by J M Guillen
“No, it’s not,” the girl asserted. “It gets all dusty.” She turned back toward the front and skipped toward the windows.
“There’s more space, isn’t there?” Aiden stepped back down the hallway a bit.
“Yes, there is more space in this building. I’ve considered renting the rest of it, if business warranted.”
“No, I meant that.” Aiden pointed up at an attic trap door in the middle of the hallway. “There’s an entire second floor.”
A heartbeat passed. A quick, pained expression crossed Simon’s face.
I knew what choice he had made. I knew what would be done.
“There is,” Simon conceded. “However, I have some personal effects up there, my office as well as some of my family holdings.” He slipped a hand into a pocket and pulled out a small playing card, an ace of spades.
“Do you expect we will expand that way eventually?”
“No, Aiden.” Simon caught Aiden’s attention and slowly spun the card where the man could see it. “In fact, you literally cannot go up there. No matter how hard you try.”
“I can’t.” Aiden spoke softly.
“You’ll forget it’s even there soon enough. You will never have a reason to go up there unless I say you do.”
“I’m certain you’re right.” Aiden met Simon’s pain-filled eyes. “I never will.”
***
“Abriel, Watcher of the Star of Memory, Keeper of Things Secret, come to me. Come and bring your wisdom.”
The words were like a song played among the heavens, like sweet memory of my first days. Just listening to it sent frisson dancing through my form, trembles of pleasure and purpose and power.
i come, simon girard. i come and bear the seventh lantern with me.
He crouched, shirtless, on the floor of the attic of Knucklebones, Inc. Swirling tattoos covered his torso, though a conspicuous bare patch showed on his left forearm, a sure sign of a recent summons.
The Aegis of Dudael smoldered with blue flames around him. In the directions of the four Watchtowers, Seals hung in the air and blazed, burning with radiant, multicolored incandescence.
These Seals held familiar power; Empyrean names, names of entities that held the power to make and unmake reality itself.
foolishness. Jasriel stood before one of the Seals, a figure cloaked in shadows and wrath. He held the blade Infurion in one hand, ready to step forward and slaughter whoever stood before him. you stand outside the book of law, simon.
“I know that which I do.” Four braziers burned around him and each gave off a different sweet-scented smoke:
Sandalwood.
Jasmine.
Myrrh.
Sweet Attar.
what is it you do. The ritual he performed remained unfamiliar to me.
“The same thing I always do.” He turned in my direction, as if he willed to answer to me in a way that he had not been willing with Jasriel. “I seek a weapon, Abriel. I seek something that will allow me to stand against the Silent Gentlemen. Something that will allow me to protect the innocent from the horrors of our world, as they should.” Simon took a breath and, without so much as a glance at either Jasriel or myself, began to invoke.
Ancient, yellowed pages lay before him, their curled edges weighed down with glassy black rocks.
“From the distant reaches, from the furthest of the farthest dreaming spheres, I call.” He sprinkled a dried substance into the sandalwood brazier.
“Here are the Names and means by which I call. Here are the powers that stand with me, that know of my worth. Step forth and know.”
He began the ritual litany.
Simon had obviously put in hours of study for this rite. He spoke with a rhythm that pounded at the edge of me, each word a sharp, thundering beat that wove and riddled and rhymed around itself. He cried out in Latin, in Etruscan, in Sanskrit. He spoke Names the like of which I had never heard, entities whose miens had not been seen in this world in a mortal age.
I felt concern.
Behind Simon, Jasriel stood mute in disapproval. Well did I know Jasriel’s nature. The Watcher held fierce fire in his heart, along with the unyielding iron of law, justice delivered by the blade.
Such a creature would only have been called for a singular purpose.
“STriYOs tHe SCyThe, come! Come and share with me what I must know.” Simon’s voice warbled strangely as he pronounced the name. I did not like the way it sounded; a discordant cacophony, shards of glass I had been forced to retch up.
