“Soon, you will be less than dust.” Anguhr said and raised his axe.
The glowing Ursuhr roared.
Maul and axe collided once more. Sparks and flecks shot from the head of Ursuhr’s maul. If the Generals could not be fatigued, their weapons could be.
Ursuhr took Anguhr’s example. He feinted a maul swing and let Anguhr commit to the counter blow. Anguhr’s axe cut nothing until it struck the flaming hull. Its blade buried among the beams. Too deep. Anguhr released the handle and flung himself out of the path of Ursuhr’s maul. Its head still made a glancing strike at the side of his helmet. Sparks flew from the blow. The edge of the maul cut a crease in the black steel shell. Anguhr fell against the burning beams of the ship as Ursuhr raised his maul to deliver the final blow as he did against the last Titan. But Anguhr’s head had moved. The maul head struck the hull beams. Anguhr’s boot heals hit Ursuhr’s right knee. He staggered back and fought for balance.
Ursuhr roared from the denied victory more than from pain. Still, he stepped a fraction of a second more slowly to strike again. Anguhr moved with speed. He rose and grabbed Ursuhr’s forearms before he could swing his maul down with full force. Ursuhr was now surprised. The flames that always lit Anguhr’s eyes now spread across his entire body. He burned like the hull in brighter hues of fire. Each General had pushed the other hard. Now their common heritage and infernal power came to the fore.
“If we are not brothers, we are equals.” Anguhr growled out his words as he grappled against Ursuhr’s strength, “That is the only salute I will give to you, uncle!”
Ursuhr grunted in confusion but focused to free himself from Anguhr’s grip. He glowed brighter. Anguhr spun and flipped the molten-skinned Ursuhr into the hull. Anguhr then sprinted and tore his axe free. Ursuhr leapt up and swung his maul. Anguhr swung his axe in a tight circle. Its blade struck the maul’s handle. A sharp, metallic sound came from the point of contact. The maul head and most of the handle hit the hull.
Ursuhr had the slimmest fraction of a second to see the cut shaft in his hands before ducking into a crouch to dodge the end of Anguhr’s axe handle. He thrust his own handle fragment into Anguhr’s burning left side. Anguhr roared in pain, but Ursuhr had no time to smile. The center between Anguhr’s axes blades swung down and knocked Ursuhr near the base of the top pincer arm of his ship’s main drive.
Ursuhr shook himself. He then quickly rolled just the head of his maul sailed passed his skull. It hit the hull and smashed through it. The hurled maul ripped through the aft region and exploded out where the ship and pincer fused. Masses of burning steel and hull beams blasted into space and tumbled in the maul head’s wake. The debris rolled into darkness as the ship sailed on. Only half of the structure attaching the pincer arm survived. Ursuhr jumped to a standing position but instantly ducked again as Anguhr’s axe flew towards him. It was not aimed at Ursuhr. It hit the same location as the maul head. Another, larger explosion of kinetic force severed the pincer arm. The massive structure wrenched free from the hull on impact. An unseen force appeared to pull away the twisting arm. The force was the continued forward thrust. A tremendous white flash sparked at the pincer arm’s contact with the star-like drive as it ripped free. The entire ship groaned and shuddered. Ursuhr and Anguhr steadied themselves from the violent waves racing through the dreadnought.
Anguhr pulled the piece of maul handle out from his side. His blood on his armor and hand bubbled in his own fires. He threw the handle into space, and then looked at Ursuhr who looked stunned at the damage to his ship. He faced Anguhr with his molten skin pulled back from the mass of shark teeth in his bear jaws. Anguhr smiled, and charged.
Their collision sent a shock through the weakened hull and their bodies. Even made from arcane matter and an impossible biology stoked by hellish powers, Anguhr’s wound still exploded with blood and pain. Ursuhr struck his shoulders with both fists. Anguhr fell to his knees. Ursuhr instinctively raised his massive arms overhead to deliver the death blow as if holding his maul. Anguhr slammed his helmet into his gut. Ursuhr reeled back to the ravaged end of his hull. Anguhr threw an upward fist into his jaw.
