Hell's Pawn

by Jay Bell

  M ore P rops were coming from the street ahead, pouring unchallenged out of the facades as more and more soldiers fell. J ohn commanded half the troops to rush out to meet them, but one of the P rops broke through the ranks and headed directly for J ohn, hammers knocking soldiers aside. The P rop intended to smash the jade suit, but there was still one soldier between it and John.

  Yi Yi! The li le soldier’s a ention was focused on a P rop flying overhead, unaware of the coming hammers that would sha er him to pieces. J ohn would never reach him in time. E ven calling out would a ract Yi Yi’s a ention in the wrong direction before he was reduced to pottery shards.

  Yellow robes collided with the P rop, sending it to the ground. A golden katana swept down, amputating its hammer hands before slicing sideways and severing the head. Liu Wu turned, wild eyes focused on John.

  “Yi Yi, get him out of my suit!” he commanded.

  “M aster!” the li le solider responded. I n a ridiculously short time, J ohn was stripped of the jade armor and was watching as Yi Yi efficiently dressed its rightful owner.

  “Have you no knowledge of ba le?” L iu W u complained. “Have you never studied S un Tzu’s A rt of War? I ’ll not have my name further tarnished by an incompetent buffoon!”

  J ohn couldn’t feel insulted. He had made a mess of things and was glad that responsibility was taken from him. “What do we do?” he asked as the mask was placed over Liu Wu’s face.

  “We retreat!” the king said.

  “We can’t!” B ut the troops were no longer his to command. They swarmed around and past him as if J ohn were no longer of any consequence. He had to run to keep up as the progress they had made was lost.

  “Archers to the rear!” Liu Wu commanded.

  They formed ranks, neat li le lines that J ohn had failed to will them into, and began a backward march at an impressive speed. O ne by one they began unleashing arrows at the P rops that pursued, felling them effortlessly. The army’s flanks were effectively protected now, but they were heading in the wrong direction.

  L iu W u appeared back at J ohn’s side, an imposing figure in his jade suit. “At the next crossroads we make two rights and travel up the side street. This city is a grid, is it not? We need to choose an indirect path, one that keeps the enemy guessing. C an you do this?”

  “Yes,” J ohn said. This shouldn’t be hard. He had roamed these streets for weeks and knew them all too well.

  L iu W u used his soldiers efficiently. The ground troops remained at each side of the army, engaging the P rops enough that the army could keep moving. The archers at the rear slowed the pursuing enemy so that they were never overcome. J ohn and L iu W u were at the front now. W hen enemies appeared ahead, the army would turn down a street to avoid them. I n this manner, they soon reached the administration building. A huge army of P rops was now in pursuit, but this was a dead-end street and only so many Props could attack them here at once.

  Unknown to L iu W u, the outcome of this ba le didn’t ma er. The goal was only to draw enemy fire while the true ba le was fought elsewhere. J ohn scanned the building as they approached, awaiting the enemy he knew must come and feeling a tingle of fear when he saw them. The doors to the building were guarded by men made of glass, the Ministers of Order.

  B ut only two of them stood in front of the door. This wasn’t right at all! According to Asmoday’s intelligence, more than a hundred of the glass men were in P urgatory.

  Most of them should be here, ready to spring their trap.

  J ohn stared, dumbfounded, as the gods Anubis, Artemis, and B aldur rushed forward to engage the glass men in ba le. The M inisters didn’t last long. E ven as the sha ered pieces became an army of glass skeletons, J ohn felt they weren’t resisting enough. C ould they possibly know about the gods who had dulled their auras and disguised themselves as citizens? His mind went to the park where they had been left behind, his friends among them. Dante was to show them the sewer entrance to the true heart of Purgatory.

  This was a trap. They had always thought they were intentionally walking into one, but they had misunderstood its nature. They had expected to be ambushed, but now they were simply wedged between an army of P rops and the administration building.

