by Matt Turner
“A decoy,” Despair cried.
A shadow passed over the floor. Denial and Bargaining glanced up as one to see a dark figure, perched over one of the gouges that Anger’s flames had left in the roof.
“Should’ve listened to your friend.” Signy laughed.
“NO,” Denial cried out. She reached for the needles in her breasts, the sharpest ones she possessed, but Signy’s arrow slashed down and tore a bloody hole in her navel. She staggered back, a scream on her lips, as Bargaining let out a mighty roar and tried to wrench himself up. He raised two bronze hands in the air, trying to reach for Signy—
She leapt down and smashed both of her feet into the small of his neck with the force of a cannonball. He toppled forward, off-balance, and Signy leapt off his head just as it crashed down into the softened steel of the floor. The sheer weight of the gold carried it farther, and Bargaining’s scalp just barely brushed against the whizzing tracks beneath.
The metal giant let out a horrendous scream as the top of his scalp was completely sheared off. A cloud of gold dust flew into the air, and Anger let out a bellow of rage. He raised the flamethrower at Signy, but she put two arrows in his steel gauntlets. The blackened joints gave way, and the nozzle fell to the ground as his metal fingers disintegrated. Bargaining continued to scream as more and more of his body was dragged onto the tracks—the only thing keeping him in place was the leg still embedded in the floor, and still more golden clouds filled the air as the railroad tracks ground his head down to his nose. Denial shouted out a command, and so Signy put another three arrows in her chest. As Denial fell back, a wave of blackness swept upward and completely engulfed her.
Despair. Signy turned around, fully intent on destroying the freak, and just barely avoided Anger’s blow.
“You BITCH!” the suit of armor roared at her. A few pieces of bone protruded from the remnants of its gauntlets, but it hardly seemed to notice—even the arrow that she left poking into its visor was still there, completely ignored. It clawed at her, trying to gouge at her face. “Bitch bitch BITCH!”
Somewhere behind them, Bargaining had stopped screaming—the railroad tracks had completely taken away his head. His metal legs still weakly beat against the floor as the tracks ground his heavy body down, bit by bit. Despair was still weeping in the corner, and Denial was completely gone. This one first, Signy decided.
“Where’s your fire?” she mocked as she easily dodged his clumsy blows. “Did the big bad flames burn your fingers?”
“I AM THE FIRE,” Anger screamed at her, and for the first time she noticed the dark droplets that squirted and leaked from the hinges in his armor. He gave a cruel laugh and raised both his arms over his head—and then she saw the dozens of tiny spikes that protruded from his armor. “I AM THE FIRE,” Anger repeated again, and he crashed his armor together. A shower of sparks whistled across the compartment as the spikes twisted and grated.
He let out another scream as the oil within his armor ignited. Black flames spewed from his visor, his gloves, and every one of the hinges of his armor—the heat was so intense that Signy could just barely make out the singe of her own hair over the intense scent of burnt pork. Still Anger’s fire spread, until it seemed that two great wings of heat and hate spewed out from the scorched armor on his back.
Anger reached for her again with a hand that gushed flames and ash. “YOU BURN.”
Signy had no choice; she had to run. He’s slow, she told herself. Dodge him. She made a feint to the right, and just as she had hoped, he shifted his position, giving her just enough time to duck to the left—just passing by him was enough to make her skin turn red and blister. But it had worked. He was too slow; maybe she could get to the next compartment—
A wall of darkness sprang from the floor in front of her and Denial stepped through. “Hello, sweetie,” she managed to gurgle out in spite of the arrows lodged in her chest. She raised one of her hands and sent a single shard whistling through the air.
Signy tried to dodge it, but the blood-soaked floor was too slippery. The shard went directly into her right bicep and quite suddenly her entire arm was dead. Her bow tumbled from her useless grasp.
“It’s, over,” Denial panted. She dug into her flank and extracted a foot-long glass needle. “Just give up—”
“Never,” Signy snarled. As Anger turned around, hand outreached to grab her, she lunged forward and slammed her useless shoulder against Denial. The other woman cried out in surprise as they flew backward into the void of Despair.
