The Cost

by R. W. Holmes

  “So someone decided it would be a good idea to build a super tall castle in the middle of city, and it's only for storage?” queried Zinerva. “That sounds idiotic.”

  “That's because you don't know how much people pay for that space” replied Gael. “Hundreds of floors. Thousands of dollars a year per floor. This building basically prints money for the owner.”

  “And who's the owner?” asked Zinerva.

  Gael paused and looked to Zinerva thoughtfully, before reaching down to his phone and giving it a look. “Zinerva, you might be a genius” he said as looked up the address.

  “No, I'm definitely a genius” said Zinerva. “I have an IQ of one-forty-eight.”

  “But what you didn't consider...” Gael began as he turned his phone towards Zinerva, “Is that this building is owned by Olm Industries.”

  Zinerva smiled. “Cool,” she said, “but I think that's just an interesting fact at this point.”

  “It's not...” said Gael. “Olm Industries got into a fight with several cities this past hundred years because they have a habit of barring inspectors from certain floors. This Eiffel building is on the list, and now we get to find out what Olm Industries doesn't want anyone to see on the thirty-seventh floor.”

  “Awesome” Zinerva said as she began taking off her clothes.

  “What are you doing?” Gael asked confusedly.

  “It's a long walk” Zinerva replied as she finished undressing. “Make sure you bring my clothes up for when you call me back.”

  Gael rolled his eyes as Zinerva grabbed herself by the skull and twisted sharply. With a crack, and the following fizzling of her body burning away, he was left with nothing but a pile of clothes for company.

  “Oh my goodness...” he muttered as he scooped up Zinerva's clothes. “There's actually underwear here. Zinerva! Who taught you propriety?”

  As Gael began the arduous task of ascending the skyscraper, Kiki was finishing her parking job in a nearby parking garage instead of on the sidewalk, like a normal person. By the time she and the others finally got to warehouse skyscraper, Gael was already approaching the thirty-seventh floor.

  “Oh come on...” Debra groaned as she and the others passed the police barrier that had been erected around her rental car. “They're going to be calling me about that in a few minutes.”

  “Look on the bright side” Artemis said as he gestured toward the maintenance stairwell on the building's leftmost corner. “They haven't noticed that door is open yet.”

  Father Jacobs and Sauriel exchanged a pair of concerned looks.

  “More breaking and entering” groaned Sauriel.

  “Not true” Kiki chimed in as she took hold of the priest's and the angel's hands. “We're just 'entering'. Gael and Zinerva, they're the ones who broke in. At this point, it's the building owner's fault for not putting an 'authorized personnel only' sign up.”

  “It is best if we all remember where we are and what we're doing” Grim said as he took up the rear of the group and followed them into the stairwell. “These are R'lyehans. The majority of them have long since sold their humanity away, so don't treat them like humans. Humanitarianism is something they neither understand nor seek to return.”

  “If that was hard to understand, remember that Gael is probably ordering his demon to burn these people alive” said Artemis. “What Grim is trying to help you understand is that it's basically a certainty that every one of them deserves it.”

  Up above, a freshly re-summoned Zinerva had just finished putting her clothes back on.

  “Underwear” said Gael. “Really? Not even slutty underwear, just normal underwear. You really are losing your edge, aren't you?”

  “Are you making fun of me?” asked Zinerva. “Or are you happy I'm growing more civilized?”

  “Yes” Gael said reassuringly, and earning a strange look from Zinerva for it. “Also, I don't think we needed to worry about 'figuring' out the right floor.”

  “What? Why?” Zinerva asked as she turned to face the door.

  There wasn't one. Instead, there was a cold, hard, steel wall where the door to the thirty-seventh floor should have been.

  “I have to burn through this, don't I?” she asked with a grimace.

  “Yes” said Gael. “I was going to tell you before you put your clothes on, but I really needed to give you shit for the underwear.”

  “You're an ass” said Zinerva. “And you know what? I don't have any money, so you can pay for my new clothes.”

  “Or you could just not set them on fire” said Gael. “Have you tried that, Zinerva?”

