Summoned to Destroy

by C L Walker

  “They are fallen, without guidance. I know who I am.”

  I backed away from the carriage and the angel stepped down to face me. He slipped out of the heavy coat he was wearing and folded it carefully before placing it on the seat. He drew a small knife and took up a fighting stance.

  “A word about what comes after we are done,” he said. “You will be tempted to save this woman, to take her somewhere else and leave her to find happiness. Don’t do it. It isn’t what she wants.”

  “If you hadn’t said that I wouldn’t have considered it.”

  “I know.”

  “And now that you have warned me not to, I will certainly do it.”

  “I know that too.”

  I shook my head, confused by the craziness of angelic beings. But if he wanted to fight and die then there was nothing I could do to stop him.

  His small knife grew into a full saber as he began his advance.

  Chapter 16

  Knowing I was going to win made me slow, and the angel capitalized on that.

  He came in fast, his saber slicing near my face. I narrowly avoided it, only to find a well-placed kick to my chest throwing me back and into the canyon wall. Rocks fell from above and the woman screamed.

  “You don’t have to struggle this much,” I said.

  He attacked again, quick as lightning. His saber missed but he’d expected me to dodge and had a punch lined up as backup. I was thrown back into the wall, this time bleeding from a wound that cut my face in two.

  “You’re going to lose anyway,” I said through the blood pouring from my wound. “Just sit down.”

  The tattoos healed the wound, spending energy I needed for fighting. They erected a shield and his next attack bounced away.

  I pressed my momentary advantage, running at him and grabbing him around the waste. I lifted him off the ground and drove him into the river. The cold torrent swept us downstream.

  He pounded on my back as we tumbled in the current, but I had a grip on him and I used it; the tattoos on my arms shone bright in the dark water as I crushed him at the waste. Bones cracked and crumbled beneath the pressure until blood was flowing over me and downstream.

  The tattoos fed as the angel went limp in my arms. I used the new power to launch us out of the water and softly set the angel down on the carriage path.

  He coughed and smiled, as though death wasn’t staring at him.

  “Can you tell me what he wants with the heartstones?” I said.

  I wasn’t sure at first if he’d heard me but I waited while blood escaped his mouth. When he was ready he spoke, his breath rattling in his lungs.

  “I can see nothing beyond the edge of this heaven. Know, though, that what you’re doing creates irreparable harm. The thing you’re about to do here can never be undone. An end here is final.”

  “Dammit, you could have left.”

  “That wasn’t what was supposed to happen.”

  I wanted to be sad for what I’d done. That was what a normal person would feel, and I was trying hard to be normal. But I didn’t feel sad; I felt angry. This was such a waste and there was nothing forcing him to fight me. Nothing forcing him to let the soul in his charge die.

  I snapped his neck and held my hands against his skin as it cooled, allowing the tattoos to get their fill.

  The woman was staring at me, her mouth hanging open in shock. I walked back to her slowly, trying not to scare her any more than I already had.

  “Are you alright?” I said. She backed away from me, a moan escaping her lips.

  I was supposed to take her away from her heaven before I destroyed it. The angel had seen it. But what would happen if I didn’t?

  They knew I was coming and they let themselves die. They let their heavens die. If I didn’t evacuate her first, what would that mean? That they were wrong and their future wasn’t inevitable? If they couldn’t see beyond the boundaries of their heavens, would it make any difference?

  I could leave her. I wanted to leave her. The reactive part of me, the part that lashed out at being ordered around by master after master, wanted to leave her to die just to prove a point. I didn’t want to do as I’d been told. For a moment it meant more to me that I prove the angel wrong than save the woman.

  She continued backing away until the carriage stopped her. I pulled the reins from her and carefully took the bit from her mouth. It was rusted, and the holes in it had torn her mouth.

  “I’m taking you somewhere else,” I said. “Somewhere better than this.”

  She didn’t resist but she didn’t help me either. She was like a doll I could do with as I pleased. I picked her up and walked slowly back to the gate, closed my eyes, and stepped through.

  The heaven next door was larger, but only housed a few hundred people. Angels watched me from quaint street corners with ornate gas lamps. The sun was low in the sky and the villagers in their medieval clothes ignored me.

  “You’re going to stay here now, alright?”

  The woman was looking around her as though expecting an animal attack. She gripped my arm, her moaning getting louder.

  “You shouldn’t have brought her here,” an angel said. He approached me, crossing the street and waving to a woman with a basket of bread in her arms. He wore an outfit from the same period as the people, though he was taller and radiated power.

  “I was always going to bring her here,” I said. “Isn’t that how it works?”

  “It is,” he said. He reached out to her and she took his hand, happily getting away from me. “But she will be miserable here if we try to include her in the town.”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  “No, she won’t. We will have to take her away and try to recreate the heaven she deserves. One day a boy will stumble across her and tell his parents, and the townspeople will try to save her. Like you, they won’t understand what we’re doing.”

