A lonely tower on a hill leaned over empty structures that crouched below. Wodan ran toward them, felt heat licking at his back, then leaped toward the tower. A moment of false peace, the leap was so great that he rested his limbs as air whipped through his hair. He landed on a windowsill with surprising gentleness and coiled his body through the narrow opening. Dust, spider webs, a heavy, hot atmosphere and darkness. He ran to the end of the hall, set a foot on the windowsill, then cast himself off. He looked back and saw the top of the tower explode in a shower of dust and stone. The lion’s great body heaved about, arms whipping in all directions, mouth pulled back revealing shining fangs. He was driven mad with rage, so much so that the tower caught fire. Their eyes locked once again and Wodan felt sand scrape against his feet.
Silent structures loomed over him and Wodan ran among them, creeping in the dying light. Heard the massive lion’s paws touching down as gently as a leaf dropping. He forced himself not to breathe too deeply despite the need to catch his breath.
“Come to feed a god, little mountain goat!?” the lion’s deep voice resounded across the city. “Come to end the boredom of living?”
Is he having trouble tracking me, that he needs my answer? Wodan thought. Surely not. His senses are far keener than mine. He probably really is bored, and this is all a game to him.
Wodan crept between two squat buildings. He braced himself, then said, “I’ve been thinking of your riddle.”
Immediately he jumped, and the buildings around him shattered to pieces, a whirlwind of destruction as the lion tore through them, swinging and burning with fire. Wodan landed and ran to a wide platform of stone ringed with columns. He turned about on the stage, saw the lion loping past the columns, glaring at him. Wodan jogged backwards as the lion followed him with his eyes. Wodan ran down a series of steps half-buried in sand. The lion followed him into an empty avenue. Y’diamach moved slower than before, but Wodan was not fooled. He was locked in the monster’s death-gaze. He would not get away so easily this time.
Wodan stopped and Y’diamach crept forward still slower, head lowered and forelimbs extended along the ground.
“Y’diamach! Your riddle! I still have one more chance to get it right.”
The lion opened its mouth and the muscles in the back of its throat contracted. “Hrr! I hadn’t realized that. You should have said something earlier! We could have had a relaxing conversation.” The lips pulled back still more to reveal long rows of fangs. Sparks fell in a shower with each step the lion took.
Wodan paced sideways, back and forth, trying to seem as if he wanted to keep his distance even as he allowed the lion to close the gap.
“You said, ‘What divides you from me’,” said Wodan. “If there’s a brain inside that animal shell, I’d like you to consider my answer. It’s quite simple.”
Wodan’s heart thundered in his ears. He knew he could not hide his fear, so he played it up slightly, casting his gaze around as if looking for an exit.
“Go on, little mountain goat,” said Y’diamach. “Treat me as your sphinx. I’ll consider your answer. But I’ll kill you all the same.”
Wodan stopped and stood straight, at rest. “The answer is will,” he said. “It’s what all living things have in common. It’s will that brought us both here. And it’s will that separates us into individuals, that sets us against one another. It’s will that makes us unique.”
Wodan’s senses raced - his eyes bore into Y’diamach’s mask – then, as one eyebrow moved slightly, rippling like a pebble dropping into a pond, giving evidence of the beast considering his answer, Wodan blasted forward, feet tearing across stone, his hand on the hilt of Capricornus at his back. In the moment of distraction, he leaped high. The lion jerked, crouching to protect the top of its head as Wodan tore the sword from its scabbard, green-shining and singing in his hands. Wodan twisted, concentrating on the lion’s head, time slowing as his mind raced, connecting every cell of his body in a desperate attempt to stave off death with one perfect act. He saw the god’s body twist as he brought the sword down - then Y’diamach brought up one paw, claws extended. With violent thunder claw and sword connected. Wodan concentrated all the strength of his being into the blow, twisting his legs about so that the force of the lion’s gesture would course through him in a spiral. His body flew upwards as the claw repelled his blow.
