by C L Walker
He stood, rising despite me being on top of him, rising as though I wasn’t there. I fell to the ground and dragged myself backward as he stood still, watching me. His face healed quickly and when he raised his hand the sword reappeared in it.
“Your tattoos,” he said. “They are weak. They are all designed for offense. Mine are smarter.”
“Congratulations,” I said, still backing away and hoping I ran into another gun. The wound in my leg slowly closed up; apparently the tattoos saw it as more important than working on the special shield.
“See, the more you hurt me the more I am empowered. And when I need to give them more life-force I can use my own.”
He was a hollow man. I had felt the tattoos taking from my soul before, but he had far more power to give and it would actually be useful.
I was done. I couldn’t see a way to win. I got up anyway; giving up wasn’t going to help me beat him.
“I’m guessing you aren’t bound to anything either, are you?”
He shook his head, flashing the perfect teeth I had just knocked out of his mouth.
“Some people get all the luck,” I said. The hall was still filled with the souls who had lived in this heaven for thousands of years. They encircled us, lining up before the walls and filling the galleria above us. They all had weapons and could have joined in, could have ensured I didn’t win.
But they didn’t have to and Erindis knew that. They were there as a show of unnecessary force. She could order me to stand down at any time and I’d have to. She could order me to do anything, but instead she was going to let Peter hurt me, just to prove a point.
He was watching me, giving me a moment to contemplate my defeat. He was sadistic; a very non-angelic way to be.
The tattoos on my skin were semi-autonomous, acting and reacting on their own. I could give them orders as long as they agreed with them. But the hollow men – and Erindis, presumably – wouldn’t have that. They didn’t have enough markings for the web that made mine the way it was work. They had to be triggering it manually, consciously.
It was a slight advantage. Short of getting a massive boost to the power I had taken I wasn’t going to overpower Peter, but I could perhaps confuse him, distract him as much as I could. If he had to focus in a hundred different directions I might be able to score some hits.
It wouldn’t matter, ultimately. Erindis was still there and she still had the others. But I wasn’t going to give up.
I turned and ran from the hollow man, sprinting for the local souls lined up on the edge of the hall. They shifted back and forth, nervous, but they didn’t move. This was a mistake.
I smashed into one, crushing him against the wall and sending the people on either side wheeling away. As his body fell to the ground I took his sword and his gun. I had weapons.
I stepped away from the wall and found Peter hot on my heels. He ran in, his sword held high and ready to strike. I had no illusions that the blade I’d taken from the local could stand up to his angelic weapon, but it might give me a decoy for him to focus on.
He swiped at me and I dodged; for all his angelic power he was moving like a mortal, putting none of that power into what he was doing. I raised the gun and fired at his leg, then his body, his heart, and then emptied all but one bullet, shooting for his face. I attacked with the sword immediately after, aiming at his legs and putting my full strength behind it.
He didn’t bother reacting to the bullets to his lower torso but his tattoos raised a shield over his heart and he raised his hands to ward off the bullets to his face.
It distracted him enough, distracted his tattoos enough. The bullets I’d fired at his leg and body hit him, but he didn’t bleed or react in anyway. When the blade I’d stolen swept through at knee-height he didn’t have time to react.
I cut the bottom of his right leg off cleanly. The blade got stuck in the thigh bone of his left leg, but I’d severed all the muscles. He went down, a scream forcing its way from his lips.
He healed slowly, at the speed of a hollow man, but I knew he could do better. I kicked his sword away and stood over him, pointing my own stolen, bloody weapon at him.
He touched one of the tattoos and the healing accelerated. It glowed and the wound glowed in concert, a bloody red that almost covered up the muscles and tendons re-growing.
I stabbed him in the stomach and his hands jumped to focus on that, so I used my last bullet and shot him in the face.
He stopped healing. He stopped fighting, moving, breathing.
I dropped everything and started walking to the dais, and my beautiful, sadistic, evil wife. She wasn’t pleased; the look on her face told me that my future held a lot of pain. I’d taken down her greatest champion and she was pissed off.
“You didn’t have to send him to die,” I said. I was covered in blood, some of it was mine, and I ached in a dozen places because the tattoos were still busy working on the shield and hadn’t healed me properly, but I had won and I felt great.
“I think your happiness is a bit premature,” she said. She pointed to the hall behind me.
I turned, expecting to see the local souls gathered to fight, but it was Peter. He was up and walking toward me, his sword up and a look of hatred on his face.
“Why won’t you die?” I said. The tattoos were ready with their shield, and it was strong enough that I could use in a limited offensive capacity as well. This fight was over, no matter how many times he got up.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
He ran at me and I kept still. I watched his sword slice through the air and didn’t make a move until the last moment.
The tattoos erected the shield, capturing his blade in their webs of energy and snatching it from his hand as I threw everything I had left into a strike at his face. I punched him hard enough to snap his vertebrae and crack his skull. His blood flowed around my hand for a moment, powering me, and then he was flying through the air, then tumbling on the ground, then still.
