by Thomas Green
Sweating, Joseph pressed a button making one piece move. The pyramid went dark and started resetting. Perfect.
“I’ll take your place,” Katherine said, walking toward us.
My vision blurred, thoughts dim, I didn’t reply, and just punched away the minotaur. I wasn’t the one needing replacement.
Before the pyramid finished resetting, Amaranta collapsed, spear clanging on the ground. Sighing, Katherine pulled her away.
Once done, she took her spot, putting on her helmet.
No. I stepped into the hallway so she couldn’t fight next to me. Katherine wasn’t a bad fighter, far from that, but I simply wasn’t letting the cow hurt her.
My world turned into a continuous blur. The Minotaur charged, I dodged the attack, punched it in the chest with enough force to send it flying away. I retook my position, the Minotaur regenerated, and we went on to repeat the process.
I lost count of how many times I hit that creature. Hundreds, maybe thousands. From time to time, Katherine shouted something at me from behind, but I couldn’t discern her words. We could talk later. Now, I was busy punching the Minotaur.
Later, long after I lost the sense of everything other than the Minotaur in front of me, the shouting from behind wouldn’t stop. I glanced over my shoulder, seeing the pyramid was gone, replaced with a hole in the ground.
Everyone other than Katherine were gone. I swatted away the charging Minotaur. Tried to smile but my mouth wouldn’t move and ran to the hole. I lost consciousness the moment I leapt inside.
Katherine 1
KATHERINE jumped into the hole right behind Lucas. He just couldn’t let her help him, could he? Of course, not. The stupid crush he had on her made him more stubborn than a donkey. She had always known about it, but what was she supposed to do?
She fell into water, sinking beneath the surface. Panic flooded her veins, and she gathered her aether, formed it inside her hands, and focused on the word Levitate. Luckily, external magic worked here, so she became light as feather, naturally floating through water. She opened her eyes, seeing Amaranta and Lucas sinking deep into the water with the others swimming down to catch them.
Katherine focused her thoughts once more Missa levitate. As her spell affected everyone, Lucas and Amaranta floated up toward the water’s surface. They may have already breathed in water though. Katherine sharpened her mind, thinking, Spiritus aqua. She opened her mouth, and breathed in, letting the salty water filled her lungs.
In spite of practicing this dozens of times, her body still had the drowning reflex as the water flooded her lungs, making her want to cough. A second later, oxygen from the water transferred into her lungs thanks to the spell, and she could breathe normally.
Since she cast the spell on everyone, Amaranta and Lucas were safe. Lightly, Katherine kicked her legs to reach the surface. Just, how exhausted were the two of them not to get out of unconsciousness even when drowning?
When Katherine’s head peaked above the water, sharp sunlight hit her face. Using her hand to shield her eyes, she looked around. Aside from a confused Zhang and Joseph, everything appeared as if they were in the middle of an ocean. And there was no land was in sight.
Katherine focused for a moment, whispering, “Oculi aquilae.” Her gaze focused, seeing far beyond normal. In the real world, that wouldn’t do much due to Earth’s roundness providing a physical limit to seeing into a distance, but here, the magical plane was straight.
She looked around once more, seeing an island covered in palms in the distance, a few miles away. Her face had already dried, salt remaining behind, so the air had to be summer-at-equator type of hot.
Katherine whispered, “Sol scutum,” and an invisible barrier wreathed her, protecting her skin from burning. While they could swim there, that would exhaust Zhang and Joseph. And it was bad enough that the monster-duo of Amaranta and Lucas were unconscious. “Don’t panic and let the current take you,” Katherine shouted.
“Okay,” Joseph shouted back, and Zhang added something in Chinese.
Katherine spread her arms, and whispered, “Movens vertex.” The water around her whirled, getting hold of all five of them, clustering them into the center. With her thoughts, she directed the whirlpool, making it drag them through the water.
Minutes later, the whirlpool threw them at the sandy beach of the island.
“Purgo,” Katherine said, letting the spell clean her of the water and salt. As Zhang and Joseph struggled to their feet in the wet sand, she cleaned her hair, and looked around. The beach was naturally turning into a palm forest with a stream crossing the beach by the sea.
