The light from the scissors brightens the room, bouncing off red, wet brick, and trembling through the formaldehyde, ethanol, and methanol solutions. Brilliant blue flashes across the surface, like an electric charge, and every eye turns, every finger points, every submerged ear and floating brain matter turns to focus upon her.
We are a many. We are a waiting. We are a hunger. We are a watching.
Creature:
To be awoken is an experience akin to no others. To see, however dimly, after thousands of years blind and hungry. To hear. To sense. To know. We tremble and cry out, lips making no noises, choking and drowning and screaming at once. At first, we are jubilant, in spite of the pain—or perhaps because of it, for pain means life. But we realize, quickly, that in this moment of pain and awakening is confusion. Broken. Not as promised.
We are further shattered. We are fragmented. Some of us see—some of us hear—but none of us can do both. When once we suffered and dwindled as one, now we each remember and splinter. Our names come back to mind, our knowledge, but not complete. Uriel. Azazel. Samyaza. Baraquel. Kokabiel. More.
And my name. My name. I want to speak it. But all I am is an eye. The eye of a goat. The light from the metal of that ancient sword—no longer a sword, and much diminished—makes my existence a misery. I cannot look away from the cruelly misshapen Daughter of Nephilim, and she stares back at me stupidly. The voices of the other Fallen pulse around me, filling the water in which I’m suspended. They are mad, trembling. Their fury will ruin this for all of us.
I panic. I am nothing but an eye. A mad, wide-seeing eye, slowly losing the only chance I have had in an eternity to breathe the air again. I do not want destruction and death. I do not want revenge. I want escape.
I know what I must do.
Maker:
Julian falls to her knees, and one cracks and shatters against the white tile. But the numbness has moved through her body so completely that she merely notes the sickening snap of cartilage, distantly. One moment her body is filled with a vibrating, orgasmic pleasure, and the next she is crawling toward a jar in the middle of her collection. She holds up the scissors and looks through the holes, as if they were another pair of spectacles. And indeed, she does see better through them. She notices that each of her specimens, now following her every breath and movement, glow different shades. Some are the red of fresh blood; others shimmer silver and gold, tendrils of light refracting across the glass surfaces. Every color in the spectrum.
Dazzled, Julian stares for time out of mind until she notices one different than the other. One of her favorite specimens. Not human, this one, and a rarity for that. It is the only specimen she killed with her own hands. Perhaps that is why she glances at it longer than the others, why she notices the blue hue of the dappled light. It is the only one unchanged by the view through the scissors.
She leans forward. She raises her fingers, scraped and bloody. The wide pupil regards her intently. It swims forward and backward within the glass, but it never loses focus. Julian has been a master preserver for years, and the golden goat eye is one of her favorites. She remembers well plucking it from the skull of the so recently expired creature. She’d roasted the other one. But it had been blue. This was gold, and too beautiful to be eaten.
We are a many. We are a waiting. We are a hunger. We are a watching.
Now she wants to eat it. Now she wants to touch it. To listen to it. To know it. It tells her things, whispers her name again and again.
Julian does not lower the scissors, but with her free hand she presses fingertips to the glass. She tries to recoil for the heat is overwhelming. Her skin immediately bonds to the glass, and she smells burning flesh though feels nothing. A heartbeat more and the glass shatters, impaling her hand with a thousand tiny lacerations. Blood drips freely, filling the room with a coppery, burnt scent.
She picks up the eye with her bloodied fingers and writes the word it commands her to, pressing the soft organ to the floor. On the bright white tile, Julian weeps with joy as she writes a single name: Penemue.
Penemue:
My name is spoken, and I arise. Unlike my fallen brothers, I am released from the nightmarish hold between life and death, animation and oblivion. It is bliss. Joy. Fury. To know my name at last is a pleasure beyond all memories. And there are so many memories.
