by C L Walker
“Tell me what you’re doing,” I said. For me a moment had passed but she was dressed differently, in hiking clothes, heavy and weatherproof.
“I’m trying to jump start godhood,” she said. “We’ve covered this.”
“Why? You’ve clearly got power. Just take it and leave.”
She moved behind me and began tracing the tattoos on my legs, pausing as she had before to decipher ones she didn’t immediately understand.
“The gods have a pipeline to something more powerful than even they are,” she said. “If you can work out how to tap into it…imagine the possibilities. The elder-gods created the world and its afterlives. They can rewrite history on a whim. Think of what I could do with that.”
I was thinking about it, and had been most of my life. I had once thought it would be glorious, that we’d create a better world through sheer power and brute force. But I saw things differently now, had friends and been involved in the lives of people I had once thought of as little better than weeds in the soil of a world I thought I should rule.
“I’m going to have to kill you,” I said. I took no pleasure in the knowledge, felt no elation at the thought of her life ending by my hands. It was simply the only end result I could see.
“I summoned you to die, Agmundr. I’m going to drain you of your power until I get what I want, and then I’m going to create a very special hell, just for you.”
She found what she was looking for and placed her palm on the tattoo. It was one on my ankle and I knew what it did: it allowed me to channel magical energy along waterways. It was something I couldn’t remember ever using, but the cleric had put there anyway.
The tattoo detached and sprang into her hand. She stepped away and walked toward the door.
For a moment I thought she was going to leave me out. I thought I’d have some time to think, to plan, to work out where I was and how to escape.
“Agmundr,” she said dismissively, over her shoulder as she grabbed the heavy door handle. “Return.”
The world faded and I watched her walk down the hall again. She was alone this time. She faded from view as the darkness closed in.
“Agmundr, vochex.”
Again, I was drawn into the dungeon to face my great failure. Again she moved in to take a tattoo from my skin.
“I’m going to tear your head off,” I growled at her, desperate to get my hands on her. But I was weak, controllable. I had no power over her, not in that place.
“I’ve moved beyond being afraid of your threats,” she said. She was wearing a long dress in an antique style, something from the seventeenth century, perhaps, one of the ones I’d spent only a few days in.
“One of us has to die and I’m going to make sure it’s you,” I said. I had no way of backing the threat, no way of making it real, but I knew it was true anyway. She wouldn’t be the first master I hadn’t known how to kill who’d ended their lives before me.
“Accept your situation,” she said, as another tattoo sprang from the skin of my chest and into her hand. “Out here nobody can help you. There are only a few people who can even get here, and there’s an army between them and us.” She chuckled. “Actually, there are two armies, now.”
“Woman, stop this, right now.”
She didn’t look away from the blood in her hand. “Agmundr, return.”
I tried not to watch her walk away, smug and happy. I tried to ignore the warriors who accompanied her again. I wanted to close my eyes, but I had no eyes to close.
The darkness came as a welcome relief.
Again, she called me, and I held my tongue. I had to think, and trying to convince her that she should let me go was wasting what little time I had. I couldn’t know how long she waited between summonings, and any number of horrifying things could be happening to the people I knew. It could have been hours or years, and both she and I would look the same.
I checked the room, noting a few specific things: the size of the fungus and the position of the slime, the marks rats had made running through the thick layer of detritus on the floor. Enough to try and gauge how long she left me in the locket for.
Next I needed to work out where I was, and I thought that one was easy: she’d said we were “out here” and couldn’t be touched. She’d said only a few people could even get “out here” and that we were safe.
We were in a heaven, somewhere out in the cosmos of the afterlives. The hollow men could travel the heavens and so could demons, if they could escape their hells. Not many others could do it, so it made sense that she would hide there.
The last thing I had to work out was how she was doing what she planned. The tattoos on her skin were unique, carefully chosen by someone who knew what they were doing. She wouldn’t waste her time guessing; she had a plan.
My time was up. She returned me as she left.
“Agmundr, vochex.”
I was back in the dungeon and she had a new tattoo on her arm, a twirly, ostentatious thing so unlike the crude efforts the cleric had etched on my skin. She looked angry, at me perhaps, or at everything. She stomped toward me and started hunting for her next prize.
I thought I knew why she was taking so long to find individual tattoos; the witch Nikolette and Roman had discussed the careful web of my tattoos, how they reinforced each other and kept the whole together, and made it stronger.
If she took the wrong one she could destroy them all. If she took the wrong one she could free me from her control, and I’d make her pay for a mistake like that.
I had a plan in mind, the kind of desperate clutching that resulted from mere minutes of thought. It should work, if I had understood the situation well enough.
“Where’s Bannon?” I said.
“Oh, please, shut up,” she said, exasperated and snappy.
“You’ve got him too. Why are you bringing me back constantly?”
“He ran out of steam,” she said. “He went a little loopy and then…well, he isn’t himself anymore.”
