“Do we know where we’re going?” Lucian asked as he caught up with her, Danira to his left, his creations somewhere behind both of them.
“No, but this is a known haunt of the Death Hunter Wyatt,” she explained. There was still an edge to her voice, Lucian intuiting that she didn’t like the fact that the angel was with them.
“He lives out here?” Lucian asked, waving his hand at a mesa about two miles away, pockets of cacti stretching between their current location and the land formation casting squiggly shadows, the mesa in the distance casting a shadow that looked almost like a handle.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Why would anyone want to just hang out all the way out here?”
“If you haven’t noticed already, many Deaths, even though they can go anywhere in the world, stick to what is familiar to them. It is why you like to haunt New England,” she told him, “and why Yoshimi has stayed in Japan. There are other examples, but that should suffice.”
“So he’s from here?”
Mastima nodded. “Wyatt died in the middle of the 1800s. He was a gunslinger, an outlaw, that sort of thing. From what I’ve heard, he put up a bitter fight to the end.”
“Alice was from this region as well,” Danira said, joining the conversation and referring to the first Death that Lucian had killed. “Not quite a gunslinger, but she did work at a saloon somewhere in Kansas.”
“How do you know that exactly?” Lucian asked.
“Oddly enough, I ran into her during that time, in one of my incarnations,” the angel explained. “It’s not often that something like that happens, but it has happened before.”
“You were a settler?” Lucian asked, imagining Danira in a bonnet and a brown dress.
Lucian remembered learning about the settlers in school, once having to do a project that compared them to the pilgrims who settled New England.
It turned out, they had similar reasons for wanting to get away from it all.
He also recalled Connor playing a game called Oregon Trail in one of his computer classes, and even though it was a bit dated at the time, Lucian played it as well once he reached that grade level, never quite being able to make it to where he was going without coming down with dysentery, getting attacked by natives, or getting bit by a rattlesnake.
Lucian smiled at this thought, both because of the nostalgia it gave him, but also because he was glad that the two women currently with him weren’t telepaths; he could only imagine how stupid they would think he was that the mention of settlers spawned a memory of an old PC game.
“I was a missionary,” Danira said.
Lucian almost laughed. “I could’ve told you that.”
“And we were trying to educate the natives, the savages, as we called them at the time.”
“Are you sure you weren’t really just trying to slaughter them?”
She turned to him, her shoulders lifting defensively. “I would never do something like that, not in the name of God. I understand that now, with a historical perspective, looking back can shape things in a different light. But at the time, I believed what I was doing was beneficial, and I still do in some aspects. They did need God.”
Lucian almost replied with a pithy comment but decided it was against his best interest. “Were you a female at the time?” Lucian asked carefully.
“I was. Why?”
“No reason, but I assume by mentioning a historical perspective, you mean something about your male counterparts having the notion to divide, convert, and inevitably conquer. Manifest destiny, or whatever it was called. But that is just my thought. We don’t have to dig too deep into it.”
“You’re right, we don’t.”
Mastima smirked at this comment, but never added her two cents, considering she was also a settler when she was human.
Silence hanging like a cloud over them, the three continued along the seemingly abandoned highway until they spotted a grouping of trailers about a mile and a half from the main road, their metal sides glinting in the sun.
Mastima immediately equipped her double-blade scythe. “Weapons out,” she said as she rose into the air.
Lucian spawned his bone armor, which grew out of his skin, his skull mask taking shape over his face and hardening. He went for his shoulder-mounted energy cannon and his MX-11 just to kick things off, Lucian maintaining trigger discipline as he summoned his remote sentry weapons, the spheres growing tripod legs and scuttling forward.
Meanwhile, Danira formed her golden armor, which cascaded up her body, piecing together in a way that reminded Lucian of fish scale armor. Her absolutely enormous energy rifle took shape in her hands, a halo spiraling around its muzzle as it powered up. Her mask had formed over her face, sharp, golden, with angles that accentuated her cheekbones.
