by Noah Layton
‘Alerian additionally sought to lock himself away in a locket with Ascevious, in order to keep watch over him. Over the years, of course, these objects were lost, as all small precious things tend to do so.’
‘And… I’m guessing I went ahead and opened one of those cages?’
‘Yes… The worst one, as a matter of fact.’
James gulped. ‘Why was it the worst?’
‘The locket that you opened contained my master, High Lord Alerian. From what I understand he emerged in his ethereal form.’
‘Ethereal form?’
‘What you would call smoke. And if he went through you, then you will have taken on his abilities.’
‘Wait… His abilities?’ James said, halting in the process of eating a piece of popcorn and setting it aside. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘What you have described – increased musculature, increased energy, and a host of other features that may start to manifest over time.’
‘Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘That’s the better part of the story. You stated that black smoke emerged alongside Alerian when you opened the locket.’
‘Yeah… Why, is that important?’
Chapter Six
Ascevious
‘WHY WON’T YOU FUCKING DIE ALREADY?!’
The plumes of smoke exploded through the open window and into the night, intertwining and striking against each other. Far below in the quiet street, a man drunkenly stumbling home thought that he could hear screaming from somewhere far off in the distance.
He threw the notion off with a shake of his head.
Six stories. Seven stories. The smoke hurtled at an impossible speed, jolting about like a pair of stuck flies before peaking over an apartment building and descending hard.
The two bound, darting clouds of smoke suddenly separated, drifting strangely to the floor and hovering in place for a moment before the smoke began to solidify. Limbs formed, heads appeared and facial features were accentuated, noses sprouting out and eyes blinked to life, and up there, where no one was watching, what looked like two men were suddenly sprawled out on the concrete of the roof, groaning in pain.
The first was dressed in red, a tattered and ripped red cloak covering his body above a pair of leather pants and boots. His face was handsome and sharp, as if it had been carved from marble, and he bore flawless skin, but even belying the flaring heat in his eyes, there was an exhaustion and a weariness to his expression that could only come with age.
He was tens of thousands of years old, but he didn’t look a day past thirty.
The other was dressed in black, a tunic shirt above his pants having been ripped open to reveal pale skin as flawless as the other man’s. His age seemed in excess of the other, sitting in his late 30s. With ferocity he groaned as he laid on his back before rolling over onto his front and pushing himself up with a psychotic smile.
The man in red did the same. Standing ten yards apart the two men stared each other down.
‘80 years of chasing and conflict and you’re still trying to fight me off,’ the man in black growled. ‘Give up these ridiculous efforts, Alerian. It’s time to accept defeat, you pathetic fuck.’
‘I’m done reasoning, Ascevious. In fact, I was done reasoning before we were even condemned to that fucking hellhole.’
Staring each other down in the din of the night, the car horns and bustling of the streets below nothing but a detail in their minds, they stormed towards each other, leaping through the air with immense strength.
Their figures smashed together as they struck and scraped and bit at each other, each willing themselves on with a single, primal need – to destroy the other, at whatever cost.
Hatred like this had never existed between two people.
But then they weren’t just people.
In the streets the roaring was drowned out by the late-night music in bars and the drunken laughs and yells of their customers.
Alerian scrambled desperately to retain the upper hand as he wrapped his hands around Ascevious’s neck, squeezing with more might than he ever had done in his attempt to choke the life from his enemy. He had been right – this battle had lasted 80 long years.
And it had all led to this.
‘Yield,’ Alerian grunted, ‘And I will consider placing you back into that cage instead of butchering you here and now.’
Ascevious clasped his hands around Alerian’s wrists, pulling his hands away just enough to speak.
‘You were never prepared,’ he said through guttural attempts at breaths, ‘You’re always planning the next move, but I was planning… On getting out…’
‘And now here we are… You’re out, and you’re going to die. How poetic.’
‘How’s this for poetic…?’
The knife moved so fast that Alerian registered the sound of it cutting through the air before it cut through his skin.
In an instant his grip weakened. Everything in Alerian’s body was willing him to proceed with the killing, to end Ascevious once and for all, but what composed his body was quickly depleting through the severed skin in his gut, which was growing larger and larger as his foe dragged the knife through his body.
Black blood spilled out of him, his life force departing from his form until he had to draw his hands away from Ascevious’s neck completely.
Alerian glared at him for a moment before the same black blood coughed from his mouth, and he fell back onto the roof of the apartment block.
Ascevious staggered to a stand, the pain from their fight more than enough of a price to pay for the victory that he had finally achieved, aeons in the making.
‘This knife,’ he said, holding the blade by its handle. ‘You knew that I could use it to kill you. Passed down through black holes and galaxies until it reached me… So you set up that damned dimension of ours in such a way that it would nullify the effects of it. And now that we’re out in the real world, you forget about it?’
Ascevious sniggered, turning it in his hand as he admired the black blood smeared across the steel.
