by Eddie Patin
Chapter 26
Jason ran, his AK-47 hot in his hands, eager to find and rescue Morgana from one of those damned crosses. He wanted to kill Estren for trying to hurt her. He wanted to blow away all of the brainwashed assholes hiding inside their broken houses, staring at him in horror as he passed. It was as if this town had been taken over by a 'crazy' disease.
Shooting down those Chosen soldiers had felt amazing.
It didn't even occur to Jason until he was several houses away from the Soloster manor—Riley and Gliath now easily striding along with his clumsy human steps—that Jason had actually killed another man. He'd never killed another human being before. He killed several of them, actually.
But they were going to kill you, he thought.
He turned on his night vision, running down the northern street toward the middle of town. Jason scanned the mist for threats.
Once, a dark shape swooped by obscured by the fog.
"Stick close to the houses!" Riley said. "That is, if you don't want to draw attention and get slowed down."
They did.
Now, running through mud outside the front walls of the dark-age cobblestone hovels with mostly-broken windows, Jason tried to avoid stepping in the stinking piles of shit and garbage in the gutter.
The people watching the running Reality Rifters from inside their houses; easy to see and hear through the cracks in walls and gaping holes in windows. They muttered and hissed about the warriors from the stars. With his image intensifier, Jason could see their pale, frightful faces and glowing wide eyes in the dark. Some of them held candles that blazed like bright LED's in Jason's night vision, but most of the townspeople hid from the gargoyles, clutching each other in the night.
What a hellish place to live, Jason thought.
If Morgana was hung up in the Crossroads, if Estren was intending to hurt her or execute her or sacrifice her to his goddess, Jason was going to put a 7.62x39mm bullet in the old man's addled brain. And if the young woman somehow made it out of this okay, Jason was going to invite her to leave this terrible, grim life and come to his world.
When they arrived at the middle of town, they found a scene like out of a nightmare. The carnage and fire made Jason think of movies where a portal to Hell was opened up and demons rose from it to tear a whole populace limb from limb. It was like being in a horror movie. The thick, foggy air was filled with the stench of ruptured intestines, blood, and burned flesh.
Jason immediately turned off his night vision because of all of the burning torches around the area, which filled the thick fog in the intersection with a flickering yellow and orange glow.
Bodies and pieces of bodies were strewn all over. Only two still prisoners hung on crosses—men with faces painted dark red and muscled bodies painted black—and they were dead. From the red spilling down their naked chests like drying paint, it looked like their throats had been cut.
The other crosses were splashed with blood. One of them was sundered at its base and now rested empty on the platform in front of the church. Another cross still held a man's arms only, strapped on tightly with leather strips. The body had been torn away from those ragged, red shoulders and was nowhere to be seen.
"Holy shet..." Riley muttered. "Man, we see some crazy shet sometimes."
"This is not the worst scene we have looked upon, Ranaja," Gliath added.
Jason quickly scanned over the many slumped pieces of bodies, looking for signs of Morgana. There were chunks of naked flesh painted with blood and entrails, piles of organs, sections of torsos and limbs with clothing and armor still attached—all stained red through and through—and several swords and spears scattered around. A handful of dead soldiers—still wrapped in smoking armor—were black and smoldering after burning to death. The ground was decorated with black scorch-marks here and there. Jason saw at least two twisted, smoking bodies wrapped in the dark blue robes of—
A woman suddenly screamed from somewhere in front of the church. It started with a sound of fright, then quickly transformed into howls of madness and animalistic terror. There were tearing sounds; cloth and flesh. Jason heard the snapping of bones—at least that's what his shocked mind thought it was—and the repeating screams began to choke and gurgle.
"Shit!" he cried and ran toward the church, shouldering his rifle. He sprinted as quickly as he could without slipping on body fluids and slop or tripping over pieces of corpses. With a grunt, Jason leapt up onto the platform beyond the street and the crosses planted in their stone bases.
"Jason—hang on!" Riley exclaimed.
