by Matt Turner
“Pain is eternal,” a wretched voice moaned.
Vera jerked in surprise as the dim lights in the hallway suddenly flickered on, revealing the miserable, translucent-skinned figure that slouched just a few meters away from her.
Is that— It took her a moment to recognize the ancient, withered old man. “Adam? What the fuck are you doing down here? We left you in that tank to rest up—”
“I listened to you in the belly of that steel beast.” The First Man groaned. He took a step toward Vera and let out a little moan as the glass-like bones in his foot crunched. After a brief moment, a few swirls of dust crawled upward from his toes, resetting the fragile bones back together. He took another step forward and moaned again as the process repeated itself. “Heard you talk about my son.”
In spite of everything, Vera felt her face flush. “I don’t know what you heard, but I have nothing but respect and, and—platonic friendship for your son—”
The old man’s leathered face contorted in sorrow. “You plot against the Master.” He raised one of his arms, allowing the tips of his fingers to morph into a tendril of swirling particles that reached out for Vera. “I followed you here.”
Wrong son. Even Vera’s shit-show of a family wasn’t nearly as fucked up as Seth’s. “Let’s just calm down,” she said uneasily, painfully aware that half her body was stuck out over an elevator shaft that led to the very foundation of Hell. She clumsily picked up the pistol that she had scavenged and fumbled with the safety. “Maybe if we can just talk this out…”
“I will stop you,” Adam promised. “The Garden—i-it can come again!”
Vera got a single shot off—just to the right of the old man’s eyeball, carving away a swathe of his scalp and half his ear—before Adam disintegrated before her eyes, replaced by a roiling cloud that rushed toward her. The edge of it brushed against her arm, tearing at her skin with a thousand tiny particles. The pain was immense; she let out a cry as she tumbled backward into the darkness of the elevator shaft.
For an instant, she tumbled into the void until one of the flailing arms smashed against the iron chain that held up the elevator. She frantically clawed at it, searching for any type of handhold, and let out a scream when she suddenly jerked to a stop with such force that it dislocated her arm. She managed to grit her teeth through the pain and hang on a few seconds longer—and then the cloud of dust that was Adam caught up with her. It felt as though she were being eaten alive by a million insects; every speck of her exposed skin was pounded by a whirlwind of tiny shrapnel. She let go again to escape the pain, but this time the cloud maintained pace with her, slashing her to pieces as she fell to her doom.
“Do not struggle,” Adam said over the roar of the wind. His voice was wispy and melancholy. “You will only hurt yourself more, granddaughter.”
“That is IT!” Vera screamed. With a strength and desperation fueled by rage and pain, she reached out and tore into the First Man’s mind. This bastard deserves everything he gets, she violently swore as she rifled through thousands of years of memories in seconds. She was going to make him pay, and for that she searched for the deepest, most repressed dream in his tired rag of a mind. His defenses were nothing; she crashed through them like an artillery shell, until at last she found, at the very bottom of Adam’s soul, what she had been looking for.
Vera blinked in surprise when she found the image, as perfectly preserved as if it were a photograph. Two young boys, playing and laughing in a mud puddle, while over them a tired-looking woman dressed in animal skins gently smiled and stood watch. Eve’s belly was slightly protruding; it looked as though Seth, her thirdborn, was already growing inside her. Vera carefully studied the faces of the two boys who could only have been Cain and Abel. If Amaury’s descriptions were right, the darker-haired of the duo was Cain. How many years until he murders you, Abel? Vera wondered. She curiously searched the laughing face, trying to see if there was any hint of the man that Cain would become. But there was nothing there other than the simple joy of a child.
Adam suddenly wrestled her mind with such ferocity that she instinctively pulled back. “Get out!” he screamed. There were tears in his voice. “Get out, get out, get out!”
There was no time for words; the bottom of the elevator shaft, as deep as it was, was swiftly rising to meet them, and Adam’s cloud was slicing open her skin in a dozen places. Vera reached out, bringing the long-buried image to the forefront of the First Man’s mind once again. They loved you, she frantically urged. Your family has fallen, but they can still be saved! They need you!