“Did you keep dragging him out of the darkness too?” I tried to say it casually, as though I hadn’t planned to let it out.
“Shut up,” she replied.
I kept my mouth shut and let her do what she needed to do. She found what she was looking for and removed the tattoo. But halfway to the door she stopped and turned.
“Why did you ask that?”
“You told me to shut up,” I replied. “Does this mean I can talk again?”
“Why did you ask me if I kept summoning him as well?”
“No reason.” I didn’t have to act like I was lying to her, because in a way I was, walking the line between truth and falsehood as closely as I could when answering my master.
“He raged against me more than you did,” she said, remembering it fondly. “But that wasn’t what drove him mad. It was something else and I couldn’t work out what it was.”
“No idea, wife of mine.”
“Next time, then. Agmundr, return.”
The next time she summoned me her hair was a mess and she was wearing loose clothes that smelled as though she hadn’t changed them in a long time. I checked the markers I’d found around the room and confirmed what I’d hoped.
She was calling on me regularly. Weekly, at least. The fungus was changing, growing, but it remained the same fungus. It hadn’t had a chance to spread further than the patches it was born from. The marks on the floor made by rodents told a more precise story, and gave me hope that it might not even be weeks between summonings.
As soon as I could move I launched myself at her, growling, screaming, swinging wildly.
She held up her hand and I froze.
“This is too soon,” she said. “It took Bannon months.”
Months. If she’d only started on me after finishing Bannon then I’d been gone from Fairbridge for a long time. Anything could be happening there and I had no way to help.
She found the tattoo she wanted and stole it, but this time when she walked out she didn’t
return me to the locket. She didn’t acknowledge that I was there, simply closing the door and walking away.
She’d left a guard outside; I heard him shuffling around, grumbling about being left behind. But I was still out, as planned.
I moved to the corner of the grimy, dark room, and faced the wall.
“Angel,” I said. “Are you there?”
Chapter 14
He was a simple man, wearing stained and patched clothing that fit the time period the dungeon seemed to come from. His hair had mud in it and his features were twisted, like he’d been punched in the face as a kid.
“Agmundr,” he said. He stood a few feet away. Where I was whispering he spoke normally, unafraid of the guard outside.
“Angel.” I moved closer to him so I could keep my voice down. “I need help here.”
“That isn’t how this happens,” the angel said. “I talk to you, but I don’t help you.”
Angels could see every moment of their lives, from the beginning of their heaven to the end. They knew everything and could do nothing about it, because everything had already happened as far as they were concerned.
“Where are we?” I said.
“About halfway between the earth and the edge.”
I could feel the power in him, like standing beside a bonfire. He practically glowed, more colorful and alive than anything else in the room. That could have been my need making it seem that way, that all the power he had and I wanted was making him stand out. But I didn’t think so.
“What is she doing out there? Can you tell me that?”
“She has turned this heaven into a vision of earth, turning the souls who live here into her army. She brought along a number of my fallen brothers and the people here were no match.”
“You didn’t fight?”
He shook his head and I knew what he was going to say next. “It wasn’t what was meant to happen.”
I needed his help or I needed to attack him. I was powerless and he could change that, if he wanted to. If he even could.
“Can I get out the door?” I said. “Can I escape without your help?”
“I don’t believe so,” he said.
“Don’t believe? You know everything.”
He smiled. “This is true, but that doesn’t mean I tell you everything.”
“But you could?”
“But I don’t.” He walked over to the door and looked through the gap between it and the frame. The light from a lantern in the room beyond flashed in his eyes like a cat.
I wanted to grab him and force him to give me what I wanted. One drop of his blood and I’d be strong enough to leave, but if I had one drop I wouldn’t have to run, because I’d be able to take more. I’d be able to take whatever I wanted.
I wasn’t thinking straight. I was so desperate to get what I wanted that I was entertaining ideas of attacking angels with nothing but my bare, very human hands. Attacking a being who could destroy me easily, if he didn’t simply disappear.
I had to think, or I was going to be stuck in the dungeon until Erindis got what she wanted, and then I didn’t know what would happen. If she was right, if there was a way to channel this greater power she suspected and she could turn herself into not only a god, but an elder-god, then there was no way to know what the future held.
“You can see the end of this heaven?” I asked.
The angel turned away from the light. “I can.”
“Is it soon?”
“I don’t tell you that,” he said.
“Is it by her hand?”
“I don’t tell you that either.”
“Then why are you here?” I said, my voice too loud. The guard moved outside my door, shifting in his chair as though he wanted to check on me. That would be my moment to escape.
“I am here because I am meant to be here,” he said. His answers would always be the same, I knew. They were honest, and the honest answer was that whatever he did was without choice. It was preordained.
“The fallen,” I said, grabbing a thread in the darkness and hoping it led to a rope. “They made a choice.”