My first thought is to take our Maker’s body from her—it is not holding up well, and she may not have long in this life—but I cannot. I have ever believed in my own innocence, having been damned to eternity for loving a mortal man and bringing the gift of writing to him. Every living human being owes me a debt of gratitude for my so-called sin, but I will not make more sins out of my own hatred of God. I will not. If I am to live again, I must do it purely and without trespass. I have learned...
Our Maker stares at me, and I can see myself as a pillar of blue fire in her eyes. I am beautiful and horrible, but I am weak and frighteningly vulnerable in this state; this she does not know.
My brothers know. My hesitation to do her no harm has given them space to call her back. And I, bodiless, am powerless. I try to blaze brighter, but the voices of my brethren rise louder and louder, a dissonant clamor of commands and cries, and our Maker is frozen. Her body twitches, her neck twists, and with those delicate scissors in hand she starts to make her way toward her macabre collection, the collection she has been putting together for so long, for this purpose alone.
Maker:
Julian knows few thoughts of her own except a sense of gladness. A sense of purpose. The blue flame creature burns brightly, but it no longer speaks words she knows. It can no longer command her. The others, the Watchers, for whom she has waited her whole life, dictate her steps now. Command her movements. She understands now, yes. She understands that collection around her has not been only to keep her company, it has been part of a grand plan. A plan to make her more. Greater. It’s what Brother Barrier has told her, time and again. She is part of a bigger, more divine plan. And the awakened specimens, her friends, have come at last.
The scissors. She understands.
This is the blade that binds, no longer the blade that sunders. Cleave and join, Daugher of Nephilim, and give your body new life.
The first cut is the hardest, even though there is little pain. Julian has spent so much time cutting and dissecting other things, that even in her dimming consciousness, it seems wrong. But she needs another arm to do this task, and the only way she will be able to add another appendage is to make room for it on her chest.
She picks the corded arm from the sewer worker she’d harvested two months before. Or, rather, it picks her. Its container falls to the tiles and shatters, the limb climbing its way up her soiled petticoat and leather vest as she leans back to accept it.
That moment of connection is a black terror, but Julian has dreamed of this her whole life. She has only not remembered the dream. Now, as it’s happening, this moment of rebuilding and transformation, she recalls every detail. Of her dying. But not dying. Her ecstasy.
Again and again she plunges the scissors into her body, through cloth and skin and muscle, and again and again the specimens come to her, merging with her body. She is their mother and Maker, giving them blood and life again—saving them from death. Every step in her life has been leading to this moment—every spewed word of hate, every uttered curse below her breath. She has never believed in God, no. Julian has only relied on herself and her connection to a greater, wilder, madder design out there.
Julian plunges the scissor blades into her heart, and it is done.
And now she is all greatness and power, and mad beauty. Her body swells and grows to accommodate the appendages of her new friends, roiling and undulating, filling up the small space, pushing out that blue fire into the passageway beyond. There comes the sound of feet, but it is distant and unimportant to her now. For she is a creature of a thousand eyes and arms, a thousand voices, a thousand terrors.
And she is hunger. She
is wanting. But she is no longer waiting.
Penemue:
It has gone wrong. So wrong. I should have known my brothers would never manage a peaceful entry, They are too full of fury. She has welcomed them, but she cannot see what I see. It is not that they are granting her power, but that they are fighting for it among themselves. Her humanity is swallowed up in moments as she grows beyond imagining, her form undulating like the long body of some many-armed creature of the deep, or monstrous arachnid.
My brothers fight among themselves for control of the body. Arms and teeth rend one another, and by virtue of blood and filth birth more, grow even more repulsive.
Penemue. My name still lingers on my mind and I taste something I have not in centuries: fear. I am afraid. Who am I? I have never been like my brothers. I have been outcast from Heaven and Hell, and now moments from my freedom, I am shoved out into the strange, dark corridor from where I was awoken, and my flame begins to diminish. Without a host, I know I will fade to nothingness. True nothingness. Perhaps that is better. I am sinless, now. I am reborn and perfect.