"But ... Morgana!" Jason replied, launching himself around the platform toward where the visceral sounds were coming from. He heard a couple of faint clangs—probably steel striking stone.
Vaguely aware of Riley and Gliath running to stay with him, Jason plunged through the thick mist toward the entrance of the big stone church. He stopped when a scene unfolded from the fog before him of a gargoyle ripping one of the Virgin Oracles to pieces. The screams had stopped. She was just meat now. The beast paused to look at Jason, its stone face and chest and forearms splashed red with blood. The gargoyle held one of the Oracle's arms in one hand; still dressed in blue and so thin compared to the monster's muscled arm. It was in the process of pulling a skinny, pale human leg out of socket from the mess within the robes...
"Gargoyle!" Jason shouted, raising his rifle immediately and putting his front sight over the creature's leering face.
"We're here, man," Riley said from beside him. Jason felt an instant of comfort before opening fire.
The three of them blew the creature away. Within the first few shots, the monster seemed to fly into a rage and spun to rush at them on all fours like a charging lion, drawing its wings in close to its back as pieces of it chipped and burst off from the impacting rounds. Then its head exploded after an expert shot from Riley and his Marlin 1895SBL. The monster crashed to the cobblestone several feet in front of them.
Jason immediately heard more going on closer to the church. It sounded like someone was beating on a stone wall with metal tools—probably soldiers fighting off another beast.
He thought about changing mags as Gliath and Riley both automatically pushed more ammo—round after round—into their weapons' mag tubes, but Jason figured that he hadn't fired more than ten shots. He had at least twenty left.
Shit. It was getting dark again. He turned on his night vision and the scene was bathed in pale green. He could easily see the destroyed remains of the woman in the blue robe—looks like the Oracles were merely women; naked, pale, and torn to pieces—but he tried not to look. The places where the gargoyle had clawed her and pulled her apart sickened him.
Jason ran on. His friends followed him.
Charging through the fog, he first saw the looming shadow of the church building appear stretching over him, then the action.
Another gargoyle was near the large, double doors of the place and had pressed several people into a corner of the building's exterior. They were mostly Chosen soldiers—all trying to fight back a gargoyle that was playfully harassing them—and another Virgin Oracle pressed into the corner, hiding behind the armored men. There were six soldiers, all faced outward from the corner with spears and swords, batting at the gargoyle to keep it at bay. Every time the creature lunged in, they stabbed at it, and it withdrew completely unharmed. Jason couldn't see the monster's stony face, but he imagined that it was probably smiling; maybe silently laughing at them. Several other Chosen soldier bodies littered the courtyard here and there in various states of dismemberment, along with the still form of another dead Virgin Oracle in dark blue.
Now that they were closer, Jason could hear that every time the gargoyle danced into range of the soldier's weapons, the Virgin Oracle hiding behind them shrieked in fear.
"Hey!" Jason shouted.
The gargoyle spun, its face smiling like a gothic demon's, splashed with blood. Even armed as he was, when the beast tilted its head—Jason recalled
dinosaur predators that would cock their heads like that, wondering whether or not he was food—he felt a chill fly up his spine.
Jason braced himself, aimed at the beast, and as soon as it made a move—leaving the defending group of soldiers behind—the three Reality Rifters opened fire.
The gargoyle leaped into the air to pounce on them from above, spreading out its wide, stone wings. All three of their gun barrels followed the beast up into the air and the courtyard was filled with deafening weapon fire once again. The muzzle flashes of Jason's rifle were brighter in the surrounding mist—almost dazzling in his night vision—and he put round after round into the gargoyle. He watched pieces of its chest, head, left shoulder, right knee all fly away as rocky chunks and powder as the monster sailed up and over them. Then Jason scrambled backwards as the gargoyle seemed to lose control. It crashed onto the cobblestone near their feet.
Riley sidestepped, cycling his rifle—click click—then shot it in the head, bursting its horned and stony skull.
"You!" the Virgin Oracle screamed with a piercing voice.