I left the sword captured in the web and turned to face Erindis.
“I’m tired, woman,” I said. “I don’t want to fight you, or your pet fallen angels. I want to go home. You keep your little kingdom and have fun, but give me my people and let me leave.”
“I can order you to stand down,” she said.
“And I can twist your words until they mean what I want them to mean. Give this up.”
She was smiling too much, still too sure of herself. I glanced over my shoulder and Peter was there. He’d approached silently and I’d been too busy threatening Erindis to notice.
A normal blade tore through my back and out my chest. He snatched his sword from the energy web as the tattoos went to work healing me. He moved quickly, though, slicing a neat line across my back.
The pain drove me to my knees, but I would have fallen anyway. I was done.
“You are an adequate fighter,” Erindis said as she descended from the dais to face me. “And you are even a good strategist. But I am a god in the making and Peter is my angel.”
I forced myself to watch her, and not to look at the dais behind her. Dave was there, standing where she had been with my friends around him.
“I’m going to tear you apart,” she continued. “I’m going to take pieces from you until there is barely anything left. And when I bring about the end of days and I destroy the world you’ve grown so fond of, I will let you watch.”
“So thoughtful,” I muttered.
“And then, only then, dear husband, will I let you die.”
Hollow men got weaker as time passed. When I’d first faced them they’d almost been at full strength, giving me a run for my money. But each time I faced them they were weaker. They lost power the longer they were disconnected from their heaven, though Peter seemed to have found a way around that with the tattoos.
Dave had fallen recently, so recently that he was still practically an angel, even if he couldn’t see the future anymore. Dave was powerful enough to crush me
no matter how much of his power I stole. Dave was the ally I needed, and I didn’t know what had convinced him to return but I could have cried watching him appear and disappear with Bec, Roman, and Buddy.
“Your prisoners are gone,” I said. I smiled through the blood in my mouth. She turned back from checking the dais and snarled at me.
“What’s going on here?” she said.
“I’ve got my own pet angel, my love.”
Dave appeared beside me and I had a moment, a heartbeat, to see her face twist into one of inhuman rage, and then we were gone.
Chapter 18
I had lost the fight, and I had to keep reminding myself of that. I had to remember that I had thrown my all into it and I had lost anyway.
Not that looking around the bedraggled group could have given me any illusions. As we made our way slowly back to earth I couldn’t help wondering if my friends would ever be the same again.
We stopped beside a raging river in a heaven covered in jungle. Everyone needed a rest, myself included; my wounds were healed but there was a heaviness on my chest I couldn’t shake. It was fear, a bone-deep dread that threatened to consume me.
“Is this how you people always feel?” Bec snapped randomly. She glared at the group, daring us to speak.
Her emotions were lessoning as we moved away from the heaven Erindis had taken over. Whatever magic had been used to give them to her seemed to need constant reinforcement, which was a blessing. I’d always thought the way Bec behaved was strange, but now I found I didn’t like who she was when she felt things the way others did.
She washed herself in the shallows of the river, trying to hide her nakedness from us. Her hair was longer than I remembered, dirty blonde and touching her shoulders. She was covered in grime and the fresh clothes Dave had given her needed washing as soon as they touched her skin.
Roman, also dressed in new clothes, was in control, but it was somehow worse. He watched the trees for an attack that wasn’t there, mumbling to himself constantly.
“I’m so sorry,” he said as we got up to leave. “I couldn’t deny her.”
“I know,” I said.
“She told me to do it and I did. I don’t think it was magic.”
It had been fear, and he’d reacted the way anyone would have. She’d forced him to help her apply Ohm’s blood and etch tattoos into her skin and that of her angels. Seeing what that meant during my fight in the throne room had rattled him, and I hoped all he needed was time to process it.
Buddy was quiet, angry. He scowled at everyone and tried to keep his distance. He was coming with, traveling through the heavens and returning to earth, but I didn’t think he wanted to. I thought he wanted to hide under a rock and never come out.
We moved on, walking quickly through heaven after heaven, stopping only when Bec and Roman couldn’t go any further.
We stopped in a heaven with an endless field of stone fountains. They shot water into the sky and the combined sound of a million of them was like a waterfall surrounding us. It was nice, blocking out the world and washing over my thoughts.
Dave approached me, sitting on the grass beside me. “I’m sorry I ran,” he said, picking at the grass before him.
“You came back,” I replied. “That’s all that matters.”
“I tried to get my brothers to help you, but they wouldn’t talk to me.” He sighed. “Until I fell, I don’t think I would have either.”
“What happens to the future they saw, before you became a hollow man?”
“Hollow man,” he said, running the words over in his head and trying to get used them. For the angels it was an insult, one they applied to themselves when they left their posts and fell. He didn’t like it, but it was what he’d call himself soon enough.
“Dave,” I said, jarring him from his reverie.
“I don’t know. None of my brothers has ever fallen.”
When he thought of his heaven he was sad, but the rest of the time he seemed excited. He behaved the way Buddy had some of the time, curious about the world around him even if he was afraid of it.