  J ohn rushed past grunting gods and sha ering skeletons to the doors. They would not open. He pounded on them and tried to will himself inside, but he couldn’t. Nothing was there. The masters of P urgatory had changed their realm, created a true dead-end that they couldn’t escape. And while they were stuck here, the full force of the M inisters would a ack the few who had been left behind. R immon. Dante. B olo. J ohn needed to get to them, to warn them, if he wasn’t already too late.

  He looked upward. The only clear path was the sky. J ohn had lost track of Amaterasu, but a li le skyward searching revealed a glow coming in their direction.

  J ohn did his best to wave her down, jumping and calling out her name, even trying a bit of a dance. She landed in front of him and he was struck by her beauty.

  His beauty.

  “I’m sorry,” John stammered. “I thought you were—”

  “A beautiful goddess?” Apollo smirked. “Honey, I get that all the time.” The sun god squinted toward the other gods who were finishing the ba le and casually said, “I ’m here for reinforcements. Which three should I pick?”

  “Reinforcements? What happened?”

  “W hat hasn’t?” Apollo sighed. “M inisters everywhere. C an’t say I like the look of them. True beauty shines, wouldn’t you agree? They look like cheap diamonds, and that’s only because it’s my light reflecting off them. Then there’s the massive—” Apollo wiggled his fingers, “—thing.”

  “What thing?” John asked through gritted teeth.

  “Ugh. Well, I can’t describe it.” Apollo rolled his eyes. “Do you know if any of these deities are good in a brawl? I see Aphrodite over there, but she’s always a li le gropey.

  What about the guy with the beard?”

  “Take me with you,” John said.

  “Well, he must be,” Apollo continued. “Look at those arms!”

  “Take me!” John commanded this time, stepping into Apollo’s line of vision.

  “You aren’t even dead,” the sun god said distastefully. “That means you are heavy.

  If I take you, I won’t be able to carry any others.”

  “Then get me halfway there, out of this street at least! I can help!” He didn’t know if this was actually true, but J ohn was desperate to check on his friends. “O ne block,” J ohn pressed. “I t won’t take you long, and then you can get back to chasing Norse tail.”

  Apollo glared at him before offering his hand. “Well, come on then!” J ohn took the glowing hand, the fine, narrow fingers not escaping his notice.

  Apollo’s delicate beauty would be quite striking if it weren’t for his a itude. The sun god behaved as though he were the center of creation. J ohn supposed the entire solar system did revolve around him, but he could still show some humility.

  The sun god’s warmth spread over J ohn as they rose into the air, but they remained just as they were standing. J ohn didn’t dangle from Apollo’s arm or press against him to fly over the city like a scene from a S uperman movie. They simply moved through the air, Apollo with a bored expression, J ohn’s brow crinkled in worry as he surveyed the city.

  Then he saw the “massive thing” Apollo mentioned. The description was surprisingly apt, since J ohn wasn’t sure what else to call it. C thulhu came to mind. S o did G odzilla. The creature loomed over buildings, swarms of tentacles swaying in all directions. I t had a head—of sorts—long, segmented, and deformed. E yes were everywhere, sca ered across the dark, slimy skin like freckles. The beast filled the block where the park had been, the place John had last seen his friends.

  “G et me as close as you can,” J ohn pleaded. Apollo must have felt his desperation because he complied.

  J ohn searched the streets as they flew for any sign of R immon and
the others. G lass men were everywhere, a acking those who had been left behind. The M inisters wouldn’t find the ba le easy. The best of each pantheon, the most powerful magicians and fighters, had been selected to travel into P urgatory’s depths and face its masters, but none of them had been prepared for the gigantic creature below. Was it the mind behind this spiritual prison or just its guard dog?

  “Athena!” Apollo cried.

  They plummeted toward the ground like a plane shot down, but Apollo was in full control and they landed smoothly. Ahead of them, seven M inisters of O rder circled a heavily armored goddess wielding a sword in one hand and a double-bladed axe in the other. S hards of glass lay sca ered around her, previous victims of her skill in ba le, but already these glass pieces were trembling, ready to transform into an army that would surely overwhelm her.

  Apollo’s posture changed completely as he rushed forward with hands extended.