  “Oh my gosh, that's ridiculous” Zinerva said as she casually called on the Nine Circles of Hell and each of their unique brands of all-consuming flame. “See, it just...”

  Zinerva looked at her clothes in bewilderment, and found even with fire pouring out of her eyes, her mouth, her skin alight, and a crown of flames sitting atop her head, they were completely unharmed purely because she wanted them to be.

  Gael stared at Zinerva and nodded knowingly. “You managed not to burn down the church way back when” he said with a smirk. “I had a feeling 'intent' affected it somehow.”

  “Right, well... you might wanna stand back” Zinerva said as she took aim at the wall. “Because as long as I'm trying new things, I'm going to see how high these fires actually go.”

  Gael nodded and wisely went halfway down the last stairwell and waited. He realized very quickly that he should have gone quite a bit further down, for he, and everyone within viewing distance of the maintenance stairwell going up the side of the skyscraper, saw the brilliant, multicolored explosion of light that erupted from where Zinerva had been standing a moment ago.

  It lasted for about eight seconds, and another three before Gael's eyes could adjust. A hole, as hoped, had been burned straight through the six inches of steel comprising the building's wall. It shone bright before him, red hot and molten at the edges, but was otherwise stable in a vaguely ovular shape.

  When he went up to look for Zinerva, he found her passed out on the floor.

  “Hey” Gael said as he lightly slapped her cheek. “Oh, holy shit! That's hot!”

  Zinerva stirred, her face flushed and her brow dripping with sweat. “Oh, good...” she said groggily. “I, uh, I pass out when I overheat.”

  “Yeah...” Gael said as he carefully scooped Zinerva up into his arms.

  “What are you doing?” asked Zinerva.

  Gael steeled himself and charged at the hole Zinerva had made, before leaping through the gaping wound of molten steel and landing within the thirty-seventh floor.

  “Well, the good news is this building is huge and they weren't over here” Gael said as he looked around them. “The bad news is, this place is barren and it's huge. I have no idea where to go.”

  “Well I'm fine now” Zinerva said as she wiggled free from Gael's grip. “Let's just take it slow and-,”

  A shrill, horrific scream pierced the air and sent Gael and Zinerva crouching low out of primal fear. The scream wasn't human, but it wasn't an animal's either. It was too remarkably close to human for that. Something horrible was in the area, and as a second scream sounded, they realized it was drawing closer.

  “Nightmare fuel” Gael rasped angrily. “It can't just be a hulking monster, no, it has to sound scary too.”

  “I got this” Zinerva said as she reared her head back. “Anger and Violence are good for this sort of thing.”

  Twin jets of yellow and purple flame erupted from Zinerva's mouth and encircled one another. They swirled about Gael and Zinerva, leaping higher and higher as they made their rounds, before finally become a constant, roaring wall of a blaze that threatened anything that dare go near them.

  “They don't really spread, you know?” Zinerva chatted casually. “They just destroy everything in their way, which makes them really effective with a few boundaries.”

  The monstrous screaming grew louder as it approached, and the sound of claws
on stone raked through the air. Then, it came to a screeching halt. A rasping noise filled the air, and Gael and Zinerva suddenly realized that the thing had already somehow crept around behind them. Slowly, they turned to face it.

  Before them stood a mottled, rasping monster nearly seven feet tall and standing on hind legs like a kangaroo's. Any similarities to something familiar ended there, starting with the bizarre hooves at the end of those very same legs. Its head was too large for its body, and filled with crooked, uneven teeth. The other features, grossly discolored as they were, were vaguely humanoid in structure, except that the creature lacked a nose, and its head sloped back directly over the eyes, giving it a distinct lack of a forehead.

  “Kill it” Gael said quickly.

  Zinerva nodded and hurled a gout of deep, blood red flame from her right hand at it, and the creature cried out as it was silenced forever in an instant.

  “There's one problem with that” said Zinerva.

  “What?” asked Gael, before seeing another dozen of the same creatures march out from the shadows in the distance. “Oh.”

