by Ari Marmell
“I found it under one of the dead Phantom Guards,” War said without preamble. “I believe it’s the object Belisatra was studying when we arrived. It must have gotten knocked off when the battle started. She either didn’t see where it had fallen, or lacked the time to recover it.” He flashed another humorless grin. “I picked it up with the tip of Chaoseater. If it’s what I suspect it is, I’m not foolish enough to touch it until I know more about it.”
His frustration slowly eroding away beneath a growing current of curiosity, Death approached the table. It couldn’t be one of them—he’d have felt its presence from the moment he entered, just as he had that of Black Mercy—and yet …
Beneath the caked ooze, he saw what appeared to be a small buckler shield with an integrated gauntlet. He brushed his hand across it several times, scarcely touching it, until he’d wiped away some of the grime. It consisted primarily of old, discolored bone, though the joints on the fingers were a mesh of chain steel. The buckler itself appeared to be made up of an elongated face. The jaw, which gaped open just above the wrist of the gauntlet, sported an array of fearsome teeth, while the remainder of the shield was rimmed in ragged horns. A single, enormous eye protruded just above that yawning mouth.
“Mortis,” he whispered.
“It’s one of them, then?” War asked. Then, when Death nodded, “I sensed something in the air, just before Hadrimon pulled that pistol—”
“Black Mercy,” Death told him.
“All right. But I don’t feel that here.”
Death leaned in until his face was nearly touching the vile thing, almost as though he were sniffing at it. “I think,” he said slowly, “it may be dead.”
“Dead?”
“I told you: The Grand Abominations are living things, albeit in a way we can barely recognize. It’s that awareness, that malevolence, that we feel in their presence, at least as much as it is their raw power. But here …” Again he ran his fingertips over the gauntlet, never quite touching it. “There’s some energy left, but it’s minuscule. Mortis might still function, at the slightest fraction of its former strength, but I’m not detecting anything of life.”
War, too, leaned over the peculiar object, though not so close as Death. “I hadn’t realized that any of the Abominations were defensive in nature.”
“It’s not, really. Yes, it’s a shield, but its purpose was never to protect the wearer—at least, not directly.”
“Then …?”
Death straightened, his eyes focused on the far wall rather than anywhere near his brother. “When awakened and at full strength,” he said, his voice grim, “Mortis reacted to any attack on the wearer by sending out a concentrated burst of profane energies. It was incredibly swift, capable of traversing an entire world in a matter of heartbeats.”
“And its target?” War asked when his brother seemed disinclined to continue.
“A random friend, family member, or other loved one plucked from the strongest memories and emotions of the attacker.”
Now he did turn toward his younger brother, who glared at him through a mask of horrified revulsion. “Even at the height of our depredations,” Death told him, “most of you knew barely half of what we of the Firstborn were doing.”
“So I’m starting to understand.”
“It’s who we were at the time. It’s unfortunate, but I make no excuses.” Death lifted Mortis from the tabletop. “I doubt Belisatra can do much with it, but leaving it here would just be asking for trouble. I’ll hold on to it until we can—”
Had Death been mistaken? Was there a sliver of awareness remaining in Mortis, so flimsy and buried so deeply that he’d failed to sense it? Or was it, perhaps, some residual instinct, a hyper-sophisticated version of an insect’s continued running and twitching after being crushed?
The Horseman had no way of knowing, nor did it particularly matter. He felt a surge from deep within Mortis; a white, searing agony that crackled across every nerve, finger to arm to shoulder to mind. A rigid, iron will that might well have kept the alien semi-sentience at bay if it had been even remotely prepared was instead swept aside by the tide of psychic fire. Emotions and defenses burned and scattered. A brilliant illumination rippled across his soul, casting the dark shadow of memories upon the walls of his mind.