The final thing she conjured were her two cherub crows, which quickly moved to greet Lucian’s, the four pressing behind them and keeping together.
As they moved faster toward the grouping of trailers, Lucian also began creating injurecrows, which fanned out behind them, his black, spherical IEDs getting into their wall formation.
“What makes you think he’s over here?” Lucian asked, realizing that he should have gone with this question before he summoned his arsenal.
“A hunch.”
As they grew closer to the trailers, Lucian noticed that the seemingly abandoned homes were arranged in a circle, all of them in disarray.
There were overturned bathtubs, refrigerators, charred vehicles, black plastic bags of trash half-submerged in the sand, tools, abandoned furniture, and other detritus indicating that the place hadn’t been lived in for quite some time.
“It’s definitely a shithole,” Lucian said, as his tripods got into place.
“I don’t like it either,” said Danira.
The three were just stepping into the center of the trailers when their doors burst open, a horde of injuresouls flying out.
The wave of blackness spun around them twice, Mastima bristling, Danira trying to track them.
The demons with their bandaged faces and misaligned jaws quickly formed a circle around them, chomping at the bit, ready to engage as their jaws began to distend.
“I was wondering if you would come,” Wyatt said, his voice startling the three.
The man stood behind them on top of one of the trailers, the wide brim of his hat casting a shadow across his face, his trench coat beating in a wind that didn’t exist. He had a cigarette in his mouth, the trail of smoke drifting up from its tip.
The man wore chaps that had been beaten to hell, yet still seemed to be holding up, spurs on his boots, a bandanna tied around his neck. “I’ve been collecting; I hope you three came ready to have a good time.”
The injuresouls all swarmed at them at once, Mastima sweeping them back with her scythe, energy rippling off its blade.
Lucian blasted through two of them, their bandaged skulls reforming instantly as Danira cut a hole through the mob with her concentrated energy weapon, the blast blowing off the backside of one of the trailers and sending bits of scrap metal and glass into the air.
Even though he had grown much more powerful than he’d been the first time he’d faced the demonic beings, Lucian still wasn’t able to put a dent in the horde of injuresouls, unlike Mastima, whose attacks were actually able to kill the demonic creatures.
The hellspawns howled and screeched as she butchered the lot, the female Death an incredible sight to see, her weapon spinning around her with expert precision.
One of the monstrosities latched onto Lucian and he began beating it away with the butt of his MX-11, the demon’s bloodied face tearing as the skin and bandages keeping its mouth sewn shut ripped, revealing two rows of jagged teeth.
His crows tore through their ranks as well, Danira’s cherub crows not far off as explosions sounded off, Lucian’s IEDs doing their damnedest.
More blasts from Danira’s weapon sent dust and debris up in plumes, their aftermath merging with
the occasional explosion courtesy of Lucian’s injurecrows.
His remote sentry weapons firing all around them, Lucian’s robes spiraled off his body and slammed into the trailer Wyatt stood on, the Death Hunter quickly unloading six rounds into the fabric, and tearing through whatever portion still met him with his bare hands, cigarette still balanced on the tip of his bottom lip.
This was the distraction that Lucian’s two Grim Mechas needed, his replicants lifting into the air behind the trailer, both going for Wyatt at once with their blades.
The man turned just in time, firing a shot straight through the skull of his first replicant, exploding it. The other one tackled him, Wyatt quickly getting the upper hand and blowing the robot’s head off.
But just because Lucian’s robots were headless didn’t mean they couldn’t fight, his two mechas piling onto him, nearly overpowering the Death Hunter.
It took Wyatt a solid minute to completely shoot through both of their bodies while simultaneously fending them off, injurecrows exploding all around him as he whistled, the Death Hunter laughing so loud that Lucian could hear him over the swell of enemies he was fighting below. “You sure bring a lot of useless technology to the fight, boy. But in the end, it ain’t gonna help ya! It ain’t gonna help ya one bit!”
