by Matt Turner
But the Beast from beneath the ice was not done; with a single stab of its claws, it reached deep into Legion’s screaming mouth and tore something free. Like a dog presenting its master with a dead animal, it tossed something twitching and screaming at Cain’s feet. The sight was so horrific that the choir’s song briefly faltered as they jerked backward in horror, but the rattling of the Beast’s claws against the ice was enough to restore the power to the song.
Cain gazed down at the thing that the Beast had torn free of Legion. A woman, Lao realized in shock as Cain gently extended one of his feet and wiped some of the blood and filth away from her face and scarlet hair. Who is she?
“Wha-what is this?” The woman raised a shaking hand and touched her face. “Where am I—” She suddenly seemed to take notice of Cain and let out a cry of surprise. “You!”
“Edith,” the Master softly said. “My child.”
One of the original Horsemen, Lao realized. She helped imprison him. Legion let out one final cry as the Beast tore out another body from within its bulk. The flesh went still and weakly spattered against the floor as the Beast dropped the other body next to Edith.
“Jezebel.” The Master smiled. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to reunite with you, my children.”
“Oh God.” Jezebel groaned. She laid a hand over her mouth in a vain attempt to keep from vomiting.
“Cain,” Edith muttered. She struggled to stand to her feet, but her legs collapsed from underneath her, and she weakly fell back into the puddle of blood and gore about her body. “I don’t know what’s happening, but if you think—”
Her words died away as the Beast took up a position behind the two former Horsemen. A single exhale of its breath caused shards of icy crystal to form over their trembling bodies.
“The both of you betrayed me,” the Master said. At first, there seemed to be a trace of sadness in his voice, but it quickly died away as his words turned cold. “And for that, you will suffer past the end of time. But first—”
Faster than Lao would have believed possible, Eve scuttled forward, a knife of jagged ice clutched in her withered hands. Jezebel seemed to be in a state of shock; she only stared vacantly forward as Eve skillfully carved away the Mark on her thigh. Edith put up more of a struggle; she cried out in terror as Eve approached, and lashed out with one of her feet. It would have caught the ancient woman in the shin, had the Master not slightly inclined his head. One of the Beast’s claws stabbed out, neatly impaling Edith through her stomach to the ice below. The pain she felt was obvious on her face, but she did not scream, even as Eve scurried forward and cut off one of her ears.
“The Marks, Master,” Eve whispered as she bowed before Cain and offered up the two scraps of flesh that she had taken.
Cain bowed his head forward and tore the two pieces of meat out of her withered hands with a single bite. Blood trickled down his chin as he chewed the two Marks into pulp.
“Witness the power of our God!” Eve called out as she backed away from her son. “He reigned!”
The Beast extended its other claw forward and neatly impaled Jezebel upon it. She and Edith twitched and bled as the Beast raised them high into the air, but still they did not make a sound. “He reigned!” the choir echoed joyfully.
A smile crossed Cain’s face as he swallowed.
“He was cast down!” Eve shrieked. The cavernous walls echoed her cry across all of Judecca.
The Beast raised Jezebel to one of its heads and bit down on her legs. Her piercing cry of pain as her bones shattered was the signal that the choir had been awaiting; they joyfully lapped up her suffering. “He was cast down!” they sang.
Cain gritted his teeth together as a look of intense concentration crossed his face. His muscles flexed and contorted under the pressure of the chains as he fought against the power of the Seals. “I AM RISEN!” he thundered, as, with a mighty effort, the links of a dozen chains shattered beneath his raw power. The barbed metal fell away from his heaving chest and a cry of victory echoed throughout the crowd.
He violently wrenched himself forward, tearing the arms of the iron cross in half. Freed from his prison, the Master fell to the ground. One of the robed acolytes rushed forward to help him, but Cain sent him flying into the opposite side of the cavern with a single backhanded slap. Blades and steel crashed against the ground as the Master tore himself free, heedless of his blood that sprayed across the ice. “DRINK OF MY BLOOD,” he commanded.
The choir rushed forward with a cry of adoration and joined in the glorious communion as they eagerly lapped up the pool of lifeblood that gushed from their savior’s bleeding body. Lao joined in, shoving aside the others as he scrambled on hands and knees and buried his face in the black, smoking liquid. It burnt and stung as it slid down his throat, yet he had never tasted anything so sweet.