We arrive in a plains heaven. The horizon was nearby in the small realm and we could see for miles. The gate was ten minutes away and as I pointed us in the right direction an angel approached.
Dave’s reaction was instant; he dropped to his knees, bowing to the creature without thinking. Buddy had no such reaction, and turned away so he didn’t have to see the creature.
Bec and Roman were intrigued, but not as much as I was.
She was a beautiful woman with long, flowing hair the color of seaweed. She smiled as she offered us a basket.
I took it and found food and drink within. She nodded to me, still not speaking. When I nodded back she vanished.
This happened every few heavens. Angels would appear with food or clothing, or some strange artifact from their realm. In one I received a bulb of sweet nectar that looked like it had been plucked from a tree. Drinking it finally healed the last of my aches and even managed to lighten the weight on my chest a little.
In another I was given a dagger. It was old and rusted but I could feel the power flowing through it. The tattoos reacted, trying to syphon some off for themselves, but they weren’t able.
In another Bec was given a shawl that was difficult to look at. It seemed to move in more directions than I could see, like more of it existed in another world and we were only seeing the tip. She wrapped it around her shoulders and thanked the silent man who’d brought it. He nodded and vanished.
Roman got a book, but when he opened it he found it empty. He thanked the gryphon that had delivered it and the beast vanished.
Buddy and Dave received no gifts, and the angels never looked at them.
We stood in the ruins of a grand civilization when an angel appeared emptyhanded. He stopped a few feet from me.
“Agmundr,” he said.
He was as tall as I was but looked like he was starving. I could see almost every bone in his body through the thin layer of skin covering his remaining flesh. He seemed happy enough, though.
“Angel.”
“I am here to tell you some things you need to know. Can I stay?”
I nodded and the angel took a seat on the ground. I followed suit and the others moved away. Bec glared at the angel and stomped off.
“The things you’ve done so far have changed our futures,” he said. His voice was melodic, like an instrument made to utter words. “They have changed things for you as well. I cannot see if you will win, as you know. But I can tell you that the woman Erindis is coming this way. You will be gone when she passes through.”
“How many does she have with her?”
“A host of our fallen brethren. They are marked, as you are. They follow her commands and I try to speak to them, but they cut me down.”
“They don’t have the strength to do that,” I said.
“And yet they do it anyway. Something is changing. She is changing it. I cannot see beyond that moment so I don’t know the nature of the change.”
I thought about it and the angel was happy to wait for me. I knew what Erindis was trying to do and I knew she could do it. She wouldn’t be as sure of herself if she couldn’t, and she had all the tools she needed to pull it off.
If she was getting close to becoming an elder god then her whims could shape the universe. If she wanted her people to be capable of killing angels then they would be, and she might not even notice.
“Come with us,” I said to the angel. “Don’t stay here. She doesn’t care about the people here and she’ll move on quickly. You can return when I’m done with her.”
“You know I can’t do that,” he said, looking at me like I was an idiot. “This is simply what I’m supposed to tell you. I wasn’t looking for you to try and make me fall.”
“You can, and you know it. And there’s nothing keeping you from coming back except stubbornness. Fall, join me, and when we’re done you can come back.”
“
I…I…”
Don’t do it, I thought. Don’t ruin another life.
But I’d already done it and I watched as the light in him died.
“The world is so small,” he said softly. “So very small.”
We moved on.
An angel in another heaven sat opposite me and refused to look at Dave, Buddy, or the new hollow man. Dave and the new guy both bowed low, unable to look at the angel’s face.
“When she passes through here she destroys it all,” the angel said. He appeared as a peasant, a field worker or other manual laborer. The heaven was a farming one, and the people walking around us were all laughing and chatting.
“Then fight back,” I said. “Get help. Mount a defense.”
“I don’t do that,” the angel said. I thought I detected a hint of sorrow in his voice. “I hide, afraid as the world is set ablaze. She takes the heartstone but makes sure she leaves no one here alive.”
“Why do that here and nowhere else?” I said.
“She is angry that you are changing things. Somehow she knows you caused my brother to fall.”
I looked over at the emaciated angel. He looked up at me in return, fear in his red eyes.
“Can it be stopped?” I said.
“No, or I wouldn’t see it. This world is destroyed and then detached, released to drift in the void.” The angel stared at the grass he was sitting on, his face a mask of anguish. “I go crazy in my loneliness. I create a false vision of this world. Scarecrows and statues in place of people. I talk to them as though they were real until even that isn’t enough. And then I kill myself.”
“Then leave. Take your people and move them one heaven away and you can all live.”
“But that won’t be their heaven, and I would have to fall. I will not fall.”
“Then you’re choosing to die.” I stood and stepped back. I wanted to get away from the creature as quickly as I could. It was weak and it was to blame for what was coming. “You’re using your free will to decide that these people should die.”
I…can’t.”
But it was enough for him to deny it. He’d broken from whatever he was meant to say. His light died.