Wyatt fired a shot that ripped Lucian’s arm off, his appendage sprouting legs immediately and crawling to the side of one of the trailers. His severed arm parked itself there, and continued firing Lucian’s MX-11, its centipede legs stabilizing it.
It was Wyatt’s next shot that really got Lucian’s attention.
And it didn’t even touch his body; rather, the Death Hunter’s bullet tore through Danira’s head, exploding on impact.
Headless Danira took a stumbling step forward and fell to her knees, fury boiling inside Lucian even though he knew she could heal from this, even though he’d seen other angels do it before.
It didn’t matter.
Wyatt had taken this shit too far.
His fury overtaking his common sense, Lucian exploded toward the trailer’s rooftop, a bolt of blackness over a sea of anarchy, Mastima still auditioning for the color guard as she spun her double-bladed scythe.
His arm not yet fully regrown, Lucian put all his power behind an epic tackle, blinded by rage as he sunk a fist rimmed in fire into Wyatt’s nose, knocking the man’s hat off and revealing an absolutely terrifying face, just a thin layer of skin over a skull, beady eyes surrounded by blackened veins, chapped lips, cracked yellow teeth, a few whiskers serving as mutton chops.
Lucian’s two crows joined them a few seconds later, using the retractable claws to try to pin the man’s clothing down, and once that didn’t work, they focused on trying to pierce his flesh with their beaks.
“You dumbass.” Wyatt grinned.
He quickly flipped Lucian around and scrambled on top of him.
He slugged Lucian so hard in the face that everything went black for a moment, then it flashed red, Lucian’s Soul Points appearing in front of him, blurry at first.
Lucian gasped as he came to realize that he’d already expended almost half of his power.
“It’s time to make you mine, boy.” Wyatt whipped Lucian around, his knee pressing into his back as a golden rope appeared in his hands.
Lucian tried to buck him off, and for his efforts, he received a solid punch in the back of the head, one that made everything go black again.
The Death Hunter started tying Lucian up, and since Lucian was still missing an arm, he roped his good wrist around his feet, Lucian growing his retractable claws, trying to tear himself free, once again trying to buck the Death Hunter off.
Wyatt was tossed from the top of the trailer by Mastima, the woman quickly appearing at Lucian’s side and undoing the rope with her blade.
“I’ve got to…” Lucian didn’t finish his statement as he launched himself off the trailer, landing on Wyatt and headbutting the man once, twice, three times, Wyatt laughing the entire time, no longer concerned for his own life, his own livelihood.
“Ha! You really are dumber than you look!”
Lucian felt his body separate as several shots were fired into his stomach, the top of his torso torn from his bottom half, the fibers keeping them together ripped in two.
A portal opened up and Lucian noticed a blackened blur flying toward it. The blur zipped into the portal and came back out, just as Wyatt brought the muzzle of his gun to Lucian’s head.
He was whisked away in a flash.
His worldview turned upside down as he was deposited on the beach in Portland, Maine, Lucian’s arm still regrowing, his lower half missing.
The sky above them was gray, just a few orphaned clouds sitting over the islands in the distance. They were no longer in the Southwest. No amber sun, no endless stretch of highway, no bridges in the distance, no trailer park filled with injuresouls.
Lucian turned to find himself next to Danira, her face still in the process of reforming, currently a mutilated, mangled mess, her blonde hair matted with sand and soot.
“We need a better plan,” Mastima told them, breathlessly. The female Death stood before the two, limping a bit, a pained expression on her pale face. She finally lowered her weapon. “Meet me here tomorrow. Both of you. And come ready to finish this.”
Chapter Eight: Enigma Kart
Lucian conjured a pair of comfortable seats in front of his workshop, facing them toward the shoreline of the lake. He thought about also summoning a large umbrella to stick in the ground, but figured that would be too much, that this was already something he wasn’t expecting.
Better to play it cool.
The sun was setting, casting marigold arcs across the surface of the water, the surf lightly lashing against the shore.