Death stumbled, almost collapsing to his knees, as Mortis began to know …
WORLDS AWAY, in a realm where day and night were measured in centuries, and the seasons in eons, a thousand clanks and clatters echoed from the depths of a glacial cave. What had only ever been intended to serve as a temporary staging area, an isolated grotto large enough for the gathering of hundreds or even thousands of soldiers—as well as several devices far, far larger—was now the primary headquarters of a desperate angel and his seemingly soulless ally.
Uninterested in whatever mechanical adjustments and improvements Belisatra might be making to her countless constructs or the moribund Abominations, Hadrimon paced the cramped confines of a small side cavern. No, paced was insufficient; he marched, stomped, each stride a separate expression of impatient wrath. Permafrost cracked beneath his heels, slivers of icicle fell at every step. Wings furled and stretched in irregular twitches; wrists and fingers spasmed as though wrapped tight about some hated throat. The glistening whites and gritty grays of the cave were tinged with crimson, and the angel was too overwrought to tell that this was no mere illusion cast by the hatred enshrouding his brain. His vision truly was obscured, for Hadrimon was weeping blood.
How had the Council’s hounds found them? Nobody, nobody should have known of Lilith’s abandoned laboratory! Had Belisatra deceived him? Had she told someone of their sanctum? Planned this? Betrayed him? Perhaps he should …
It wasn’t until he actually heard the hollow click of tensing hammers and rotating chambers that Hadrimon realized he’d drawn Black Mercy, was cradling it almost sensuously in his palm as he stalked toward the cave mouth.
No. His arm trembled as he forced the pistol back into the holster at his side. Belisatra’s not the enemy. Remember the enemy. Remember the plan. Remember her, if nothing else. He needed to maintain control, to—
Hadrimon screamed, tumbling to his hands and knees, wings flailing in uncoordinated sweeps, as his mind abruptly burned. A white-hot lance, a chewing parasite, a nightmare with claws and doubts with fangs … All these burrowed through his thoughts and seared his soul.
But they carried with them the thoughts of another, the deepest knowledge, the answer to everything he sought.
Through his agony, through the bloody tears that smeared his cheeks and dribbled across his lips, Hadrimon began to laugh.
BELISATRA WAS NOT, in fact, working on her mechanized warriors at just that moment. Instead she, too, occupied one of the caverns branching from the primary grotto. Unlike the relatively diminutive cave in which Hadrimon paced, however, this one was only moderately smaller than the vast chamber in which the brass-and-stone army awaited her command.
She was not alone in this cave, not entirely—not yet. Hanging in chains from the pitted walls, almost two dozen figures decorated the periphery of the chamber. Some were angels, some Old Ones, a couple demons. Most were dead; the others wished they were, if they remained sentient enough to wish for anything at all. None retained more than a third of their skin or half their muscles, for these had proved raw materials for Belisatra’s so-far-unsuccessful experiments in awakening the Abominations.
No screams, whimpers, or cries emerged from these broken, pitiful bodies. Tongues and vocal chords had been the first pieces removed, lest they disturb the Maker’s concentration.
The only source of light was a crystal sphere glowing with a pure white radiance. It hung in the air above her, supported by absolutely nothing at all, shedding a column of illumination that allowed Belisatra to see what she was doing while keeping the remainder of the cave in cloaking shadow.
And something waited within those shadows, something enormous, something she could
sense looming over her even in the darkness.
In her hands, Belisatra cradled what might, at first glance, have been a rifle. It consisted primarily of a perfect tube, carved from the femur of some lumbering giant. Both the handle, near the rear of the weapon, and the secondary grip farther up the barrel, were made of humanoid hands. The first was joined with the bone along the top, where the thumb should have been, so that the wielder’s fingers would interlace with the handle’s own. The second had its fingers wrapped about the barrel, providing a simple bit of cushioning and texture for the wielder’s off hand. A faceted lens of blackest obsidian filled the tip of the barrel, and an impossibly long rope of braided hair trailed from the rear of the weapon, linking it to whatever it was that lurked unseen in the depths of the cave.
