by Thomas Green
I nodded. “You may speak freely until this conversation ends. What are you doing here?”
“Oh, my, Goddess!” she exclaimed so loudly the entire hall shook. “Give me a minute to restore your memory.” She spun and stomped toward what looked like a pile of junk.
Awoken by the noise, Amaranta blinked, slowly getting out of Zhang’s support, looking around confused.
The burning glare of Katherine became insufferable, so I glanced, smiling awkwardly. “What’s the problem?”
“What’s the problem? Maybe that you turned a poor woman into your personal slave for an eternity? How about that?”
“Slave?” Trisha shouted without looking at her, “Hold your horses, Virgin. Not everyone wants to waste their life living like a nun to get a ticket to heaven. And being one of the highest rulers of Hell is a lot better than fading into nothing in the Void. Or at least, it was better before that shitty little bitch Shani tricked me into getting trapped here.”
Katherine’s face turned dark red, gaze darting sideways.
“Is Shani another member of my court?”
Trisha sighed. “I should have brought the biggest history book we have back home, so I could beat your head with it until your memory returned. Yes. And she’s also bound to you, just like about seventeen million other demons.” From the pile of junk, she fished out a staff made of black metal with a head-sized ruby seated at the top.
How many? “Tell me the coordinates for Hell.”
“Seventeen, four, twelve, six, six, six, eleven, nine, five,” she said mechanically, and then glowered at me. “Would you stop bossing me around?”
“No.”
“Goddess, help me,” she said, exasperated, and raised the staff. “Don’t move for a moment. Hopefully, this will hurt.” Trisha started incanting in Infernal. Black and red energies swirled around her and then flew toward me.
I remembered every word, every detail, every twitch of her aether. The spell wrapped my head, blocking my vision for a second, and tingling filled my head as the spell reached into my mind. A moment later, the energies fizzled into the air. “That didn’t work,” I observed.
“No shit, genius,” Trisha snapped. “You have no locked memories or anything like that. In fact, your head’s borderline empty.” She narrowed her eyes. “How old are you? I mean, I thought you looking barely old enough to enter a brothel was the result of your agelessness, but you don’t just look young, do you?”
Interesting. I expected that spell to scan my memories, so she found out what I wanted her to know. I let her do that on purpose so she would know what my plan was and thus did not interfere. And this question felt like her confirmation that she got it and was going to play along. She may have been my past selves’ right hand for a good reason. “Awfully curious, aren’t you?”
“Sure, keep secrets from your most loyal subject, why wouldn’t you?” Trisha rolled her eyes. “Goddess, grant me patience.” She stopped, eyeing me for a moment. “If you needed to ask me for home’s coordinates, you haven’t been there yet. How did you know to come rescue me?”
I shook my head and walked toward her. “I’m here to pick something up from Lucielle’s vault.” With my hand, I motioned at the makeshift brewery. “Got anything to drink?”
“I suppose I can piss into a mug for you.”
“I’ll have beer.”
“Young and spoiled…” she sighed theatrically. “This way.” Trisha stomped forward, and I followed.
The others did too, Katherine’s face cutely red, others just looking confused. Trisha led us into a side hall, which was filled with marble-carved jars—formerly parts of the walls—that overflowed with beer.
“The last few brews were pretty good, so start from there,” she pointed at a jar at the far end and motioned toward the wall where she had a pile of stone-crafted mugs. They were her size though, so each had a capacity for about twenty gallons.
I picked one up, walked to the nearest jar, and sank the mug into the liquid.
“Did you listen to a word I said?” Trisha shouted. “I told you to start from over there.”
“I’m not falling for that,” I said, and drank. Since she didn’t have a proper filter, the beer had the consistency of a thick soup rather than a drink. The taste was pretty terrible too, but given how thirsty I was, it tasted as if Heaven opened its gates and an envoy of angels brought me the most delicious drink they had. I drank until I felt sick.