“Impossible!” Adam moaned. “I am nothing—just dust—just trash—my fault, MY FAULT—”
“Then why do you still exist, you old fuck?” Vera screamed aloud. The dust slashed into her mouth, cutting her tongue and filling her nostrils with the scent of blood. “Why are we still alive?”
“AS PUNISHMENT,” Adam bellowed.
They hurtled downward, faster and faster; Vera could almost see the bottom of the shaft, and instinctively braced herself for the bone-crushing landing. At this speed, she had no chance. There would be nothing left of her but pulp. She would fail Seth, and that, she violently swore to herself, was never going to happen. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and used the last card in her hand.
“As PENANCE,” she cried with the last air in her lungs, a bare second before the floor would’ve flattened them both.
The rush of the wind and the endless slashing of Adam’s attacks suddenly stopped. Vera opened her eyes to see that she was dangling just a few centimeters away from the bottom of the shaft. From the flickering light of a single bulb, she saw that a small dark cloud had gathered underneath her, and was forming a strange cushion that kept her hovering just over the ground. The very edge of the miniature dust-storm reached upward, where it merged with Adam’s right hand. The First Man gazed down at her, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“What did you say?” he croaked out. “What did you say?”
Vera desperately sucked in a few lungfuls of precious air. “It’s simple,” she panted. “You exist. They exist. Stop questioning why and focus on what you can do.”
“Seth, Eve, even Cain…” Adam whispered. “There was no hope for me for so long…my wife and firstborn are even deeper in the darkness than I. What can I do?”
It was amazing how quickly the words came to Vera’s tongue; it was as though she were a telephone for something else entirely. “You help put them on the right path.”
“The right path,” the old man muttered. “I had forgotten it…but you showed it to me again, Horseman. I will never forget that.”
She smiled, and this time the next words were one hundred percent Vera Figner. “And if they don’t come along willingly, we’ll beat it into them.”
47
The flying angel systematically dodged, destroyed, and cleaved apart every single desperate defense that John had tried to throw up against it. In less than thirty seconds, the massive tree that he had created was torn to pieces, falling apart in dozens of places, and on the verge of utterly collapsing in on itself as the angel’s bullets and explosives ravaged it. John caught a brief glimpse of Salome on Leviathan’s back, rushing in to intercept the flying monster, but it was already too late; his powers were taxed to the very limit.
As if they reflected his growing doubt, the heavenly flames on the tree began to sputter and die. The unending crowd of humanity roared in triumph and rushed up the tree’s roots, steadily making their way to the wagon-sized branch that Seth grimly held onto. John desperately swatted at them with thorns and bristles and vines, but for every hundred he smashed to pieces, a thousand more scrambled forward, as vicious and implacable as ants.
“It’s Cain!” Seth had to bellow over the horrific screech of splintering wood. He stabbed his flaming sword deep into the tree’s bark, trying to steady himself as the upper branches shifted and trembled. “There! In the fortress!”
The Master was finally here, then.
Even though he was in the center of the trunk and surrounded by over twenty meters of steel-hard bark on every side, John felt a shiver of terror. “I’m a little BUSY at the moment!” he shouted back.
A deep CRACK abruptly rocked the very foundations of the tree. John frantically scanned the massive vegetation and found that one of the central roots had shattered under the sheer weight of the swarm that smothered it. He sprouted a dozen more roots that stabbed downward into the insatiable press of humanity, but it was only a stopgap measure at best; already he could feel the tree trunk groaning in misery as more and more pressure built up on it.
“John, get me over there!” Frantic desperation spilled out into Seth’s voice. “Quickly!”