As that sound leeched into the world around us, it darkled. The shadows in the room grew and grasped at me; whispered promises of dire blasphemy teased the edge of my mind.
simon. Jasriel spoke again, his single word wary and full of warning.
“StriyOs THE sCyThe, come then. Show your face. Bring forth the treasurer of distant worlds.” He pronounced the name slightly differently, yet in my heart I knew it was the exact same, the slight shift of tone still uttered a dark and terrible truth.
The smoke from the four watchtower braziers simply, simultaneously, stopped. The lights went out, and the only glow in the room came now from the single large window.
Cold drifted through the room. I wore no physical form, yet chill cut to the depths of me.
“STRiyoS tHE SCyTHe, appear before me. Appear and show me the beauty that slices at the hearts of men.”
For a moment, the building itself seemed to tremble. Before Simon, a hazy miasma hung in the air, the way heat shimmered over stone. Reality around him melted away and ran like wax, like the melted flesh of those sacrificed on an ancient and nameless pyre.
“Who has called?” The words weren’t spoken but boiled from that miasma, little more than a gurgled approximation of speech. “Is this you, sightless Orahiel? Or perhaps a servitor of Kiz’iel the Eld’rich?”
“I’m none known to you.” For his part, Simon stood straight. He stared into that wavering, shimmering portal and did not blanch. “I’m simply a seeker. I search for those who may be able to stand with me as I embark upon a dangerous journey.”
“No.” The gurgling word mocked. “You seek power. You believe you are able to wield it.”
“I do.” Simon raised his chin. “On both counts. Already do I wield Empyrean Fire. Already do I master the Aegis of Dudael. Do these not prove I’m capable of wielding power?
“These things?” The voice laughed, an ancient, amused cackle. “You wield shadows, boy. You wield powers granted to you by little more than feeble manling-dreams. That is not true power.”
“Is it not?” Simon took a half step back, almost unconsciously. “Well. Is it that you do not have the power to give to one such as I?”
“Do you ask if I am powerless?” The touch of anger burned in that voice.
simon. Jasriel took a step closer to the man. this is a mistake. madness. end this.
“That would be a foolish question. Why would I call one who was powerless? No. I called to you after long hours of study. I discovered yours was a name that burned with true fury.” He took a breath. “I need that strength. I need to be able to stand against those who would destroy me.”
“I do not know that you are worthy of what you ask,” the voice mused.
“Test me, then. What would you ask to show my worth?”
“At least you have some semblance of manners,” the voice crowed. “Is this so? Would you be tested to see if you are worthy of wielding true power?”
simon, do not, I pleaded. If he heard me, he did not show it.
“Set your tests.” He nodded into that awful, reality melting shine. “I’m prepared for whatever you have.”
“It is well.” The voice seemed pleased. “This shall be simple. All you must do is… survive.”
Like water bursting through white-water rapids, an otherworldly plasm exploded from the shimmery gateway. It burst in every direction and solidified into several scrambling shapes that lurched about the darkened room.
“Survive,”
the apparition continued, “and I may yet visit you again.”
“Abriel!” Simon cried, that single word a commandment from on high.
As I always had, as I always would, I went to him.
My form melded with his, as easily as shadows might. The moment we became intimate, my Seal burned upon his brow, a scalding-white radiance that shone into every corner of darkness in the room. Heaven’s light, the light of the seventh lantern burst into sight.
Where my light gleamed, only truth rested.
Horror surrounded us.
That stinking plasm had formed into monstrous wretches, creatures that looked and moved like stunted apes yet dripped unending filth and gore. Their empty, white eyes bled down their faces, and enormous fangs jutted forward out of their mouths, somewhat like boar.
The one closest to us wailed, a battle cry undulating with primal wrath. It leapt at Simon with speed I could not possibly believe and bore him to the ground.
“Jasriel!” Simon cried again and attempted to wrestle the simian away.
