Legacy of Judas - Book One

by Aragon, Christian

  Malus stirred in pain and began trying to reconnect himself to his severed lower portions. Vic attacked viciously closing her fists which caused the two red shades to jut outward from her knuckles. Each of the reds were in continual flux, but distinctly they were blades, for lack of a more appropriate description. Neither could be said to like claymores or rapiers, or any other known and named blade. Instead these were like swirling smoke dancing within rays of sunlight, but there was an oscillation within the swirls of flux, and it matched Vic’s heartbeat and changed further according to her instinct. I could tell it was instinctual because we weren't receiving her thoughts of motion and attack until after she had already completed them. Vic was attacking from farther within herself than we had access to, yet this armored form still complimented every motion and increased every necessity of strength.

  Vic crashed down upon Malus’s mid-torso, which slammed him onto his back from his reclined position. She literally ran up his chest, his face, and then used one of his great crooked horns to spring from and again bears down all of her force, but this time onto the connective arteries which she successfully severed cleanly. Vic then ran back to Malus slicing down any who opposed her with such thin slicing they only knew they’d been cut as they attempted following through with their attacks.

  It was during these defensive strikes one of the souls within the book, once a physician by historic standards, and of Latin descendantry, had an epiphany and referred to the blades as Scalpellus, which provides the origin for the modern physician’s scalpel.

  But I digress as in these moments Vic was a machine with but a single purpose. Malus at first found he couldn’t simply reattach his limbs. Something in the exposed wounds wouldn’t let him, so he purged the portions with the exposed wounds, and then re-absorbed the balances. He noted to himself the small bits he cut away, which also had the open wounds created by Victoria, seemed infected and turned putrid.

  The Tom and Martha Trinities have for some reason been made to refrain from joining the fray. I suspect they also had difficulties with Victoria’s cuts, so Malus has commanded they refrain from this confrontation for the time being.

  Malus once again towered over us, but again this was neither a thought nor so much as a remote concern for Vic as she charged and leapt into the air in a spiraling attack with her crimson Scalpellus slicing away at Malus mercilessly. As quickly as he could, he purged her cuts and mended the wounds, but he couldn’t keep up. Those parts began to slide from one another faster than he could do anything about them. His form was getting jagged and clumsy as Vic kept attacking relentlessly. She became as a horse in full gate — a dead run. But then that thought re-crossed our minds; running just to run. A flash of our favorite cabby’s friendly face within our collective, including Victoria, suddenly left us remembering his farewell advice and a panic sparked within us.

  As Vic turned and pivoted through her attacks we caught glimpses of the Virtues helping the Valkyries as their engagements had come to a brief respite. With each of touch from a Virtue a Valkyrie regained enough strength to get airborne and away from any incoming attackers, though there were fewer now as so many were trying to pull themselves together or escape the Great Blood Lake. We could see the affects of Vic’s initial razor-thin blast reaching out in a straight line from where we had been laying. Thorn bushes, demons, other Thorn, even one of the many great columns built to help stabilize Hell itself had slid off its base and were resting against the floor of damned completely detached, but as with all the other damages there were repairs in progress.

  Vic doesn’t care about anything at this point though. She’s caught in a bloodlust for Malus and nothing else will suffice. Vic leapt, and leapt, and leapt again into the air, arms crossed before her and both Scalpellus exposed with dancing edges and fluctuating shape, length and breadth. They were both magnificent, each in their own right. Obviously she was now gaining control of their shapes to a degree, but as she went about her melee she seemed to prefer the innate chaos of the blades and allowed them to shift and flux on their own accord.

