by C L Walker
I shook him and dropped him to the ground. I could have killed him – I had the anger needed to do anything – but I didn’t want to.
“You have been telling me this was coming,” I said as I looked down at him. “All of you. Why?”
“This is what we are meant to say.” His voice was breaking and he couldn’t look at me anymore. He was scared.
“But you know what’s going to happen. Just tell me.”
“And now you kill me.” He finally looked up and there were tears in his eyes. “You kill me now because he has found you, and this is your only chance before you finally face him.”
“Where is he?” I turned in place, searching the blue sky and the endless sand. I could feel the gates dotted around the landscape and none of them showed promise. They were all the same, giving nothing away, yet I knew what I would find on the other side.
“You are out of time, Agmundr.”
I turned again and plunged my hand into his chest. His flesh was old and weak but his heart was all I would need. I crushed it and the tattoos fed again.
I sent them out again to search the heaven. They found the heartstone in place nearby but nothing else. Gates were abundant but they couldn’t see beyond them.
I poured more power into the search, angrily willing the tattoos to find me something, anything. And they did.
There was something new in the heaven, a connection I could barely detect. It was like a root leading from the heartstone and out into the void, disappearing beyond the capacity for the tattoos to follow.
I ran for the seed of the heaven and found it buried in a small hole, apparently forgotten. It was a wooden bowl, cracked and faded from too much sun. I picked it up and knew what I had to do.
He’d connected the heartstones. Somehow, while he had the power of Ohm in him, he’d connected the heartstones from all the heavens he could find. I could feel the link from this to all the others through a grand central hub. And I could feel the strange gate the heartstone had now become.
I closed my eyes and focused, trying to understand what I was feeling. It took me seconds to see it properly, but when I did I saw that it wasn’t that different to a normal gate. It was a fissure in the fabric of the heaven, only this time in the form of a simple wooden bowl.
I channeled the life-force the angel had gifted me and tore the bowl open. I stepped through before I could change my mind.
Chapter 37
Heavens were converging, melding into one. I stepped out onto a blasted plain of dry, cracked rock. But it was also an ocean, and if I concentrated I found I could focus on it instead. The heat of the dead plain changed to the cold of an endless sea.
There were others, so many others. I reached through them, searching for the one at the center. But they were all the center, all on top of each other.
I flipped through more: a marble temple atop an enormous mountain that stretched out of the atmosphere and into space; a raft large enough for a small town traveling down a river with no end; a kingdom in the clouds, with ivory bridges and statues of animals mating.
It was too much, all the heavens combining into a mass of sensation, of noise and sound that flooded my mind until I couldn’t think. I was lost, spinning through them and out of control. I blinked and I was falling. I blinked again and I was in a grand cavern surrounded by tiny white lights.
I realized I was screaming and it was the right thing to do. My mind was unraveling under the pressure and the only thing I had to hold onto was my rage. It was my core of sanity, my rock. I held onto it for my life, squeezing my eyes shut and focusing only on that anger.
The world grew quiet. A warm breeze blew through my hair. I opened my eyes and finally saw it all.
He was forming the heavens into an enormous amphitheater, hundreds of miles wide and curved in some other dimension of space that my mind couldn’t grasp. Everything intersected with everything else, no beginning or end, no one or the other. Everything, all at once.
“Agmundr.” An angel stood beside me. He looked like one of the people I’d fought with when I was just a man. He was a warrior with an enormous broadsword across his back.
“Help me,” I said. My anger would only keep me sane for so long, and then I would snap.
“You’ve received all the help you need.” Another angel, tall and elflike, with delicate features and the slightest beak instead of a nose.
“This is what is meant to happen.” Another, behind me. It was the large furry beast I’d met in the frozen heaven, it’s teeth swaying in its circular mouth.
“This is the end of a world,” another angel said. It was the old woman from the first heaven I’d taken a heartstone from. She was unbalanced, about to fall over. She looked up at me and smiled. “Perhaps.”
“You saw this coming,” I said.
“We can’t see beyond the edges of our heavens,” the warrior said. “But our heavens no longer have edges.”
“And you see all of time, so you saw all of this.” The worlds were fracturing again, splintering off and making my head spin as I tried to keep them in focus.
“He came here and restored the heartstones to the heavens you set adrift,” the elfin one said. “Then he closed the gates and began his project, only to run out of Ohm’s blood and get stuck. This is his response.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I said as the assault on my senses began again. “Tell me what happens now.”
“Now you fight, Agmundr.” I couldn’t tell who’d said it. Everything was a blur. “Now one of you is lost.”
The tattoos exploded with fresh power. I could feel the heat from them in my bones. Angel hands were all over me, pumping angelic power into the sigils and symbols and spells etched on my skin. Hundreds of hands. No, thousands, fueling me for the confrontation.
I focused again and willed the tattoos to aid me. I made them feed the anger inside, grow it and cultivate it, until I could see again. Until I could see him.