She glared at the stream. She had never been this thirsty in her life, but given the fake sun’s blistering gaze, this stream was bound to be a trap.
“Well,” Zhang said, clearing his throat. “I wouldn’t drink from that.”
“Me neither,” Joseph said.
Katherine nodded, glancing at Lucas and Amaranta who lay unconscious on the beach. “Can you carry them?”
“We will have to,” Zhang said before Joseph could protest. He grabbed Lucas and lifted him up, grunting as he did.
Having the lighter duty, Joseph raised Amaranta, supporting her with his shoulder.
Katherine picked up Lucas’s hat that lay on the sand, cleaned it with the same spell, and put it on her head. She verified her sword rested in its sheath by her waist, and stepped toward the forest, taking the lead.
“Sorry to ask,” Joseph asked from behind her. “But do we have an actual escape plan? I mean, asking Lucas is pointless when he’s conscious, but he’s not up now and the teleportation matrix plan he told us is obviously bullshit.”
Katherine stopped, staring at Joseph. “What do you mean?”
“When he fought against the werewolf,” Zhang said calmly, “Lucas teleported to him to punch him. Before, he said he couldn’t teleport in here, then he corrected himself that he couldn’t teleport others, but we already know that when he can teleport, he isn’t exactly limited by anything. So, why didn’t he use teleportation to avoid the Minotaur? Or right behind the gates?”
“What we want to say is,” Joseph said, “that there has to be a defensive mechanism built into the gates that stops teleportation. And the gates seal shut after we pass, so that mechanism is definitely in place behind us and if he can’t teleport through that, there’s no way the matrix can.”
“Since the teleportation matrix is an item that imitates Lucifer’s original teleportation power to begin with,” Zhang added to finish their theory, pointing at the matrix hanging by Amaranta’s belt.
Katherine smiled awkwardly, continuing through the palm forest. “There is an escape plan but I don’t know what it is.”
Both Joseph and Zhang frowned at her. “Then how can you be sure about there being one?”
“Because Lucas promised to deliver me back to New York,” she said and instantly realized how ridiculously that had to sound to them. But when it came to promises, she trusted Lucas limitlessly. He always fulfilled every promise he had given.
A moment of silence passed as Joseph apparently expected her to add something. When he ran out of patience, he said, “Are you for real?”
“She is,” Zhang said instantly. “Promises are the ultimate currency of the supernatural world. Since there is no real law enforcement, one’s reputation is everything. But did he promise to bring you back or all of us?”
Correct question. He promised he would bring her back, and never mentioned the others. She noticed that trick instantly, but she let it be because she didn’t care. Zhang wasn’t even from her territory, so she didn’t care. Joseph was a renegade mage and didn’t carry a cross, so she couldn’t care less about him.
And Amaranta, well, after the St. John’s incident, the utterly unforgivable stain on Katherine’s otherwise spotless career, Amaranta deserved a lesson in penitence. But since the Church served Amaranta no real punishment, Katherine had to solve that herself.
And sh
e was not simply going to get over it. She knew that she was supposed to forgive Amaranta and move on, she knew. But she couldn’t. Though her chest still clenched with guilt. “All of us,” she said, voice steady.
Zhang exhaled, visibly relaxing his posture. Joseph still stared at her as if she fell from the moon.
They continued through the forest. And when they were both behind her, Katherine kept scowling. This was the first malicious lie she had ever uttered, and yet she felt no shame. The island led up a slope, which gradually increased. The foliage became denser for about an hour’s walk, but then tall palms with thick trunks gave way to smaller ones, until palms disappeared completely, replaced by bushes.
Atop the slope towered a mountain with smoke coming from the top. Katherine led the way, slowing down the pace to allow Zhang and Joseph to keep up. Amaranta and Lucas remained unconscious.
The air heated up further, drying Katherine’s lips to the point where one cracked. Frowning, she continued up the mountain. Joseph and Zhang lagged behind. She stopped, waved her hand, and whispered, “Missa levitate,” targeting Amaranta and Lucas with the spell.