But I cannot. I know their hunger. Finding a host means a harsher judgment, but only I know how to stop the creature, the many-eyed beast growing fast along these strange hallways running with filth.
He stands there, clutching his heart, my blue flames flickering in his eyes. There are tears coursing down his cheeks, and his lip trembles. A priest, I can tell, even in this strange place. He wears black with a swath of white at his collar, and his bald pate reflects. He whispers ancient words familiar to me, an invocation of an angel. Of Gabriel. I remember him well. A friend in brighter times. That this man thinks I am Gabriel is a balm to me, a moment of strength in this weakened state.
“I must welcome you, messenger,” the priest says, bowing his head and going down to one knee. “I am your servant, all body and soul.”
I enter him in an instant. I do not think beyond that, for I can hear the walls around me shaking as the creature expands. It groans, as well, this leviathan of the deep.
I become the priest, and the priest becomes me. He is not gone, but he is no longer. I take from him his life, his memories, his intelligence, his faults. To the human eye this priest, this Brother Barrier, is like all others save for the gentle glowing of his eyes and fingernails. He tells me what I need to know of this world that has grown in my absence. I am in a sewer, where all the filth of humanity flows. Julian, the name of the Child of the Nephilim, has lived here for thirty years, since she was but a newly flowered girl, and has collected these specimens for her own pleasure, to quell the voices in her head. Brother Barrier found her fifteen years before and helped her out of pity but also out of understanding. He, too, has heard our voices. Not through his blood, as Julian has, but through his own preternatural abilities.
The body I have now is painfully human. The muscles are atrophied in places, the stomach soft. The heart trembles with some sort of ailment. I can heal what I am able, but there is little hope he will last beyond this task.
Creature:
The creature of a thousand corpses cries out in agony and joy, feeling the pulse of humanity above and sensing the waters not far. The cleansing waters of the ocean. Food and drink. Revenge and lust. With nothing more than the stars to guide, the creature looks up with a thousand eyes through grates and slits in the ground, pulled toward the center of the city, along the great bend in the river.
Sliding up through the sewer, its shape changes a dozen times, rearranging its girth. Arms and legs, paws and muzzles, teeth and hooves, all slither against each other to slip through the narrow space. Up and up in an endless ladder of bodies and bones, snapping and mending over and over, dim eyes lighting up and down each unfathomable arm.
Toward the whitest, tallest, building, pulled as if by magical impulse. The most holy place in the city. It must be taken down before the feeding can begin, this alone the fallen brothers agree upon. The creature of a thousand corpses knows the dark memories of their host, knows the way she had been turned away as an abomination. It feels the dead beneath the streets, smells the murder and chaos. All these beautiful and horrible gifts they, not God, have given to mankind. And now, it is a great reckoning.
When the creature’s full girth meets the air a great fog begins, as something in the smoky atmosphere reacts against the living dead. The many fallen brothers begin to argue, surprised by the sudden pain. The creature lunges north, spilling white smoke throughout the streets in huge, stinking pillars. As the brothers disagree, the mass of the beast smashes left and right, crushing buildings beneath it and smothering all living things in its wake. Brick and wood and steel crumble as if mere afterthoughts, and those caught below see nothing but the massive arms casting shadows. Hands and mouths reach for any useable weapon, and so the seething creature becomes sharper and more deadly.
Penemue:
I am slow in this body, and breathing—something I had dreamed of doing so long—is an abysmal pain to me. I know where the creature is, where my fallen brothers move, but I cannot catch up to them fast enough. I pause as I exit the sewer, feeling something digging against my hip. I had not noticed it before, and I have to listen to Brother Barrier tell me about it before I throw it away. It is a weapon, which he calls a firearm. It is intended to kill others, though I cannot imagine how. He explains it is full of ammunition. I still do not understand, so he shows me. Turning it over in the moonlight I feel the cold metal and understand better. There is a charge within, and with the proper aim, I could send a menacing bolt.