  “No, not that” said Zinerva. “These things don't have any claws. The thing scratching the place up definitely had-,”

  Zinerva stopped as she felt a presence looming behind her, and prompting both Gael and herself to turn around. There, they saw the source of the noise from earlier. The beast itself now before them was impossibly mute, as if sound itself were too afraid to go near such a thing, but one of the other kangaroo-legged creatures lay half-eaten and limp in the creature's alien maw.

  Rows of teeth ran parallel to one another, but did so vertically. The creature's eyes lay on either side of its 'jaws', each of which ran all the way down to the base of its neck in one great, gaping chasm of a mouth. What's more, the horrific visage of the walking nightmare's head stood upon a muscular, haired frame one would imagine for a yeti. It was nearly eighteen feet tall, had to hunch despite high ceilings, and was so heavy with muscle mass that it would have been twice as wide as Gael even if they were the same height.

  Gael and Zinerva took a fearful step back as the monster before them swallowed its prey in a single, soundless gulp.

  “Anger and Violence aren't going to stop that thing” Zinerva whispered in horror.

  “I have an idea” Gael whispered back shakily. “But you're not going to like it.”

  Zinerva felt her heart drop as she looked up at her summoner and asked, “What do I have to do?”

  “Turn yourself into a bomb” Gael said as reached down and picked her up.

  “Oh my God” Zinerva exclaimed in horror. “Gael, you enormous pile of shit, I'm going to have nightmares for-,”

  Gael hurled Zinerva forward, cutting her cries of indignity short, and landing her square in the ever-gaping maw of the great, furry monster before them. There was no sound as Zinerva vanished into it, but the ear-shattering explosion that followed deafened Gael and showered him in a well-deserved coating of beast guts.

  With Zinerva gone, though, the wall of fire around Gael faded, and the other monstrous creatures lurking just behind him were no longer pinned down by fear or a ring of impassable flames.

  They dove forward, but caught only air as Gael vanished across the vast swaths of space and otherwise to recover his imp. It just so happened that, at that moment when both were missing, Gael and Zinerva's friends finally reached the thirty-seventh floor.

  For Artemis, Kiki, Debra, Grim, Father Jacobs, and Sauriel though... they merely came upon a molten hole in the wall that framed a scene of charred devastation the likes of which were woefully reminiscent of Glen and Petyr. Except that this time, a dozen kangaroo-legged, corpulent monstrosities scrambled violently over one another in the search for the prey that had just gotten away, and an explosion that shook the maintenance stairwell had only just preceded their coming.

  “A-Ah...” Father Jacobs stuttered. “Sauriel, I think-,”

  Sauriel drew his sword, and his brilliantly gleaming armor and luminescent, pearly white wings manifested over his form. Before he could act though, Artemis and Grim charged forward and laid two of the creatures low with the tremendous power of their fists alone.

  Kiki ballooned up to a much larger size as well, but remained steadfast at Debra and Father Jacobs's side.

  “Debra” Kiki boomed. “You have a gun, right?”

  “Oh yes” Debra said wickedly as she drew not one, not two, but four handguns from various places on her person. “And I always bring extra.”

  Father Jacobs nearly cried out in surprise as Debra thrust one of the pistols into his hand.

  “There's extra ammo in my purse” Debra added as she dropped her purse at her feet. “And don't be shy, I've brought more than five-hundred extra rounds with me.”

  “Five hundred!?” Jacobs exclaimed incredulously. “In your purse? Where do you keep your money?”

  “My sock, of course!” Debra replied as she shot one of the creatures sneaking up on Artemis through the head.

  Sauriel leaped into the fray then, his sword illuminating the area as it hewed through the foul creatures' forms two or three at a time. In short order, the entire gang was reduced to a sickly, but satisfyingly defeated mass of dead monsters.

  Then, as if on cue, Gael returned with Zinerva in tow, and the two landed directly atop the corpses with a dull, wet, splat.

  “Hey guys!” Gael said with a grin. “Glad you could make it. Thanks for cleaning up the little ones.”