Jason looked up to see the blue-robed bitch storming out from behind the six armored men protecting her. She pointed at him with a pale, scrawny finger and glared at him from behind her glossy black mask.
The soldiers followed her, spreading out into an even formation row. They were all spattered with blood—probably other peoples' blood—but acted like human robots, silent and disciplined behind their golden masks.
"You're welcome!" Riley countered, pushing more cartridges into his lever gun as he elevated one boot on the gargoyle's corpse.
"You've doomed us all!" the woman shrieked, shaking within her robes. "You are not emissaries from the Golden Lady!" She pointed at Jason. "You never would have helped free the rebels it you were!"
"You're right," Jason replied flatly. How many shots had he fired? Ten more? Less? "Where's Morgana?"
"Estren should have never trusted you—the fool!" she replied sharply. "He should have listened to us and focused on the Golden Lady! Now, he is lost! We are all lost! You warriors from the stars," she shouted, her voice dripping with venom, "have doomed us all!"
"Where the fuck is Morgana?!" Jason demanded, raising his rifle. "Tell me now!"
"Kill them!" the Oracle shrieked, immediately dropping behind the ranks of the six soldiers and rushing off toward the cracked-open double doors of the church.
"Are you freaking kidding me?!" Jason replied.
As soon as one of the soldiers advanced, Riley reacted as quick as a snake with a boom of his rifle and punched a huge hole through his chest. The Chosen soldier dropped like a sack of rocks. His sword clattered onto the ground.
The others hesitated, then suddenly charged as one.
The three of them cut them down like weeds, then reloaded.
"Goddamn it!" Jason snapped, swapping his magazine.
"Stay calm," Riley replied. "We'll figure it out."
"They took her," Jason replied, feeling his heart pounding and the blood rushing through his ears. "Those fuckers took her, and where is she now? Torn to pieces?"
"Take it easy, Jason!" Riley said. "Don't lose your head. Besides, what does it—?"
"Warriors!" a male voice bellowed from behind them. Riley spun immediately, aiming his rifle far quicker than Jason could react. "Warriors from the stars! Stay your weapons!"
A large man emerged from the mist dressed in burlap and leather clothing splashed with blood. He had a wild mop of long, blonde hair and a bushy blonde beard all streaked with mud and blood and soot. His face was dirty, but as he approached—stumbling toward them through the courtyard—Jason could make out in his night vision that the man's eyes were strikingly pale.
"Don't come any closer!" Jason shouted, aiming his AK, which stopped the man instantly ten feet away. "What do you want? All of you people are fucking crazy here!"
"You're looking for Morgana Soloster!" the man replied. "Aren't you?"
Jason noticed that he had beads woven into his beard and he thought for a moment that he recognized the guy as one of the prisoners Morgana had cut down last night.
"Yes!" Jason exclaimed, lowering his rifle. "Where is she?!"
"Taken!" the man said, his eyes immediately turning down and awash in pain. "Estren was about to kill her, and a gargoyle took her into the night."
"Shit!" Jason replied.
"Where do the gargoyles take them?" Riley asked. "Somewhere to the south, but where?"
"To the necromancer's tower, I'd warrant," the man said. "The necromancer lives!"
"What?" Riley said, lowering his own weapon and scratching his beard. "How do you know that?"
"I have seen him!" the man replied. Jason suddenly remembered the big guy—he was one of the twins up on the crosses. "There!" He pointed at the sky over the Crossroads. "The necromancer returned tonight with several of his monsters and attacked the ritual. He flew through the air with them and cast lightning from his fingers!"
Jason and Riley exchanged glances.
"I thought Skinner paid them for his head!" Jason exclaimed.
"Skinner never makes mistakes," Riley replied. "Maybe the bounty was literally for his head, and the necromancer somehow came back."
"Perhaps the necromancer has grown a new head," Gliath said with his rumbly voice.
Jason looked back to the bearded man. "You mean—you literally saw a man flying through the air throwing lightning bolts attacking the village along with the gargoyles?"