  Malus is seemingly just taking the attacks. He sees Vic’s descents in telegraphed fashion yet are offering little defense other than crossing all his arms in front of him to absorb the assault. He’s gotten wise to it all and is reacting by allowing those parts of his form to liquefy as Vic impacts them thereby allowing her blades to pass through while only splashing portions of Malus away from his form. Vic slashed with everything she had and all the extra we could give her. She increased the speed of her next attack in hopes of landing it before he could liquefy her targets. Vic’s blades sliced through Malus’s shoulders, well within what would be each of his clavicles, exiting nearly halfway down each side of his torso, and he stumbled back and cried out in genuine pain as all four of his arms fell to the ground. Vic turned as she stood up and charged Malus again. This time the swirls in the dark red blade became yet darker as the blade became longer, even greater than Vic’s own height as she tucked the left blade to her chest and reduced its size. With the dark blade she cut, stabbed, and hacked away at Malus making as much contact as she could against his flailing attempts to dodge her strikes. So much effort for what she’s hoping to be enough pain inflicted for Malus to relent and release Vin and Vic’s parents. But despite being augmented by the book and Evelyn, Vic’s body is tiring. This is why she’s putting so much into this moment. There needs to be an end-game soon! With a few final strikes she drove Malus back and off his center. He tripped and found himself stepping backward quickly trying to regain his balance without his arms. Into the Great Blood Lake he fell and submerged.

  “I WANT MY LIFE!” Vic stopped just short of the edge of the lake. She stood fast and her emotions flowed strong though her body would soon fail her. The dark blade grew darker with her thoughts of what Malus did to Vincent, her parents, and all those innocent people. The red blade glowed more brightly as memories of her parents, growing up, and Lusa arose to the forefront of her mind. Then Vincent and the times and love they shared; the intimacy beyond intimacy. She bowed her head and her shoulders dropped as they were heavy with the weight of her world. She was still as her eyes closed and she basked the loving memories and raging thoughts of vengeance. She couldn’t even hear Hell around her from the depths of those memories and emotions.

  No demon or Thorn advanced on Vic or upon the Virtues or the Valkyries. Except for the noise of the suffering, the moment was strangely calm as Vic opened her eyes and saw her reflection in the blood of the lake. Her brow crinkled a bit as her reflection was broken up by the blood being disturbed by a vibration which then subsided. Then another vibration. Then yet another emanated from within the liquids of the damned but more visibly and audibly as a deep rumbling groan caused the entire surface of the lake to reverberate and echo loud enough to drown out the screams of the damned. A shiver crawled up Vic’s spine and the hair on the back of her neck stood at attention as her eyes went wide. I suggested she might want to step back from the edge of the lake.

  “Iiiiieeee… aaaaaaammmmmm… eeeeeeteeerrrnnnaaaaaaaalllll…” Malus’s voice wasn't just in front of us. Vic turned to check her blind spots and found that Malus’s two sets of arms were gone! Looking around frantically we couldn't find the limbs nor could we see the spatters of his black flesh Vic had carved from his form.

  Vic turned back toward the shore. Her blades are still fresh and pulsing due to her trip down memory lane and her yearning to inflict more pain onto Malus. She changed her stance to brace herself and crossed her arms in front of her with buckled up fists. It was a pugilistic stance. She transfigured her Scalpellus into gauntlets of sorts swirling around her forearms and fists as well as through them as the rumbling from the lake ceases.

  Up from The Great Blood Lake Malus emerged with his form renewed, though not of the four-armed giant but rather the form we remembered from the night Vincent became part of the Trinity Demon. The fucker has just been sparring with us this entire time! From the lake he s
tepped, confident and clearly staring Vic in the eyes as he strode past her like the cock of the walk. He was heading toward the still gaping tear leading to the exterior of Hell, but Vic wasn’t about to let him gain more strength from the sin congealed outside. Vic changed stance again to face Malus.

  “MALUS!!!” And with as much strength as she could muster, she quickly brought her hands together in a powerful clap intertwining her fingers together as her palms met. With the sound of her hands coming together a single Scalpellus, in constant flux of shape and with smoke-like swirls of the vibrant and dark reds, extended out from her clasped fists and ran Malus through and through. The Scalpellus exited his body, and then speared off into the distance harpooning a couple demons before piercing the landscape and exiting Hell altogether.