Invehl stood at the center of the maelstrom, a spider admiring his web. I brought my fury to bear and roared as I took a step forward, passing through a hundred heavens, then another step and a thousand more. Every permutation of humanities longings passed around me, but I only saw one thing: the god of envy as his eyes widened when he saw me coming.
I was everywhere already. I didn’t need to walk or run, because I was already where I needed to be. I focused…
…and we were standing together on a dais at the center of his heavenly creation. He was staring at me, angry and scared at the same time.
“How did you get here?” he said. He raised his hand to silence me. “It doesn’t matter. Look, Agmundr. Look at what I’ve made.”
His emotions were fluid, changing by the moment as he too flipped through the heavens. Or maybe he could see them all at once the way my human mind couldn’t. Perhaps he was experiencing his emotions all at once, every possible feeling piling atop one another.
“I’ve been sent to kill you,” I said. He was close enough for me to attack, but I could feel the power inhabiting his body like it was a blast furnace.
“Erindis has no faith,” he replied. He seemed to struggle to focus on me, to block out all the thousands of distractions. Our voices were close and loud, blocked by walls only a few feet away that I couldn’t see. Even so, they echoed as though we were in the giant cavern.
“Erindis wants to save people. She thinks you’re a threat to everyone.”
He held up his hand again, laughing softly. “I’m not a threat to anyone. Not anymore. I’m not going anywhere. This is where I belong.”
The dais was now the raft, floating down the river, and we were its only occupants.
“Where are the souls, Invehl?”
“They had to go. Too many desires conflicting. I needed a pristine surface to work with.”
“You don’t want to leave, do you?”
“Why would I?” He walked toward me and the tattoos erected a shield in preparation. “Look at what I can h
ave here. This is more than any of us could ever hope for. We fight over one world and here I can have them all, and more, forever.”
He was the god of envy, despite all the trappings of war. And in the heavens he had found his ultimate desire: everything.
I still had to kill him. It was what Erindis wanted. Deep inside I knew it was what I wanted, to save the heavens.
“You don’t want to fight me, Agmundr. Not here, not even with the power you now have.” He tried to touch me and the shield pushed back on his hand. “As powerful as you are, I am more a god now than I have ever been.”
He began changing constantly, his clothing morphing from one ceremonial garb to another, armor to flowing silks to stone plates to modern combat gear. His form was shifting as well, from a human to a giant to a robot to a dragon, on and on.
“Put everything back the way you found it,” I said. The tattoos glowed even brighter, preparing for what was coming. “Be a good boy and let’s go.”
I knew what I had to do. One of the angels had told me on one of my journeys. They had seen this moment and used it as a way to speak to one another and swap stories. They lived in every moment of their heavens, from beginning to end, and they’d seen what had to happen. All I needed to do was back Invehl into a corner and complete their plan.
I sent a blast of magic his way, raw and without form. It hit him hard, driving him to the edge of the raft, which was now on a pole ten miles in the air, precariously balanced and in danger of falling.
He recovered and ran at me, raising his hands to return the favor. Only where my attack had been simple magic his was something else, and all-consuming wave of divine anger.
I shifted my focus to a different heaven, a cave beside a beach. I could still see his attack but it passed through me harmlessly.
He shifted as well, joining me.
“You can’t win,” he said. “Not anymore. Perhaps an elder god could, I suppose. They created all this, after all. But they don’t care about it anymore, and you are no elder god.”
He sent another wave and again I focused away, this time to a clearing in the woods at sunrise. He joined me a moment later.
“I can do this all day,” he yelled. “You can’t beat me here.”
“But you can’t beat me either, and I will never tire and I will never die.” I shifted to the oasis in the desert and kept talking, knowing he could hear me wherever he was. “I will keep you from your heaven for the rest of my life. I will make this your hell.”
He understood. He knew what his future looked like unless he beat me, and he knew there was only one way to do it. Gods were arrogant, and he believed he could defeat me if I’d just hold still.
The clearing blurred as multiple heavens intersected against my will. I could focus on any of them and escape, but this time I wanted to be swept away by his maelstrom. He was doing what he was meant to do. This was what was supposed to happen.
The heaven that resolved around me was my own, the amphitheater that resembled a scaled down version of what he had created. The enormous stands were empty and tents flapped in the warm wind. Invehl stood atop the temple in the center.
“Now you can’t escape,” he said triumphantly. “Now I’ve got you.”
“No,” I said. “Now I’ve got you.”
The four angels stood at their corners, the bull, the wolf, the eagle and the tiger, twenty feet tall and as healthy as they’d been when I first saw them. They raised their weapons and joined the battle.
I tried to focus on a different heaven and found myself trapped. As expected. As planned.
The tattoos all shone with a vivid red light as I leapt to join in the fight.
Chapter 38
“How are you here?” I said to the bull. His sword was ineffective against Invehl but his actions were creating openings for me.
I wasn’t ready to end it all yet, not before I knew exactly what was happening.
The bull retreated from a blast of divine power. “The heavens you set adrift are still in the void, still alive. He brought them back.”
“You’ve seen this coming?” I said, but the bull was back in the fight and the wolf now stood beside me.