Goddamnit, John silently snarled. Fucking goddamn shit! Deep cracks coursed up the trunk, spattering his body with showers of dust and splinters. Irritating tears came to his eyes, but he could not wipe them away; he was so encased by the trunk that it was impossible to tell where his body ended and the wood began. The pain that radiated throughout the tree’s dull senses finally began to reach him—it felt as though thousands of ants were chewing apart the muscles of his calves. He struggled to reach out with a branch to carry Seth across the ocean of bodies, but it was no use; the tree’s life-force was dying. It could barely move.
“JOHN!” One of the uppermost damned furiously clawed his way up to Seth’s perch. The heaven-man took the man’s head off with an easy swing of his blade, igniting his body in a wreath of flame. The headless torso tumbled back down, knocking down dozens of others with it.
“Hang on then,” John growled, and with the last of the tree’s energy, he dug its remaining roots deeply into the ground, in the direction of the fortress. In spite of the press of bodies weighing it down, it tilted forward, now at a dangerous angle.
Seth scrambled upward, trying to get to the far side of the trunk, as the hordes below shouted and jeered.
With a sigh of despair, John ripped himself away from the last few roots that bound the great tree to the ground. It felt like ripping away his own fingers—there was one final CRACK, and then, with the lumbering motion of a dying giant, the tree slowly toppled forward. It cast a looming shadow across the entire Phlegethon, across the fortress, and miles into the desert of the Burning Desert as it staggered downward, slowly building up more and more speed. John closed his eyes and braced for impact as a fierce wave of nausea overcame him. Here it comes—
There was a sudden screech of wood as the tumbling trunk came to an abrupt stop. John opened his eyes in surprise and realized that thousands of the damned were crashing down into the masses below, hurled off the tree by the sudden change. I don’t understand flickered across his mind, just before five enormous claws rent apart the wall of bark in front of him. A great roar filled his ears as the smoky outside air rushed in. He blinked, uncomprehending, then screamed in fear at what he saw.
The great flying monster—the one that they called the Beast—had intercepted the falling trunk. One of its hands—nearly human aside from the monstrous size and razor-sharp claws—was buried in the upper branches of the tree. The tree was gargantuan, yet its unfathomable weight seemed to hardly faze the Beast; it easily kept itself aloft with blast after blast of its dusty, leathery wings. It shot its other hand forward, tearing another chunk of bark away, thus fully exposing John to the elements. He continued to scream as the Beast brought one of its enormous, baboon-like heads toward him. With a gust of rancid breath, it unhinged its jaws and opened wide. John glimpsed a wall of bladed teeth, bleeding gums, and beyond that, the emptiness of Death itself.
“Come to God, Horseman,” the Beast’s other head said in a low voice.
“SETH!” John screamed out. He tried to pull back into the wood, away from the hellish sight, but the Beast’s fangs easily tore through the bark, surrounding him on every side. Freezing breath wrapped around him, then a small ocean of saliva and phlegm nearly drowned him. In an instant, everything was torn away as the Beast swallowed him down. Through his fear, he had only the dimmest recognition of his surroundings as he was wrenched down into the monster’s bowels. What little he recognized made him weep and thank God for the darkness.
“John!” Seth cried out. He rushed down the tree, using the angle of the partially collapsed trunk to his advantage. The few damned who still clung to the bark tried to rush him, but they were no match for his sword; he smote them apart with barely a backward glance. He was still too late to save the Horseman; he was still over fifty meters away when the Beast took a horrendous bite out of the trunk, ripping out John in an explosion of splinters. “NO!”
The Beast spun its two heads—and the bloody stump that had marked its third—up at the sound of Seth’s despairing cry. And then, to his utter fury, the monster smiled. “Seth,” one of its mouths sneered. “Son of Adam,” the other added. “The only one of your family to escape my judgment. That changes today.”
“You will not escape my judgment, monster,” Seth snarled. He rushed downward, the flaming sword so tightly gripped in his hands that the skin of his knuckles threatened to split. My brother took away one of your disgusting visages. Let’s see if I can finish the job. A fierce smile crossed his face when he realized that the Beast, still supporting the trunk’s weight, was at a significant disadvantage.
