In Eden's Shadow

by Amanda Churi

  Screaming, Griffin charged, leaped into the circle of foreboding purple with feet apart. His nostrils were steaming with dense, chilled mist, his hammer above his shoulder as he stood back-to-back with Flye, preparing for the moment that the hunger-driven lerials attacked.

  The evil clan stopped their descent once they were eye level with the three bold Encryptors; they were secured to the walls by their claws and refrained from attacking, through that did not mean that they were not hostile. They jittered in place, licking their chops with their black tongues and yearning to dive forward into the blood-bursting bodies that threatened to send them into overdrive.

  “Oi! Back off!” Sybil snapped.

  “…You’re alive, Sybil…”

  A lerial slightly bigger than most stood atop the broken hole, his voice helping to quell the clan ever-so-slightly. Aside from its few extra inches, there was nothing to set it apart; it looked just as deranged and evil as the rest of them.

  Sybil’s snarl slightly dropped, though her teeth remained bared, ready to burrow into any one of them at a moment’s notice. “Vasili… You’re clan leader now?”

  Vasili nodded, keeping his thin arms folded and emotions hidden. “I’m surprised to see your face. After our most recent attack, we assumed you were amongst the dead.” He brought himself down into a crouch, leaning forward and smirking as he rested his sharp chin against his jutting knuckles. “I’m more surprised to see the faces you’re with, though.”

  Sybil stifled a growl, clearing her throat and drawing a hand across her chest, pushing her height to its limit. “I am now Sybil: The Lost Avenger,” she stated proudly, “and this is the Encryption: a courageous, bold group, who I don’t regret siding with a bit!”

  “…I see,” Vasili replied bluntly. “And you brought them here why?”

  “To talk to Merritt.”

  Those were the first words that shook the leader. His toes curled and gripped the rim of the trench with deadly force. He leaned forward and threw his arms out. “What business do you have with that crazy bat?!”

  “I want the truth!” Sybil yelped, desperately trying to maintain her posture. “Merritt has those truths—our truth! Our lives are lies, Vasili!”

  “Blasphemy!”

  “No, you’re just blind! You all are! Gannon is not our real master; Satan is! And if by some chance Gannon was, it doesn’t make any sense to worship someone who treats us like trash! Why do we go hungry?! Beg for food and never get any? Open your eyes to see what I do—what is so obvious! He doesn’t care about us! He never has!”

  “SHUT. UP.” Vasili thrust an outstretched claw toward Sybil; his purple eyes became dangerously bright. “You know as well as I do that we aren’t afraid to kill our kind… Don’t push your luck.”

  Sybil giggled—one so high-pitched and innocent that its purity made Vasili flinch. “Oh, don’t worry! I’m not!” She leaped down from Flye’s shoulder, elegantly stretching her arms and motioning to her new family that flanked her at every inch. “We’re running. And we will kill anyone who gets in our way.”

  Vasili took a step back with a hiss. “You’re really trying to blackmail us?”

  “Haha! No, of course not!” A single eye of hers lit up in the intimidating fashion of a wink. “…Or am I?”

  “You… Bah!” He threw an arm up, readying the ravenous clan; they leaned forward as one, pinching the hole and dropping their salivating jaws. “No! You are not going to get by! We defend the real Lord, and we will fight you, even if it costs our lives!”

  “Oh, you didn’t lose enough last time?” Sybil casually took a step to the side, leaning on Griffin’s calf. “I think he taught you a good lesson. Eero too.”

  Vasili’s shoulders slightly rose.

  A sinister light glossed over Sybil’s eyes. “Oh yeah… You remember: the clan leader has the memories of the past. That was why the past leader remembered Eero, even though he was foreign to the rest of us. She remembered what we didn’t, and you… You know I’m telling the truth—the truths that you know from Merritt but keep hidden from everyone else.”

  The sureness in Sybil’s voice could not be ignored. Many of the aggressive, thirsty faces looked up at he who ruled them. Vasili grunted, catching on to the rising pressure—to the wave of suspicious followers with doubt flocking their eyes. Even so: “I’m happy to see that they manipulated you as well, you Glitch.”

