by Norris Black
"Justice? This is what you consider justice?" I sat up all the way so the dim light filtering in from the hallway illuminated the mangled mess my face had become. "How about this? Is this part of your wonderful justice?" I pulled up one side of the robe I was wearing, my anger blocking out the pain as my nerves screamed at the motion, the exertion almost causing me to black out. She gave a slight gasp at the site of the mass of mottled bruises—ranging in color from yellow to a blue so deep it was almost black—covering my side from hip to armpit.
"And for what?" The fire of an anger building since I first woke up in this hole in the earth fueled every word. "You think I caused this? That I wanted this to happen? I didn't want any of this! I just wanted some gods' damned breakfast." The last words were spoken quietly, the fire turned to embers. A weariness settled on me like a shroud and I lay back down, covering my eyes with one arm.
"Fuck the Seraph, and fuck you," I said in a near whisper. I waited, without caring, for Dagda's response. Silence stretched, then I heard a shuffle of feet followed by the hollow boom of the cell door closing. Faintly, I could hear steps moving away and then nothing. I was all alone in the dark, left with nothing but my own dark thoughts and the squeaking of rats.
After a time I slept and again found myself standing on a rooftop overlooking the Battery. The blasted vista was the same as my last visit, judging from the sun it was late afternoon here. Idly, I wondered what time of day it was in the waking world right now. As before, the mysterious visitor with the broad hat and broader smile was at my side. There was something different about the stranger this time, something indefinable. While it appeared unchanged, I got the sense it was wounded somehow, like a spider with a missing leg. Diminished, but still deadly.
"Rough day?" I said, not a little smugly. Hey, I never claimed to be the magnanimous type.
The Thing With Many Teeth hissed, the sound like a kettle coming to boil.
"No need to have a hissy fit," I said, giving myself a mental high-five at the pun. "It's not like my week has been rainbows and puppy dogs. Speaking of which, you wouldn't happen to have any suggestions on escaping a high-security prison cell and sneaking past a hundred or so highly-trained killers, would you?"
"You'll have to extricate yourself from that particular mess. I cannot interfere. Just bringing you here has its consequences," it winced, the persistent smile resembling more of a grimace.
"So why then? Why bring me here if it's so dangerous?"
"Time is running short, the clock is ticking down. You need to be ready for when that happens."
"Ready for what exactly?"
He ignored my question as he gazed out onto the ruined landscape before us. "Do you know what a god is?" He asked finally. "It is creation incarnate. It seeds life and commands it to take root through its Will. Then it waits to see if that seed will grow and flourish or wither and die."
"Fascinating. Is there any point to this lesson on celestial botany?"
"This time, instead of his creation it was He who withered and fell to the earth, shorn of life. How could that happen? How could a god die? How could He leave us behind? How could He leave me?"
The Thing With Many Teeth paused. There was such profound sorrow in its voice. This was a creature deep in mourning for something long-lost. The sadness crept over me like an infection. I felt my own sorrows respond. Sorrows that had been so recently unearthed. Decaying skeletons dragged from decades-long dormancy and made to dance in the halls of memory. I wanted to weep, to provide some sort of release for us both. Instead, I stood mutely and listened to a tale of the end of a divinity, and the promise of a new one.
"Even now, as the Last God lay dead and festering in the crater beyond, his blood still holds a magnificent power, for it is indeed the very lifeblood of creation. But it is a power unfettered from any divine guiding Will. Whatever it touches becomes twisted and warped, a victim of its own imagination."
In the distance I spotted the remains of what once must have been a tall building, at least judging from the mounds of debris surrounding it. Now, only one partial wall remained standing, thirty feet high and jagged where the rest had crumbled and fallen. Squinting I noticed what appeared to be writing of some sort, scrawled in thick letters on the ashy, white-painted brick. A chill crept over me as I read the familiar words and I pulled my coat tight like a protective shroud.
"What do you need from me?" I asked finally.
"I need you to wake up."
Chapter 12
There's nothing quite like an open-handed slap to wake you up and get you up and moving about the room. Of course, in this case by room, I mean cramped cell, and by moving about I mean swearing a lot and trying to protect myself from any further potential slaps by flailing my arms in front of my face.
When no further slaps seemed to be incoming, I stopped my flailing, yet kept my arms poised and ready on standby in the event their protective services were needed still. Peeking open one eye I immediately closed it again as bright light seared into my brain. After a few more attempts my vision finally acclimated, and I was able to make out the two Seraph guards standing over me. Seraph come in two flavors. The first is soldiers, who spend their time marching about the streets of Crash City and meting out steely death to any denizens of the Battery who breach the barriers – when they’re not kicking the shit out of innocent civilians like yours truly. The second is guards, who maintain the labyrinth of cells below the Seraph keep – when they’re also not kicking the shit out of poor unfortunate souls like myself. I've gotten pretty adept at being able to tell the difference between the two groups by the color of their boot soles, Gods know I've had enough up-close views by this point.