But the Master was not done; he placed a foot on the end of the chain that dangled from his mouth and violently jerked his head backward. The rest of the chain that snaked within his guts was torn free, bringing up bile and vomit and several organs with it. The choir screamed its approval. “EAT OF MY FLESH.”
They tore the organs to bloody pieces as they fought savagely for the precious scraps of holy flesh. Lao had to sink his elbow into an elderly woman’s face, shattering her nose in a spray of blood, to get a single red-tinged tendon. Tears streamed down from his eyes as he swallowed it down.
“This isn’t over!” Edith called out. “You will be stopped! You will be—” Her words went unheeded as the Beast hurled both her and Jezebel into its maw and swallowed them down.
“He is risen!” the choir chanted. Utterly delirious with joy, they danced and sang and screamed their victory to the skies, Lao chief among them. “He is risen, he is risen, he is risen!”
“HEAR MY WORDS!” Cain raged. His voice was so mighty that stalactites rained down from the ceiling above, but even those crushed or injured by them continued to join in the mad celebration. “I AM RISEN!” He shouted the words even louder, so much that the cave’s ceiling began to crack and crumble away. The light of the Ninth Circle poured in, bathing them all in its majesty. The Beast roared and recoiled from the light, but the choir shrieked in delight to see it; for most of them, it had been centuries since they had last seen anything but torchlight and darkness.
“I LIVE!” the Master thundered in triumph. Tears trickled from his eyes as he gazed up toward Hell…and what lay beyond.
45
Giles gazed down at the mountain of unmoving flesh. One minute, Legion had been thrashing and screaming about as they were pulled down into the dirt, and now they seemed to be dead…if such a thing were even possible in Hell. “What just happened?” he demanded.
I don’t know, Abaddon confessed. The demon seemed to be just as puzzled as he was.
“Lao,” Salome growled between gritted teeth. “That slimy little worm. I saw him riding Legion…bet he was helping that freak all along. When I find him…” Her voice trailed off into muttered threats of savage violence and torture as she guided Leviathan down to the massive carcass below.
Giles carefully studied the snake-body that stretched nearly a kilometer across the ruined city. The growing stench from the burnt, bleeding flesh was already unbelievable; it seemed to have already begun to rot. “We need to regroup,” he decided. “Find ELIE, finish off the Horsemen, and then—”
NO! Abaddon screamed in his ear, so suddenly that Giles would have fallen off Leviathan’s back had Salome not grabbed him by the shoulder. Too late! You fools, you damned FOOLS! The raw gibbering panic in the demon’s voice was unlike anything that Giles had ever heard before.
“What—” Giles tried to say over the torrent of sheer fear that crashed into his brain. Below him, Leviathan trembled and shuddered in panic. He exchanged a look with Salome and saw that she was just as confused as he was.
Run, run, RUN! Abaddon shrieked. He is risen! HE IS RISEN!
Leviathan immediately changed direction an
d began to fly from Dis, frantically flapping his wings as fast as they were able to go. “He lives,” the dragon-devil roared. “Heaven protect us, he has risen!”
“What the fuck is going on?” Salome yelled over the roar of the wind. The panic of the demons was infectious; Giles could hear the fear rising in her voice as well.
“THE MASTER!” Leviathan moaned. “THE DEVIL-KILLER! HE COMES!”
Judecca is breached, Abaddon screamed. Too late, he draws near! No hope!
“Judecca?” Giles sucked in his breath. Dear God… If the Master had truly escaped… He looked down at his hands and saw that they were trembling. No, he snarled at himself. I am in control. He’d be damned if victory slipped from his grasp a second time. “Take us to the Ninth Circle,” he snapped.
No, no, no, you little fool! Abaddon screamed. You don’t know him! You don’t know him!
“NOW, GODDAMNIT,” Giles ordered. He snapped his fingers, forcing a plume of locusts to burst from his sleeves. “Our only chance is to strike now, before the Master is prepared! Take us to the Ninth Circle, or I’ll throw you into Judecca myself!” His mask of self-control slipped away as he allowed the constant undercurrent of rage that dwelt within him to bubble to the surface.