  The eyes of the hundreds in the hole and thousands in the trees flared up as that single word activated their mutated genes. Sybil hissed in response, lurching forward and bending her claws, ready to fillet whoever made the fatal flaw of attacking.

  “AVENGER!”

  Griffin and Flye’s head shot back, watching Virgil come forth from the shadows. The smell of his fresh wound turned the heads of all demons, Sybil included as her primal nature rippled under the skin. Vasili thrust his hand up higher as the starved lerials shook in their slime coats, yearning to taste the juice swirling through the fresh, soft scab. “DON’T!”

  “Prelude…” Flye grumbled. “What are you—?”

  “How about a trade, Vasili?” Virgil put forth casually, ignoring the shocked eyes of his warriors.

  Vasili’s tail twitched, surprised by the sudden possibility of a negotiation. “You’re a bold human to speak with me… What do you propose?”

  “We need shelter from your Lord. We need protection, and we need advice from Merritt; we must know firsthand the truths that you know.”

  “Soldier of darkness, that is not—”

  “Oh, you’re mistaken! See, if you know what Merritt knows—or even if you only know slightly more than what Sybil knows—then I’m sure you want things to change. We can make that happen. We can overthrow the bastard, but we need a new base of operations.” He motioned to those behind him. “We can take shelter underground, it is what we have always known, but some must occasionally surface for supplies and other purposes. I ask that you keep our presence disclosed when the Proxez walk amongst the forest, and in return…” He grabbed his flask beside him, flicking the top of the canister open.

  The predators shuddered, nearly melted out of temptation; even Vasili’s tongue dropped like a dog, but he continuously pushed his wicked hand up toward the branches, demanding the lerials to remain in place. “That is not enough blood to satisfy us!”

  Virgil closed the flask. “I see.” He looked back into the sea of battle-prepped Encryptors, outstretching his flawless black hand into the darkness. “Spear.”

  A torch of white surged over the humans’ skin, and Seek bolted forward with crazed eyes. Her powerful aura immediately silenced the lerials’ cries for blood, but they did not retreat as she came face-to-face with Virgil, latching onto his buff wrist and yanking it down in disbelief. “Prelude!”

  “Get back, Seek,” he commanded, his red eyes seeing through her as the crowd parted, revealing a buff, scar-laden soldier carrying a pale, diminished ghost.

  “NO!” Seek roared, tugging on Virgil’s wrist. “You can’t—!”

  “She won’t live anyway!” He knocked Seek away, lerials scattering as he plowed her into the loose wall. “This is what she would want!”

  The soldier stopped before Virgil, passing off the dead weight to the tactician. Kaitlyn groaned as her body was displaced, but she had not the strength to move her limbs nor open her eyes to see what was happening.

  “What she wants?!” Seek repeated, sauntering back to Virgil and blocking his path. Her white eyes were on fire, the most blinding star in space; her hair levitated around her, glowing and racing with starlight as she thrust her hands beneath Kaitlyn so that she had a hold on her as well. Seek’s anger had become her very body, the air bending and twisting around her knuckles that sank into Kaitlyn’s spine—if they did not rest there, they would have collided with Virgil’s face.

  “I will warn you one last time,” Virgil spat, jerking Kaitlyn closer. “Move.”

  Seek opened her fists and latched onto Kaitlyn’s infi
rmary gown. “What she wants…” she started again, seething with every word, “is not to be eaten alive. Yes, she’s a valiant warrior who would have given anything and everything for the cause, but this…?” She attempted to pull Kaitlyn closer, but Virgil would not budge. “This is inhumane.”

  “INHUMANE?!” He snatched Kaitlyn away, his foot barreling into Seek’s gut. She gasped as her torso folded inward, saliva flying from her lips and eyes going dark as she imprinted the wall a second time, spine cracking, legs buckling. Her thin muscles convulsed with adrenaline; her teeth bore down on each other as she tried to come back at him, but her strength was gone.

  “Inhumane…” Virgil echoed in disbelief as he faced away from the cursed child. “The only way to win is to abandon humanity. She knew that; she is dying the honorable death of a soldier.”