The sensation was utterly foreign to Signy. One moment, she was on the train; the next, she was hurtling through infinite blackness. There was no light, no sound, nothing other than the feel of Denial’s body pressed up against hers. She could feel the bitch struggling to free herself as they plummeted through absolute nothingness—there was still the shard in her hand; Signy could feel the edge of it sliding against her abdomen, drawing a line of blood.
No, she tried to say, but the words would not come in the utter absence that they drifted in—only a suffocating presence and the thirst for air. Signy ignored the strange feeling that she was being strangled and tore down with her sharpened teeth at her enemy. Blood rushed into her mouth and from somewhere far away she could have sworn she heard the sound of a single faint giggle.
As suddenly as the void had taken them, a flash of light dazzled Signy’s eyes. Gravity rushed up to meet her and she felt the floor of the compartment crash against her good arm. She blinked, trying to make out her new surroundings, and saw that she was back in the compartment. Denial was pressed up against her chest, bleeding from a dozen wounds, yet still smiling, as Anger lumbered over to them.
That means… Signy spun around to see that the wall of blackness that Despair had opened up for them was still there. It took us through that—
In an instant, she realized what she had to do. Denial’s arms were locked around her, forcing Signy to drag up the other woman’s weight with her. Despair simply stared at them with its bulging eyes as Anger drew closer.
“Denial, get off her,” Anger boomed. He took another step closer, reaching for Signy with his fiery hands. “She’s mine.”
“No, she’s mine.” Denial chuckled. Her blood gushed down in rivulets onto the floor, yet she kept her arms locked around Signy’s neck. “You’re incredible,” she breathlessly whispered into Signy’s ear. “What a dance!”
“Sorry,” Signy growled. She slammed her knee up into Denial’s stomach, knocking the wind out of the other woman. Her arms loosened just enough for Signy to seize her face in an iron grip with her left hand. “Not interested.”
“MMMPH,” Denial protested, just as Signy spun around and used her own momentum to shove Denial forward. For an instant, recognition dawned on her face as she toppled into the portal to darkness—and then she was gone into the black void.
“Despair, bring her back,” Anger shouted. He clumsily fumbled at his breastplate as he continued to advance toward Signy.
“R-right,” the emaciated thing stammered. It closed its eyes and started to mutter something—and let out a squeal of fear when Signy wrapped her hand around its throat.
“Got you,” she hissed, and she stabbed at it with the glass shard she had wrenched out of Denial’s grasp. A small tendril of blackness shot up from Despair’s body to swallow up the blade, but the creature’s attention was fully on her hand now, and so she was able to smash her forehead into her knee. Grease spattered up from its long hair, and it whimpered in pain. She wrapped her good hand around its neck and hurled it at Anger.
“Make it stop,” Despair moaned. A dozen tendrils of blackness exploded from its abdomen in mid-air, reaching for Signy—just as its unprotected back crashed against Anger’s armor. In less than an instant, the creature’s skin and rags were consumed by the flames. It weakly crashed to the floor, its tendrils forgotten, and did not even attempt to struggle as the heat withered and shrunk its body even more.
“Pathetic,” An
ger raged. He slammed one of his boots down on Despair’s back, spraying pieces of fire and blackened flesh across the entire compartment. “Fucking weakling.”
“Just you and me now,” Signy panted. “You got any more tricks, freak?”
“Just one.” With one smooth motion, Anger tore away his breastplate. A column of flame and smoke gushed out, but Signy was able to just barely make out the glint of something metal protruding from the scarred, twisted flesh inside. A new light began to grow within it—a bright blue, quite different from the black flames that curled and twisted around the gun’s barrel.
Without a word, she turned and sprinted for the door.
“No use.” Anger laughed as Signy pounded at the keypad. A loud whirring began to emanate from his body over the crackle of his flames. “You can’t outrun a beam-cannon, little girl.” The blueness of the beam-cannon intensified as the weapon swiftly built up its charge.