The blow sent Ursuhr off his feet and spinning end over end. The angle of his trajectory was the course planned by Anguhr. The ability to achieve it was a moment of luck. For Ursuhr, it was death. He glimpsed his doom as he spun. It was his main drive. If he sailed toward the propulsive, aft-most hemisphere, even his General’s body would be incinerated and his atoms lost in the plume. Ursuhr headed for the energy gathering side facing the ship. He felt the intense flow of radiation before his back struck the brilliant, blue engine. He exploded with greater force than a warhead. The tremendous blast warped the star-like drive. It flexed. Waves traveled across and through the sphere and its energies. It exploded.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The main drive’s blast triggered an instinct within all the fighting demons. They swiftly tucked into balls and turned their curled wings to the blast. It saved many, including Solok. Kalak was caught and sundered in a sideward wave of the ship’s burning beams. Martis saw the blast on his screens just before all systems died. His back faced the shock front shredding his ship. He had no wings and no time. The blasted fragments of Ursuhr’s throne struck and crushed him.
Proxis and Gin saw Ursuhr’s main drive explode and his ship demolished by the blast. It was a spectacular destruction. Unlike Sutuhr’s ship, the sudden annihilation was unexpected. Gin watched the flash dim and the debris continue to fly out into space on the screens. Proxis turned his head and looked through the bulkhead toward the actual location of the blast.
Proxis had put aside his inner confusion to continue serving General Anguhr. His future as a rebel, and more importantly one without the Dark Urge felt strange and uncertain. The leadership of his General had given him stability and purpose. Now he wondered if his future would be without his Lord and leader. Again he considered the impossible. He wondered if Anguhr was dead.
Zaria’s sword split the last of the Ursuhr’s insurgent demons. The spray of acrid blood eclipsed the flash of Ursuhr’s spectacular death. The blood fell as his ship shattered from aft to bow in a brilliant instant. Zaria was stunned. The destruction of Ursuhr meant Asherah and all the worlds his discovery threatened were safe. She felt relief, and then a swell of regret. Zaria wondered where Anguhr had stood when the ship blew apart. She knew he led from the front. He would be the cause and be close to the explosion.
The blast was seen and felt across the system. Its greatest impact was in Hell. The world of fire and steel shook, but not from the blastwave. Ursuhr’s mother screamed. The Generals were the instruments of her rage. They were the projection of her fear. They served as the sharp edge to jab into a shadowed lair and then kill whatever stirred. To the Dark Urge, the universe was that lair. But she was the shadow. Her specter was vast and stretched from the deepest black in her heart. She had always feared something striking down from outside. Despite her fear and rage spread so far into creation by the war, that fear of something now seemed more potent than ever before.
Her children, those she made from herself, were gone. Anguhr she remade. He remained his true mother’s son. He lived in defiance of great power, and gained power of his own. Eventually he made his own terms for life, just as his mother. However, he went missing at the end of his greatest battle. Just as his mother. The age of the Generals—of the war—was done.
Hell was a complex system. The Dark Urge was a powerful force but a fragile mind. When a complex system develops a fault, the failure can be spectacular. Such was the war. Now it ended with the last of her children as ash on the crest of a shockwave. The war had failed. Now, so did all that power and the mind that set it to sinister motion.
Anguhr floated in space. His fire had ebbed. He was burned by the blast and bled into the warm gap between his still body and armor. He was alone. Only the cold of the vacuum held him. He was not even a reliable companion to himself. His consciousness dawned and then
darkened. His mind was lost in black when familiar red flames arrived beneath him, and arms as bright as sunlight took hold of his legs and pulled him into his ship.