"He came with the Darkness! Yes!" the man replied. "Take this," he said, holding something shiny in his hand. "May I approach now, warriors from the stars?"
The three Reality Rifters looked at each other for a moment.
Jason nodded and beckoned the man to approach.
When the bearded man was close, he handed Jason a ring.
Jason had been looking at Morgana a lot in the last few days. Several times his eyes scanned over her hands as he imagined ridiculous goober things like touching them and weaving his fingers through hers. He was pretty sure that the ring in the man's burly hand was hers.
He took it.
"Morgana's ring?" Jason asked. "Why?"
"That ring of hers is special," the man replied. "It is called a smuggler's ring. She keeps her father's sword, Dawnbringer, inside. If you find her in the necromancer's tower, give it to her. I am Jordan Hubbard. I would have been her husband—if only she let me. My brother was killed tonight by the bastard Estren and I will be gone come morning."
"Gone?"
"I am leaving. If anyone can save Morgana, it will be you three warriors from the stars. Please give her my regards ... and my love."
With that, Jordan turned and ran away, disappearing into the mist.
"What the hell?" Jason said, looking down at the ring. It was a pretty basic silver ring with a tarnished, silver square where a jewel or a diamond might normally be. "Dawnbringer is ... inside?"
"Maybe it's magic," Riley said. "Stash it."
"Morgana will know how to use it."
"Let's get out of here, Jason. Rift us home. Let's get some sleep," Riley said, looking up at the fog-filled sky. He scratched his beard. Jason heard a crash and more screams somewhere in the distance.
"What?!" Jason replied. "We've got to go after her!"
Riley scoffed. "Come on, Jason," he said. "This job is kind of going off the rails, don't ya think? We're done."
"We can't just leave Morgana out there, taken by the necromancer!"
The soldier looked at him evenly through the mist. His face was hard and lean, and with his night vision, Jason could barely see tiny machinations behind Riley's corneas inside the darkness of his eyes.
"Jason, I don't think you're really getting the concept of infinity. This...?" He waved one arm around. "It doesn't matter! There are infinite universes in this multiverse where this same thing is playing out right now. In some of them, we get the girl. In some of them, she's dead. In some of them, we never find her. In some
of them, she falls in love with the fruking necromancer! Every second that passes by, infinite other universes split off with different results and go in infinite different directions. Can we please be in the path that lets us just go home and be done with this world? This place is really going to Hell. It's also depressing as fruk!"
"I'm not going to abandon her, Riley," Jason said. He felt hot. The soldier's cavalier attitude about all of this was really rubbing Jason the wrong way. Yeah—maybe this 'crush' he was feeling for Morgana was warping his thinking a little, but that didn't mean that he could just walk away! She was captured by Estren and put up on the cross, and was now being taken away to who knows what grisly nightmarish shit the necromancer had planned?! She was probably waiting in line to be transformed into a gargoyle like her brother!
"Then for fruk's sake, Jason," Riley said with a sigh. "Let's just hop along the sixth dimension and find another version of Morgana where her town was never under attack by gargoyles! Let's find a world where she's not totally traumatized by years of imprisonment and her family being murdered. Hell—we could also go along the seventh dimension to find slightly different multiverses where she—"
Jason shook his head as Riley talked, feeling like he was about to explode and lose his temper. He tried to remember that he was exhausted and on edge, but Riley was being a real asshole. Even if it didn't matter—if they were just a speck in an infinite pool and nothing would make a difference—then what did make a difference? Morgana mattered. If she didn't matter in the grand scheme of the omniverse as infinite versions of her were out there, then she at least mattered to him.
"Goddamn it, Riley!" Jason said, cutting him off. "If infinity makes everything meaningless, then what the fuck matters?!"
Riley paused. He scratched his beard. "Nothing," he replied. "That's why it's best to not think about—"
"Yeah, I know: don't think about it. But you're not dealing with the problem, man! You're just burying your head in the sand!"