It bit into his shoulder, and those fangs sank deep into his flesh where they fountained with deep-red heart’s blood.
With the wrath of heaven itself, Jasriel was there.
“You are nothing before true glory,” he cried as he swung Infurion. The blade cleaved easily through the abomination.
It screeched the moment the sword struck and then fell into the silence of death, shattered into shards of blood-covered jade.
“Abriel, I need my staff.” Simon dragged himself to his feet. “I don’t remember. Where is my staff?”
by the cabinet. I shared the memory with him. it leans against the northern corner, with your other tools.
“Dammit,” he shook his head. “Too far.”
language.
Another of the screaming demonic things leapt at him.
Simon ducked out of the way, but not before another hurtled into him from the side.
Jasriel swung at that one yet missed, as Simon and the primate wrestled.
Another slipped up near Jasriel’s side and he swung his blade again, reducing the animal to bloody shards of jade.
Simon rolled to his back and levied a kick at the primate’s face. It stumbled a few steps away, and Simon brought his right arm up to grasp his shoulder. One of the many tattoos inscribed upon his body lay there, this one in the semblance of a falcon with fire in its talons.
“Tarahiel!” he cried, the word both beseeched and commanded. “Come to me now! Make haste and come to my side!”
Pure white fire ate the outline of the falcon from his arm, leaving unbroken, bare flesh behind.
With a shimmer of golden, furious flame, Tarahiel came.
She came like a shadow on the face of the sun, a winged brilliance that carried her truth shining upon her brow. Her eyes shone with the relentlessness of one who has glimpsed eternity, one who knows what it is to gaze into the furnace of forever.
To Simon’s left, Jasriel struck down another of the apelike creations, and righteous fury bled through his every motion.
Tarahiel drifted to Simon’s side and held up her blade. It burned with silver purity. It sang the world’s first song.
“Repent, you terrors. Flee from the radiance of the First Truth. Burn before it like the misbegotten animals you are,” she cried as she struck one entity, then another. Each burst into flame the moment her blade connected.
“Now,” Simon crowed, “we have a fight!” He cast about until he found his cane where it leaned against the desk. As the two Watchers held back the gibbering aberrations, he limped to it, favoring his leg that had been wounded so long ago. Once in his grasp, he brandished the cane before him like a club.
The fury of the battle had devolved into pure chaos.
Jasriel stepped to one side and found himself plagued by three of the simians. One leapt at him from behind and gnawed at the Watcher as he busied himself with the other two.
Tarahiel swooped toward Simon and attacked one that slipped up on him while he retrieved his cane. She swung her sword, and the flame within it burst outward.
The simian abomination screeched as that brilliant fury consumed the wound. It fell.
At the same moment, however, another raked its claws down Simon’s back. He screamed and fell to his knees.
I felt pain burst through him like ribbons of fire.
I had never felt anything like it before.
“That fucking hurt!” Simon snarled and surged to his feet. He brandished the cane high and swung down at an angle to connect with the wretch’s ribs.
Those bones cracked as Empyrean Seals burst into colorless fire all along Simon’s cane.
The creature tumbled back through the air, as if struck by the hand of a giant.
When it landed, it lay still.
“That’s more like it!” Simon hobbled just a little as he approached the next. Behind him, Tarahiel and Jasriel engaged in pitched battles wherein the chimp-like beings tried to overwhelm them and bear them to the ground.
A hiss turned Simon’s head.
Another simian crouched a few feet away.
“You look like you’re for me,” Simon declared as he strode forward. He limped and still bled profusely.
Yet he went on.
The animal bared its teeth at him and prepared for another leap. Before Simon came within striking distance, the simian was in the air, those powerful legs propelling it at inhuman speeds.
Simon spun his cane in a whirl of ferocity as he raised it above his head.
I knew those Seals on his cane. They gathered power with every swing and grew exponentially stronger.
Simon reached the apogee of his arc and brought the cane down in a furious strike that met the top of the creature’s skull.