Zhang and Joseph picked up the pace now that their burden lightened.
Katherine headed up the path among large rocks. She reached the plateau atop the mountain, a scowl returning to her face. As the smoke suggested, this was a volcano, boiling lava filling the insides.
In the middle of the lava floated a pentagram, and above it, a text written in letters of light:
‘Gate of Fire
Intruders who passed this gate: 282’
Only a five percent drop from the previous gate, so this trial wasn’t anything difficult.
Katherine spread out her aether into a detection barrier. The lava overflowed with flame spirits. Most were human-sized, but the one resting right beneath the gate was the size of a skyscraper.
Katherine’s primary combat magic was fire, so this would be a terrible matchup for her. She glanced at Zhang, and said, “Put him down.”
Gently, Zhang laid Lucas on the ground, and stepped aside.
Katherine focused, thinking Orbis extinctio. An orb of green flame formed in her hand. She let the spell float above the volcano, and then she ducked above Lucas.
Gingerly, she cleared the hair from his face, kissed him on the forehead, not minding the salty taste of sweat, and whispered exsuscito.
Lucas opened his eyes, blinking.
Katherine stroked his face, smooth thanks to the fresh shave. She liked that. “You’ve got dinner waiting,” she whispered, and focused on the word Activate.
The flame orb she had created rained dozens of bursts of fire into the volcano. In return, the entire mountain shook, hundreds of spirits of flame bursting from the magma.
Lucas grunted, glimpsing the spirits from the corner of his eye. Katherine caught him by the hand and helped him up.
From the volcano, among the hundreds of smaller spirits, rose a massive one, towering against the heavens.
“A big dinner,” Katherine said, and put Lucas’s hat back onto his scalp.
He turned, eyes turning into pools of darkness.
A chill ran down Katherine’s spines, intestines clenching. This wasn’t even his nova release, but she already felt the air around them changing. All the heat vanished in the blink of an eye, the sunlight became bleak, the grass on the mountain withering.
In thousands of tendrils of pure darkness, aether erupted from Lucas piercing the spirits, wrapping them, instantly filling a ten-mile radius around them.
Katherine stood in place, pleased. She loved when Lucas became like this. This was who Lucifer was supposed to be, an invincible emperor of the Void, the sovereign King of Hell, not a young man struggling to maintain his morals. He wasn’t supposed to have morals to begin with.
The fire spirits screeched, wailed, and tried to fly away. They had nowhere to run. The darkness caught them all within a moment, and then started retracting, absorbing the spirits into Lucas.
Spirits, at their core, were beings purely made of aether. For a fallen angel, the apex predator of the spiritual world, they were like a well-cooked and season pasta, served nicely on his favorite plate.
The largest spirit took a last, deep breath, and exhaled a cloud of flames toward them. Lucas’s tendrils of darkness absorbed that attack far before it reached them.
Not even a minute later, all the tendrils drew into Lucas, the spirits gone, the magma gone cold, the palm forest and grass that covered the island all withered to dry husks.
Katherine smiled. “Feeling better?”
“A little.” Lucas picked up Amaranta and peered into the crater. “Have you found a way down there?”
Katherine waved her hand, saying “Scalae.” Steps of pure magic formed from the crater’s edge all the way to the now-open gate.
Lucas flashed a smile that made Katherine’s heart skip a beat, picked up Amaranta, and headed down the stairs.
Lucas 14
CARRYING AMARANTA, I walked through the gate in the volcano, guilt clenching my insides. I never wanted Katherine to see me like this. But I didn’t have any other way to deal with the fire spirits.
The gate dropped me onto a wheat field in a wide hall. Beneath the ceiling shone a spell-made, tiny sun, but the walls were marble, covered in paintings with a story etched among them. What the hell? As I stared around, I realized chunks of marble were scattered amidst the wheat, as if someone tore out the floor and used the dirt beneath to create a wheat field.