Guards were also more normal sized than their musclebound street kin and carried heavy black clubs instead of silver swords. I can tell you from personal, quite recent, experience that those fuckers hurt. Warily eyeing the clubs hanging from the guards' belts I waited to see what was going to happen next.
The elder of the pair gestured for me to stand. He sported a magnificent set of gray muttonchop sideburns. Likely some sort of compensation for a hairline that had moved back so far it technically began at the back of his head.
"You need to come with us."
I peered over their shoulders but didn't see Dogfucker's toad body lurking behind them. So, not a questioning session then. I had a momentary conflict on whether to be a smartass or not. After a quick consultation with my internal bits, we all agreed it was time for my mouth to give the rest of my body a bit of a break. Perhaps I'm not too old for personal growth after all.
With hands cuffed behind my back I was marched through the tight corridors worming throughout the earth beneath the Seraph's keep. At one point we had to squeeze close to the side of the wall to let past a progression coming from the opposite direction. A pair of guards drug a third man between them and, as they drew closer, I spied the man’s fire-red hair that sprang from his scalp like an unruly brush. His ruddy skin made a perfect canvas for the mosaic of bruises covering him. He was shirtless and I could see a trio of old scars, thick and ridged, across the chest and stomach, resembling a pair of eyes with a wide smile beneath.
Happy Jack. So that's what happened to him.
In the wake of the guards strode Dogfucker. He scowled at me as we came abreast of each other. As he turned his head to continue walking, I feigned a stumble and managed to stick a leg in between his. With a bellow he went down, hard, his chin bouncing off the rocky floor with a sharp crack. Writhing on the ground he screamed in pain, hands covering his face. Blood spurted between his closed fingers and I fervently hoped whatever the injury was, it was a painful one. The howls had roused Happy Jack from his stupor, and he looked at his tormentor, now in a torment of his own, and then up at me. It didn't take long for him to figure out what happened. The smug expression on my face was probably a solid clue. The Wardlord grinned at me, his red smile missing almost all of its teeth, and nodded his appreciation before the guards dr
ug him off. We may have had our differences, Jack and me, but some things were bigger than that.
My escorts pushed me onward. I imagine they were going to send someone back to attend to the downed shitstack who had stopped his screaming and was now just making a pained whimpering sound. Maybe I got lucky and he bit his tongue off. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving asshole.
The guards led me out of the darkened passageways and into a world of multi-colored light. The walls of the room must have been at least forty feet high and constructed of cyclopean granite blocks. Across the upper half of one wall were a row of tall stained-glass windows, the light from them bathing the entire room main floor of the Seraph's keep in rainbow hues. Long before the Seraph had taken it over and turned it into their primary headquarters, the imposing structure had been a temple dedicated to some deity, the identity of which has been lost to the mists of time. Each ward had its own, smaller, Seraph's station, but this keep was the organization’s center of power. The room was a hive of activity as clerks scurried from desk to desk with stacks of paperwork in various stages of completion. While the soldiers patrolled the streets and the guards held sway in the keep's underbelly, the clerks oversaw the whole operation from a kingdom built of ink and paper.
Through this commotion we went, gangs of wide-eyed clerks fleeing our path like startled seagulls. I expected I was a bit of a sight, covered in blood and bruises as I was. The maniacal grin plastered across my face likely had a lot to do with the extra hop in the clerks' steps as they all seemed to suddenly find much more important work anywhere away from me. It's not like I had anything to smile about, but I was enjoying scaring the shit out of them. I'll take small pleasures where I can get them.
We stopped at a sturdy looking door with a small brass name plate that read LORD GENERAL APOCH. The younger guard leaned forward and rapped his knuckles on the wood of the door. Unlike his partner he was clean shaven with a thick head of hair and large, round eyes that made him look almost a child. I was surprised to note he was trembling slightly as we awaited a response to his knock. I didn't catch what the actual response was when it did come, but even through the thickness of the wood I caught the heavy baritone of the speaker's voice, the sound hitting the other side of the door like a hurled rock.
The younger guard leaned forward and opened the door as his partner hastily removed the manacles from my wrists. A rough shove sent me stumbling into the room and I heard the door close behind me. Neither of the guards had accompanied me.
If I were going to use one word to describe the room I had just entered, it would be 'heavy'. Dark wooden bookcases lined the walls to both my left and my right, filled with tomes so massive I felt I would struggle to lift even one unaided. Across from me were a pair of dark-walnut chairs, thick, sturdy and without cushions. Beyond the chairs was a matching desk covered in loose papers and a small metal box with a red button on top.
Every item in the room exuded a feeling of weight and none so much as the man sitting behind the desk. He was by far the largest man I had ever seen. Tall and heavily muscled, he had a thick column of a neck jutting from an unadorned snow-white Seraph's uniform that was immaculately pressed and pristine. Hair a gold so pale it was almost white was worn short and tight to a stone block of a head. Hints of gray were visible at both temples. Light streaming from a small window high in the wall behind him gave him an almost angelic glow. The desk he sat behind would've looked overlarge on a normal person, but for this man it was almost too small. Between his vast size and pale skin, he looked nothing more than like a marble statue had come to life and decided to get a desk job.