  Suddenly the craggy fissures on Malus’s form flooded with Vic’s intermingling emotions. They coursed throughout every open fissure in his form making visible veining throughout the interior of his now somewhat translucent body. Malus wasn't reacting well to the invasion of his form as he started convulsing. He released a terrible cry in his low tones sounding off as some terrible horn. Suddenly — liquid. Malus’s entire form instantly became black liquid and splashed all over trauma terra. Vic ran to the spot where Malus’s form collapsed only to find his dark ooze disappearing into the seams between the bodies, down the throats of the fleshen souls, and into any other crack, crevice, or orifice available. Could we be so fortunate? Yeah, probably not.

  Vic looked back to the Trinities and we could see there was no change in them. Vic stepped towards them and in unison they all stepped back. It's been Vic’s thought this whole time that destroying Malus would release his willful hold over them causing the three portions to separate. This hasn't happened.

  Journal entry LXXV

  We all felt it. A reverberation unlike what preceded Malus’s heralding before leaving The Great Blood Lake just moments ago. The noise of Hell was drowned out by this rumble, not just in the small expanse of Hell we occupied with the Virtues and Valkyries, but from one end of Hell to the other. Vic knelt down and laid her hand on a fleshen soul and we could feel the rumble was getting stronger steadily.

  “Diligence!” Vic’s call-out was confident rather than panicky. She knows what she's doing. A golden lightning bolt of sorts arched from where he was standing to where we were before she pronounced the last consonant in his name.

  “Go to the crucifixion fields and find Judas. He’ll be in the center. Leila will be kneeling before him. You have to ask her, humbly, to wake Judas. You have to be penitent with her to gain her favor. Do you understand?!”

  “Victoria, we can leave here right now. Nothing has been working to release your loved ones. We need to find another way.”

  “We are NOT LEAVING HERE WITHOUT THEM!!! DO AS I SAID!”

  Reluctantly Diligence stepped back and signaled Liberality and Patience to follow him to the Crucifixion Fields, and instantly three golden bolts were off weaving their way to fulfill Vic’s command. There in the distance we could see their glows mingling and weaving between the crucified towards the center of the fields.

  The rumbling below our feet became greater and greater still until we felt it pass under us in a wave. Now it had a direction from which we could derive where it was. Before us, in the distance, sin-tainted souls captured in the thorn bushes of fleshen bodies suddenly began turning from their tortured red tones to hot yellowish-whites. All of the sin of each of their coffers was siphoned out of them in a heartbeat. This continued up and through the landscape in such a manner that we could soon see a human-like shape — human-like because Malus enjoys his extra set of arms — forming in the pattern of cleansed souls. So many souls suddenly released from the sins of their former lives, trapped in Hell, being brutally punished and no longer understanding why. Hell just found an entirely new suffering, but it’s unjust.

  Malus’s took the sin of the damned in the pattern of his four-armed form. We had started drawing back from it across the landscape in anticipation of Malus breaking through from the outside. The area just cleansed of sin would easily rival most skyscrapers in height, and was large enough that Malus could punch through at any point with enough speed to catch us off guard. It’s a lot of area to watch, but we had to consider it was just a diversion.

  Vic called in all of the Valkyries and the four Virtues. They all surrounded Vic in a three-sixty pattern to watch for Malus from every direction.

  Then suddenly something truly frightening transpired as all those bright, clean souls caged in the thorn bushes sprouted from their own fleshen skeletons, went out. Like gas lamps they were simply seemingly extinguished. For a moment the rumbling ceased as we stared at a massive place in Hell now more like a giant silhouette than part of a landscape.