The demon was not deterred; it opened up its two mouths and unleashed a torrent of fire that rushed up the trunk, crumbling the splintered bark to ash wherever it touched.
Seth rolled to the side as the wave of flame thundered toward him, allowing gravity to carry him around the curve of the trunk. He slashed his sword at the bark, felt it catch in the tough wood, and wrenched it forward, carving a deep path into the trunk as he hurtled toward the Beast. It sneered up at him and lashed out with its free hand. A claw the length of a full-grown man whistled through the air, coming within an inch of disemboweling him. By the grace of Heaven, he barely avoided it and curled his body upward to place his feet against the trunk. For a brief second, he hung there, completely upside-down, supported only by the shaking sword that he had impaled in the tree—and then Seth, son of Adam, lunged downward, directly toward the Beast’s twin maws.
“My judgment is death,” Seth spat.
His sword neatly pierced one of the right head’s scarlet eyes. The orb ruptured, spilling out foul liquids that hissed and sizzled in the heat cast off by his blade. He felt a brief resistance as the heavenly steel warred with the devil’s skull, and then the gray sludge of the monster’s brains gushed out into the air. Seth expected a scream or a cry of pain, but the Beast made no sound at all, even as he carved a bloody path down its back to the base of its wings. A trap, his instincts shouted at him. But where—
He glanced over his shoulder to see that one of the Beast’s heads was following him, stretching out its neck to a snakelike length. It stretched open its mouth, and Seth tensed, waiting for the burst of fire. Instead, he caught a glimpse of steel, a haggard face, and the form of a man leaping out of the Beast’s mouth.
“Heaven-man!” Marc Antony screamed. He exploded from the Beast’s maw like a bat out of Hell, a sword in either hand. His body was a conglomeration of meat and crude stitches, clumsily put back together by the unnatural magics that the Beast’s innards contained. It did nothing to diminish his speed; he was upon Seth before the other man could even fully wrench his blade free of the Beast’s thick fur. “This Prophet isn’t done!”
He stabbed at Seth, clearly intending to impale him upon the two swords. Seth clumsily fell back, losing his grip on his hilt. “Stop this madness!” he shouted. Marc continued to hack and slash at him with the ferocity of a madman, steadily pushing Seth back to the edge of the Beast’s torso. “Do you KNOW who you serve?”
“Of course I fucking know,” Marc snarled. “The fucker ate me!” One of his vicious swipes over-extended; Seth lunged for his arm and fell right into the feint. It was only his unnatural speed that kept him from being completely cut open. Even so, Marc’s swor
d left a deep slash across his chest.
“He’ll retake Hell.” Marc laughed madly. “But who gives a fuck? Fuck the Master, fuck the Kingdom, fuck Heaven, and FUCK YOU!” He pressed forward even more madly, now little more than a screaming storm of steel. Seth gasped and panted as the Prophet ruthlessly tore apart his body, leaving a maze of cuts and wounds wherever his blades made contact. The Beast’s entire body shook with a rumbling laugh as it watched the two men struggle.
I’m unarmed. Even if I weren’t, he’s too good. The cold realization shook Seth to his core. I can’t beat him.
“Are they watching us in Paradise?” the Prophet shouted. “Are they watching this?” With the final word, he kicked Seth in the groin and easily smashed him down to his knees. Far below, the watching army hooted and jeered. Seth gritted his teeth in pain and struggled to stand back up. Marc breezily backhanded him across the face, sending a single broken molar tumbling to the masses below.
Blackness curled at the edges of Seth’s vision. I can’t fail. I won’t. “You serve Evil,” he mumbled. “Don’t do this. Even for a sinner like you, there’s still hope—”
“Hope?” Marc slammed the hilt of one of his swords into Seth’s face. “Hope was the first thing you Paradise bastards killed. No, here’s your precious hope.” He dug his fingers into Seth’s dark hair and wrenched him forward to where the Beast’s open mouth gaped, patiently waiting. “Spend a few eternities in there, Saint, and tell me how you feel about your hope and the tyrant you call a God.”