Strange Cosmology

by Alex Raizman

  “There’s a portal at the other end of the field. He didn’t leave that one open, but there’s a pile of bodies near it.”

  Crystal looked thoughtful. “Why leave one portal open, but not the other?”

  Dianmu answered the question before Athena could. “It seems he wanted us to see, and know what he did here, but did not wish us to follow him any further.”

  “Well,” Horus said, sourly. “This has been a waste of time. We received his message, and now we’ve lost him. We need to go back and start looking elsewhere.”

  “For Moloch, or for Bast?” Athena asked, her voice harsher than she’d intended.

  Horus shook his head and held up a hand, his mouth twisting sourly. “Stay your anger, Gray-Eyes. We seek whoever we can locate, so it will depend on what clues we find. You have my oath, Athena, is that not enough?”

  I had Bast’s oath too, Athena thought, but aloud she said, “Of course. My apologies – I just dislike our failure here.”

  Crystal took a step towards her, her mouth open. Whatever platitude she was about to utter was cut off by a sharp click.

  Athena understood instantly and started to shout a warning as she grabbed threads of reality, twisting with desperate need.

  She barely saw the shock cross Crystal’s face before the world went white. The air bubble Athena had tried to throw around them was only half-formed, and the soupy air compressed and battered the gods. Athena’s vision went black, and she lost track of what was happening.

  She hit the ground moments later, the impact snapping her back to full awareness. The last of her improvised shield vanished, and her head rang from the explosion. She looked around wildly, trying to find any of her companions. Her hasty shield might have protected them too, or it might have come too late. She didn’t know.

  Debris from the tower rained down around her. Athena cursed when a stone struck her forehead and drew blood. She hissed in pain and twisted, searing the wound shut. She briefly lost her vision again as her eyes watered.

  When they had cleared, she saw that the portal they had used to enter had gone dark. For a moment, Shadu seemed even quieter than before. Then more explosions rocked the remains of other towers and structures. Athena dove for shelter, and then twisted to form a full, solid shield.

  Turning, she came face to face with the corpse of another of Moloch’s zealots, a woman with silver blond hair and another of those damn smiles plastered across her lips. Athena’s lips curled in disgust, and then her mouth dropped open as the corpse’s neck began to writhe as if maggots were crawling under the skin. Athena scrambled away as the woman’s head tore free from her shoulders and took flight, entrails trailing like tentacles grasping at empty air. Athena reached into her nanoverse to draw a sword as the head hissed raged at her, showing three-inch fangs.

  Penanggalan. He made penanggalan. It’s a trap. And I led us right into it.

  ***

  When the tower exploded, Crystal was flung away from the others, hurling off the tower and through the air. It was a bloody trap, and I triggered it, she thought. Stupid!

  The ground rushed up at her, and she quickly twisted to lower her gravity before she splattered against the hard stones. She touched down gently, scanning the horizon for any possible threats. It can’t just be that one explosion. Moloch wouldn’t have left it to chance that we’d stumble across it.

  She’d landed close to Moloch’s exit portal, an area that had been relatively untouched by the earlier battle. She didn’t see the others, although a speck in the distance might be Horus in falcon form. Athena, Dianmu, Anansi...you have to assume they’re okay, Crystal told herself. Until she knew otherwise. There wasn’t anything she could-

  A clap of thunder tore through the air. No, not thunder. That’s a sonic boom. Someone’s fighting. Of course. Moloch must have left monsters waiting somewhere. Crystal turned on her heel to rush in that direction and felt a hand grab her foot.

  Reflex kicked in, and she leapt upwards as hard as she could. With her personal gravity still decreased, the motion carried her a good twenty feet into the air. She held out her hands, realizing how horribly exposed she was. If anything else was laying in wait, she’d just announced her presence as badly as if she’d screamed.

  But there was the immediate threat to deal with. Crystal reached the apex of her leap and scanned the ground.

  The “threat” was half-buried by rubble. It was a man. He could be one of Moloch’s, or he might be a Canaanite survivor. Either way, he’d have information.

  She landed and took a tentative step towards the man. “Hey. Hold on a second, let me get you out of there.”

  When she cleared the stones away from his head, she saw an older, bearded face. It was a face she knew: Resheph, the god of plague. “Ishtar?” he asked, his voice weak.

  She quickly began clearing more of the rubble. “In the flesh, love. Don’t try to move, you look like you’re in a right state. I’ll have you out in a jiff.”

  “No…time,” he coughed, a phlegmatic sound that made Crystal shudder. Usually, the sick didn’t particularly bother her, but hearing Resheph cough used to be a death sentence. He’d been able to concoct diseases that even gods couldn’t resist. The black plague had been his idea, his plan to stop the advance of Genghis Khan.