‘Y’know…’ He continued. ‘I could say something clever, or I could give some advice about how to die with dignity, or I could just humiliate you, but how about this instead?’
He moved to stand atop Alerian’s body. Alerian wheezed desperately as the systems in his body began to fail, his mouth and lungs filling with that black liquid by the second.
He leant over Alerian, looking down into his eyes and smiling.
‘I am going to kill every single one of your insolent, little bitches. I am going to laugh over the dusty remains that they leave behind, and once that is all said and done I am going to bring this world to its fucking knees, just how it should have been at the beginning of time, and how it should remain for all time.’
Alerian held on. He knew that he was about to die then and there. There was no alternative outcome to this scenario.
But it just wasn’t in his nature to fold his hand. He was committed even when he knew that he was fucked.
‘Now look at me… HEY!’ The order escaped Ascevious’s lungs in an uncontrollable, animalistic roar. ‘LOOK AT ME.’
Alerian conceded, meeting his enemy’s eyes.
With a final, gentle smile, Ascevious plunged the knife into Alerian’s head. His body seized upon the concrete, every huge, powerful muscle constricting sharply. Then, as quickly as the knife had come down, his body relaxed, collapsing back upon the concrete, unmoving.
Ascevious removed the knife and stepped back. As Alerian’s eyes filled with blackness, his enemy’s lifeless body turned the same ashen grey as his own before turning to a deep, horrendous black. Every cell dissipated into dust in a matter of seconds, before a pile of the whispering, ashen stuff was all that was left.
In the midnight breeze, the smallest parts of the scattered, haphazard mound began to blow away, lost to the dark.
Ascevious looked down at his work, admiring what he had created, the
most beautiful creation of all in his eyes; death, and the ending of something.
Shifting away from what remained, he moved to the edge of the rooftop and looked out over the city below, and above himself too as the buildings further downtown rose enormously.
‘Oh, how things have changed around here,’ he growled, a smile rising to his lips.
Chapter Seven
You’re Going to Kill a Monster
‘So this Ascevious guy… I’m guessing he’s not a lot of fun at parties.’
‘Partying, as you say, is of no interest to him. Prior to I and my companions being captured we vanquished many of his minions. You could say that he… Doesn’t approve of us.’
‘I’ll bet. So this guy’s like some kind of super-god and he wants you dead.’
‘Not just myself, but my companions too.’
‘Wait, your companions are still alive?’
‘Yes. Just as with the presence of you that I detected, I can detect there’s. They have been upon these lands ever since we were captured, and we need to free them from their many cages if we wish to have any hope of stopping Ascevious.’
‘We?’
‘I may be a goddess, but it is your help that I need in doing this.’
‘Look, I really don’t know if I’m the right guy to help with this… It’s way beyond my expertise.’
‘James Torrance…!’ Elena suddenly rose from the couch and darted to her feet with demonic speed. The cold light that made its way in through the window by James’s bed blacked out as the blinds dropped sharply. Her wings unfolded hugely and flapped lightly as she rose up before him, her eyes turning to a burning, fiery red. James fell straight from his chair and onto the floor, holding up an arm pathetically to protect himself as he looked up at her fearfully. ‘The souls of the gods reside within you. Only you have a chance at stopping these forces of evil that I have foretold before they lay waste to this Earth in its entirety.’
The edge of her mouth curled with another devilish grin, her teeth having suddenly sharpened behind her lips.
All of a sudden she lowered herself back to the ground, her wings folding back into place as she sank back onto the couch and took up the packet of blueberries.
James scrambled for the light switch, striking it with his palm before looking over at her again. Elena was just as she had been before, as if nothing had happened.
‘What the hell was that?!’ he shouted at her.
‘What was what?’ She asked innocently. ‘Oh, that? It’s a demon-goddess thing. It happens sometimes. I’ll try to warn you next time.’
‘Right…’ James stammered. ‘So… Just like that I’m some sort of… Half-god?’
‘If my senses are correct then Alerian has been killed, and it won’t be long before Ascevious begins unleashing his minions from the cages that they are trapped within. With a part of Alerian’s soul having entered your form, you are the closest thing to a master that I and my companions have. We must seek out my companions and together destroy Ascevious and his minions.’
‘And if we don’t?’
‘Did you not hear the part where I mentioned Earth being laid waste to?’
‘Got it…’
James suddenly felt like he had had a tonne of bricks dumped on his shoulders… Or the weight of the world.
Literally.
‘There’s one more thing I don’t understand,’ James continued. ‘You mentioned that I had part of Alerian’s soul inside of me after his ethereal form went through me, but Ascevious’s form went through me too… Which means…’
‘A part of his soul has entered your body, too.’
He gulped deeply, taking a deep breath.
‘So I’ve got part of a good god and part of a bad god inside of me.’
‘Well, I don’t think I would call Alerian and the Goddesses good… We’re reasonable. And I don’t think I would call Ascevious bad, either…’
‘Would you call him reasonable, too?’
