Thief

by Greg Curtis

  No longer hearing or knowing his love, they learned hatred, greed, lust for power, corruption, fear and misery. And as their souls had blighted and withered, so their bodies had decomposed around them, while the hunger for what they had once been grew and grew like an out of control cancer. And at the same time the lies the creatures told had become a part of them, so that they themselves didn’t fully understand what they had become. They had no way back to their former glory, no hope, no chance, largely because they had cut themselves off from it.

  So they learned to hunt. Finding the weakest and the greyest. Those who had distanced themselves furthest from the glory of Heaven. And the fallen had started preying on them, their own brothers and sisters. Feeding off the remnants of what they had once been, the only food they could ever know. And it wasn’t enough, Mikel knew, not nearly enough. For even if they had fed off every angel in creation, it wouldn’t have made them any more powerful. It would only have made them hungrier and more desperate.

  While they learned to feed off the weakest of their brothers and sisters, their hatred of man had also grown like a cancer, as they blamed him for their predicament. The lies of their nightmares were all they had between themselves and insanity and death. They turned their anger into revenge, because revenge even against someone powerless against them was the best thing they could know. Mikel understood that need to hit back only too well, and had always managed to steer clear of the trap, for which he suddenly found himself truly grateful. Had he given in to it, this was what he might have become.

  The demons had started playing games with human kind, corrupting some, frightening others, and generally trying to play god. For mankind’s terror of them was their greatest and perhaps only pleasure. But as with the angels, they could only frighten or corrupt the weakest. Those who were good, those who believed, those who loved, were beyond them, as he was, now. Perhaps he always had been, had he simply been able to believe it.

  For while Mikel had not truly believed he realized, he had always loved, and he had practiced goodness. While he had denied God, he had always appreciated God’s handiwork, whether nature or life and love. And he had tried to preserve it. That little was still enough to foil this monstrosity’s evil. Only his lack of faith and trust, and his stupid belief in this creature’s power had let him down. Sherial’s love would always be enough to destroy it beyond repair. Even his own meagre faith would have been enough to protect him had he let it.

  The angels could not come here because they were too good, he knew. For unlike positive and negative magnets, goodness and evil repelled each other. Only weaker, more distinctly grey creatures with both good and evil could enter here. Humans and angels much too far from home.

  Sherial wasn’t allowed to use her divine power as a weapon against these monstrosities either. It was a simple rule of life. The more power a person or creature had, the greater the care they had to take to control it and use it wisely. They could not use their divine power as a weapon because they could not countenance even such slight deviations from what was right. Fighting was wrong. Mortals being weaker were permitted to act in this way, until they learned, much as a baby learned to crawl.

  Yet it wasn’t a silly rule, he understood. It was rather, he saw, as a loving father would indulge a younger child’s failings more than those of another old enough to know better. Angels were simply older and more powerful. One day perhaps, his people too would be too grown up for this wrongness as well.

  When their power had no longer been enough, the fallen had used their agents in the world of men, mortals who had fallen for their lies, and at their whim had spread terror and mayhem. Having lost the power of the lord, they had learned to use mortals and mortal weapons for their ends.

  Belial carried two such devices in his hands now. He believed they would give him power. He should have known better. The weapons could do no more than kill him. No weapon born of the created whether angel or man, could ever undo the power of the creator. How could they? They too were part of creation. Thus technology for the Earth was merely a new version of the Tower of Babel; an attempt to reach the glory of heaven, but one with no chance of success. As was magic for Mya’s people, and psychic power for Grould’s.

  The fallen, he realized, had made the same unbelievably stupid mistake he and the others had made, believing the created could ever stand against the power of the creator. And committed the same sin; that they should even want to.

  “Is that all you have?” And he laughed, a small thin laugh of irony and sorrow. “Have you fallen so low that a once mighty angel can no longer even destroy a mere human without mortal weapons?” For it was true and they both knew it. And Mikel knew how deeply the fallen hated him for it. It didn’t bother him. The fallen hated all life.

  Finally it spoke. “You should not have been.” It spat out the words, hatred and impotent venom dripping off every syllable.

  “Your kind was an obscenity. We were enough. We loved, we were happy. What more was ever needed? And then you monkey ancestors arose, and the world we knew was shattered. Pathetic little monkeys. All of you should have been destroyed at birth.”

  “And did those who came before you feel the same when you appeared?” For he knew from Sherial that the angels themselves had not been the first. Already he understood the titans had been before them, now so grown up and so powerful they could do almost no wrong. Yet they too were not the first. Others had come before them, their names, everything about them unknown to human kind. It was a succession, perhaps without beginning or end.

  “Should they have done to you as you would do to us?”

  But the creature would not listen to the simple logic of his statement, even though it was the truth. It could not afford to listen without giving away part of its reason for hate. That in turn would be fatal for it. Without hate it would be nothing. Worse it would know what it was, and that was unendurable.