  G one was his bored, exhausted-with-life expression. Now his face wore vicious offense that anyone should try to harm one of his kind. Apollo’s hands began to glow red, and soon so did the glass shards before they melted into powerless puddles. O ne of the glass men turned to focus on Apollo, but the sun god pressed his hands together, creating a beam of light that struck the nearest M inister. The beam passed into its glass body and stayed there, light ricocheting back and forth like a laser beam, gaining in momentum. The M inister flailed as the light flashed and flared until the glass body exploded from the inside.

  Apollo reached Athena’s side and they bumped fists before turning their a ention to the remaining glass men. Together they clearly had the situation under control, so J ohn left to find his friends, heading toward the park and the giant creature there. He scanned the streets, searching for Dante’s spiky hair or R immon’s red skin. C itizens were running everywhere, seeking the shelter that P urgatory didn’t provide. The panicked crowds helped camouflage J ohn as he ran past countless M inisters, a platoon of them heading toward Apollo and Athena.

  The world shook as a tentacle from the massive C thulhu beast fell into the street, writhing and twitching. J ohn leapt aside just in time, but a young man ahead of him wasn’t so lucky. The tentacle passed through his midsection, and the man exploded into sand. O ne moment he was there, the next he was a cloud of dust. J ohn pressed against one of the buildings as the tentacle continued to slide through the street, bursting more souls into miniscule pieces. J ohn realized this wasn’t dust or sand, but tiny fragments of soul now floating through the air like soot. How could they ever hope to recover from that? This disintegration was the nearest thing to true death that John had ever seen.

  Fear twisted his stomach as he wondered what would become of him at the tentacle’s touch. J ohn pictured his body, his true body, lying in the hospital, the heart monitor emi ing a high-pitched whine as his soul was reduced to dust. He swallowed and prayed to every god he had met that this wasn’t the reason he couldn’t find his friends.

  Then S et was there, strolling down the street as if window-shopping on a S unday afternoon. The beast’s grotesque appendage writhed again. Set, heedless of the danger, didn’t flinch as the tentacle rolled over him and back again. S et was still standing, as if he hadn’t been touched. Then he began to chant. S et’s words were terrible, dark and eldritch. J ohn had to press his hands to his ears lest the words drive him insane. He watched as the tentacle began to tremble and wither. S oon it was nothing more than a dried husk, curling in on itself like a leaf in winter.

  Those few souls remaining in the street chose this time to flee. J ohn had to wonder if they were actually running from S et, and if he should do the same. The chaos god turned his dark eyes on J ohn, the glowing red pupils fixing him in place before S et spoke.

  “I know where your friends are. Come with me.”

  * * * * *

  The C thulhu creature wasn’t faring well on its eastern-most side. There, four gods and an incubus a acked, systematically burning, hammering, slicing, and working arcane magic to gradually cut away its flesh. The goal was to remove enough of the beast to access the entrance to P urgatory’s lower levels, which was somewhere beneath the monster’s ugly bulk. This was very messy work. Thor was the most enthusiastic, knocking away great chunks of flesh with his hammer. R immon had to duck as one went flying over his head, before he turned his flame breath on the creature again.

  “It’s nice to be useless sometimes,” John commented.

  “That was my life philosophy,” Dante replied.

  “So it just appeared here?”

  “Not long after you left, it sort of materialized. We could see it coming before it showed up and just barely managed to move our asses out of the way. Then the Ministers followed, and it’s been chaos ever since.”

  They both winced as M anannan sent a dozen lightning bolts into the creature’s side.

  The flesh liquefied and began to ooze away.

  “I think they’ve found the right technique,” Dante said as Thor contributed lightning bolts of his own. G ood thing they were watching from a distance because the area was beginning to flood with the creature’s flesh. J ohn was pondering whether monster ooze would conduct electricity like water did when Bolo began to growl.

  The hair on J ohn’s neck stood on end. He turned to find two dozen glass men, all as beautiful as ice, coming toward them. The deities on the outer perimeter had been charged with keeping them at bay, but the gods must have fallen. That, or the Ministers had found another way through.

  “Into the ooze!” Dante said, bolting toward the gods.