Wodan spun in the air and, just as he’d hoped, he fell near the lion’s back. He felt searing heat and saw coiling muscle, the details nightmarish and hyper-real. Still twisting about with the extra momentum delivered from the lion’s powerful blow, he ignored the nausea and focused. He brought Capricornus slicing through the monster’s back, tearing scale and thick flesh, then shearing through spinal column, sparking like a shaft of steel tortured by a saw. He finally tore through delicate cords in a shower of bio-electric discharge.
The great lion roared, the cry drawn out in his racing awareness, then it fell with the dead weight of its hindquarters. But even as Wodan finished his swing Y’diamach jerked sideways, abandoned his defensive stance, and swung at him. One wide claw tore through Wodan’s leg, below the knee, and sent him spinning in the air.
Y’diamach crashed in a shower of dust. Wodan hit the ground spinning, nauseous, in agony. As he tumbled along the ground a bucket of blood from his ruined limb splashed before him. He felt motion as the lion shifted its weight, all grace gone as it thrashed about in outrageous fury. Wodan rolled away still further, and could feel his leg hanging by strips of flesh and rattling bone.
Wodan came to rest some distance from the fallen god and gripped his screaming leg, blood pouring through his fingers. Y’diamach lifted his head, eyes burning into him; Wodan picked up Capricornus in one blood-drenched fist and held it forward, his breath ragged with panic at the horrifying thought of losing a limb.
The two stared into one another, bodies shattered.
“Kill you,” Y’diamach rasped, straining against his ruined lower half.
Barely able to think beyond the pain, much less speak, Wodan hissed, “You’d have to drag yourself to get to me. One arm to drag, another to fight. I can still... stab your head. Your brain... you have to protect your brain stem.”
“Fire,” growled Y’diamach, twitching in agony.
“You would... divert nanomachines from healing… spinal column, just to burn me? Your wound... spine is complicated, will take... time to heal.” Lying in a pool of blood, Wodan said, “We’re at a stand-off.”
Y’diamach growled.
Wodan felt light-headed from blood loss, as well as nauseous from holding the pieces of his leg. Darkness beckoned.
No! Stay awake! Finish it!
“Y’diamach,” he said, fighting to stay conscious, fighting to finish the thing he’d begun. Before, he’d wondered how he could accomplish such a cruel objective. Now, after facing terror and death, and straining to stay awake, it was all he could do to say what he had already scripted in his mind. “I’ve answered your riddle. Now I have one for you. I want... to ask you... what good is your conscious mind... if all it does is add boredom to your animal existence? You have a mind… and complex emotions. But for you, O great lion… the prime emotion that you live by is fear.”
The beast glared at him, yellow eyes burning beyond rage.
“You think I don’t know what you’re afraid of?” said Wodan, feeling surprisingly little guilt as he forced himself to lash out at the lion. “You think I don’t know what you hide from? You think you rule yourself, and can go anywhere. What nonsense! There’s one place you can’t approach. In the north is a tower, and in it lives a god who tossed you aside. And why wouldn’t he? He is one thousand times your better. You dumb, delusional animal! You don’t live alone because of your strength. You live alone because of the pain you suffered in your childhood!”
Wodan felt a stab of remorse as he saw the lion’s eyes close for a moment. Then he felt little of anything as his body tried to put him to sleep so that it could begin the
healing process. He snapped back awake in time to see the lion pulling itself forward. There was no rage left in the lion’s face, only a dull, tired hunger. The lion stopped and extended one claw. Wodan felt heat, smelled his hair burning. He covered his face and crawled backward, his leg screaming in agony once again as he released it and let it flop about.
Then there was a rush of air, the clank of gears, and Robot Number Six, Black, landed beside Wodan. Black picked him up by the waist of his suit and pulled him into the air. He felt cool wind, then the world blurred into sleep.
***
Wodan woke in the belly of the Gul-in Kami. His leg ached terribly. He could see through the torn suit that it was black and purple, but the flesh at least held together. It took him a long time to figure out how the plane could be moving when all of its lights and controls were off.
The robot must be carrying the entire thing, thought Wodan, leaning back. If Setsassanar didn’t know before, he knows now.