The Maker had spent less time in contact with any of the Grand Abominations than had Hadrimon, and she certainly had a much tighter grasp on her emotions. Thus far, then, she’d experienced only the faintest inklings of the seething hatred and endless bloodlust that had begun to consume her companion.
And thus, when the surge came, it struck her with a much weaker intensity.
Belisatra rocked on her heels, shoved with an almost physical force by the unexpected pain. It was fearsome, piercing, yet it was nothing compared with the understanding that came with it.
The corner of her broad, unfinished lips quirked in a shallow smile as she dropped the weapon and strode from the cave, searching for Hadrimon, as rapidly as dignity would permit.
WITH A CRY of frustration and fury, Death hurled Mortis from him as though it had begun to bite. It smacked into the far wall, where it sent a cascade of stone chips and dried blood floorward before it followed them to land with a hollow clatter.
“Damn it!” The skin of the Horseman’s palms split and tore beneath his fingers, so tightly were they clenched; had he any blood to shed, it would have poured in torrents. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”
“Brother …” War took a single tentative step, almost but not quite reaching out. “What—?”
“I should have anticipated that!” Death—normally so unflappable, at least on the surface—was as distraught as War had ever seen him. “How could I be that stupid!”
“What—?” the younger Rider tried again.
“We have to go.”
“I thought you planned to question—”
“We have to go now! The Council must be informed, and we have preparations to make. With any luck, it should at least take them some time before they can move. If we—”
War’s gauntleted hands closed on the other’s shoulders, physically spinning him around. “What’s happened, damn you?”
Death froze in the midst of raising his own hands to knock his brother’s away, then allowed himself, however slightly, to slump. “They know, War. Something, some vestige of Mortis’s mind, still lingered, still communed with the others, and I didn’t prepare myself for it. The Abominations tore the knowledge from me, and I’ve no doubt that Hadrimon and Belisatra now have it as well.”
“What knowledge?” War asked the question, but they both knew full well how Death would answer.
“All of it. The history of the devices, the location of the Abomination Vault …
“And the means to fully awaken the damn things.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WHEN MOST INHABITANTS OF THE MANY WORLDS, the myriad examples of sentience that had arisen across a thousand domains, spoke of “Creation,” they thought primarily of the Empyrean, the metaphorical Tree of Life. Thriving realms of light and life, uncountable in even an immortal’s lifetime, sported angels, Old Ones, and animals in infinite variety.
Broad enough, varied enough, for any race and every purpose, was the Tree of Life. Yet it was not the full extent of Creation, for all that many of its inhabitants might wish it were.
Beyond the Divide lay wholly half of existence, a dark and twisted mirror of the Empyrean and all its wonders. The Underworld. The Tree of Death.
For every Heaven, a Hell. For the vibrant Forge Lands, the Kingdom of the Dead, vestibule to the Well of Souls, dominion of the Lord of Bones. For Eden, the peculiar—almost nightmarish—semi-reality of Purgatory.
And for the many worlds of the Old Ones, in the deepest metaphysical bowels of the Underworld, among the very roots of the Tree of Death, below even the darkest pits of Hell …
The Abyss.
If Oblivion was nothingness made manifest, the Abyss was darkness incarnate. Shadow, not as an absence of light, but a black radiance of its own; death, not as an absence of life, but a cold and ravenous presence. It was from the depths of the Abyss that the rampaging Nephilim had gained much of their power, and they fed the Abyss in exchange.
They fed it whole realms.
The Abyss had few, if any, to call its own. It was, rather, the Graveyard of Worlds; the final resting place of any realm well and truly murdered. Such dead worlds gradually but inevitably drifted from their cradles in the Tree of Life and fell, here, to nourish the gnarled tendrils of the Tree of Death.
Yet the Abyss was not without some native life. Like any cemetery, it attracted vermin, scavengers, and predators: things that fed and thrived on the decay of worlds. Some dwelled in the void; most made their homes in the dead and desiccated realms that made the Abyss their final place of rest. And because the Abyss had few rules of its own, and corrupted those of the worlds it claimed, each of those realms, and each of those creatures, obeyed vastly different laws of nature from any other.