But not to the creature. Not to my brothers. Only one thing would undo them, and likely me. I pause to catch my breath and renew my focus. At my feet, fog swirls, smelling of sulfur and decay. I see better than the other humans running past me, away south. Some carry bodies, severed in unspeakable ways. Livestock knock over humans in their terror, trample them.
Trying to keep a distance, I make my way slowly north. I can see straight through the strange square buildings and know immediately where the fallen brothers are going. Even though they continue to squabble, and through their squabbling grow and absorb all around them, they seek a holy place. A high, holy place. From there, they will fight. Or they will seek to storm Heaven. Or they will seek more blood until they have summoned the Devil himself. Or all at once.
The skies crackle with lightning, and the fog rises. In the distance I can see the arms of the great beast limned against the dwindling starlight.
“She buried the blade in her breast,” I tell Brother Barrier. He is rather quiet, and does not seem to understand. “I must reach it, must remove it.”
“Don’t angels fly?” he asks slowly.
“Sometimes,” I tell him. “I mostly burn.”
“Seraphim,” he says.
“Once,” I reply.
“You were close to Heaven.”
“I thought I could go back. But I see now I cannot.”
I run, now. The air smells of blood and fire. Shrill noises—sirens, Brother Barrier tells me—whine in the distance. The salt air from the sea drives tears to my eyes, remembering a life for which I earned a thousand centuries of torture. Remembering a face. Remembering hands, perfect and strong feet. A perfect human, touched by none of this terror. What became of him? We bore no children—how could we?—but his love cost me so much. Those perfect ebony hands, which I loved and taught the holy marks upon paper.
The cathedral rises before me, three steeples stretching to the skies, but darkening against their white sides as my fallen brothers rise. There is no time to marvel in this creation of humanity, for I hear voices in the air. My fallen brothers. Hear their wailing cry, their furious oaths of destruction and death. Destruction of humanity, destruction of each other. They loved once, as I did, but they birthed the Nephilim. I was merely caught up.
And now, I watch in horror as I hear the side of the cathedral snap. One long tendril reaches up and squeezes, working as leverage so the fallen brothers can climb higher, that t
he massive creature may get a better view of the city.
In the distance I sense the waters rise from below, Julian’s steam pumps are failing. Soon the city will be submerged. What does not die from the hand of my brethren will drown.
I can see the beast better, now, as I come around to the square behind the cathedral. It arranges itself over and over again, the center glowing blue where the scissors lie, but never rids itself of the massive tentacles. Sometimes six. Sometimes thirteen. They lash and break and bend all around them.
I approach the cathedral at a dead run, ducking as debris falls down. There are still people inside. Many of them. No doubt they came here seeking refuge. I can smell their fear mingled with incense. The closer I get the more I see the muck and sludge the fallen brothers have dropped over the building. It hisses and oozes, stinging my face as it drips on my skin. I wipe it away, and with it some of my flesh. I cannot even imagine what it would do to a mortal.
Then, in a moment of sudden inspiration from Brother Barrier, I stop. I look to the heavens in between a swath of cloud. The stars blink at me. I wonder… the other angels. Would they hear me? Did they forget me? In this moment of need, would they heed my cry?
No. I am too afraid they will not answer. As the beast rages above me, I move through from pillar to pillar around the cathedral until I find a door unobstructed by bodies or debris. The sound from inside is somehow worse, though dampened. I do not have time to wonder at the strange symbols and drawings, so alien to me. The straining of the building rips my breath from my body, but I keep the pace while Brother Barrier sings strange hymns I do not know.
The center tower is still holding, and that is where I must go. I pass humans, many of whom recognize me as Brother Barrier until they see my eyes. Some scream, others fall into a sort of silent reverie, giving me knowing smiles. He tells me their names, and I say them aloud, and they are blessed by it.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 9