“They regret making that choice,” he replied. “One choice, and their entire world ends, replaced with uncertainty and a lack of purpose.”
“They don’t regret it,” I said. “I know a bunch of them, and they don’t regret leaving their heavens.”
“That is hard to believe.” He looked up, staring as though he didn’t see the heavy, dark stone, but saw the blue sky outside instead. “To be unsure. To be at risk, in danger. To no longer have a path to follow. Who would wish for that?”
“Humans,” I said. “Everyone on earth.”
He returned his bright blue eyes to the dirty room. “And how happy has that made you? Has beating your own path made you a happy man?”
“Happiness is in the eye of the beholder. Besides, I haven’t had freedom for a long time.”
“Ha, that isn’t true. You know it isn’t. You have guidelines, but you ignore them constantly. You do whatever you want, and to hell with the masters who try to control you. You are a fantastic example of your species.”
“As are you,” I said, lost. I had nothing, and I was getting close to the moment when I’d try to attack him and he’d vanish.
“No,” the angel replied, his voice so low I could barely hear it. “I’m not. I worry about my people and what has happened to them, and that isn’t something I should do. I know what will happen in their future so there is nothing to worry about. It is what happens, and what use is there in worrying about something that cannot be changed?”
“Then change it,” I said. “Help me, and I’ll change it.”
“Free will is your curse, not mine.” He went back to watching the guard through the crack.
“Let me tell you what I know,” I said. I was getting desperate and I needed to get closer to him before I made my move. I had to keep him talking in the hope that he wouldn’t notice what I was up to, as ludicrous a thought as that was.
I walked toward him slowly, my hands at my sides. I was naked and he could see I had no weapons, but he could also see the future and there was nothing I could do about that.
“I strive,” I said. “We all do. We can’t see what you can, but we can see something better.”
“Your imagination cannot compare to my reality.”
“Want to bet on that?” I was near enough to strike, but he looked at me again and I wanted him looking away. “I can see a world that is glorious beyond anything out here, and all it takes is choosing wisely. Choosing, not going with what others, or the universe, have chosen.”
“When you attack me in a moment, know that I’m going to leave you here and we won’t talk again.”
“You’re warning me?”
“I’m telling you what I am meant to tell you.”
The look on his face gave me hope. His words might have been scripted, planned from the dawn of the heaven, but his face told me a different story. He didn’t like telling me he’d go away and never return. He didn’t want that to be true.
“Free will,” I said, moving another step closer. “It’s mankind’s gift, and it’s your curse, isn’t it?”
“Free will isn’t anything to us,” the angel replied.
“But you can choose to deviate from what is meant to happen.”
“I can choose to fall.”
“Then you have free will, even if you don’t exercise it. You have free will, and that means every moment of every day is a hell for you.”
“You are incorrect.” He turned away from me, faced the door. He was getting ready for me to attack.
“Can you imagine doing anything different? Can you imagine saying a single word that you didn’t know was coming?”
“Imagination is a human failing.”
I knew that wasn’t true, or no angel would ever fall. I knew it wasn’t true because I’d spent enough time around the hollow men that I knew what they dreamed of, and what they regretted.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. I think you imagine all the time, but you never act on that imagination. You never do the simple thing, the easiest thing in the world for everyone else, and just say what’s on your mind.”
He kept silent, waiting for me to attack him.
“That’s why free will is your curse and my gift. Whatever…being decided this was how your existence was meant to be was a sadist, and you are the most pitiable of creatures.”
I turned and went back to the far corner. I leaned against it and watched the angel, waiting. Hoping.
“You didn’t attack me,” he said, slowly turning around. “But then, you were never going to.”
“I know,” I said. “That was just what you were supposed to tell me was going to happen.”
“Then…”
He was on the edge, his mind racing. I could see it on his face, as his imagination kicked in and showed him vistas he would never see, things he would never experience.
“I…”
“Say it,” I said. “Do it.”
“I…don’t want to do this.”
His light, the way he stood out against the darkness of the dungeon, vanished. It was like I’d flipped a switch, like his words had broken a circuit in the universe.
“Welcome to the world,” I said. “Now, we need to get started.”
Chapter 15
I didn’t know if the souls he was meant to watch over would notice he was gone, but I couldn’t risk it. Hell, for all I knew the sun had just gone out.
“Are you going to help me?” I said, crossing the room quickly and grabbing his arm. I pulled him away from the door.
“I…I want to go back,” he said. “I want to undo it.”
“I don’t think you can, angel.” I paused, curious. “What’s your name? Do you have one?”
“The people don’t know I’m here. They never named me.”
“Then your name is Dave, alright?”
“Dave?”
“Yes, Dave. Dave, I need some of your blood. Just a little, but I’ll need more later. Are you alright with that?”
His eyes were rolling around in his head, unable to focus on the new reality he saw. He was confused and scared for the first time in his life and I wanted to give him a moment, let him work it out, but we didn’t have time.