When I finished, I saw Amaranta, Zhang, and Joseph, were struggling to raise one mug from a jar, Katherine rolling her eyes at the side, Trisha viciously smirking. “Put some strength into it,” Trisha taunted, “Don’t tell me you can’t even lift a mug of beer?”
Amaranta’s face reddened, and lightning wings burst from her back. But the mug weighed easily a quarter of a ton and she focused her strengthening on speed, not strength.
“Oooh, and angel,” Trisha said mockingly. “The Church must be falling apart to give wings to someone like you.”
Ignoring that, I grabbed the edge of my mug, and broke off a fragment. I strengthened my hand and used my fingers to break off parts of the stone to make a semblance of a normal-sized bowl. I filled that with beer, walked to Katherine and offered it to her.
She smiled softly, accepting the bowl. She drank calmly in spite of how thirsty she had to be. “Could you help the others?” she asked, motioning at the other three who were struggling to raise the mug so they could drink without drenching themselves, Trisha smirking above them.
I returned to my mug and made three more bowls out of the stone. I already felt the beer kicking in, head becoming light. With a smile, I watched Amaranta, Zhang, and Joseph, lose the fight against the mug, having it drop down, spilling the beer over the floor.
“Goddess, you spill my bear?” Trisha shouted. “Do angels have no manners these days? I offer you the fruit of my hard labor to help you and you, without even thanking me, spill it over the floor? Not very angelic of you, is that?”
Amaranta’s face reddened to an even darker shade.
I walked to her, offering the bowl. She clearly wanted to refuse, but she took the bowl, as did Zhang and Joseph.
“So,” Trisha said, turning toward me. “What’s with the band of losers you’ve brought? Like really, you’ve got an old virgin, an incompetent angel, a weirdo, and a guy who can’t even lift a beer mug by himself. Is this really the best you could do?”
I looked up at her. “Shut up.”
Trisha glared at me, wordless.
Ah, the blessed silence. I turned and headed back into the hall. I may have gotten interrupted, but the story Lucielle had carved into the walls was just about to reach the part I wanted to know. Katherine followed me while the other three remained behind, gorging on the beer.
I continued from the carving of me proposing to Lucielle. The following imagery showed her preparing for the wedding, having silk brought all the way from China to weave her dress.
This section wasn’t particularly interesting, so I skipped ahead. The day before the wedding, the carvings turned darker, bright colors gone, and displayed her sneaking through a partly-open door.
The next painting was the largest, showing her standing at the edge of a bedroom, me lying naked in bed with space next to me, female underwear on the ground by the bed’s other side.
“Really, you cheated on her the day before your wedding?” Katherine asked accusingly.
I shrugged. I didn’t remember. It didn’t sound like something I would do, but well, I wasn’t the most loyal type either. I continued to the other carvings seeing the wedding cancelled, Lucielle drinking to drown her sorrows, wearing black for the first time, instead of the white she always donned.
By the paintings, this took months. Until one day, Lucielle put on her armor, robes, grabbed her staff, and headed out of her tower.
The next image was her holding my head by the hair, the body lying sideways in a pool of blood, an angel drawn flying away, as if he left m
y body.
The following image was the angel reaching for a sealed gate, Lucielle’s spell catching him by an ankle before his hand touched the Heaven’s Gate.
The following painting was Lucielle towering above the mutilated body of that angel, feathers scattered around. Aptly, the painting was named: ‘Lucifer’s Death’.
“She really killed both, the man and the angel,” Katherine whispered.
And the reason I didn’t have the memories of the man was because he was by the Gate of Swords. Way back in the past, when I ate the soulgem with Lucifer’s soul, it was the angel’s, not the man’s. I knew, intuitively, but having it confirmed still felt strange. One wasn’t supposed to learn of one’s own death. A chill clenched my insides since I was in the middle of giving Lucielle a good reason to kill me again. I verified my aether still filled the invisible owl flying above me.