  “She doesn’t know that!” Seek gagged. “How could she?! Just look at her!”

  Virgil’s chin fell a tick, his sight scanning the worn soldier draped in his arms. Seek wasn’t lying; Kaitlyn could not hear the commotion—she had no idea what Fate had planned at that moment. The soiled gauze patches in place of her ears had reached their retention rate; her blood could be restrained no longer, creeping across her dusted cheeks and dripping into her hair, and yet she grinned in a forced, oblivious sleep.

  “She’s smiling,” Virgil said lowly. “She accepts it.”

  “BUT—!” Seek attempted to rise once more, but her beaten body fought back, forcing her to hug her gut and remain down. “But… Virgil…!” Her lips twitched and collapsed, her jaw slacking as she sobbed—sobbed loudly, desperately to her heart’s content as her face dug into her knees, unable to watch.

  Griffin remained silent, dropping his head. It was obvious that Kaitlyn’s brain no longer functioned properly, but when Virgil’s merciless soul lifted Kaitlyn’s corpse above his head and held her to the sky as though she was a prophet, Griffin could only wonder where her conscious lie. Maybe she thought she was ascending to Heaven—or perhaps she thought she was running wild and free in a forest, a real one, reunited with her lethal bow and hunting natural prey. He would never know, but he hoped that the smile on her face came from genuine happiness somewhere within that would mask the pain… That sole thought was the only thing that kept him from collapsing beside Seek as yet another well-known name was grayed out.

  “…B-bring the sacrifice for-rth…” Vasili instructed with irate laughter lacing his words. In preparation for the feast, the jittery herd scrambled up the walls as fast as they could, laughing as they trampled one another to get first pickings.

  With his bulging muscles, Virgil flung Kaitlyn’s limp body over his shoulder like a towel. He gripped the strongest of the roots, gradually climbing up and out of the hole with such ease it was hardly apparent that he had extra weight to carry.

  Flye watched silently as Virgil exited the trench and stood on flat ground. The lerials screamed with excitement, clicking their fangs, claws, and smacking their wings to try and make their meal come sooner. Most all Encryptors looked away or retreated farther into the tunnels, but Flye was tempted to watch—she needed to.

  Sybil whimpered, glancing over at Seek, who was screaming, white tears racing down her arms and legs and turning her into a radioactive, destructive x-ray. Sybil wanted to reach out and apologize, tell her how it was her fault that this was happening, but when Sybil lifted a claw, Flye noticed, quickly bending down and pinching it.

  Sybil looked at Flye, confused. Flye summoned a weak smile, wrapping her fingers around Sybil’s wrist and hurling her into her arms so that she had a front-row seat. “Do you know what utilitarianism is?” Flye suddenly asked.

  Sybil did not know how to respond; she could not repeat that word, let alone understand it.

  “It’s a philosophy in ethics: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Flye tilted her head back. “Fly away, Spear…”

  Virgil grunted loudly, pulling his arms back and letting Kaitlyn’s body loose.

  The lerial and crazed girl looked on as Kaitlyn’s body spun in midair, the gauze parting from her wounds and releasing a surge of blood. Her red hair was a ribbon, twirling around her shoulders and neck as her gown flowered about her. Her upturned lips touched a single beam of dusty luminance between the gaps in the branches, the strings of blood that spewed from her missing ears complimenting her streamers of hair and turning her into a beautiful, majestic spiral of matter—a galaxy of human flesh with the center being her fading heart, her fading torch, but nonetheless, burning.

  She supernovaed. The black hole of lerials was off the ground and on their wings, surging through space before Kaitlyn could return to Earth. Her outer rings were ripped away as quickly as gas would have dissolved, their fangs digging in at her neck and creating cosmic trails down the length of her body. All the energy that she possessed sprayed out of her as blood, and as her life force turned dark and condensed in their bellies, her eyes did awaken. And she did scream—she did cry, she did beg for help as they slashed her throat and burrowed into her organs.

  But she did not move. She had not the strength: once her vocal cords had been sliced, she could not yell; once her eyes had been gouged out and sucked dry, she could not see; once they crawled into the open holes in her skull and drank the fluid around her mind, she could not think.

