by W A Rowland
“Where’s my pack, Black?”
“I had them guarding the Acroterion. When you disappeared, we-”
“Everyone there is dead, Black, so I’m going to ask again. Where. Is. My. Pack?” Julian’s voice had a dangerous tone in it.
“Probably dead then. But it doesn’t matter. We’re almost inside! They won’t have died in vain. Once I have the last stone I’l-” There was a choking sound and a muffled cry.
“Their lives weren’t yours to spend, Black. So now you get to pay me back for them. Like you said, I only need one more stone.” Liam heard, but Julian’s voice had gotten even lower, and more gravelly. Liam had managed to get his vision clear enough to turn his head and see Julian, in full Varkolak form, holding Black up with one massive, clawed hand covering his face.
Black was flailing and hitting Julian’s arm, and by the impacts Liam heard, he was hitting pretty hard. Julian ignored the blows and a clawed hand came up and sliced down the middle of Black expensive suit, leaving his chest bare, with a line of blood trailing down from where the claw had cut into him.
Over his liver, Liam saw a glowing pentagram tattoo. Julian put his muzzle close to it and sniffed, then dug a clawed finger into Black’s side. Black spasmed and jerked as Julian cut out his soul core, the once powerful demigod unable to do anything to stop his inevitable demise. He flailed for a moment more as Julian extracted his prize: a blood red core stone. Liam heard an anguished wail from within Julian’s hand, just before the wolf squeezed, collapsing the skull of John Black, also known as Algos, the Greek god of Pain.
Julian unceremoniously dropped the twitching body and strode towards the door opposite the entrance. Liam saw the seal inset into the stonework. Five round indentations, around an approximation of an eye. Julian shrunk back to his human form, and picked up a small black bag from the ground on his way to the door. He stood in front of it for a moment, but Liam couldn’t see what he was doing since his back covered his view of the seal.
Suddenly, there was a loud crackling noise like thunder on the horizon, and the massive stone wall parted cleanly down an invisible line. An intense white light flowed out from the chamber within and Liam could feel the astral energy rolling out of the room.
No, he can’t. Lily, it’s open, Liam thought as he fought for control of his body.
“So pretty,” she cooed, sounding like a drunk looking at a bottle of fine whiskey.
He managed to get his legs moving and started to crawl his way towards the light, stopping for a moment to dislodge Anahita’s hand from his own, where she’d grabbed it during her final moments. Must have been terrible, dying alone except for the person that killed you.
“Come on, Lily, we’ve gotta go,” he said, not wanting to let his mind travel down that rabbit hole at the moment.
“Yeeeeaaaaa, we neeed to goooo,” Lily slurred. It was almost like the closer he got to the door, the worse she got.
“Lily I need you to snap out of it!” he said, trying to do the mental equivalent of a cold bucket of water. He managed to do something equivalent by actively telling her dumb jokes every couple second until she finally reacted.
“Dang it, would you stop saying ‘orange, you glad I didn’t say tomato?!’” she eventually screamed after he’d gotten her attention.
“No. Stop it, Lily. Stop enjoying the lights. Bad, very bad, and I need you here. Now,” he emphasized.
“But they’re so pretty! Can’t you see them? It’s my girls and…” He heard her make a muffled sob.
“Lily, what do you see?” he asked, confused.
“I see – they’re…” Lily sounded far away. “No. Please come back, I didn’t mean it. Come back,” she cried. He could feel the pain in her then. So much pain and sadness. Loss at what could have been, and never would be.
For the second time since they met, Liam found himself questioning just who Lily was, and if she was simply just an astral being, or there was something else beneath.
She finally stifled her sobs. “I don’t know where that came from, but I knew who they were. I don’t understand, Liam, what is going on?” she asked desperately.
“I don’t know, Lily, but once we’re done here, we’re having a long chat with Joshua about some things. Now, are you with me?” he said determined to finish it here.
“Yeah, I’m with you, Liam. Let’s get ‘em,” she finally eeked out, a bit of her normal fire back in her voice.