Not today, Giles vowed as the swarm of locusts grew over his body, then over Salome, then over Leviathan himself. I won’t fail. The insects covered his face, casting his eyes into darkness…but in the blackness, he once again saw the mocking face of little Marie laughing at him.
This is different, Giles snarled at the six-year-old. I was just a man when you escaped from me. But now— Now, he had the power of the mightiest devil that had ever existed, or so he tried to tell himself. I won’t fail. Not ever again.
The little brat only giggled at him, and Giles felt the old hate rise in his throat—by Satan, they had come so close to catching her; he had been within a hairsbreadth of carving the bitch’s eyes out…
He opened his eyes to find that they were swooping over the icy landscape of the Ninth Circle.
For the love of God, let us go, Abaddon moaned in despair.
Giles ignored the demon’s pleas and scanned the ice below. He felt a burst of hope when he saw the telltale signs of one of the Kingdom’s legions below. “There,” he said. “Take us down.”
“I’ll be damned,” Salome said in amazement. “The Holy Council actually sent a legion after all.”
Giles sighed in relief as they swooped down to the command tent in the center of the camp that the army had carved into the ice. Artillery, stiltwalkers, a diverse range of infantry ranging from spearmen to veterans wielding machine guns and beam-cannons—the Thirteenth Legion seemed to be in excellent fighting condition. For once, it seemed that things were finally going his way.
He did not wait for Leviathan to come to a landing; instead, he leapt from the back of the demon and used a small cloud of locusts to cushion his landing on the ice below. A group of officers stared at the newcomer in their midst in awe. “Where is the imperator?” Giles demanded.
A pudgy woman in old-fashioned armor emerged from the depths of the command tent. “Hail, Lord Prophet,” she said respectfully. “I am Imperator Dulle Griet of the Thirteenth Legion. What brings you here so far from Dis?”
Giles had no time for pleasantries. “Judecca,” he snapped. “The chasm. Where is it?”
Imperator Griet pointed to the north. “One kilometer in that direction,” she said. “The Engineering Corps has been building a wall around it all week—”
Leviathan crashed to the ground alongside them, kicking up slivers of ice that crashed across the front of the command tent and the curious crowd of soldiers gathering about. “No more talk,” the demon roared. “Fire everything on Judecca! NOW!”
The crowd gasped in shock—more at the sight of the demon among them than anything he said.
Imperator Griet raised an eyebrow and looked at Giles for clarification. “The artillery is zeroed in on the chasm to Judecca,” she explained. “If the Lord Prophet wishes for us to fire—”
Giles nodded. “I want a full bombardment. Level the place, then send in the infantry and stiltwalker corps.”
Imperator Griet grinned. “Maximum force, then.” She raised her voice so that it echoed across the entire campsite of the Thirteenth Legion. “All right, you lot, you heard the man! Artillery, prepare to fire! Officers, form your ranks!” The camp immediately exploded into action like a vast beehive in response to her orders. “No worries, Lord Prophet.” Griet smiled. “The Thirteenth is the best in the Kingdom. We’ll have Judecca stomped in a heartbeat.”
Useless, Abaddon moaned as thousands of soldiers rushed out into the freezing cold and began to form ranks. The clank of metal and stench of fire filled the air as crews rushed to their vast artillery guns and made last-minute adjustments. A dozen heavily armored stiltwalkers rushed past Giles, miniguns and flamethrowers at the ready, as they took position among the army’s ranks. It was difficult to not be impressed by the efficiency and raw power of the force before him. All hopeless, Abaddon continued to weep.
For a moment, the rumbling of the ice underneath Giles’s feet seemed to be nothing more than a natural byproduct of the Kingdom’s vast war machine clanking into gear. And yet the rumbling was growing more and more powerful… He glanced down and saw a crack radiate between his feet.
“With your permission, Lord Prophet, I’ll lead the…” The imperator felt the growing rumble too, as if some great beast were stirring in the frozen depths beneath them.