  But even after her brain collapsed into a pile of mush, even after her heart was torn in half, she still lived as red rain. It splittered and splattered onto the earth buried in the remnants of victims prior; it dribbled and drabbled down the walls hiding the revolution; it smacked and smothered Sybil and Flye’s face, a light spray of all that was left painting the rest of their bodies.

  Flye closed her eyes, silently giving thanks to Kaitlyn for all that she had done. It was Sybil who shivered under the coat of warm blood that masked her skin and filled her pores. No matter her dedication to the cause, she was still a demon, but it was at that moment that her corrupted heart died. Her natural, sinful instincts fled forever as she basked in the fallen life of her ally, watching Virgil lick his arms and reap his own reward from Kaitlyn’s disposal.

  Gut strung with unrest, Sybil carefully mirrored Virgil’s movement and lightly traced her soaked arm with her tongue.

  She frowned as she swallowed. It was no longer sweet, but sour.

  Six

  To Dynasty

  Nortora was the stronghold of Hell’s serenity. It was where trials were conducted, where demons celebrated all existing dance styles, where damned served the unfortunate saved, and it was the last place where pleasure could be found—where a smile, however twisted, could come to life, and where gleeful stories could be shared. In spite of what humans said, it wasn’t all bad. Demons had a blast, and if you were a respected damned, working your way up through the rankings, you could have a slice of your own salvation there as well.

  Even though demons could cackle and joyously beat servants to a pulp outside of the gates, I was one of few who brought myself pleasure without Nortora—without the use of others. Burrowed into the side of an active volcano, resting amongst the sulfur and obsidian, that was where I was happy. I was happy having a view of the vast lava plains from within my home; I enjoyed my expeditions to Earth, daringly selecting my pickings for forgery and combining them with the power from my demonic soul before topping the seal off with a coat of fire; I looked forward to munching on some devil’s lettuce and letting my mind wander away to explore its creative dark side.

  That was my life; that was what made me smile. I had my clawful of friends and allies, but I had an ocean of enemies—people who thought they were better than me. I preferred isolation over association because, honestly, I needed nothing more than myself, adventure, and weapons to be happy.

  I had pushed the large boulder back in front of my doorway to seal away my presence as I leaned over the pool of lava that stretched on for eternity, swirling the molten rock with my long black claw. I was trying to think of a design, frame,
anything… It had been far too long since a good creation had sprouted from my brain, and Satan was requesting more. He wanted to have something great enough to bring the chariots down from Earth’s sky when they would eventually fly; He wanted a tool great enough to sever God’s being with one strike so that He could tear down the pearly gates and order those angels still above to bow at His malicious feet.

  I honored Him for having ambition, but what He dreamed of seemed well beyond my capabilities. And trust me, I didn’t admit that often.

  “Which weapon is this?” The sound of a chime graced my ears—a beautiful sound that made me smile when I heard it.

  “Halushkie,” I replied, remaining focused on my work. “It’s something that I believe will be the first of many: a device that has an affinity for energy which it then shoots out the nozzle.”

  They grabbed it off one of the many stone shelves, grunting as its heavy golden barrel threatened to break their arms. “Damn, who can hold this up?!”

  “Me.”

  They glowered and threw the contraption back on the shelf. They pressed their hands to their hips, scanning the cluttered, deadly walls before moving onto the ceiling. Shrapnel from all sorts of entities hung down from chains and clinked against one another like wind chimes, even in the still environment; there was so little space that even the slightest gust from the simplest movement displaced them. “You sure you don’t have anything for me?”

  “You are a twister,” I muttered. I swirled the magma around before scattering it once more. “No, that won’t do either…”

  “So what?” my guest pushed. “Being a twister doesn’t mean I don’t need a weapon!”

  They were starting to get on my last nerve. I couldn’t focus with all this blabbering! “True, but your manipulation skills exceed your physical capabilities by far. Just be grateful that He made you the head of a respected population.” My claw slipped, cutting through the current blade I had been sketching. “Shit!”