Come on, come on… Signy scooped a loose pistol off the floor and swiftly emptied its clip into the keypad. The door’s locks disengaged, and she reached down to slowly lift it off the floor. She cursed and grunted as she lifted with her one good arm, feeling the cords and tendons pop out. The door lifted, but it was too slow; she had no time. Her tortured body was on the verge of giving out—
“Better run fast,” Anger screamed. The whirr was so loud that it nearly drowned out his voice. A crackle of electricity spewed out from the beam-cannon’s barrel and danced across his burning armor—it then jumped to the bottom half of Bargaining’s body that was still grating against the railroad tracks. “All Hell is gonna hear this one!”
Somehow the door’s resistance suddenly went away—she must have dislodged a gear or something—and it shot up into the ceiling. Signy staggered through the doorway, but Anger was still laughing, and she knew that there was hardly any time. She ran forward, half-blinded by the blood and sweat that stung at her eyes. She was dimly aware of figures standing on either side of her, staring at her in astonishment, and then a familiar voice somewhere ahead of her.
“What?” Babin cried out. Signy had just a glimpse of his stupefied expression, and his lips beginning to form the order to fire.
Somehow she had just enough energy to sprint the last meter toward him. The bastard was quick; he thrust a sword at her, but with his limbs reversed, the gesture was a clumsy one. She knocked his arm away and let out a cry of pain as her wounds sent a jolt of pain into her body. She did not allow her wounds to slow her down for an instant—she wrapped both arms around his neck and violently twisted as she spun around to his ear. There was an earsplitting crack as his skull traveled with her, and suddenly she was on the other side of him, facing a score of heavily armed soldiers.
“Dear God,” Babin whispered in shock. Utterly heedless of Signy, he stared down at his feet in wonderment. Tears rolled down his face, for at long last, his head was finally facing the right way. “I’m cured! I’m cured!”
“You’re welcome,” Signy said, and then she hit the floor.
Anger’s beam-cannon punched through the compartment with the wrath of a vengeful god. At the speed of lightning, the pillar of pure light tore forward, burning and disintegrating every scrap of matter it came across. By the time Babin’s scream reached Signy’s ears, the beam had already swallowed up most of his torso and hurled the remnants of his body a quarter-mile away from the railroad tracks. The beam continued to travel like a scythe through the compartment, flooding the train with light as it annihilated everything taller than a man’s waist. It punched through wall after wall, down half the train, rocking the entire War Train from side to side on the tracks. Somewhere in the distance, one of the war machine’s ammo depots detonated, sending an aftershock that felt as though it loosened Signy’s teeth in their sockets.
Signy glanced back to the front of the train to see whether Anger was already preparing to fire again. All that she could make out were two legs from a suit of armor standing upright amid the devastation. As she watched, they crumbled away into ash.
The lightning. She grinned when she remembered the way it had radiated from Anger to Bargaining’s body and back again. It likes metal. The fool had been destroyed by his own weapon.
“Stupid freaks,” Signy muttered. There was still fighting to be done; somewhere far away, she could hear the klaxon of an alarm, and dozens of boots crashing against the steel floor. The imperator, wherever he was, couldn’t be happy about the loss of his pets. I’m not done yet…still need to find the bastard… But her aching limbs were as heavy as anvils. Every ounce of her strength was gone; it took all her willpower just to keep her exhausted eyes open.
“She’s in there!” a voice called out. Guns clicked into position as scores of blurry figures rushed into the compartment. She tried to roll over on her back to see them better, but her body seemed to be a million miles away, completely out of her control.
This time it’s the end. She didn’t even have the energy for one last chuckle.
29
The Master made his way up to the light, and all Hell followed him.