  The revulsion must have shown on her face, but he shook his head. “No...illness…I wouldn’t…”

  “I know,” Crystal said, lifting a piece of debris and tossing it aside. The others would have to get along without her until she freed him. “Just an old reflex, yeah?”

  He nodded slightly, a slow gesture that caused him to scrunch his face in pain. “Moloch. It was-”

  “Yeah, he’s been a right pain in my arse for a bit now,” Crystal said as she lifted another stone. “No need to waste the energy – I’m here because I was following him. I don’t suppose you managed to infect him with anything nasty?”

  Resheph shook his head as Crystal heaved the last rock from his stomach. This revealed why Resheph was having so much trouble speaking, and Crystal did her best not to let her horror show. He’d been impaled, a spear driven straight through his spine and then broken off by the collapsing rubble.

  “He took them,” Resheph managed to spit out, ichor leaking from his mouth.

  “Took what? We saw Marquod earlier…”

  Resheph shook his head, and Crystal went silent to let him continue.

  It took him a bit to manage to speak again, and in the silence, Crystal could hear the sounds of distant battle. I shouldn’t be wasting time. He’s out of that mess, so he’ll keep. I should be getting back to-

  “The…verses. He took them.”

  Crystal winced. “So he’s going to destroy them,” she said. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Enki had escalated every fight to life or death, and now Moloch was continuing that tradition.

  All these ages, Crystal thought, we managed to war without final death. Now, all that has changed.

  “Monsters,” Resheph said. “Heard him talking...to his followers. They were going to…”

  “Oh no.” Crystal wanted to be sick. Moloch was a master of crafting monsters out of dead gods. With all the nanoverses he’d have from his attack here... he’d have an army. Hecatoncheires. Dragons. Medusae. Probably things she couldn’t dream of - and he’d have an entire pantheon’s worth…He would be unstoppable. “Did he say where he was going?”

  Again, with great effort, Resheph shook his head.

  “Okay. Did he take yours?”

  Resheph smiled slightly. “No. Managed to…bring building down…on myself.” He tapped a pouch on his belt. “Got it right-” the last word was cut off by more of that disgusting coughing. A chunk of viscera flew from his mouth, and Crystal turned her eyes away.

  “Okay,” she said, her mind racing. “Resheph. Other gods, my allies, are fighting for their lives. I need to get back to them. Your spine is severed, love. How do you want me to deal with that?”

  H
e didn’t need to think about it. “Do it. Quick.”

  Without waiting, Crystal brought her sword down into Resheph’s skull. The sound was sickening, as always, but she maintained eye contact until the light went out in Resheph’s eyes. She reached down and scooped up his nanoverse before a quick twist set his corpse on fire.

  It was a choice she’d made before when the injury was bad enough.

  Without wasting any more time, she turned and headed towards the sound of battle, moving in giant leaps augmented by her decreased gravity. She just hoped she would be in time to help.

  ***

  The penanggalan’s entrail tentacles whipped at Athena. She surrounded herself with a bubble of air and pushed herself away, the tentacles slapping against the barrier. They didn’t find purchase, and the penanggalan hissed in rage while surging to close the distance between them.

  Athena rolled to get more distance, slashing her sword through the air. A few of the tendrils went flying away, and the penanggalan recoiled from the blow.

  Around her, more torsos were detaching from bodies, their heads whipping around to focus on her with eyes full of malice. Worry about them later. The one in front of her was closing the gap, spittle dripping from its screaming mouth.

  Athena hurled her sword directly at her attacker’s skull. A quick twist as she let go of the sword and the weapon let out a sonic boom as it accelerated.

  The sword didn’t just punch through the penanggalan’s skull. It detonated it, and a red mist erupted from around the penanggalan. The creature’s entrails fell to the ground limply.

  Useful knowledge, Athena thought, already moving again. She hadn’t been sure the destruction of the head would be fatal. The immense sound, coupled with the rather gory display, gave the other penanggalan pause. Athena seized on their distraction to leap with all her might, propelling herself further out of the circle with a gust of air. Midair, she held out her hand and called her sword back to her. It flew into her grip, and she was barely able to bring it up to meet the bite of the next attacker. They’re fast, she thought as the two halves of the skulls fell to the ground, revealing three more creatures closing the distance.

  The penanggalan didn’t appear to be stupid. They weren’t rushing in as blindly now that Athena had felled two of their brethren. Instead, they attacked from different directions, keeping their grasping entrails extended so she couldn’t just block them out. Athena felt their slimy lengths brush against her arms and fought desperately, finding herself losing ground with each strike.