He turned and looked out the window of the plane. He saw only darkness far below. He knew that if he wanted to live, he should open the door and throw himself into the darkness. But his leg hurt too much… he would not survive the fall.
Perhaps I’ll be spared, he thought, drifting back into sleep. Maybe Setsassanar won’t understand what I was doing...
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Guardian Demon
Wodan only vaguely remembered the next few days, sleeping in his room, waking only when Yohei brought him food. His awareness floated in a dark pool as his leg knit itself together, vein seeking after vein, bone shifting and fusing together, blood forcing itself into layers of starved muscle. He did not see the Master at all.
One morning he woke. The sun shone directly through his window. It was blinding, and he saw his scarred, healed leg as if through a halo of light. He was amazed. His door opened silently and Yohei entered, bringing him his food. As he finished, Yohei did not leave, but rather gestured toward the door. Wodan was gripped with worry. Either the time of his final passage – or his judgment – had come. His heart sank. He had wanted to be proud going into his final test, not filled with the heaviness of shame.
Wodan dressed in his all-purpose gear with the leg material still sliced open, then followed Yohei. He found Setsassanar standing in the high chamber that was designed to look like an ancient ruin of gray stone, open to the air. Setsassanar sat on a plain wooden throne, looking grim, slightly turned away from him.
Does he know? Wodan wondered. Does he know that I…?
“In mythology,” said Setsassanar, “the demon Coronzon is the dweller in the abyss. When one makes the final crossing into nothingness, one encounters Coronzon.”
“And what does Coronzon do?” said Wodan, glancing to either side. He saw the tapestry of the ancient warrior.
“He destroys the self. He annihilates the ego.” After a pause, Setsassanar added, “He stands between the seeker and the end. He is the final obstacle on the way to enlightenment.”
“But… but there is no conscious awareness of existence... without the self.”
“And yet existence persists.” Setsassanar pointed to a heavy iron trapdoor in the middle of the chamber. “You must go down and face him. If you can.”
Is this it? thought Wodan, hiding his feelings behind a mask. Does he know I betrayed him, and this is his way of killing me?
“Fine,” said Wodan. “So this is Robot Number Eight, the final machine that you told me about when I first came here. The one you keep disconnected from yourself.”
Setsassanar said nothing.
“Tell me, Master. Why would you bother to create a robot that you keep disconnected from yourself? Why do you hide it in a deep vault?”
Setsassanar smiled murder. “Let’s finish your preparations,” he said. “You’ll need a weapon and some soldiers, hm?”
Setsassanar sat in brooding silence for over an hour while Wodan worked alongside Slave Circuit in designing a weapon. Her gentle voice now seemed alarming in light of his upcoming trial and his Master’s heavy silence. When they finished, Wodan retrieved the weapon from its amniotic vat: A long rifle designed to shoot heavy rounds filled with a powerful molecular acid. An optional scope lay fixed to the side, and could be flipped up to the top if necessary; he wanted the scope to be optional so that it would not be in the way in case he found himself confined in narrow corridors.
He slung the rifle onto his back alongside his sword. Setsassanar forced a smile, then gestured to a doorway. “Your troops,” he said.
Four models of Robot Number Four, the training series, marched forward in a line. White-armored, black-jointed, like militant dolls they stopped and stood silent. Each was armed with a different hand-to-hand weapon.
“Their capabilities?” said Wodan.
“Turned up all the way,” said Setsassanar. “They will not hold back and they will obey your commands with complete competence.”
Wodan nodded, then pulled open the heavy iron grate in the floor. He looked down a wide, square shaft of cut stone leading down into darkness. Thin spokes of twisted iron stuck from the walls at irregular intervals. Wodan gestured to his troops, then leaped into the abyss.
***
Wodan and his robots descended for a long time, scaling from iron rung to rung, eyes adjusting until they found themselves in total darkness. He cursed silently, unable to see the next rung. He let go and slid down the sides of the walls, fingers grating against crumbling stone that rained dust, until a dim red glow from below guided the way.
