by Ryan Attard
Gil approached from my peripheral vision, and I knew.
“This is your world, isn’t it?” I asked.
She nodded. “It is where I go every time I access my curse power,” she answered.
“Doesn’t look like much of a curse,” I said.
Gil chuckled. “Your curse is lack of control,” she said. “Mine is lack of power.” She pointed at the leaves. “All that magic, all that power, that knowledge. I possess within me the ability to change the very physics of this universe. And yet, it is far from my grasp, brother.”
I looked at my sister as she wistfully gazed at the leaves. Now I understood what she must have gone through this past year. Imagine knowing that you had the potential to bring back your loved ones, and that knowledge was just beyond your grasp, locked away inside your head.
Useless.
It was enough to drive anyone insane.
I thought of reaching out to hug my sister but backed down. Gil was not someone who took kindly to acts of sentimentality.
“So what do you call this place?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“You must call it something,” I said. “Mine’s Ashura.”
She shrugged. “Never occurred to me to name it.”
“What about the avatar?” I looked around. “No avatar?”
“Nope,” she said. “Just me.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Dark Erik can really get on my nerves.”
“Dark Erik? That’s what you’re going with?”
“Hey, at least I have a name for mine.”
Gil smiled. “Virgil,” she said. “If I had to name this place, I’d like it to be Virgil.”
I nodded.
Virgil, Dante’s guide as he journeyed through Heaven and Hell. Funny how a single word can reveal so much about a person. All my adult life, I thought of my sister as someone who had all the answers. But I guess she needed a guide, someone to help her out. It made sense when you consider her actions. Gil needed a mentor, someone to help her make the right decision.
And with me being dead, it’s not like I could do much in the way of counseling.
“Virgil,” I said. “I like it.”
Gil approached the tree and placed her hand on the trunk. Soft blue and yellow light pulsed from her touch.
“Virgil,” she said, sounding it out as gently and lovingly as she could. “My guide.”
Like I said, names have power. Names in magic are tied to that thing’s identity. That was why Mephisto and Astaroth refused to call Amaymon by his name.
Gil had never named her inner world until now. She never got close to it in the way I had gotten close to Ashura and Dark Erik. Crossing that bridge solidified that connection, and now Gil had turned her inner world from just a place she found herself in as a byproduct of magic, to a home for her powers.
And that world responded.
Silver liquid ran along Gil’s body before turning into pure white light. Unlike my transformation, Gil’s was smoother, less combat-oriented.
Less bestial.
White light flared from her shoulders like a cloak, reaching out to the ground beneath her. Her platinum-blond hair became a supernova. Light branched above her head, forming regal reindeer horns that turned on themselves. The crown sat on her head, and my sister went from a very well-dressed woman to a deity. Her power radiated through her, controlling everything around her.
Power and control over matter, energy, nature, and magic itself.
“Erik?” she asked. Her voice was the same but carried a bass within it that resounded with power.
“Wow,” I said. “I’ve never seen that.”
She glanced at her hands. “Yes,” she said. “It’s never been this complete before.” She looked at me and smiled. “I guess it’s because you made me name it. Thank you, brother.”
I smiled. “You’re welcome. Now how about you use some of that power to fix me?”
She laughed, and the tree rumbled behind her. “Of course,” she said. “Come join me.”
I walked forward and reached out towards the tree.
Upon touching it every fiber of my being was ripped apart. I was engulfed in fire and darkness, and pain unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
No, not true. I had felt this, every time I tried to use magic without a channel. Only that pain was a fraction of what I was feeling now. This pain attacked my very essence. Think of how bad you feel when you do something that you know is not right, but are still forced to do. That was what I was being assaulted with, only this was physical as well as mental and spiritual.
At the very centre of it all, hidden beneath all that power and pain, behind a thousand different realities, so far from my grasp and my understanding of it, I glimpsed a being.
Something was alive inside of us, something that encompassed our existence.
No, not just our, mine and Gil’s. Something older, stronger, something more primal. Something that I knew deep down had been at the start of all this—and by that I meant my curse.
The moment I made contact with Virgil’s tree, I sensed it looking at me.
Before rejecting me.
Ashura’s sands greeted me. I was standing in the spot where my own obsidian tree was supposed to be. Only now the ground was barren, the only evidence that there had been anything at all were the holes in the ground where the giant mangrove-like roots of the tree had dug into the ground.
A single beam of light parted the red skies, hitting the ground next to me. Gil appeared there, still in her luminescent glory.
“So this is your world, brother,” she said, looking around. “It looks… bleak.”
I nodded. It was indeed bleak. This was the inner world of a dead man.
She held out her hand. A single black leaf floated in her palm. She smiled and held out her other hand.
I took it, instantly feeling the buzz of power emanating from her.
“Let’s see about changing that.”
Gil tossed the leaf on the ground. It melted into a puddle of black liquid and sank into one of the holes.
“Erik,” she said. “Look at yourself.”
I let go of her hand and glanced down at my chest. Golden light glowed from my core, filling my body.
“Sun Tzu’s gift,” I said.
She nodded. “A god’s gift is not one of destruction,” she said.
No, it was not—it was one of life.