He was studying a sheaf of papers on the desk in front of him. "Sit," he said without looking up.
His voice crossed the room like the rumble of distant thunder. If this man ever raised his voice to a shout, I could imagine the heavy furniture smashing into sprays of splinters and the stone walls flying away like pieces of paper before a heavy wind.
I sat.
Minutes passed, the only sound was the turning of pages as the very large man read through the report in front of him. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.
"So— " I stopped, dismayed at the squeak in my voice. It sounded like a mouse had crawled down my trachea. Clearing my throat, I tried again. "So—" a little too deep this time but I forged ahead anyway— "the Seraph must have quite the meal program. I mean, every one of you seems to be ridiculously large. Your grocery bill must be insane."
He pushed the papers aside and looked up at me. Flinty gray eyes were set wide in a heavy-jawed face. He opened his mouth to speak and it was like watching a crack form in a cliff face.
"So. You're him. I expected someone more—"
"Taller? Younger? More handsome? Oh, I know, how about someone not beat to a bloody fucking pulp?" The flare of anger I felt at Dagda's accusations sprung back to life now I was in the presence of the man ultimately responsible for the recent abuse inflicted upon me.
"Yes," came the rumbling reply.
I waited for more and when any didn't seem forthcoming, I opened my mouth, most likely to bury myself, but I had reached a point I didn't care anymore.
"I apologize for the treatment you have received within these walls,” said the cliff that spoke. “You were brought in on suspicion of unsanctioned wychcraft in connection with the brutal slaying of Seraph soldiers. You were to be put to the question as is our protocol."
"Some fucking protocol."
"The enhanced techniques you endured are only meant to be used as a last resort and with only the most extreme of heretics. Approval had not been given for their use in this situation. It appears one of my jailers overstepped the bounds of his authority. He will be arrested and charged with his crimes. In fact, he is being invested in the quarters you had been occupying as we speak."
He considered me a moment before continuing. "Despite your... unfortunate treatment, I can assure you Mr. Brown, this is indeed a place of justice."
While I'm certain he wasn't anticipating my cackle of glee, he did an admirable job of hiding any surprise he may have felt. At most one eyebrow might have twitched a hair. I made a mental note to never play poker with this man. The fact he could casually break me over one knee without breaking a sweat when he invariably caught me cheating was also another strong reason to strike 'games of chance' off the to-do list. Of course I cheat. My father always taught me losers were just people who were too stupid to cheat. He had his faults, but good advice is good advice.
"Poor Dogfucker, karma really is a bitch I guess," I said finally.
"Dogfucker? Are you referring to ex-Rodmaster Goran? Hmm. There have been rumors concerning certain indiscretions with local canines. I'm surprised he would admit to such an activity out loud, and to a prisoner no less. Quite curious."
Cackling, I rocked back in my chair. I'd love to say these were manly laughs I was letting out. You know, the deep and booming kind you make while enjoying a good cigar after a juicy steak dinner. But if I'm being honest, they were most definitely cackles. I was so pleased with myself I didn't even bother making light of the fact the Seraph had a rank called rodmaster. I mean, seriously?
"Are you about finished?" Apoch asked, impatience starting to creep into his landslide of a voice.
"Finished? What an excellent question. What an excellent word! Finished. I most certainly am finished," I said, dropping the amused grin from my face. "I am finished playing the puppet to whatever game you fuckers have going on. You, the sonofabitch with all the teeth and whatever the thing is that likes to graffiti my name all over town. Every one of you can kick rocks."
"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean." The words were spoken with all the emotion of a brick thrown down a well, but I wasn't buying what he was selling.
"Oh, don't play coy with me. You bring every suspected heretic you snatch up here for a nice and cozy personal interview? Bullshit. Given how many poor bastards your black-booted thugs drag in off the street because they looked a
t them funny, how would you ever have the time to get anything done?"
Getting up from the chair, I paced across the stone floor as I talked. I suspect I looked a bit ridiculous with my wild hair, bloody face and sack robe barely covering my unmentionable bits as I strutted back and forth in front of the desk like a deranged rooster.
"No, this isn't some standard meeting. Which tells me you pulled me up here for a specific reason and I don't imagine it's for my conversation skills. You need something from me, something you're not going to get by beatings or sticking me with hot pokers."
I stopped.
"Wait. Do you actually use hot pokers?"
"On occasion."
I shuddered. Thank the gods Dogfucker was so in love with his fists.
"The point is you know more of what's going down than you're saying. Just because you look like a rock who learned how to wear pants, don't make the mistake I think you're dumb as one."
Stopping my pacing I rounded on him, quavering finger pointing like a rapier. "So, are you going to level with me big man, or are you going to keep spinning me bullshit and telling me it's gold?"
I had finally cracked the impenetrable facade. The neutral look was gone, replaced by a glower so fierce I had a momentary battle between holding my ground with justified indignation and the desire to make a quick, prudent retreat. I settled on maintaining my accusatory pointing but taking a couple of hasty steps backwards.
The glower passed, like a thundercloud floating away, leaving behind nothing but weariness.