  “None of this is my fault,” I replied. The woman was scanning the town around her and looking fearfully at the friendly locals. “If you people ran your heavens better this wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You will not return,” another angel said as he approached. He took the woman’s hand and led her toward the road out of town.

  “You will leave here and be too busy to come back,” the first angel said. “Eventually you will forget about this woman and the heaven you’ve meddled with.”

  “If you know what’s going to happen then do something about it.” I was still angry and they seemed to be going out of their way to piss me off.

  “We are doing what we are supposed to do.”

  The angel turned away. I wanted to punch him, if only to vent some of my frustration.

  Instead I stepped back into the woman’s heaven. I sent power from the tattoos out over the land in search of the heartstone.

  If they weren’t going to fight for themselves then they deserved to die. They deserved to let their charges die. It wasn’t my fault they wouldn’t do anything to protect themselves and do their jobs.

  The tattoos gave me a picture of the heaven; it was an endless road, looping back on itself so the woman would never have pulled the carriage to its destination.

  The heartstone was resting at the base of a gnarled tree nearby. It was a well-worn leather bound book with an ornate silver clasp. I opened it and found all the pages blank.

  At the base of the tree a fire sprang to life. I went to stamp it out before realizing that this was how the heaven would die. The fire spread quickly and confirmed what I’d thought.

  Within moments everything was ablaze and the tattoos were protecting me behind a brilliant red shield. The heat was intense, hotter than any natural fire could be, and even the rocks were destroyed by it. They cracked and fell apart before melting into magma.

  I stepped through the gate before even the ground around me disappeared in flame.

  My journey back was even quicker than before. Following the shortcuts and quick routes I had discovered I was back o
n earth in less than an hour. Even having traveled as quickly as I had, night had passed while I was away. The angel at the gate was waiting for me in the brilliant sunlight.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. He got out of my way but I could see his need to strike me in the tension of his dead muscles.

  “Why can they see the future and you can’t?”

  “This isn’t our world and we have no god to guide us. They are where they belong, doing what they are meant to do.”

  I imagined I heard sadness in the hollow man’s voice, but it was as emotionless as always.

  “Go back to where you came from, then. Go fulfil your purpose.”

  “Some of us will. Some of us won’t.” He gestured to the street and a cab waiting for me. “Go fulfil yours, Agmundr.”

  I didn’t have the patience to speak to him and I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. I powered the tattoos and ran to the cab, surprising the driver.

  I looked through the book again on the way to the base, over and over. This was the seed of the woman’s heaven and I couldn’t read it. Every page was blank but someone had read it multiple times; the cracks on the spine attested to that.

  I didn’t understand anything, and no matter what I tried I couldn’t keep the fury inside me from building. If something didn’t change soon the old Agmundr was going to come out, and then Erindis wouldn’t have a choice in what was going to happen.

  Nobody would.

  Chapter 17

  The base was quiet, with only a few soldiers standing guard near the main building. Most of the cars and trucks were gone and I wondered what Invehl was up to.

  I approached his office, trying to calm myself down. I was being swamped by my anger and there would come a point when I would lose control, when the red mist would descend on me and I would strike out without thinking.

  I breathed slowly, in and out, in and out, but it wasn’t helping. The closer I got the architect of my predicament the angrier I became. I stood outside the door with my eyes closed, summoning what little control I could find, and then went inside.

  Invehl stood over his map table, studying the figures arranged over the suburbs of Fairbridge. I waited for him to finish, using the opportunity to see what had changed.

  More of the plastic figures were grouped together, the battle lines short and tight. When I noticed where they were gathering I put my hand on the table to lean closer. Invehl finally noticed me.

  “You and I have a problem,” he said. He didn’t look up from the map but I could tell his attention was all on me.

  “You and I have a lot of problems,” I replied, barely restraining myself from yelling at him. In truth I was barely keeping myself from reaching across the table and ripping his head off. He was a god and it probably wouldn’t work, and if it did he’d just come back in another body, but it would feel good.

  “I was calling you,” he said. “When I call you, answer the damn phone.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  His eyes shot up to glare at me, his hands curling into fists. If he had been a normal master I would have smiled and pushed him over the edge.

  “You know what the result of your rebelliousness will be.”

  “I know you like threatening me, but I also know you won’t do anything.”

  I avoided his gaze and studied the map. The hats, cars, and warships were clumping, coming close to boiling point and all-out war. And they were doing it in the streets around ACDCs.

  “I’ve moved Erindis.”

  His words swept all thought of the Fairbridge battle from my mind. Nothing existed except the god standing before me.

  “If you think you’re safe from me, little god, you’re wrong.” I would rip the table apart and feed it to him. I would make him regret ever learning of my existence. I would…calm down. Be prepared and not attack unless I had to.

  Being rational was difficult and I wasn’t well suited to it. My rage didn’t fuel my thinking, it fueled my bloodlust.

  “Bannon removed her when I couldn’t get ahold of you. She is being kept in a cage and I’ve left it to him to decide what to do with her when you disobey me.”