“Ok then, Potential Lily. Let’s go kill a wolf,” he said, finding the strength to get to his feet and walk through the shining silver doorway.
The hallway to the anchor chamber was long and descended into the earth for what felt like eternity as Liam made his way down into the depths of the ruin. He was surprised to find carvings lining the walls of the tunnel.
Apparently, the local peoples of pre-history had known that this was a special place, and had revered it as such. The energy wafting from the anchor was intense and he was having problem focusing his mind. So much power was here. He could do anything he wanted. No more eating bits of his soul, no more of Lily almost killing herself to save him.
He could save the world or damn it at his whim. He struggled, drawing his mind back from that dark chasm, the image of bodies and blood filling it. Of a burning house and dead children.
He pressed forward to the end of the tunnel, which opened up into a massive underground chamber. It was perfectly round, with maybe a three-hundred foot radius. In the center of the room, a white orb of pure light emanated incredible amounts of astral energy, a beam of which shot straight down into the figure directly beneath it.
In the middle of that beam of pure power, stood Julian. But this wasn’t the grizzled old man that Liam had faced at the land fill or in the city. This was Gaius Julius Caesar in all of his glory. His body rippled with muscle and his face was that of a young man. He’d thrown off the old duster that he’d been wearing in the chamber above. In fact, Liam had never seen him without it.
Instead, he wore sparkling gold Roman armor. It shimmered in the incredible light and he looked every bit the god-emperor that history remembered him as. Liam was mesmerized by the sight as he slowly walked down the curve of the chamber. He had just gotten to where the curve was almost even when he saw Julian’s eyes open. They were black as night, with smoke flowing from them as he spoke.
“All I wanted was to live in peace, but you demigods don’t know peace. You are the chaos in the world; you are the disease that plagues the physical plane. I will wipe you all out, even if I must destroy the guardian himself!”
He ramped up into a scream as he strode forward toward Liam, and as he walked, he grew in size, eight feet, ten feet, twelve feet. He continued to grow and his skin turned black as the abyss. His golden armor twisting and growing around him as he continued to gain.
Twenty feet. His footsteps shook the ground now and Liam heard a terrifying howl echo through the chamber as a new voice spoke in the hollow space. It was deep and dark as the bottom of the ocean, a low rumble that would make a thunderstorm jealous.
The voice seemed to emanate from everywhere at once, and as Liam watched, Julian finally stopped growing. “I am the wolf of Gaul, the black beast. And I will eat the world,” it rumbled.
Before Liam now, was a twenty-foot-tall approximation of a werewolf, only this one was wearing massive pieces of gold armor and had skin the color of blackness itself, which seemed to be made up of smoke.
The beast roared and lashed out with a claw larger than Liam’s whole body, which scored the stone behind him as it passed over Liam’s head.
“Shit, Lily. I thought only demis could tap the anchor!” Liam said and started to run.
“He’s an astral being, so I guess it works for him too!” she said, also panicking.
“Well, that’s just great!” Liam shouted and flung down a kinetic field to boost himself up and across the sphere from the massive beast. He noted briefly that it was incredibly easy to manipulate the fields in here, pro
bably from the immense power of the anchor point floating just above him. Ok, so next up, killed the beast, get the power, conquer the worl- wait what?
His thoughts were interrupted by a monstrous wolf-thing slamming into the wall right in front of him. Lily quickly took over and changed his course, with a little whiplash, avoiding the jaws that snapped shut where he’d been a split second before.
“Liam! Quit planning world domination and focus!” she yelled as Liam hit another kinetic field that Lily threw down.
Julian leapt after him as he bounced around the chamber. Liam worked with Lily and tried to throw some kinetic fields in the way of the beast, but he couldn’t make one big enough, fast enough to actually do anything more than annoy the beast. Julian bellowed in frustration and the sound waves actually, visibly moved the air inside the chamber, tossing Liam to the ground.
If I can harness the anchor, I wouldn’t need to focus, and then she’d stop yelling at me, Liam thought. He rolled and boosted himself horizontally along the ground in time to narrowly dodge the clawed feet that pounded the ground where he’d been.