Anguhr awoke, fully. He was on his ship. The aegis burned on the ceiling above him He was in a chamber near the main armory. He lay on a slab of raised deck plating. For the first time since leaving Hell, his armor was stripped from his body. He felt a breeze across his naked skin. It was annoying. He reached to where Ursuhr had stabbed him. The wound was gone. And no scar. Disappointing. He noticed an odd, yellow light shimmering behind him. Then Zaria stepped to his right side. She smiled.
“I could not tend your wounds until Proxis tasked demons to be medical engineers.” Zaria said. “They concurred with me. And then we could strip and treat you. This must be the first time a General suffered enough wounds to require attention. We had to create a sick bay from a rifle locker.”
“My ship and horde—” Anguhr started. His voice cracked and sounded weak. It was more annoying than the breeze. Or being naked.
“All is well. You are still General Anguhr.” Zaria said. “Where I found you, for once there was no destruction. You were at peace. And so was the space around you.”
“You wish that to be prophetic.” Anguhr said and rose into a sitting position.
“I do.” Zaria added.
“I wish you to bring me my armor,” Anguhr’s tone was again deep and commanding. “Now.”
Zaria sighed, but went to retrieve Anguhr’s only clothes.
Anguhr looked at his hands and flexed his fingers. He looked down at his feet. He flexed his toes. He was not sure he had ever seen them before.
Anguhr entered his bridge in fully restored helmet and armor. Zaria followed. Gin nodded to him. Solok and Proxis bowed. Anguhr sat on his throne and spoke to his Ship Master.
“Proxis, I will send a message. Target Hell, but make anyone able to receive it.”
“Transmission channels stand ready, Lord.”
“Dark Urge, hear me. Hear the son of your first General. Hear the one you renamed Anguhr. It is said my father was a conqueror, but that he held a trait called honor. Very well. I will honor this father I never knew, Sargon, king of an interstellar empire. I will show you honor, Dark Urge, queen of fear and ruler of Hell. I will let you live, as you allowed me life. But I will not change you. I will not subvert you to my will. I cannot. But if you send another General against me or attack me in any other way, I will return to Hell. Fear that. I am the son of your greatest warrior, and the greatest living warrior in the galaxy. And I have the means to destroy you. If I come back to Hell, I will kill you grandmother. I will turn Hell into ash. I can do that. I am Azarak, son of Sargon and Azuhr. I am General Anguhr. And I am what you made me. I am the Destroyer.”
Anguhr expected no reply. He received none. For several moments, silence and the low rumble of the ship were all the noise in the universe. Then, Zaria drew a breath.
“An impressive, speech, General.” Zaria said. “I wonder what you will do with your freedom.”
“What I can,” Anguhr answered. “What I must. I will make sure my demons live, and thrive. They have served well, and I will need their service now, even more.”
“And I dare ask, how?” Zaria raised her palms as part of an entreating shrug.
“I will return to the stars and make fractured, conquered systems into an empire. Unlike my father’s empire, mine will not fall.” Anguhr spoke with great confidence. “I will fuse sundered planets into new worlds. Those who join me will become stronger.”
Anguhr lifted off his helmet and looked intently at Zaria.
“So begin the galaxy’s new era,” Anguhr continued. “Note it well, old sunlight. You have seen history. See more. Record the tale of a demon General who renounced Hell, and became a king.”
Zaria nodded affirmation, and then took another, deeper breath.
“First,” Anguhr said, “we search for my mother’s sword. And my axe.”
Anguhr’s crimson warship sailed into the black, away from Hell. Zaria thought of the Xa’rol arks. Their time to descend back into the galaxy may now come sooner. She would watch Anguhr. Her strategies to preserve life and end Hell’s irresistible devastation had intersected with slightly altered means and unexpected allies. Nevertheless, time and tide had turned from oblivion. Life would survive.
Screaming became laughter. The laughter became frantic, manic, and then childlike.