  The immensity of this now dark portion of Hell was more than our eyes could take in without looking up, down and to each side. Because the innate dimness of Hell and greater darkness of this dark zone Malus has created, it took us all a couple moments to realize this blackened portion of Hell was moving … toward us. Like laying a thin cloth on water, and then pushing down into the water, the cloth wraps around what's pushing it. This is what we were seeing as Malus took his first step inward pulling with him thousands of fleshen sounds screaming in pain and terror and infinitely confused. Their flesh snapped and tore away from those souls around them like tearing perforated paper to reveal a shape. The cold stickiness of the exposed flesh on the back sides of all those bodies caused them to stick to Malus’s form, and no doubt some of his own will was binding them there as well.

  Malus’s mass is so immense that as he pressed in from outside, pulling along the entire darkened landscape until it tore away entirely. Hell itself bent as such that one could no longer stand at one of its Hellmouths and see down to the other one. Malus has literally changed the shape of Hell by putting so much pressure on it from outside that the cylindrical shape now curves at this massive point of his emergence.

  It's awe-inspiring and incredibly frightening to witness what we were witnessing. To say we, including Vic, were dumbfounded and terrified tremendously was an understatement. Vic was trembling horribly within our protective shell, and she pissed herself as well. We couldn't even get a grip on how to counter what was before us.

  “Vic. Steady yourself. Stay true to your plan. He’s changed size, but it’s still just Malus.”

  “Thank you, Azeeza.”

  “We’re here for you, Vic.”

  “No, Azeeza. I mean, thank you. For everything you’ve done, and for every moment you’ve been there. Thank you. Whatever happens. Thank you.” Her tone is genuine and incredibly sincere. She also expressed gratitude and thanks to Evelyn, and to all the other Valkyries and Virtues in a whisper we know they can hear, even over the noise of this place.

  So far as we could tell using Hell’s sight, Malus’s entire form was as bundled branches as his legs and second arms were before, but now more akin to bundled trees in breadth and length, and into all the nooks and crevices of this form the fleshen bodies of the now unjustly damned. The soles of his feet don't actually touchdown as thousands of well-knuckled spider-like legs, as before, sprouted out from the ends of his legs, spread out, and bore the weight of his form as he stepped. Was it not for his height placing much of his upper portions well into the gravity above and around us even his snowshoe efforts wouldn't have keep him from falling through the thin fabric of this tormented place. Looking upward we see Malus look down at us. This is truly what it's like to be an ant.

  “There you are …” his voice and following giggle felt like they were passing through us a thousand times. The shape of Hell serves to further this intimidation attempt as it's become both an echo chamber and amplifier at once. NONE of the damned could be heard while the resonance of Malus’s voice carried through Hell.

  Without warning Vic drops to her knees while gripping her head with both hands and screaming in agony. Malus’s voice had already faded aw
ay when Vic dropped, which means it wasn’t his resonances causing her pain, so we didn’t know what was happening till searching within her. Soon enough it became obvious Malus had broken into her mind. Of all the souls Malus just molested to become what he is, he managed to find just one which is connected to the Book of the Damned and used the very thread of its soul to infiltrate Vic’s mind through our current form. Her protection has just become her prison as I found I couldn't pull away from her! He got her through the book while we're her armor, and now we're locked onto her until she commands otherwise. She’s suffering horribly and we can’t separate from her to stop it!

  “He's fighting her from the inside! You must do the same for her!” The words of Diligence rained down on us as the three Virtues returned, and he was right. He and the other Virtues began assaulting Malus’s great form with bolts of dripping, golden lightning strikes flowing from their palms and throwing off searing slag. It was an impressive sight, but we had more important work to focus on as portions of Malus’s borrowed flesh began raining down with showers of pure crimson. Malus really did pull all the sin out of them as evidenced by the clean color of their blood.

  One of the Virtue’s bolts hit Malus in a spot without a covering of Hell’s flesh. The impact and resulting damage didn’t appear to cause him pain, but it obviously strained his efforts within Vic and gave Evelyn and the rest of us an opportunity to wedge in and disrupt Malus’s assault on her.