Liam had always loved the old movies like Godzilla where the giant creatures or robot would duke it out in the middle of a city wreaking havoc. But in those old movies, they moved slowly, and you could see a hit coming from a mile away. This was not like those old movies.
Liam bounced off of the ceiling and Julian leapt from wall to wall trying to squish him like an annoying gnat.
“Liam, you either get your head in the fight or you won’t be around long enough to worry about going Graven!” Lily yelled. The word sounded sour in Liam’s mind: Graven. Was that what he was becoming?
Julian was roughly four times his original size now, and he moved just as fast, if not faster than before. Liam spotted a chunk of rock that had dislodged from the ceiling where Julian had hit, and headed for it; maybe if it could cover him for half a second, he could get a proper field up, figure his head out, and get control of the fight.
But as he approached it, the rock disappeared. Liam recalculated with about a tenth of a second to spare, and looked up, the gash wasn’t there anymore. Was the chamber fixing itself? He looked and saw another recent gash closing up, the rock rolling back up into the holes from Julian’s claws.
Bounce, SMASH!
Liam’s mind came back to him then. He wasn’t a Graven. He didn’t want the power. He didn’t need the power. He quickly formulated a plan that probably wouldn’t work, but it was all he had to work with. He jumped to a sidewall and waited, till almost the last millisecond before launching directly across the globe from him.
Powerful jaws snapped behind him as he escaped, but Julian leapt as soon as he landed. This time, instead of going in a line perpendicular to where Julian was coming from, like he’d been doing, Liam aimed straight back the way he’d come, right at Julian.
“Please work,” he yelled and launched, catching Julian off guard and managing to slide right through his claws and past him with inches to spare, back to the previous wall, where the gash Julian had made still hadn’t healed.
So far so good, he did the same thing again, this time, having to go down slightly to avoid Julian’s claws. The monster bashed into the wall in roughly the same spot, breaking more rock loose.
Liam performed the maneuver several more times, the lightning fast exchanges creating deep divots in the stone each time Julian landed. Each time, Liam barely escaped a claw or the teeth of the beast. He tried to speed up their jousts as he saw the rock of one side start to collapse back into the hole, and hoped Julian hadn’t spotted what he was trying to do.
With the many times that Julian had slammed into the wall, he’d created a rather large hole. Almost large enough for him to fit inside, or at least, most of him.
Now, it was time for Liam’s gambit. He landed inside the hole and immediately set several large kinetic fields over the entry. Each time they’d exchanged, Liam had had a split second longer to react as Julian was landing off kilter and having to recover.
Julian, being in a beast rage, hadn’t noticed the difference, but to Liam it was huge. This time, as Julian struck the hole Liam was inside, instead of the meaty demi-treat he was hoping for, he instead got a face full of kinetic energy. Twelve massive fields pulled taut like a rubber band slingshot, arresting his momentum just in time as he stopped mere inches from Liam’s face and then they rebounded.
Julian was flung back with enough momentum to destroy a building foundation, and landed deep inside the opposing hole. Liam quickly followed, landing below it and putting field after field over the entrance, making an invisible wall of kinetic energy pushing back anything that touched it.
He saw Julian’s bulk slam into the barrier, but without much room to maneuver due to his size, he wasn’t able to get enough force to break through. Liam kept focusing on the field and saw two massive hands pushing out against it, bending it. One of the fields broke, then another. Liam tried to reinforce it, but he was slowly losing the fight as Julian forced his way out of the small cave.
“Just a few more seconds…” Liam strained and then saw it. The rock was starting to roll back up the slope of the sphere and into the hole. Each piece hit the field and shot forward with the force of a freight train.
Julian was instantly thrown back as debris rolled into the field, and hit him with shotgun blasts of two-ton pieces of stone. As a result, he was flattened inside the cave and it soon began to fill up with rock, compressing down as each piece was flung into the rest, smashing and reforming until the hole filled and the surface was smooth once more.