  “Why should they? We were the chosen ones. You are no more than the dirt beneath our feet. Our Father loved us. But then he turned his back. He left us to the dark and cold. It took us time to understand that. A long time. But finally we saw. He feared us. He feared what he had created, and he cast us out lest we cast him out. And for that He shall pay. You shall pay.”

  Once the dark man had found his voice again, he seemed unable to stop speaking, and Mikel listened patiently. He wanted to shut him up, he wanted to go, anything to avoid listening to such malevolent drivel. But he knew he had to stay, and that the longer he stayed the more time the others had.

  “For in the darkness there is power. It took time but we found it. Infinite power. For the power of the dark is as great as the power of the light. They are but two sides of the same coin, each as strong as the other.” For a single instant Mikel knew fear again. Just a touch as he listened to the demented creature’s words, and then he heard Sherial and knew the demon lied, even to itself. It was after all, known as the father of lies.

  “There is nothing in the darkness except the absence of light. For that is all it is. That is all you are.” There was no triumph in his voice as he spoke, only relief, and a terrible sadness. For he finally understood their lies. Yet it wasn’t only him that spoke the words. Somehow, he was certain others were guiding his tongue, saying what needed to be said.

  “There is only goodness in the universe, a single dimension. Without good, evil cannot exist, but goodness can and will one day endure alone. Love can exist without hate, but hate is defined by its very nature, as an absence of love. Yet such is the love of God that he cares for even you, here and now. As wrong and as little as you have become, he still loves you.”

  “There is only God.”

  All the while Mikel spoke with the creature and his minions, he felt the prisoners escaping through the tunnels his companions had wrought, their tears of joy and relief rising to heaven and via Sherial coming straight back to him. It brought enormous joy to him to know that even while this foulness concentrated on him, his work wa
s being done in the rest of his demesnes.

  The fallen did not listen to his words, it could not, and yet a part of them still got through. Rage, anger and a thousand darknesses in its eyes told Mikel it had decided to kill him. Even if the Lord came down to take his soul to heaven, his death would still at least be some small thing it could take pleasure in. Mikel didn’t even have time to duck. The first of the weapons fired, some sort of beam, not of his world’s knowledge. Now was when the power of the others would be so important.

  Whatever it was supposed to do, it didn’t, and Mikel realized with relief that one or other of the shields the angels had given him had protected him. He had no idea which one, as he had no knowledge of what the weapon even was.

  Then the globe was used, and something slower, but more vicious was released, like a cloud of noxious vapour. It sprang for him like a diseased greyhound, but this time his own reflexes were up to the job, perhaps because of Abrax’s training, or perhaps his adrenalized fear. He dived and the cloud passed harmlessly overhead. Maybe it would not have been able to harm him, but why take chances?

  Even as he rolled to his feet he planned his next move, the integral survival instincts of the thief once more coming to the fore. He had to flee, he knew it. All of the gifts of the others would not be enough for ever against these creatures. Sooner or later they would hit on something he didn’t have a shield against. And yet he also had to stay long enough that they didn’t notice the prisoners escaping. In short he had to become a moving target. The others still needed time.

  The answer was simple, run and hide, while they hunted him. In a split second he, or rather Abrax’s trained muscles had planned his moves, a series of leaps and sprints followed by him hiding behind the nearer pillars while the insane monstrosities lost all semblance of reason trying to kill him. It was in essence, a simple plan; run, duck, stall and live.

  Three quick flips saw him behind the first of the pillars while a variety of strange lights and objects streaked past him like rockets. Every one missed, thankfully, and he took advantage of the demons’ anger and his good luck to dive backwards behind a few more pillars, silently. Belatedly he remembered to turn off the light sources that shone through him, knowing it made him visible to them. He would not have been so nearly tagged but for that mistake.

  Then the machine guns opened up, and he was utterly grateful he’d moved. The first massive stone column was cut in half like a tooth pick, and more began to follow it like raindrops. It might be a machine gun the demon was wielding he realized, but it surely wasn’t any earthly variety. Hopefully Herman’s so called static shields would protect him, but he couldn’t be sure and again, why take chances.

  The noise and explosions surely deafened everyone and everything in that room, and he took advantage of the chaos of sound to creep quickly out of sight, and began circling behind them. It was ridiculously easy. Somehow these monsters had thought their ultimate weapons unstoppable, and in the unbelievable devastation they’d wrought in the cavern they believed him a bag of broken bones. They were walking, - well, slithering was closer to the movement they actually made, towards the destroyed columns, no doubt looking for his corpse to trample on. Soon they would realize. He decided to make a game of it.

  Even as they started scouring the debris Mikel was told of the last of the angels being freed. While he was hiding they were escaping through the tunnel, running for all they were worth, and it was all he could do to keep from shouting out his joy and relief. Mikel and the angels both. Over. It was almost over. Now he knew, there was only one person left to get out of this hellhole; himself.