The others landed near me, also staring around. Eventually, all our gazes joined on the central painting on the wall. Drawn in the background stood a hill stood with a wooden cross carrying a nailed man with a thorn-wine-woven circlet atop his head.
The painting’s centerpiece was a woman in white robes, creating a pendant with the shape of a cross within her palm. This was year 33 AD, April 4th, the day after crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The title beneath the painting read, ‘The day I found my faith.’
I knew Lucielle for a long time, but I still struggled to wrap my mind around how ancient she was. To me, what was more a myth than history was, to her, a simple day in her past. The central figures of history were mostly people she knew in person.
The next carving showed Lucielle standing by a lonesome cross, dried blood still on the wood, and the imagery around showed Lucielle turning the cross into a staff, keeping the three nails as spikes in the staff’s head. She carried that staff in every following painting.
In the other direction, the story dove deeper into the past, showing Lucielle travelling across Africa. This time, we were thrown into the middle of Lucielle’s history from this period. I wanted to see the future from there, so I headed into the appropriate tunnel.
I followed the story etched into the walls, heading through the wheat into the hallway where the paintings led. The next major painting displayed Lucielle meeting two men, a black-haired one and a blond one, Azrael and Lucifer. The painting’s title read ‘Founders of the Holy City.’
The paintings around showed the three of us building temples, holding sermons, spreading the faith we shared. As the religion flourished, accordingly changed Lucielle’s clothes. From simple robes into ones covered with gold and silver ornaments, but the staff remained the same.
The images turned into ones of battle, featuring Lucielle, and a slew of ancient gods. The legend had it that the reason Christianity conquered the world was because Lucielle herself wiped out all the other pantheons of Gods. By the pictures, the first was Roman, followed by her destroying Mount Olympus to slaughter the Greek Gods.
She travelled north, turning the Nordic gods into myths, and then she travelled East, reaching India, where she ended the Hindu pantheon, the Shinto one, the Chinese one, and slayed any other deity she could find.
Her conquest ended back in Rome with her receiving gifts and praise from the Conclave. Next was a statue, and that one made me frown. Two people were carved out of marble,
a woman in robes, and a kneeling, blond man holding a ring in a raised hand.
I glanced at the others, who were gathering behind me, staring away from Katherine, who was glowering. “In my defense,” I said, “I don’t remember doing that.”
“She wouldn’t make a statue of it if it wasn’t true,” Katherine pointed out sharply.
Yeah, I knew. And I had the feeling the reason for my original death was right behind the corner. We entered another hall. Leaving behind the statues and paintings for a set of contraptions that looked like a do-it-yourself brewery.
By the contraption’s end towered the biggest succubus I had ever seen, glaring at the machine. Wearing a light, red dress, she was easily twelve feet tall, had two wide horns, half of her face covered with black, demonic scales, while the other half was that of a beautiful woman. Her right arm was lizard-like with black scales and claws, the left normal. Her legs started human, but turned into fur-covered ones below the knees, ending with hooves. From her behind weaved a ten foot long tail, half a foot thick at the base.
She kicked the machine in front of her, cursing in Infernal. The speech of the Void, inexpressible in human words, meant something along the lines of “Got stuck again, didn’t you, you piece of junk.” She paused, turned, and froze, staring at us before focusing her eyes on me. She waved her hand, whispered a word in Infernal, and then said, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” in what sounded like today’s English.
I smiled broadly. “I take it that we know each other.”
“Know each other? Did you fuck yourself to a memory loss?”
We knew each other well. I smirked in spite of feeling Katherine’s burning glare aimed at my nape. “Something like that. Who are you?”
“Trisha,” she said emotionlessly, expression blank in sharp contrast to how she spoke before, “the High Sorceress of Hell, a member of your court and your right hand.” She snapped back to glaring. “The one you love to wipe your ass with.”
I could see why. “Explain to me our relationship.”
“I am bound to you by blood and soul,” she said, mechanically once more, “By our contract, I am to truthfully answer any question you ever ask me, obey your every command, and in return, I am connected to your soul’s core, making me immortal.” Her expression switched back to normal. “Stop ordering me around!”