Lucian and Danira’s crows played in the water, Ezra seated at the shoreline and watching them, occasionally licking his paws as the spherical creations chased one another.
Danira sat, her armor fading away as Lucian lowered into the chair next to her.
“Is it comfortable enough?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” she told him.
“Here.” Lucian summoned a plate with chocolate on it. He handed it to her and she readily took it from him. Lucian conjured the coffee cup that said ‘Angel’ on it and handed this to her as well, grinning as he did so.
“You know the way to an angel’s heart,” she said, frowning at her cheesy line. “That sounded dumber coming out of my mouth than it did in my head.”
“A personalized coffee cup and chocolate, huh? So it works on the Progeny of Light too.”
Danira shook her head. “Did that ever work back when you were human? Please tell me you didn’t try something like that.”
“Personalized cups? No, but the flowers did. I still keep meaning to create some beautiful flowers for you. I actually don’t know why people like flowers. They smell great, sure, but they’re just going to die anyway. Would it be nicer for us to give plastic flowers that smell great?”
“I’m not going to touch that one.” Danira ate one of the pieces of chocolate, the light from the sun reflecting off her face, making the blue stripe that she wore as part of her heritage seem that much brighter. Satisfied with the first piece of chocolate, she went for another one.
“Do you have a place like this?” Lucian gestured toward the world that his predecessor had created.
She finished eating the piece of chocolate and shook her head. “Not exactly like this, but I suppose it is similar.”
“So you do have a place, right? I mean, all the angels aren’t just staying in a giant hotel together, right? I can see it now…”
“We are powered differently, you and I, but we share similar abilities. I am not able to utilize a limited core of sheer energy in the same way that you can, but I can create and expand spaces, create weapons out of thin air, and I’m much harder to kill.”
“You mean copy weapons out of thin air. Remember, you have gotten all your weapon
ideas from me.”
“Please. I’ve been meaning to make a gun for a while. You only inspired me to do it faster so I had something to shoot at you.”
Lucian smiled as she went for another piece of chocolate and popped it in her mouth. “So… is Heaven just a bunch of angels sitting on clouds and whatnot? Sorry if that’s a dumb question, but it’s how I imagine it.”
“No, but it’s funny you think it’s like that. It’s funny that people think that we exist out there,” she said, nodding to the sky.
“It makes sense, though,” said Lucian as he summoned his own cup of coffee. He took a sip of it, noticing the subtle nutty flavor from the cinnamon, the beverage just the right temperature not to burn his tongue.
He ate a piece of chocolate and took another sip of coffee, letting the hot liquid melt the sweet morsel.
“It’s really not that hard to understand,” Danira said. “Just like you, or I should say, just like the Progeny of Darkness, we exist everywhere. Realities do not have to be stacked on top of one another as many humans assume they must be. Heaven above, Hell below, if that makes sense. They can all be happening at the same time in the same plane of existence.”
“I’ve heard a couple theories like that,” Lucian said. “But I don’t know enough about them to really explain them. Just something that this friend of mine used to talk about.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No, nothing like that. Although Katy was interested in Eastern spirituality. But mostly just, you know, meditation and yoga. It seems like a lot of people are right now. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side, and it seems like other forms of spirituality are less oppressive, or whatever. I personally think it’s a little bit superficial, but that’s just me. Katy did most of the stuff just for the health benefits. That seems like one of the good things about the Asian religions; they seem to have this focus on movement and mindfulness, you get what I’m saying.”
“There have been similar esoteric practices in Christianity,” Danira told him. “Especially during the Middle Ages. There still are, although they’re just less known, many of them lost to time. But believe me, there were meditating monks, famous ones even, and while there wasn’t really something like yoga or tai chi, there were similar liturgical practices, and there was always a focus on music. There still is, even in your country, although it has been commercialized and packaged in a way to entertain the most people at once, which I think spreads the message but at a cost. There really is nothing like it, though, the old churches in Europe, other temples in what is now the Middle East. Maybe we should go some time.”
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