nearly consumed an entire city had shrunk to the size of a house. Pathetic, he wanted to say. But in the holy depths of Judecca, he did not dare speak aloud. Instead, he knelt and pressed his forehead against the ice. The cold burnt like fire against his skin.
“Heaven-man,” Legion said, and to Lao’s amazement, the disgusting slug was actually sobbing. They struggled to mold their form into something else (probably their original hunchback body, he guessed), but their flesh did nothing but flap and make a sickly slapping noise as their intestines slid out of a dozen holes gouged into their body. “We almossst had him…. We almossst had Paradissse…”
“Jezebel,” an all-too familiar voice whispered from the depths of the cavern. Lao paled and pressed his face against the ice even harder. The Master, he thought as his heart leapt into his mouth. “Look at what you’ve become.” Chains rattled and slid along ice as Cain slowly approached the monster in his domain.
“We are not Jezebel,” Legion spat, but their voices lacked any strength behind them. “We are Legion!”
Cain’s voice softened into a tone that Lao had never heard before. He sounded almost…human. “Oh, I know.” His chains continued to clatter as he drew closer and closer. “And look at you now. Weak. Stripped of your power. Naked.”
“We are ssstrong!” Legion hissed. “We are God!”
“YOU ARE NOTHING,” Cain thundered.
Something heavy crashed into the ice, sending shards flying up into Lao’s face. He did not dare to move a muscle even as the scratches torn into his cheeks began to bleed. Beside him, Legion’s scream of pain was abruptly cut off. Lao cringed in terror as the chains whispered across the ice, closer to him.
“Long live God,” Lao whispered in his tiniest voice.
Cain raised his bare foot and lightly pressed it on the back of Lao’s neck. For a single moment, both too long and far, far too short, Lao shuddered with the greatest burst of fear and love he had ever known—to touch the Master Himself! He could feel the power that coursed through the Master’s every breath, the power that could reduce him to dust with a single thought—it was exhilarating, indescribable. This is love, he thought with awe as he gasped under the weight of what could only be called Almighty. All his doubts were erased away—he would fight, march, and kill for the Master, and, if his god were to will it, he would destroy himself for its existence without a second thought.
Lao closed his eyes and dared to kiss the foot of the Master. “Long live God!” he wept as his lips brushed against one of the Master’s toes.
He was glad to sense Cain’s smile.
“Rise, slave,” the Master commanded.
Lao let out a little groan of disappointment as Cain lifted his foot away from his neck, but he obediently rose up to his feet, keeping his gaze locked on the floor all the while. It was not just the cold of Judecca that caused Lao’s limbs to violently shake and tremble.
“Look at me,” Cain ordered.
I can’t, Lao thought in terror, but he seemed to have no control over his actions. His chin rose as he beheld the Master.
Even after all these centuries, Cain was still unable to walk. Barbed chains wrapped around every inch of his body, binding his legs together, and causing a constant dribble of blood to leak onto the floor beneath him. The great metal spikes that stabbed through his thighs and biceps, impaling him to the iron cross on which he was crucified, further restricted his movement; the Master was forced to rely on two silent black-clad acolytes to drag the iron cross forward by the base of bones and blood that it was built on.
But his wicked golden eyes still gleamed from beneath the network of chains lashed across his face. The yellow light seemed to pierce Lao’s very soul as he stared in fascinated horror and awe into the eyes of a god.
“You have done well,” Cain whispered. His golden eyes absorbed most of Lao’s attention, but he retained enough awareness to notice that the Master had to speak out of the corner of his mouth—one of the chains wrapped around his body snaked into the interior of his mouth through his body. Lao could even make out the edges of it bulging from the skin of the Master’s throat. “I will permit you to witness my rebirth.”
“T-thank you,” Lao mumbled, but the Master was no longer paying any attention to him. He slightly inclined h
is head, and the two robed acolytes slowly turned the cross about to face the darkness of the cavern. Lao winced at the horrible sight, for at least twenty rusted blades and spears protruded from the Master’s back, further nailing his spine to the cross and binding the chains even tighter.
“LET THERE BE LIGHT!” Cain thundered.
In unison, a hundred torches gathered at the edge of the cavern ignited. Their flickering light reflected off the stalactites on the ceiling, bathing the cave in dim light, and revealing the silent crowd gathered at the edge of the room. Lao recognized none of their shadowy faces, save one withered old crone who stepped forward.
“Long live God!” Eve cried out as she raised both of her hands to the heavens. The choir joyfully echoed her call as the cross turned so that Cain could face Legion.
“Pleassse…” the monster begged. Salty tears dripped from their myriad faces, but other than that, they seemed completely incapable of movement.
Cain silently stared down Legion. Both of his arms were pinned to the arms of the cross, but the raw power that continued to emanate from him was immense.
Lao could almost taste it on the air. “Long live God!” he cried along with the choir as the chant continued, louder and louder. “Long live God!”
“EDITH. JEZEBEL. MY HORSEMEN.” Cain barely moved his lips, yet the words made the very walls of Judecca tremble. “COME OUT.”
“Never!” Legion wept. “We never—”
Their words were drowned out as the ice beneath them exploded. Dark wings burst into the cavern, extinguishing half the torches with a single gust of wind. Legion screamed pitifully as a pair of black talons tore their body in half, spilling guts everywhere.
Lao had only a glimpse of a shadow of teeth and claws before he looked away; he did not dare to gaze directly on the true form of the ancient being.