  “The little ones?” Kiki queried in surprise. “What were the big ones like?”

  “The big one was giant, like a polar bear that eats normal sized polar bears” replied Zinerva. “And Gael fed me to it.”

  “You're functionally immortal, and it could catch the little ones” explained Gael. “Which were fast, by the way.”

  “Yeah, but now I'm naked again!” snapped Zinerva. “I have dignity now, okay? Dignified people wear clothes.”

  “The situation has been handled” said Artemis, intent on keeping the group focused. “Now; Gael, Zinerva; do us all a favor and agree that we should all stick together.”

  A deep, horrific, and yet familiar-sounding cry echoed out from somewhere else in the unexplored, labyrinthine warehouse before Gael and the others.

  “Yeah, that sounds good” Gael replied with a weak smile. “It's probably best if I'm not alone for the next fifteen minutes regardless. My hearing is a little shot from the explosion...”

  Chapter 19

  Olmstead's Plans

  The thirty-seventh floor of Olm Industries' Eiffel-based skyscraper warehouse was, like every other floor, approximately forty acres in size. Of these forty acres, thirty-eight were used to house a small, simple ecosystem of foul creatures the R'lyehans kept around for protection, and a mere two were used by actual R'lyehans.

  Far across the building from where Gael and the others were now making their way, these two acres were sealed behind a great metal wall with a single, solitary, retina-scan locked vault door. Hallways, lit by harsh fluorescent lights, wove throughout the hidden facility to form a labyrinthine network of well-sealed rooms, each of which housed its own dark secret. It was at the very center of the facility though, where security was at its tightest, that the Four-Seal Scroll had been taken...

  “Doctor.”

  Doctor Combs looked away from the large, reinforced glass window separating his observation room from the room that now housed the scroll.

  “What is it?” he asked one of the facility's many armed guards.

  “There's been a disturbance on the far side of the building” said the guard. “A small group is making their way here, and the menagerie isn't slowing them down much.”

  Doctor Combs looked back to the observation window and donned a sly, knowing grin. “That is fine” he said plainly. “It's already too late.”

  Within the observation chamber, a large, arm-like device descended from the ceiling and held its position ominously over the Four-Seal Scroll. At its
end was a nozzle, fitted with a very particular lens, which channeled a single red laser over one of the scroll's four seals.

  It was nearly cut through already.

  “It took a long time to figure out which one was 'first'” said Combs. “But my ideas on breaking it were correct, and the first seal is almost broken. The rest will fall like dominoes immediately afterward.

  Travel through the thirty-seventh floor had grown disarmingly ease for the group. Gael and Zinerva's raw confidence as they led the way seemed to impose a degree of caution in the monstrous menagerie they'd stumbled into, and the trail of bodies they left only reinforced that. Debra, Grim, Father Jacobs, and Sauriel did their best to keep the trail going strong by picking off those daring few ghasts that dared venture too close, and then subsequently feeding them to the otherwise oblivious gugs who constantly preyed upon the ghasts.

  Kiki and Artemis had set their sights on something else, though.

  “So...” Kiki started, her form now small once more and perched on Artemis's shoulder. “There's a bunch of R'lyehans here, right?”

  “There should be” confirmed Artemis.

  “And yet all of this crazy stuff is here too” replied Kiki. “And none of it is really under control.”

  “It seems that way, yes” said Artemis.

  “So how did they kill Petyr with any of it?” Kiki challenged. “They must be able to control them somehow.”

  “The bigger ones are leaving us alone now that Sauriel and Grim are leaving them a fresh trail of bodies” Artemis replied with a shrug. “Perhaps-,”

  Kiki gripped Artemis tight as a one of the smaller, kangaroo-legged ghasts ran up to them and caught a mouthful of goat demon fist for its efforts. It collapsed, and the sickening crunch of Artemis's cloven hoof splitting the monster's skull echoed throughout the warehouse.

  “Perhaps the bigger ones are more malleable than we realize” Artemis continued. “If you could convince one to stand obediently by your side, the smaller ones would stay away like they're learning to now.”