“We see everything.”
“Will we win?”
“This is where I die,” he said. “This is where I choose to die, yet I fight against my conviction and try to survive at the last moment.”
He joined the fray and left me alone. They were a distraction to enable me to do what I had to and I was wasting time questioning them. Invehl had brought this heaven to life using the power of the many, plucked it from the void and placed us in it. I knew he couldn’t create gates of his own, though I’d seen him refocus on other heavens as I did.
I knew heavens needed a heartstone or they disconnected and floated away. And I knew where the heartstone for this heaven was.
He was trapped with me, and all I had to do was destroy the heartstone before he could leave to keep him trapped forever, adrift in the void.
I ran for the temple door, dodging the eagle as it fell from the sky screaming, its feathers on fire.
Invehl threw the tiger at me. It was dead and when it bounced off my shield I saw its glassy eyes for a moment.
The bull went down next, torn in half by the power of the god of envy. Its sword clattered to the ground before the temple entrance.
“I know what you’re doing, Agmundr.” Invehl dropped to the ground before me, blocking my path to the heartstone. He was surrounded by a nimbus of green energy and the floating gore of the fallen angels.
“I’m following orders, little god.”
“Little?” he screamed, running at me faster than I had any hope of defending against. He slammed into the shield and drove us both backward and into the pool surrounding the temple.
His attacks were everywhere, darkening the shield where they couldn’t get through, breaking me where they could. The tattoos had more power than they needed to heal me quickly but it was all a defensive act, a desperate move to remain in a fight I was losing.
The wolf came to my aid, tackling the god off me and giving me a moment to recover. I stood and ran for the temple entrance again.
Invehl was on me, driving me to the ground as his magic slammed into my shield and destroyed it.
“Even with your gift, you’re just a man,” he said. He punched through my side, my flesh exploding from the hole and painting the marble red.
The wolf was there again, growling and slashing at the god. I rolled away from the battle and grabbed the bull’s sword, rising to my feet in time for Invehl to toss the wolf aside and desperately hunt for me.
“I can just leave,” he yelled as he ran at me again.
“You’re too stupid,” I said, raising the enormous blade in preparation.
We clashed, his hands gripping the blade of the sword and tearing it away from me. It flew away, landing too far beyond for it to matter. I landed a blow and drove him back but he was stronger than me, faster, and I had to deflect his next attack a heartbeat later.
Back and forth, barely keeping on my feet. Invehl screaming constantly and my voice rising in response. The red mist had fallen and all I wanted to do was see the god bleed, see his guts on the floor beside his cooling corpse.
The wolf was back, joining the attack and reminding me why I was there. Once I completed my task I’d have time to fight Invehl, and he would have time to punish me for stranding him in a heaven neither of us could escape. First I had to get to the heartstone.
I waited for the moment he split his attention between the two of us and ran for the temple doors. He tried to stop me, reaching out with his hand and his divinity, missing by a moment. I made it to the door as the wolf screamed in pain.
I turned back to see if my last ally was dead. This was a mistake.
Invehl was there with the sword in his hand, surrounded by the green glow of his divinity. It pierced my stomach and exploded out the other side, driving into the stone temple door a
nd pinning me to the wall.
The wolf rose again and came in for an attack, but Invehl didn’t have to split his attention anymore. He turned his back on me and faced the angel.
“Leave and you can live,” he said to the rapidly approaching wolf. “Come at me and I will crush you like I’ve crushed him.”
The wolf kept coming and Invehl’s power grew in response, the glow surrounding him brightening until I had to shield my eyes. At the last minute, moments before Invehl destroyed him, the wolf veered away. He chose life and escape, despite his convictions.
“Not so fast,” Invehl yelled, launching into the air and tracking the escaping angel.
I gripped the sword and tore it from my body. It was an angel blade and I was running low on power. The wound was there to stay, pumping blood out and weakening me considerably. But I only had a few feet more to go.
I staggered and turned, gripping the door and bracing myself to tear it open.
“Not so fast,” Invehl said from behind me.
He grabbed my shoulder to pull my around, his hand digging into my flesh, the pain so intense that my knees buckled. I was left dangling, supported by the god, yanked away from the doorway.
I held on to the handle with the last of my strength. As Invehl pulled me away from the door, so I pulled the door open. The cool darkness within was opened to the light. I glanced over at the god to see the sadistic smile on his face spread at the sight of my failure.
The snake angel, lying in wait within the temple, struck. He bypassed me and ran his blade through the god’s stomach, propelling him away from me.
I fell to the floor in my own blood. I was too tired, too low on power. The heartstone was a few feet away but it might as well have been a world away.
“Get up and fight, Agmundr,” the snake said, and then it was gone, the last distraction before Invehl won.
I dragged myself up and limped to the temple, stumbling inside and landing on the plinth within. My hand was on the bloody spear as I heard the snake screech and die.
I focused all my remaining energy on the heartstone as I gripped it in both hands. As Invehl’s laughter grew closer I poured everything I had, everything the tattoos had, into the effort, and broke it in two.