I approached the spot where the tree used to be and knelt. With all my strength, I dug my hands into the sand, reaching as deep as I could.
“I’m still alive,” I said. Golden light exploded within me. I willed it to my hands and down to the soil. “So if you’re still there, I need you to come out. It’s time I walked again.”
The golden light left my body and flowed down into the ground. The sand glowed with golden light, which expanded like a lake.
I sensed power rising from beneath me before feeling the earth shake under my feet. I backed away as the first root exploded from the ground, jet black and majestic. More and more roots reared up, twisting and swirling.
Within seconds, the giant black trunk was formed, almost identical to the one I had seen in Gil’s world. The trunk shot towards the sky until it disappeared from sight.
It’s joining Gil’s tree, I realized. We were two halves of a whole. The root and the crown, yin and yang.
The centre of the trunk warped and split open. Dark Erik emerged and walked towards me. He looked at Gil and nodded, acknowledging her presence, before turning back to me.
“Well done, human.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “We good now? I can go back to my body and be resurrected?”
He nodded. “Yes. You may be resurrected.”
I grinned at Gil. “I guess I’m back.”
She shook her head.
“No. Not yet.” Cautiously, she approached Dark Erik and gazed at him curiously. “Your avatar looks just like you when you transf
orm.” To it, “Are you sentient?”
“I am Erik. And so much more,” Dark Erik replied cryptically.
“What do you mean, not yet?” I asked her. “Am I alive or not?”
Gil tore her gaze from my avatar and looked at me. “You have been released from Samael’s grasp,” she said. “But you still require magic in order for your soul to reenter your body.”
“Shit,” I spat. “So now we need a Necromancer?”
“Yes,” she replied. Then she grinned. “Luckily, in my current state I am a Specialist in all magic. Given sufficient energy, I may conduct the spell myself.”
“And do you have sufficient energy?” I asked, suddenly exhausted.
She nodded. “Back at the mansion,” she replied.
“Good. Then let’s haul ass outta here and get me back alive.”
“Yes, do hurry,” said Dark Erik. “The threat is not yet over.”
I cocked my head at him. “Yes, I know. We’re technically in Hell and Greede is attacking the mansion-”
“No, not the mansion,” he said. “Not any longer.”
I opened my mouth to speak but suddenly the world spun and went dark.
I opened my eyes again and was assaulted by two different kinds of chaos. The first was the natural chaos within Astaroth’s lab.
The second was the malignant chaos of battle.
Chapter 25
Trumpets blared from outside Astaroth’s dwelling. The sound was jarring and made me want to sit in a corner and cry.
Fear. That sound was fear incarnate.
As Gil and I emerged from Ashura, we were caught in a blast of fear-inducing sound. Mephisto caught us—my sister fell into his arms while I bumped into him and fell into my body.
Mechanical arms pulled it back into the vat and sealed it shut.
“What’s going on?” I yelled.
“We are under attack,” Mephisto calmly replied.
“Yeah, thanks,” I shot back sarcastically. “Who the hell is attacking us?”
Mephisto growled. “Paimon. The worst of the worst.” He pointed at a window that had not been there before. “See for yourself.”
Gil and I peered out the window.
Surrounding the little castle were thousands of Asmodaii, demonic shock troops. They stood unnaturally still, their long limbs and wicked scimitar claws twitching occasionally. Blank, featureless heads pointed in our direction. Their tails were erect behind them, a sign they were primed for the attack.
Walking, or rather trotting, in their midst was, I assumed, Paimon. At first glance, he looked like a centaur, except the horse half was ink-black and very skinny. Rib bones jutted out. His hooves were ridged into sharp angles—a design meant to hurt and maim, not kill cleanly.
Unlike a centaur, his back was sloped, making it impossible to ride him—not that anyone would want to. The human portion consisted of a malnourished torso with hunched shoulders. Four arms, two on each side, hung low. In the lower pair, he carried two long swords. The weapons were featureless and covered in rust. The edges were chipped. Again, these were tools of torture and pain, not war.
In his upper pair of arms, he carried two golden trumpets.
His hair was long and plastered to his skull, while a crown of thorns rested on his head. His face was gaunt, like the rest of his body, and his mouth was torn open from ear to ear, and sewn shut save for a small portion at the front of the mouth—presumably for his trumpets.
“His face,” I said, thinking it looked like a figure I’d seen hundreds of times before. “Doesn’t it remind you of…”
“Jesus?” my sister supplied. She glanced at Mephisto.
“He wears that visage in mockery,” the demon explained. “Paimon was one of the demons who tempted Jesus before his Crucifixion. He took no small amount of joy in showing the human his future by wearing his face.” Mephisto shook his head. “Paimon is weak and cowardly, and like most weaklings and cowards, he sold his loyalty to the biggest bully of his time. Lucifer.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Lucifer? As in the Lucifer?”
You have to understand my skepticism here. I’ve dealt with demons and angels before, and never once has the whole Lucifer thing came up. I assumed it was, like most organized religions, just a made-up myth to make sense of a world people just do not understand but are fascinated by nonetheless.