  “Be very careful,” I said. The wood of the table was groaning as my grip tightened.

  “No, Agmundr, you be careful. You watch yourself from now on because I’m done playing with you.”

  “I’m not playing.” He was the only thing in the world and all I wanted to do was crush him.

  “I liked the banter, I did. I enjoyed treating you like a man, but you’re not one. You’re a weapon, and you’re a bad one. I am going to hone you into something more useful.”

  The table broke apart in my hands. Every muscle in my body was tight, ready to go, and this god was standing before me, taunting me.

  “Did you at least bring me a heartstone?”

  “Let her go,” I said. There was nothing between us except the remains of a table and my self-control. “Let her go, now.”

  He held up a small phone and pressed one of the buttons. The scream I heard through the tiny speaker could have been anyone, but it wasn’t. It was her, and the god was going to die.

  I lost all sense, all control. I had my hands around his neck and I was squeezing. Her screams kept going, the only sound in the world as the god began to smile in the face of my anger.

  “Enough,” he said softly.

  I was thrown away from him, across the room and through the wall into the hall beyond. I was up and running at him immediately, the tattoos ablaze and powering me toward his destruction. The god moved as quickly, leaning back against the wall behind him and holding the phone to his ear.

  “Attack me again and I’ll start cutting things off.”

  The tattoos seized up, constricting and stopping me immediately. I was stuck glaring at him, unable to move.

  “You will learn to listen to me, Agmundr. You will learn or she will suffer. Do you understand?”

  I was allowed to nod.

  “Do exactly as I say. Give me the heartstone you harvested.”

  I moved closer, walking stiffly and pulling the book from my pocket. I handed it to him carefully.

  He flipped through it quickly before looking up at me.

  “This isn’t good enough,” he said. “This is the same as the last one. This is a one person heaven.”

  “You didn’t specify.” I wanted to scream and rage, but every time I tried the tattoos crushed my windpipe and kept me from speaking. If I wasn’t responding to the god properly I was unable even to breathe.

  He sniffed the book. “One old lady and one angel. You, the mighty Agmundr, can’t do what I told you.”

  “I can. I chose not to.”

  Being forced to tell the truth was painful, especially when Erindis was at stake. I needed to lie, to bend the truth. I needed to tell him that the smaller heavens were stepping stones to bigger ones, and that they had to be done in order because that was how the heavens worked. He wouldn’t know any better; the new gods couldn’t go there, and they’d never made their own.

  Instead I had told the truth, and it pissed him off.

  “You killed a million men with your bare hands for one master. You slaughtered a peaceful tribe and burnt down their rainforest for a master. You killed thousands of gods for your master, and you won’t do this for her?”

  I wanted to tell him I wasn’t that person anymore, that I couldn’t just kill anymore. I wanted to tell him but the tattoos knew it was a lie. They knew that I could do whatever I was told and I was choosing not to. I wasn’t a human, I was a monster, and I couldn’t lie to him and tell him otherwise.

  “Go find me a big heaven and tear the damn heartstone out of it. I want a million souls in it, at least.”

  “I don’t have the power.”

  “Then find it. And find the heaven, and get back here as soon as you can.”

  “Hurting her beyond a certain point will release me to kill you,” I said. I tried to put as much menace
in my voice as possible but the tattoos holding me in place made it difficult. “Without her you have nothing.”

  “If you won’t do as I say then I don’t need you anymore.” He walked up to me and examined my frozen face. “If I don’t need you then I don’t need her. Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Then go get me what I want or I’ll have Bannon burn her face off.”

  I turned, as stiff as a hollow man in a fresh cadaver, and walked away. The cab was still waiting and I remembered I’d forgotten to pay him. He seemed pleased when I sat in the back.

  I gave him the address for the gate and prepared myself. I didn’t need the new Agmundr, who had friends and plans for the future. I needed the old Agmundr, who saw the world the way it truly was: transitory, ephemeral, and pointless.

  I sat quietly in the back of the car and tried to kill the progress I had made, because if I didn’t she would suffer. And I knew now I would do anything to keep her from suffering.

  Even destroy a million souls.

  Chapter 18

  The angel at the gate saw me and stepped aside without comment. This was the right thing to do.

  I looked around at the green plain and the fish-people statues and wondered what Invehl would do if I took the heartstone from this heaven. It was the only open gate I knew of and if he’d set up his base here I was willing to bet it was the only one he knew about too. If I destroyed it he’d have no way of forcing me to get more heartstones.

  And then he’d hurt Erindis. He’d do it as revenge and then he’d put me back in the locket and I wouldn’t know what happened to her.

  I ran, burning through the life-force I’d stolen from the angel and pushing faster than before. I skipped through gate after gate, heaven after heaven, not paying attention to anything but the next stop on my tour. I didn’t think about where I was going and I didn’t check any of the heavens in my path.

  I couldn’t do it. I knew I couldn’t do it. A million souls, lost. Destroyed by my hand to save one woman. How could I do that and live with myself?