It did, and my energy had spread thorough the complex’s defenses, distributed by the uplink from the owl. After a moment of focus, I verified my aether filled the information storage area, and also all the other areas, aside from the core.
That one had protections against hostile aether injections, so I couldn’t touch that. Pleased, I glanced over the hall. Katherine’s cheeks caught a cute, slightly pink hue as the alcohol worked its way to her head.
Amaranta, Zhang, and Joseph, were sipping from the bowls, all looking more relaxed. Only Trisha stood tense, glowering at me, mouth sealed shut.
“Are there any defenses on this floor other than the gate?” I asked the succubus.
She kept glaring at me, wordless.
Right. “I allow you to speak.”
“But not to criticize you, right?” Trisha asked back poisonously. “Because the young emperor can’t handle a bit of honest criticism, can he? He’s got too small an ego for that, doesn’t he?”
I rolled my eyes. “Answer my question.”
“No, there are no defenses on this level other than the gate. And I hope you’ve brought a royal descendant for that, because that stupid gate has a blood check.”
“I’ve got that covered.” I motioned my head into the next tunnel. “We need to move.”
“Goddess, tell me he isn’t impatient too,” Trisha almost shouted. “At least give me a moment to change. I’ve been here for six hundred years, so you can’t expect me to be ready to travel instantly.” She headed toward another exit carved into the wall.
“You have until I finish Lucielle’s tale,” I said, and headed backward.
Amaranta, Zhang, and Joseph, seemed entertained enough by the beer, but Katherine followed me.
“How much do you think there is about Lucielle before she found our faith?” Katherine asked conversationally.
“A lot,” I said. But I didn’t know how much, only that it led far, far, far into the past. “I once spoke with Gilgamesh and he told me a story from when he was a Sumerian prince. Back then, Lucielle was leading raiders pillaging his villages. And that was almost three thousand years before Christ.”
Katherine smiled nostalgically. “When I met you, you were a teenage boy who didn’t even know magic existed despite being able to use it. Now, five years later, you tell me how you chatted with a member of the Hand of God as casually as saying you had a sushi for dinner last night.”
I shrugged. “I never chose to become like this.”
“No, you didn’t. No one gets to choose his destiny.” She kept smiling pleasantly.
I returned the smile. “You forgot to say you weren’t impressed.”
“Who said I wasn’t?”
Was she flirting with me? That thought nearly froze me in my tracks. I mean, I was never subtle about liking her, but aside from that one kiss over a year ago, followed by a slap, she never responded in kind. “Be careful not to end up in a penitence cell for impure thoughts.”
“If I do, you’ll have to bring me food …” her words trailed off as she stared at the wall. We reached the point before Lucielle travelled the African continent. By the imagery, she traveled both American continents, Australia, Asia, everywhere. The pictures showed Lucielle crossing the entire world over a span of five hundred years.
At the start of this journey was a carving of an enormous, ancient city ravaged by war and famine, where Lucielle stood atop the highest tower, wearing a crown. The title read ‘The Fall of Babylon.’ Lucielle’s city fell, so she went to travel the world.
But this was far from the story’s beginning. The paintings led through a series of long tunnels and wide halls, showing over two thousand more years of Lucielle conquering cities, leading armies, ruling, being dethroned only to patch together another raiding horde to start over.
From one battle to another, all the way to year three thousand BC. There, the imagery showed men digging into an ice cave, finding death in the cavern bellow, their bodies reduced to mere husks. The first image of these halls was that of Lucielle, with a pair of horns and a tail, crawling out of a crystal coffin. The text read, ‘After 66 million years, I woke up into a new world, a world without dragons.’
I exchanged a glance with Katherine. “Did you know she wasn’t a human?” she asked timidly.
“No.” Humans as we know them count their origin some forty to eighty thousand years into the past, not millions of years. The story ended here, clearly continuing beyond the next set of gates. “Do you think she once rode on a T-Rex?”
“Definitely.”