Giles slowly raised his head to follow the progress of the single crack. It led back into the depths of the camp, where it began to quickly radiate outward—first one fissure, then another, then an entire network that pulsed outward like a spider’s web… He stared at it in horrible fascination, frozen in shock as a slab of ice ever-so-slightly shifted upward. None of the surrounding soldiers seemed to notice it as they rushed into position, not even the armored stiltwalker that lifted up a clawed foot, about to slam it down on the cracking ice—
Too late, Giles snapped out of his trance. “NO!” he shouted at the stiltwalker as he rushed forward. “STOP!”
Inside the cabin, the stiltwalker’s pilot turned to face Giles. He placed a hand around his ear to better hear the Prophet’s words—and the machine pitched forward. Its foot punched through the cracking ice, swallowing up the stiltwalker’s entire leg. Metal screeched against ice as the stiltwalker’s engine let out a shriek of indignation.
He is here, Abaddon whispered.
For one brief instant, Giles thought he saw a glimpse of a vast ripple churning up from the icy depths below. He did not even have enough time to shout out an order, for in the space of a second, an entire hill of ice exploded upward in a vast cloud of frozen mist and shrapnel. Giles covered his face, instinctively allowing a swarm of locusts to make a protective barrier in front of him, but it barely helped—an explosive burst of air slammed into him, hurling him through the air like a ragdoll. Screaming soldiers and equipment rushed through the air along with him, their voices lost in the sheer thunder of cracking ice.
Giles slammed against a howitzer with so much force that his back would have instantly been shattered had Abaddon not thrown up a layer of locusts to cushion his impact. As it was, all the wind was knocked out of him, and all he could do was weakly wheeze in a shaking, painful breath. Through his bleary vision, all he could see around him was chaos—shards of ice rained down from the sky, officers desperately bellowed orders, and the ground shook as the great chasm torn in the center of the Thirteenth Legion’s camp widened. The growing fissure swallowed up the command tent, the officers’ quarters, hundreds of fleeing men, before it finally came to a stop barely a meter away from Giles’s trembling feet.
“Lord Prophet!” Someone seized Giles by his collar and wrenched him upright. He found himself face-to-face with Imperator Griet. A shard of ice, still partly wedged in her cheek, dribbled blood down her throat. “Your orders?”
> I am in control, Giles weakly tried to tell himself. Orders—yes, that was his responsibility, wasn’t it? “Fire everything.” He forced himself to put the steel back into his voice. He raised a shaking finger at the smoldering chasm in the center of the camp. “Surround that now, Imperator.”
“Aye, Lord Prophet.” Griet nodded. She unceremoniously ran to the opposite side of the chasm, still dragging Giles along with her. “Form up!” she bellowed at the ranks of soldiers who emerged from the freezing mist. “Form up!”
Giles tore himself away from her grasp and glanced up at the skies. To his relief, he saw the outline of Leviathan’s dark wings against the storm clouds above. It’s not over yet. He turned his attention back to the distant chasm and allowed Abaddon’s locusts to emerge from his sleeves, covering every inch of his body with their armored husks. I won’t lose again, he vowed.
Hundreds of soldiers rushed past him to form ranks around the chasm. “Pikes in front!” a dozen officers bellowed. “Pikes in front!” The ranks frantically jostled one another as soldiers took their positions, and soon enough the entire chasm was surrounded by a wall of razor-sharp steel blades. Behind them, the crossbows, rifles, and machine guns swiftly assembled. A score of stiltwalkers clanked forward into the army’s great mass, standing over the men like lumbering giants as they took aim with their own weapons.
It was a classic tactic of the Kingdom’s armies: put the more inexperienced troops wielding blades and melee weapons in the front ranks to hold down the enemy. The real attack came from the entire nation’s worth of firepower—in the form of bullets, bolts, bombs, and beams—massed behind the front ranks that shredded the enemy to pulp. Such a tactic always involved a great deal of friendly fire, but many imperators actually encouraged this; if there was one thing the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace had an overabundance of, it was soldiers.
It’s over, Giles thought triumphantly as more and more of the Thirteenth Legion filed into position. There was no power in Hell that could take a prepared legion head-on. As if to confirm his sentiment, the legion’s artillery began to thunder behind him. He smiled in satisfaction as shell after shell traced through the skies above to smash into the depths of the chasm.