“Yes,” Mephisto said. “Do not be so surprised. Fallen angels that come to Hell to occupy a small patch of territory are a dime a dozen. Most of them wash out and are slain by their own subjects. Lucifer, the archangel formerly known as Luciel, has not been heard of since the old days.”
When a creature like Mephisto mentions ‘the old days’, he’s not referring back a decade. It’s less old days and more Old Testament.
A fwoosh behind me, along with a burst of heat, indicated that Astaroth had returned.
“Look, brother, look,” he said happily. “Paimon is here.” He skipped a little. “Tea. Do you think he’ll like tea? Do people still serve tea? Oh, and we must get some entrails. But where am I going to find a shop open at this hour?”
“You’re kidding, right?” I shot. “Look at those Asmodaii. They’re here to fight.”
“I’m afraid he’s correct, brother,” Mephisto said.
Astaroth spun and stopped abruptly. “Fight? And why would Paimon try to fight me?”
“Probably because he was given a big enough incentive to,” Mephisto said. He shot me and Gil a pointed look. “By an even greater demonic presence.”
“Greede,” I growled.
“Mephisto,” Gil said. “Is there any way that Greede can piggyback on our spell to get here?”
The demon shook his head. “I was the one who created the frequency, so the possibility is entirely unlikely,” he replied. “On the other hand, he does possess both the Necronomicon and is technically a demon, considering Mammon is grafted onto his body-”
“So that’s a yes,” I interjected. “He can get here.”
“Indeed.”
A pop behind us.
“Indeed.”
Mammon’s monstrous figure suddenly loomed over us. I could see bits of the turtleneck Greede wore flapping about his body, completely torn to shreds as he swelled to Mammon’s gargantuan size.
“Greede!”
I rushed him, only to be swatted away by Mammon’s massive hands. I saw the demon lunge at me, too fast for anyone to do anything about it.
White light flashed. Mammon screamed. Pure white chains wound around his body, tightening and cutting deep into his bulbous flesh. A hissing sound indicated their holy nature, burning the demon’s essence.
Gil held one end of the chain, her entire body clad in white light. She had transformed into her alter-ego, cloaked in the same power she had inside Virgil.
With a flick of her wrist, she whipped the chain, and Mammon was pressed to the ground.
“Do not touch my brother,” she snarled.
Mammon raised his head. “Paimon!” he shouted.
The trumpets sounded again. I had to cover my ears and scrunch my face against the pain.
The walls exploded, and Asmodaii poured in. Claws and fangs and thrashing limbs bumped and bashed into everything in sight. Mephisto disappeared in a gust of roaring wind. A cluster of Asmodaii squelched, torn to shreds.
Paimon himself appeared from one of the holes in the wall, gently clomping in. Several flaming kitsune leapt onto him—I wasn’t sure if to attack or play with him. Either way, Paimon blasted out a note on his trumpets and blew them away.
“Erik,” I heard Gil yell. “It’s the trumpets. Take him out.”
I glanced over to her direction and saw her struggling as she fought with Mammon. Mephisto was busy keeping the Asmodaii away, while Astaroth danced around and conversed with his two sock puppets, Orange and Black.
Paimon advanced upon me.
“Erik Ashendale,” he said. His voice was a cemetery. “Your head will fetch a hefty sum for my master.”
I assumed a fighting stance. Power coursed through me. Whatever Dark Erik and Gil had done back in our respective inner worlds had made me more solid. I was still a spirit, sure, but I was no longer helpless.
And this creepy centaur-looking demon was about to find out exactly what I could do when I was scared and pissed off.
“Greede’s not gonna save you today,” I told him.
Paimon chuckled. It sounded like a thousand pincers.
“I serve not… that,” he spat. “I serve the one true master. The master of Heaven. The master of Hell.” He cocked his head. “The master of all.”
I shrugged. “Whatever you say, buddy.”
Paimon swung his sword at me. The stroke was wild and basic, and I easily avoided it. I slipped under, closing the range, and shot an uppercut into his frail ribs. Paimon stumbled to the side, crying out in pain. He brought one trumpet to his mouth and blew. Several Asmodaii leapt towards me.
I spun, ready for action. Magic flared from within me. My right hand glowed blue. Through Limbo, I saw the magic reach for the object I always associated with the word ‘weapon’. Something that had been by my side since the beginning.
The energy grew into the likeness of Djinn, translucent and ethereal, but real nonetheless.
I swung without thinking, unleashing a blast of energy. The Asmodaii were flung back. From my peripheral vision, I saw Paimon attack and blocked one of his swords. The second one nicked me, but I avoided the brunt of the blow.
He kept coming at me savagely, swinging both swords widely. I ducked and evaded, but he had put me on the defensive. I’m a fairly good fighter, but math was math, and two swords were better than one.
An idea formed in my head.
I remembered how Abi had split Sun Wo Kung in half, transforming the single staff into two sticks. And since I wasn’t holding the real Djinn but just energy, there was no reason I couldn’t pull off the same trick.
I ran my left hand over the weapon and pulled a strand of energy from it. The energy formed a second copy of Djinn in my left hand. A strand of blue linked the two weapons at the pommel but lengthened and shortened at my will, never interrupting my attack.