There was no resistance. Violence and blood, yes—but all of Cain’s doing. Behind the First Son’s shrouded face and golden eyes, an inner devil lurked, lashing the Master and everyone around him with its talons of frozen hate. Cain strode through Lower Hell, a growing ocean of blood left behind in his wake. When the damned fled from him in their millions, he tore them and bled them until they could do nothing but kneel. When they knelt, he shattered them, humiliated them, until they worshiped at his feet with slavish adoration in their eyes. One by one, he broke everything that he faced and rebuilt it in his own image. His army became a horde, then a nation, then as countless as grains of sand. Doom, doom, doom, their footsteps pounded, the beating heart of a single titanic creature.
The might of the sea beneath them had grown so great that the Master and his lieutenants had been forced to relocate to the skies. Cain stood upon the back of the Beast, grimly staring up at the red skies above, while Lao and the others meekly sat on Leviathan’s back. ELIE had taken a malicious delight in “repairing” the wounded devil, and one of its wings now had a silvery metal sheen.
ELIE noticed Lao glance at the crude metal instruments protruding from Leviathan’s half-amputated wing. “You like my work, concubine?” it asked. It had managed to scavenge some leftover metal and weld it over its head, but the job was incomplete, and the lower half of its human face shone through. There was no smile there, only the eternal blankness of the machine’s face. Even now, it still didn’t seem to fully comprehend how to use the mouth it had been given; blood dribbled down its chin from the half-dozen places its teeth had accidently torn into its lips.
In spite of everything, some part of Lao could not help but feel pity for the demon; the devil’s scales were twisted and mangled where ELIE’s artificial wing stabbed into its body, and the dragon let out a little hiss of pain with every flap.
“Wait until I have all of my instruments,” ELIE promised. “I’ll forge this devil into something beautiful.”
He was tired of the way the machine unnecessarily smacked and pursed its lips together with every syllable. Spray me with your spit one more time… “Where’s that new body of yours?” Lao snapped. “You still look pretty human to me, girl.”
“When I have the tools to make it,” ELIE growled, “you will witness my glory firsthand—”
“Both of you need to shut the fuck up,” Lamech groaned. He stared down at his stumps of his arms and muttered a foul curse under his breath. “How am I supposed to serve like this? A fucking cripple!”
“The Master will reward you,” Eve croaked. Tears shone in her beady eyes as she looked ahead to where her son stood and faced the horizon. “He’ll reward all of us. All we must do is serve his will.”
Where has his will brought me? Lao couldn’t help but wonder. Before this, I was the star of every orgy in Dis. Since then, I’ve been crushed, eaten, stabbed, shot… He angrily shoved the
traitorous thought aside. No, no, I serve the Master! Doubt at this point was idiocy…and yet he couldn’t help but feel a trickle of fear run down his spine. There was something wrong; he could feel it in his bones.
Eve slowly turned around to glare at him. A shiver ran down Lao’s spine as her beady eyes locked with him. In a strange way, the First Woman was more terrifying than her son. How does she know?
The Beast let out an inarticulate roar and suddenly unfurled its half-dozen ragged wings. The backrush of air knocked it backward, allowing Leviathan and the lieutenants upon him to rush past. Lao glanced backward, surprised, as the Master leaned forward and gave his command.
“Go to the Phlegethon,” he ordered. “The Horsemen are there. Crush them. I will meet you at the Gates.”
“Son?” Eve pleaded. “Where are you going?”
Cain did not reply to her question, but his face darkened. “Make sure the thirdborn puts up a good fight. I would be disappointed otherwise.” With that, he crashed his foot against one of the Beast’s heads. It hissed and snapped, but the monstrous devil gave another flap of its wings and took off in the opposite direction. It soon disappeared into the great clouds of dust that rose like smoke from the unending horde below.
“The Phlegethon,” Eve muttered to herself.
“Twenty-six point four kilometers from our current location,” ELIE automatically recited. “There is a garrison nearby that will have the resources I require.”
“The river of blood,” Eve continued, hardly aware of the others. “Where it finally begins.”
No, Lao thought. A tight ball of dread in the bottom of his stomach grew with every flap of Leviathan’s wings. That’s where it all ends.
30
Two. Two syringes of Zaqqum left. If she paced herself, she’d have enough time to finish off the Master before…
No, Salome told herself. Don’t think about it.