The image made me smile. We finished the circular route, walking through a human-sized tunnel, and thus reached the gate in the next wide hall. This one differed from the others, a massive gate with a door in the bottom center. Text in light read:
‘Gate of Kings
Intruders who passed this gate: 242’
“Let’s gather the others,” I said and headed into the opposite tunnel.
We crossed another wheat field, passed through another human-sized tunnel, and returned to Trisha’s brewery. She was just finishing arranging her clothes. Instead of the light dress, she wore thick, steel plates covered by a robe, everything black, with dark red runes sewn into the cloth. The other three members of our team were chatting by the brewery, bowls in hand. By the relaxed postures and heated cheeks, they were drunk.
Katherine sighed. “I leave her out of sight for one second and she gets drunk.”
“Better than being unconscious,” I said jokingly.
“No,” Katherine snapped. “Not by a long shot.”
I glanced at Trisha, motioning with my head at Amaranta, Zhang, and Joseph. Trisha grabbed her staff and slammed the butt into the floor.
The hit echoed through the hall, making everyone look at her.
“His Majesty feels too lazy to say so himself, but we’re heading out,” she said and headed toward me and Katherine.
The other three finished their bowls and followed. I became curious how Trisha would pass through the standard-size tunnel. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine her crawling, though the image amused me.
As if sensing my thought, mid-walk, Trisha raised her staff, whispered something in Infernal, and black-red energy swirled around her. A mist burst from her, and she walked out human-sized, except that she had no sign of being a demon. The armor, robes, and staff were the same, just smaller, but she had a perfectly human, strikingly attractive face, rich black hair laced with crimson strings. No tail, no scales, just two horns snaking from her forehead. “What you’re all staring at?” she asked mockingly. “Yes, you now finally have an attractive woman on the team, but that’s nothing to fuss about.”
Katherine’s and Amaranta’s cheeks flushed at the jab.
They had to fall for every provocation, didn’t they? I couldn’t even blame Trisha for poking them. “Spare us the crap,” I said, and turned into the tunnel.
Everyone else followed me to the gate. We stopped before the human-sized door at the bottom of the massive gate. In the middle of the door was a hand-shaped carving, beneath which a spike protruded from the door.
&nbs
p; “For everyone too stupid to realize,” Trisha said mockingly, “You need to scratch yourself with the spike, put the blood on the palm, and press on the carving in the middle. If you pass the check, you can undertake the gate’s trial.”
Obviously, but I lacked the energy to interrupt her. Katherine gulped dryly, stepped to the door, and removed one gauntlet. She pricked her palm on the spike, drawing a drop of blood, and then pressed her hand against the door.
The door disappeared, a cloud of darkness reached out, wreathed her, sucked her in, and the door disappeared.
Katherine 2
WHEN THE DARKNESS FADED, Katherine sat on a throne. The throne room stretched far, courtiers and guards buzzing around. They arranged flowers on tables, dusted off chairs, and, led by their captain, the royal guard was preparing to take its positions.
Katherine relaxed on the throne, comfortable in the heavy gown, the golden circle reassuring atop her head. She sat alone on a large throne, no sign of any king, or a special seat for an archbishop.
She watched the preparations, glimpsing a girl in early teens peeking through the door sideways from the throne.
Katherine granted the girl a short smile.
The girl rushed in, holding her skirt’s hem to run, eyes tearing up. The guards ignored her, so this was not unexpected. Still, Katherine had no idea who that was, so she sat calmly.
Almost crying, the girl threw herself at Katherine’s chest, shouting, “Mom,” among soft sobs.
The word hit Katherine like a spear. She kept delaying having children, but as she was running out of time to have them, she thought about it more and more. But the thought of this sweet girl being her daughter made her speechless. Gently, Katherine wrapped her arms around the girl’s back, letting her sob. “It’ll be alright now,” she whispered.
The girl wept for a moment. And then she whispered back, pleading, “I don’t want to get married.”