Some were merely grotesque and violent, like the demons or the topography of Hell writ large. Others were … worse.
This particular world was worse.
The air, already hazy with an unidentifiable noxious fume, roiled and thickened before finally parting, almost sullenly, for the Horsemen’s magic. Ruin and Despair gradually appeared, a process far less comfortable for mount or for Rider than it ever was in worlds beyond the Abyss. Death and War sat rigid in their saddles, leaning slightly forward as though confronting a fearsome headwind. Of Dust, oddly, there was no sign at all.
“This … this is …” War was clearly taken aback. Death, who had thought himself prepared, found himself nearly as disconcerted.
He had seen dead worlds in his time, that eldest of the Horsemen; had, in fact, helped make more than a few of them. He had seen worlds burned to cinders and scoured of life, such as the one on which he made his current home; worlds blasted and blackened, barren echoes of the Charred Council’s fiery domain; worlds of glistening ice and worlds of sterile stone.
Never before had he seen a world … infected.
A gritty, almost scabby crust cracked and shifted beneath the horses’ hooves, exuding a clear, vaguely sour fluid with each step. Scattered pits were literal gaping sores in the landscape, radiating a feverish warmth, wreathed in rot. The hills, of which several were visible before the cloudy air obscured the distance, were fleshy, bulbous—tumorous rather than geological, growing and shrinking in starts even as the Horsemen watched.
The wind, though placid and weak, moaned with the voice of an old man dying, and Death had finally identified the tang of the putrid air.
Gangrene, bile, and the eye-watering breath of a mouth full of rotting teeth.
“Welcome back to the home of the Ravaiim,” Death muttered bitterly.
“I don’t understand,” his brother said. “Even at our worst, the Nephilim never did this.”
“But we did.” Death slid from Despair’s saddle and knelt to examine the sickly earth—not so much because he expected to learn anything as because he felt he should. “We didn’t just slaughter all life on this world, we corrupted it. We murdered the Ravaiim, yes, and then we compounded our sin by warping them into something they were never meant to be, something Creation was never meant to contain. We planted the seeds of all this, brother—or first cultivated the pestilence, if you prefer that metaphor. It was here, waiting, and when the world slid into the depths, the Abyss itself help
ed it to bloom.
“We did this. Perhaps the return of the Grand Abominations is no more than we deserve.”
“All right, enough of this!” War dropped from Ruin, ignoring the faint trickle of puss oozing up from where his boots cracked the surface, and halted less than a pace from Death. “You’ve always had a morose streak running beneath your bitter sarcasm, but that only goes so far. Yes, this is horrific. Yes, perhaps we, and the other Nephilim, were responsible. But you’re taking this personally, brother, and it’s time you told me why.”
“It doesn’t matter. We—”
“No! You’ve been keeping your precious secrets since we started this, and I’ve permitted it, but it ends now!”
Death rose, smoothly, lithely, from his crouch, so that the two Riders stood face-to-face. “You’ve permitted it, War?”
If the younger Horseman felt any trepidation at that tone, he managed to keep it from his expression. “Yes. But no more. I need to know whatever it is you’ve kept from me.”
“No, you don’t. Now step back.”
“No, Death.”
“Step. Back.”
“No.”
Death’s uppercut did not merely lift War off his feet, it sent him hurtling up and back with enough force to shatter the ground where he finally fell. A pink-frothed puss puddled in the shallow crater, soiling the ornate armor and the crimson cloak.
By the time he’d struggled to his feet, his jaw already coming over a mottled purple, Death had closed the distance between them.
“Am I clear?” he demanded.
War’s hand clenched of its own accord, his entire body trembled with rage, but he refused either to lash out or draw Chaoseater. “No.”
A second blow, this one to the chest, threw him back farther still. Again he split the crust of the world with the impact, and again he staggered upright.
This time, when Death approached, he held Harvester in both hands. “And now?” he asked. “Consider, before you answer, that I’m done with my fists.”