The shaft ended in emptiness and he grasped a rung, stopping his descent. His followers did the same above him. A cold wind blew up from below, and his suit hummed quietly as it moved against his skin. He knew that, long ago, the cold would have cut into him like a freezer, completely uninhabitable.
There’s no clever way out of this, he thought, looking up at his troops. I just have to do what I always do.
Wodan sucked in a gust of cold air, then released his hold.
He fell through darkness, then his feet touched stone and he rolled and rose into a crouch, his hand on his sword’s handle. The robots dropped down behind him, nearly as quiet as himself. Slowly he unslung his rifle and looked about the freezing black chamber. It was large, full of mist and covered in frost, but he could make out the square blocks of four walls in the distance. Square columns of black stone rose up from the floor, but did not touch the ceiling; other columns hung down from the ceiling but fell short of touching the floor. The columns were tightly packed, except in the center of the chamber where he had landed. The mist was dimly lit by a red light, but he could not make out its source.
Wodan signaled for one robot to stay close while the other three split up. Silently they crept among the columns. There was a strong feeling of claustrophobia, with each corner hissing a subtle warning. At times the red light flickered, casting the room into flashing darkness. Still the source was unclear, and in growing dread Wodan realized that the source of the light was moving. Silently stalking.
Wodan heard a faint vibration, a sharp clicking that echoed. He was maddened by the presence, an obvious trap that he was moving toward if only to break the monotonous horror. He crouched against a column, then heard a crash like metal plates falling from a shelf. He signaled his nearest guard to move out, then he whipped around the column, rifle held high.
One of the robots laid on the ground, head and torso crushed. One arm jerked stupidly, gear grinding against gear. Red light winked as the stalking thing passed behind columns in the mist. Wodan and his ally moved on.
They crossed a convoluted labyrinth of columns, then heard footsteps. One of his robots crossed their path, glancing at him before disappearing around a bend. Wodan sighed in relief, then decided he had better gather his forces - then there was a terrific crash and pieces of the robot skidded across the floor. Bright red light flooded the area and Wodan and his ally flew around the corner to confront the thing.
The monster stood befo
re them, red light pouring from its infernal eyes. It was at least nine feet tall, a black-scaled reptilian humanoid in red, plated armor. Its arms were too long, and in each massive fist it carried a heavy blade, curved and as thick as axes, the metal glowing dark red just as Capricornus glowed green. The blades rose and, for a moment, Wodan saw depths of black void, cold space, dying stars. Light reflecting from the blades lit the monster’s face, a horrid construct of wet black stone, mouth forced open by oversized teeth, the top of the head small and collapsed but contrasted with a muscular, bulging neck. The expression was empty of emotion, a black well of death.
His training overcame his terror and he shouted a command to attack. He danced to the side and aimed his rifle as one robot ran past him and another, perched on a high column, leaped down onto the beast. The monster flew into action, limbs moving impossibly fast as its torso whipped about. Before Wodan could fire he saw one robot smashed to pieces by a giant sword-axe, then saw the last robot dashed against a column so that it fell in a lifeless heap. Wodan stepped backwards and fired off a round, but the monster was already on him, body bent low in a high-speed lunge. Wodan’s shot tore into a column, then one massive blade moved in a blur and knocked the rifle from his numb hands.
With unnerving speed the monster swung at him, each arm coming from different directions. Wodan leaped and turned and rolled, but it was all he could do to avoid the lethal blades. The monster seemed to be all around him at once, never taking a moment to consider its course of action, only attacking relentlessly. Just as one of the red-shining blades smacked into a column, Wodan was given a split-second in order to recover. He rolled behind the column and drew Capricornus as the column bucked and heaved. He did not have a chance to plan his attack; at once the monster was on him, his sword-axe held overhead. The monster attacked and with all his force Wodan swung against the blow. There was a terrible collision, a flash of light, and Wodan felt his arms go numb, every joints compressed as he slid backwards on his feet. The armored monster dashed forward once more.
[Demonworld #6] The Love of Tyrants Page 56