  And still more came. Like the hydra, for every one she cut down, two or more filled the gap. One of them got its tendrils around her arm, and before she could cut herself free, it yanked with a strength that caught her off guard. It didn’t quite pull her off balance, but it did propel itself close. Athena felt fangs sink into her arm. Another tentacle wrapped around her leg and yanked, and a penanggalan bit deeply into her calf. Athena let out a cry of pain, and a third wrapped its entrails around her waist and bit the back of her neck. Already they were drawing strength from her, feasting on divine Ichor. Too much longer, and she would be too weak to keep the fight up.

  Fortunately, Athena fought well in close combat.

  She grabbed elemental threads with her free hand. This wasn’t an intricate weaving, pulling in threads to create a delicate construct. This was a direct, brute force transmutation of Air into Flame.

  The world exploded around her. A thin layer of elemental Water protected her from incinerating herself, but the impact of the sudden flame drove her to her knees. The penanggalan that were attached to her screamed as they burned. The remaining swarm hesitated at the display, floating out of her reach to study her with beady eyes.

  Athena took a slow breath, steadying herself and rising to her feet. She’d beaten back the first assault and had bought herself time to think.

  The penanggalan weren’t all waiting to see what she would do next. Several of them broke away and latched onto some of the bodies that still littered the battlefield, and when they finished feeding on a body, it became a new penanggalan and joined their ranks.

  Athena swore. Some of the creatures were fully fed, hale and healthy and brimming with blood, and she could see the excess energy swirling around them as a sickly mass of crimson smoke. That was going to make them far more dangerous than the first group.

  She reached up and twisted as several dozen penanggalan turned to face her. She sent shards of stone hurtling at them, a barrage of bullets flying from the ground. The penanggalans’ writhing intestines lashed out, batting the projectiles away before they could reach their targets.

  They’re too fast, Athena thought as they snarled in excitement and began to rush in. She changed to direct twists of Air, blades of condensed wind cutting into the approaching monstrosities. They bled but endured the strikes and continued to advance. What would it take to kill them?

  A tendril wrapped around her arm again. This time, when the penanggalan tugged at her, she went stumbling towards it. Her sword flashed, but another pair of tendrils whipped around her sword arm. The twin penanggalan began to tug her from both sides.

  Then the pressure on the right vanished, and Athena swung her sword around and rammed it through the face of the penanggalan still attached to her.

  Dianmu had arrived, her glaive flashing down on one of the monsters. It didn’t cleave the penanggalan as neatly as Athena’s sword had, but it did the job.

  “I got your message,” Dianmu said with a fierce grin.

  “Nothing quite like a sonic boom to give away your location.” Athena got back to her feet, breathing heavily. “The others?”

  Another penanggalan moved in. Athena dropped to a crouch to ready herself for the charge, and Dianmu raised her glaive. Before either of them could reach it, a rolling buzzsaw of air caught it mid-flight. Anansi stepped into view, that implacable grin still on his face. “Hopefully, Horus and Crystal are on their way,” he said. “Want to see how many we can take out before they get here?”

  Athena threw her sword again, adding the supersonic twist to accelerate it towards a new target. Anansi’s confidence was appreciated, although she suspected it was feigned. The penanggalan were brutally effective killers and outnumbered the gods significantly. Athena doubted it would be easy.

  The one she’d targeted caught her sword, proving her point. It tossed the formerly supersonic projectile aside and snarled as it dove. Athena reached into her nanoverse to grab another blade, her teeth gritting in determination.

  “Let’s,” Athena said to Anansi, raising her sword.

  The three gods rushed to meet the penanggalan in a clash of steel on flesh. Athena hacked with her sword, only barely aware of Dianmu and Anansi in her peripheral vision. The penanggalan in front of her croaked as she shoved her blade down its throat. She had to duck as another one groped for her neck. She swung the sword upward and slammed the impaled penanggalan against her new adversary. They burst like ripe fruit.

  Athena leapt up, tentacles passing through the space she had just vacated and tossed a blade of air down beneath her. It severed some of the appendages, but now the penanggalan were racing up to meet her. She flipped her feet up behind her and descended with her sword held out, slashing at the brutes as they drew closer. A tentacle wrapped around her ankle and she had to curl up to break it free, exposing her back to the mouths below. Two latched on to her, one biting into her side and the other her shoulder and Athena shouted in pain as they started to feed.

  She kept her back downward as she hit the ground. It drove the wind from her but turned her attackers into paste. She rolled, but another creature managed to get its tendrils around her throat. Anansi’s daggers sliced them away before they could constrict. Athena slashed out with her sword, freeing Dianmu from one that had latched onto her arm with tentacles and fangs. Dianmu’s glaive flashed and completed the circle, cutting away a third that was veering towards Anansi.