  He stood up suddenly and shouted at them from behind, then hit the ground as fast as he knew how. If he hadn’t have been so scared he would have laughed at the almost comical sight as they spun in confusion and fired almost randomly at the sound. Of course he wasn’t where he’d been by then, having discovered the ability to crawl faster than a formula one racing car, and they weren’t particularly accurate with their weapons. More columns and chunks of stone fell down in avalanches, while several of them shot each other in their confusion. Sadly none of the misfires seemed to do any lasting damage, and Belial somehow seemed to avoid getting hit. Whatever the demons were, they were still more powerful than mere flesh and blood.

  This time, as he’d been certain they would, they kept firing at the area where he’d stood, strafing it until it was an inferno of explosions, heat and fire. For a while an area the size of a small building resembled a continuing nuclear bomb blast. Nothing could have lived in it, which was why he was glad he wasn’t anywhere near.

  “Yoo Hoo!” This time he was even further away and in a completely different direction, while most of the horde were still blasting the old target. But a few heard him and turned in desperation and fury. They were far too slow, and not very bright. Before he’d yelled he’d fired the grapple, the noise lost in the other din, and even as they turned he was swinging high above their heads, leaping from column to column.

  “I’m coming.” Mikel promised Sherial he was on his way towards her, hoping to ease her fear. He moved like the wind, almost flying as he swung towards the tops of the highest columns like Tarzan. Mikel had never known strength and coordination like this, the product of Abrax’s teachings, Sherial’s love and his own desperation, and he knew he probably never would again. He wasn’t even sure it was only his own strength he was using. It almost felt as though he was being lifted. Regardless, he used it with the greatest of pleasure.

  A series of thirty-foot flights carried him clear across the cavern, safely above their heads, while all hell broke loose behind him. Not far he thought, to the exit, and most of it, under cover. He knew from Sherial that the last of the prisoners had now made it completely outside this nightmare, and he picked up enough to know a little of the joy that filled them as they reached daylight. It was long past time to leave.

  Quickly he grabbed Grould’s little present and flung it behind him, directly into the milling horde. In the dark, and among their random firing he knew they’d never see it coming until it hit, and then it would be too late.

  He watched with satisfaction as it landed perfectly in the middle of them, and began its little dance of chaos. For it had generated a psychic image of him, running in circles in their midst. And immediately he knew joy as the horde started firing at it. But since it wasn’t actually there, they actually started shooting each other. Better yet Belial was right in the middle of the horde, finally being hit himself and screaming angrily. He fancied at least some of the noise the demon made must have been pain, and he couldn’t help but hope he suffered. He was after all, only human. While mere mortal weapons couldn’t kill even such pathetic angels as these, perhaps they could teach them a lesson. And they needed to learn.

  While the horde was screaming and shooting with all their might and stupidity, he silently and quickly ran out of the cavern, telling Sherial he was coming as fast as he could. He could feel the fear in her heart, even over his own adrenaline, hope and terror.

  Through the narrow way he twisted, falling to all fours as needed, and probably crawling faster than any Olympic sprinter in history. The terrible fear that they might have discovered his ruse and were chasing him, grew with every second, urging him on. It wasn’t only his fear.

  Then he reached the slightly higher and wider passageway and started sprinting with all his new found might. Rock walls and columns became blurs at the edge of his vision, while his eyes focussed only on the way ahead. He couldn’t hear the sounds of the devastation behind him over his own blood pounding in his ears. Around the corners he didn’t even slow down choosing instead to bounce into and then hurl himself off the walls. Bruises weren’t important. Nothing was as important as leaving this horror behind; forever.

  And then the final entrance hall, and the door at the end. A different exit, somehow he’d gotten turned around in the cavern, but still he knew it was the way out. He could feel Sherial somewhere beyond it.<
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  It was his way out of this nightmare, and its very sight made him reckless, desperate to leave this foul place. He flew at the door like a runaway jumbo jet, not wanting to waste even a millisecond with the handle, and felt it disintegrate around him. But too late he understood the danger. The door was a trap. They’d carefully set one final weapon there, though whether to keep enemies out or stop prisoners escaping he didn’t know.

  All he knew was pain. Yet even in his pain he knew it was something other than anything he’d ever felt. It was like music, a vibration inside of him, resonating his every single cell and trying to explode his body. None of the others had been prepared for this, for this was surely from none of their worlds, and in his haste he’d been too careless to check. The thief had made his last mistake.

  And yet perhaps, he wondered, he might still get out of this alive. For while he couldn’t have moved to save himself, he was still flying through the air carried by the momentum of his lunge. Would it carry him beyond this weapon’s range before it killed him? He didn’t know, but as those split seconds began to drag on for an eternity, he asked himself that same question again and again.

  And then, just as it seemed his body was about to detonate like a nuclear bomb, and as his diving arc was starting to dip, he felt the volume lesson a little, and once more knew hope. Detonate or subside, he didn’t know which. But whatever happened, he knew it’d be close. He prayed knowing at least that someone was listening.