Sunlight. It seemed so long since the spider felt the caress of the bright, yellow sun across her abdomen. There was only a slight breeze. The day was warm. All things moved more quickly on a warm day. More things flew. Today the spider might sate her hunger.
From the center of her web, the spider looked out across a perfect, mown lawn. But her eyes could only focus on things close to her, as in a place on prey for the killing bite. To the spider, the lawn was only a vast expanse of green. A quick, blurred shape bounded into view and bobbed in a circle out in the green plane. The moving shape made high tones and occasional squeals. The sounds carried across the air and made benign waves through the web. Otherwise, how could the spider hear? Somehow the spider knew the waves were the sounds of a child playing. The child was a little girl.
The web shook. Something big, something fat, had flown into it. The spider moved with precision across arcs of silk and gripped the head of the thrashing dragonfly. The spider bit. The thrashing stopped. The spider saw the green lawn and the yellow sun mirrored as small, constrained images in the dragonfly’s wide, reflective eyes. The spider began to cast silk over the sun to capture it and the perfect, sunny day. Impossible.
In the reflections of the dragonfly’s eyes, the spider noticed more than what she could see far away. At the edge of the green plane she saw another little girl. She was whole and bright. This girl was quiet. She was hiding from the other, bounding child. The silent girl stood near an odd, tall object. It could, perhaps, be a tree. And so it became just that. It was a strange, rigid tree with a black, hexagonal trunk. Its branches, like the hiding girl, were luminous. The branches extended from something within the oddly geometric trunk. Something of great power. The spider doubted she could make a web in those branches. They were arcs of energy, not really branches. Many things were not real. It became obvious to the spider that she was dreaming. But she was safe. It was a sense she enjoyed. Like sunlight, she had not felt it in a very long time.
This was a simple dream of a simple spider. But spiders do not dream. Not simple, normal spiders. And the last sunny day on a green, sunlit world was so long ago. That sun had grown huge. It became red, and caged. Only very, very old spiders dream. Those spiders have lived so long, they have evolved within themselves and their minds are no longer simple. Neither are their dreams. And then they wake into nightmares.
The Great Widow awoke. First she saw a vast expanse of black. Then she heard the sound of a child. A little girl was playing. The energies of the Forge had died down. The radiation was nominal. The Great Widow moved her eight legs and crept from her entangled web into the greater breadth of Hell. She found the Dark Urge. The mistress of fear and war had reassumed the form of the little girl missing half her skull. As this girl, the Dark Urge frolicked across the heat and very old machines. The Great Widow knew her mistress had finally, fully succumbed to madness. The spider said nothing, and watched the strange girl play. The child seemed to have no grasp of the power she could summon. Indeed, she seemed as weak as a true human girl. If the Great Widow was patient, and indeed she was, perhaps the Dark Urge would eventually change into a dragonfly.
In the beginning was the war. The war turned against Hell. From its fires rose a new force with the power to destroy Hell. Suppressed history could not prevent a personal revelation. The truth changed the fate of creation. A new kingdom dawned. In the end, the supremacy of darkness lay destroyed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bruce S. Larson is the author of many short stories. The NIGHTMARES AND OTHER VICES Horror/SF colle
ctions are available as two e-books or one print edition. The WITHIN AND BEYOND collections feature SF & Fantasy stories and are also available in both formats. With BEYOND APOCALYPSE, Bruce answers the often asked question: when will your novel be published?
Even after writing a book with one version of Hell, Bruce does not like hot weather. A shame, since his car has no AC. Bruce enjoys the outdoors, especially where there is cool water and shade. He finds plenty of both in his native Pacific Northwest. He hopes your world stays intact, and any giants you encounter don’t use apocalyptic weapons. His favored giants on hot days include air-conditioned skyscrapers and shade offering trees. Although, beware Widows great and small in the corridors and branches.
More of the Author’s fiction, occasional observation of spacetime, life, and combating darkness are at his website: thewritebruce.com
Beyond Apocalypse Page 29