Liam let the fields drop then. Surprisingly unscathed and feeling pretty peppy, he grinned to himself. He’d stopped Julian, the Blacks were dead, Cindy should be safe, and he felt like the draw of the anchor might be starting to affect his mind again because he was getting really giddy.
He needed to reseal this place and make his way home before he got stuck here for good, trying to dominate the world or something. His reverie was interrupted by noises from the doorway. He looked up and saw several figures in the doorway.
Steven, Sarah, Thea, Jax, and Hand all peered into the room, transfixed.
“Guys! Perfect timing! We need to get out of here and seal this place up!” he said, but they didn’t seem to really notice or acknowledge his words.
“So this is it? The anchor point,” Thea said with a bit of awe.
“It’s so warm,” Sarah said happily as she stared at the glowing ball of power.
“Almost like you could touch the energy,” Steven said.
Jax grunted.
“Guys? Hello? We need to get out of here!” Liam yelled giving himself a little boost to get over to them. He landed a few feet away and got Hand’s attention.
“Hand, we need to go. It’s not safe here for us. We’ve gotta seal off the chamber,” he said.
“Why would we do that?” Hand looked confused. “It’s so wonderful.”
Liam looked askance at his friends; they all looked drunk.
“Liam, this isn’t good,” Lily said cautiously.
“Yeah, Liam, why are you trying to get us to leave so fast? Want it all for yourself!?” Steven said angrily, advancing on Liam suddenly.
“Yeah. How come you get to hang out in the cozy room and we get stuck outside!” Sarah cried.
“Hang out? I just finished fighting Julian. We weren’t…” Steven interrupted him by poking him in the chest, hard.
“Well, where is he then, Liam?!” he said accusingly. “I don’t see a big dead werewolf anywhere. Hell, I bet he wasn’t even here. You’re just trying to get us to leave so you can have the power to yourself.”
“No. Guys, seriously. This thing is messing with your heads, we need to head outside and all calm down and talk, ok?” Liam tried to diffuse the situation.
“No!” Hand screamed and Liam suddenly found himself flying backwards across the room. He landed with a thud and gasped, did Hand just hit him?
“Re
ally bad!” Lily said, as he heard a general pandemonium break out in the room as his friends started attacking one another. Screaming insults and baseless accusations as they began trading blows.
Steven and Sarah had both produced multiple copies of themselves, and they were all running in circles, each trying to find the real version.
Thea and Jax had started in on one another, Jax deftly dodging around her lightning fast punches as they danced. Hand appeared in front of Liam with a crazed look on his face as he started to bring a huge fist down on Liam’s head.
Liam reacted, throwing out a kinetic field, pushing him away. Hand, instead of going flying like Liam had thought, instead just hopped a little, then landed back on the ground with a hard thud, barely fazed.
“Ohh come on!” Liam said as Hand started for him again. He tried to launch into the air, but the speedster grabbed his foot and tossed him, sending Liam flying off course, missing the fields Lily had put up and instead he just fell ten feet away with a painful crack. He looked up to see Sarah standing over a prone Steven with a combat knife in one hand, ready to bring it down.
“Sorry, Sarah,” Liam said, and sent the girl flying just as she was about to strike. Saving Steven had come with a price though as Hand picked up Steven and threw him towards the wall.
Lily got there in the nick of time though and slowed him enough so that he didn’t just crumple against the wall like a soda can in a compactor. Instead, he hit on a shoulder and rolled, sliding back down the slope of the sphere to where he could get footing again. Hand appeared again, this time, with two large machetes, one in each hand.
“Sorry, Bud,” Liam said as he dropped a kinetic field on top of Hand, crushing him into the ground. The big man struggled to move as he was crushed by the weight.
“Damnit. Pass out already,” Liam roared as Hand made a very large indent into the floor.
“I think he increased his density somehow, that’s why he doesn’t go flying or get squished,” Lily pointed out.
“Not helping, Miss Encyclopedia,” Liam grumbled. It looked like Hand was finally about to give up when he started glowing a bright white color. Liam saw a familiar glow in his eyes.