  J ohn followed, calling out warnings. To his relief, he saw the gods had found the entrance, which still looked like a simple manhole. They were struggling to open it, something that J ohn could finally do to help. He slid through goo, pushing away Rimmon’s ineffectual hands.

  “Hurry,” Rimmon said. “There isn’t much time.”

  Ares growled and charged toward the glass men, Thor at his side. S et followed coolly, dark shadows spinning around his hands.

  “W hat are they doing?” J ohn said as he flipped the manhole open. “We can all escape through here!”

  “They’re buying you time,” Rimmon said before fire exploded from his mouth.

  A P rop crawling out of the hole fell back in. J ohn looked over the edge to see it colliding with dozens more.

  “The tunnels are full of Props! We’ll never get through!”

  “S tand back!” M anannan commanded. W ith a sweep of his billowing blue robes, M anannan was at the hole and thrusting his hands inside. Then came the roar of water and the smell of salt as the sea god flooded the tunnels, washing away the Props.

  “Watch yourselves!” Ares snarled from the front line.

  Half a dozen glass men had broken through and were headed for them.

  “I nto the hole,” J ohn said, shoving Dante forward. “Keep the water going, Manannan! We won’t drown, and it will get us there quicker.” M anannan nodded, taking a few steps back so they could enter while oceans continued to pour from his hands.

  “You realize that we’ll end up wherever the Props do,” Dante said.

  The C thulhu creature gave a terrifying wail. I f it shifted even a few feet, the gods would be crushed and he and Dante would be dust. “Go!” John shouted.

  Dante pinched his nose and jumped into the hole. Next J ohn shoved B olo in. He felt cruel doing so, but had no other option.

  “You next,” Rimmon insisted.

  “And then you,” John said, locking eyes with the demon.

  R immon clapped a hand on his shoulder, his eyes intense as he struggled to find words. The world around J ohn faded away as he waited to hear what the demon had to say.

  “G o, J ohn. E nd this, if not for all the souls trapped here, then for me. And if we never see each other again, just know that every moment spent with you was a reward worthy of Heaven.”

  J ohn opened his mouth to respond, but R immon shoved him forward. M anannan’s waves pi
cked him up, sweeping him into the hole and away from the surface. The last thing he saw before the water rushed over his head was R immon breathing fire toward the advancing glass men.

  As J ohn fell, he tried to remember where he would land. Ages had passed since he and Dante had made their escape a empt. Dozens of P rops were already ahead of them, and John hoped to remember which direction they should run once they gained their footing. An elephant trumpeted just before he hit bo om. He definitely didn’t remember that!

  J ohn landed with a splash, a thick gray leg almost trampling him as it walked by.

  Animals were everywhere, sloshing through the knee-high water, many swaying groggily. The animals they had discovered in stasis had revived. W hether that was a result of the conflict above or a side effect of M anannan’s magical water, J ohn didn’t know, but thousands of them filled the area. P rops were scurrying to fulfill their programming and recapture the animals, but not all of the animals were sleepy. A lion leapt over J ohn’s head, engulfing a P rop’s head in its jaws. The elephant nearest to him became enraged as a P rop tried to sting it, knocking it and others aside with its trunk before stomping on them.

  “John!”

  Dante, drenched and panicked, was beckoning toward the doors. J ohn imagined he didn’t look much be er as he sloshed through the water toward him. O nly one P rop noticed him as he made for the exit, and it was dragged underwater by an alligator.

  “Where’s Bolo?” John asked as he reached Dante’s side.

  “Over there.”

  The I rishman nodded to where the dog barked and bounded through the water around different animals. The lethargic beasts were soon aggravated or panicked by his behavior, their reaction causing even more problems for the Props.

  “I think he’s helping,” Dante said. “Or having fun. Either way, he’s better off here.” J ohn didn’t like leaving him behind, but they didn’t know what they faced ahead.

  The worst that could happen to B olo here was being put back into stasis. They reached the doors, J ohn’s heart heavy as he gave one final glance toward the dog. First Rimmon, now Bolo. He could only hope this wasn’t their last goodbye.