‘No, I would call him brutal and evil and terrifying and hellish and ruthless and-’
‘Okay, okay, I get it.’
James stood from his seat and ran his hands through his hair, pacing around the room slowly.
‘So what’s our next step?’ He finally asked.
‘Like I said, we need to start freeing my companions and hunting down Ascevious.’
‘But… I wouldn’t even know where to start in doing something like that. I might be part-god now, but that doesn’t mean I know how to kill one, never mind the worst of them all. How the hell am I supposed to pull off something like that?’
‘Mmm…’ Elena pondered, tapping her chin. ‘That is indeed a problem… I suppose we must endure what you would call a ‘baptism of fire’.’
‘Does that mean the same thing to a demon-goddess as it does to a human? Because I really don’t feel like being dropped into a vat full of flaming oil if that’s what it means to you.’
‘Lord no, that would be awful. You must adjust to your new abilities, and quickly. In order to correctly achieve this, though, you need a totem.’
‘Of course I’m gonna go ahead and ask – what’s a totem?’
‘A totem is a weapon that you can channel your powers through. You could attempt to use them now, but in doing so you run the risk of not only harming yourself, but overloading with energy completely.’
‘Overloading with energy?’
‘Your body would explode.’
James frowned at her, furrowing his brow involuntarily.
‘Uh huh… Yeah, I’d love for that to not happen. But what am I actually gonna do with my powers?’
Elena smiled devilishly. ‘You’re going to kill a monster.’
Chapter Eight
Totem
The axe of Xudon. Elena wouldn’t stop ranting about it.
‘It’s not the greatest weapon belonging to the goddesses, but it can do some damage. It became famous amongst those who wished to hone their abilities before moving onto something more… Powerful. The weapon was originally commanded by a god who lost his ways, preying on the innocent. He was damned by his peers, and the axe was taken from him.’
‘What do you mean by those?’
‘Over the past two millennia the goddesses have made occasional dealings with humans. In exchange for favours we have sometimes supplied ordinary people with abilities, spells and items. This is one of them.’
‘So… It’s like a starter weapon?’
‘I’m not sure what you mean by starter, but it would be a good weapon to start with.’
James had spent a few minutes googling before finally finding the axe. It was even kept under its real name, and it was located within the city.
‘Wait, this is in the city. NYC Historic Museum. That’s just across town.’
‘Wonderful,’ Elena smiled, standing readily. ‘Let’s go and retrieve it.’
‘We can’t just walk into the place and take it. It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Well, how does it work?’
‘You can’t just steal things from somewhere. Especially a government run organisation. That’s how you get arrested and sent to some hellhole of a prison.’
‘I see. Regardless, let’s investigate. We may find something of use in the process.’
‘Something of use?’
‘Just trust me.’
‘You’re a being from another world and you’re asking me to trust you. Do you see the problem here?’
‘I do. But right now you don’t have any choice, and neither do I.’
James stood from his seat and placed his hands on his hips. Briefly he thought back to his father, pulling the same pose. Realising that his face had the same expression of disapproval, he quickly pushed his hands away and wiped his face clean of emotion.
‘My life was so much more… Normal yesterday.’
‘Perhaps. But normal is exceedingly boring,’ Elena chimed, raising an eyebrow. The image of the almost-naked goddess on his couch
still hadn’t gotten old, and he doubted it ever would.
How could it?
‘Okay…’ James continued, ‘We need to get out of this apartment, but if we’re gonna do that you need to be wearing… Something.’
‘You do not approve of my current attire?’
Elena stood, doing a slow twirl in her tight, lacy underwear and accentuating her curves knowingly in the process. James couldn’t take his eyes off her, drinking in the sight of her perfect body.
‘No… I mean yes, but I already told you that you can’t go walking around like that. We need to get you some new clothes if we’re gonna leave the apartment.’
***
James had never had a girlfriend long enough to have any of their clothes lying around in the back of his closet; instead, he had to resort to the next best thing, which was a pretty huge step down.
Twenty minutes later he and his new goddess were walking into a nearby clothing store; James was dressed in exactly what he had been wearing all day, but Elena was wearing a lot more – a pair of baggy running pants and a huge parka coat complete with furry hood that James wore on his way to college when the weather got bad, as well as an old oversized pair of boots.
She looked ridiculous walking by his side, but at least she wasn’t naked.
‘Damn,’ she commented as they walked into the brightly lit department store. ‘Forms of dress certainly have changed since I last walked the earth.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘So what should I wear, do you think?’
‘Uhh…’
James looked about the store blankly, unsure of what to pick out. He didn’t know a whole lot about women’s clothing; like most guys he was only interested in what it looked like when it was scattered across his apartment floor.
Lauri and Helen were the only girls that he hung out with, and his only frame of reference.
‘This is nice…’
At first James thought that Elena’s voice had grown fainter, but after looking back in her direction he found that she had already taken off across the shop floor and into the aisles and stands. He hurried after her as she surveyed the aisles.