He caved its head in.
seven more in total. I reported.
Another stood on the far side of the Aegis, bathed by its flicker of blue light. It hissed at Simon and puffed its chest out at him in an obvious challenge.
“Ya’ll want some of this, too?” Simon snarled as he stalked forward. “I got plenty! I’ll give you seconds, if you like.”
The words had scarcely left his mouth before the animal loped forward and screamed a war-cry.
Simon tried to dodge to one side, but his weakened leg made him too slow. The chimp leapt and swiped at him with wicked claws.
It connected and red gouges rose along Simon’s upper arm.
“Fuck!” Simon swore and leveled a kick to drive it back. He stumbled for a moment and backed away from the primate. “And yes, I know.”
know what.
“Language.” He took another step forward and swung his cane one full revolution. The colorless fire within the Seals shone with his motion, and glowed even brighter as he swung it a second time, then a third.
“Sometimes, Abriel, it just feels good to swear.”
With that, he struck his target in the chest. This time, as he battered the ape-like monstrosity, he struck it with something far more than the simple force of a man in his middle years.
It sailed backward through the air and slammed into the window, which shattered before the beast fell to the street below.
three remain.
No sooner had I finished speaking than Tarahiel reduced that number yet again. The beast she impaled exploded into a burst of hungry fire. Horrified, it pulled away from her blade and reeled backward into the room even as it burned.
Jasriel spun, in an attempt to wrest one of the beasts off his back. As another approached from the front, he hurled himself down and smashed his adversary between his weight and the floor.
“Holy shit!” The startled cry came from far away, yet was wrought from pure terror and adrenaline.
Simon’s head whipped around toward the window.
“Oh no! Oh, no, no, no.” He hobbled toward the window as quickly as he could.
There in the nighttime street, the battered brute had risen to stand. It definitely seemed wou
nded, perhaps terminally so, but its appearance didn’t do anything to soothe the speaker.
“Wh-what are you?” Aiden held a broomstick between himself and the ugly little goblin. “What do you want?”
The creature swayed, seeming a little drunk. It stumbled toward Aiden and lifted both arms over its head. It hissed, its fangs stretched wide.
“No!” Aiden stumbled back and swung the broomstick. He struck the thing in the side, where it certainly had broken ribs.
It roared with pain.
Aiden screamed with it, partly in terror and partly in an attempt to frighten the demonic simian back.
“Tarahiel,” Simon muttered. “Please protect that man.”
Wordlessly the Watcher drifted through the window and down, her silver sword held high.
Simon did not stop to watch; he knew the outcome of the confrontation. Instead, he hobbled over to the trap door as quickly as he could. Once there, he dropped the ladder and clambered down into the shop.
“—end your darkness.” Tarahiel swung her blade as Simon stepped out the front of the store, and the simian screamed in agony, falling to the street again in flames of death.
“What the fuck?” Aiden screamed as he watched what appeared to be a literal angel from on high descend from the heavens and smite the malformed creature that had also, apparently, fallen out of the sky.
“Be cool, Aiden.” Simon stepped up behind the man and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’re safe. I promise you’re safe.”
“Safe?!” Aiden turned to Simon, his eyes wide. He gestured at Tarahiel with the broomstick. “You’ve fucking slipped a cog if you think we’re safe!”
“Tarahiel,” Simon spoke to the Watcher, his voice almost sweet. “I no longer require the gift of your presence.” He turned and looked up at the broken window as a whisper of ink returned to his arm.
“You…” Aiden’s brow wrinkled. “What the hell—?” He stared at the many tattoos on Simon’s bare chest.
“Jasriel!” Simon cried up to the attic. “I dismiss thee. You have performed your duty and more. I should have taken your counsel when I had the chance!”
Jasriel said nothing, but I felt him fade.
“Simon.” Aiden fully turned toward the man. “What is this?” He gestured up into the sky. “What was that?”