The God of Battles

  The escort stopped, and the sergeant raised something to his lips. An earsplitting tone filled the air. Angela gasped and clutched her hand to her chest, half doubling over with pain. No one appeared to notice.

  The door swung open, and someone pushed her from behind into brilliant white light. It grew in intensity until she could no longer see where she was going or perceive anything around her.

  She heard a voice that was muffled as if it were speaking through thick cotton. Her ears were ringing, and she had difficulty breathing. Something explosively popped in her head, and Angela thought for a moment that an eardrum had burst. Reaching up to her ear, though, she found no moisture.

  The light began to dim, and the cottony voice became clearer. “Angela Jaelle Cooper.” The words made her whole body shake, and unaccountably, she began weeping. The entire world had spoken to her, and she was enclosed by overpowering warmth, no longer alone.

  She squinted. A glowing human shape stood before her, supernally brilliant. An impulse deep within urged her to fall to her knees, but a hard kernel born of lifetimes of self-reliance kept her on her feet.

  “Are you… are you the War Leader?” The words stuck in her throat, and she choked. The light shifted subtly, and Angela was able to breathe more easily. The form in front of her darkened again so that she could look at it directly without pain.

  The voice came again, more bearable in intensity. “I am War Leader for the mighty Bald Eagle. What you know as America. I am the Egregore of your lost people, resurrected by the power of the Root Hexagon. And I am your beloved, whom you know as your oversoul.”

  Angela could not interpret what she had just heard. The word “oversoul” echoed in her mind. Was she going to have to endure more puzzling oracles from this stranger?

  Then the words penetrated the fog in her mind, and Angela fell to her knees. Her own oversoul. The source of all her lifetimes and the one entity that she had never expected to meet while alive. Cradled by omnipresent love, she sobbed uncontrollably. An eon passed while she knelt before her god.

  Gradually, a kind of self-awareness returned. She recognized the part of her mind that had become habituated to watching over her thoughts and actions, cultivated by decades of training, first as a chovihani and then as a psychiatrist. She took a shuddering breath and looked up into an infinitely beautiful face. The War Leader, her oversoul, waited patiently. Angela slowly got back to her feet.

  “How did this happen?”

  Instead of receiving an answer, she found herself remembering the last time she had been in this place, when she’d fought and defeated Iron Star. She recalled the glow she had seen around her body. Her heartbeat thumped loudly in her ears as she made the intuitive leap.

  “I beat Iron Star. And you took his place. So all this time I’ve been fighting…what? The ruler of America?”

  Another image arose in her mind. She was suspended over the earth with the North American continent beneath her. There was a vast presence below that reminded her of the experience she had had when her grandfather showed her the Egregore in the Otherworld. She sensed that the presence must be a manifestation of the massed minds of all the inhabitants of the continent. Looking closely, she saw political borders glowing fitfully, demarcating Canada, Mexico, and the United States below. The presence was bounded by the lines drawn around her home country. Then, smoothly, that map bent upward, deforming to enclose her, brightening into featureless white as her senses returned.

  Angela laughed bitterly. “Well, that’s rich. I don’t hate America. I was born there. I only wanted to help a friend with his nightmares. So, why am I fighting you?”

  “You have been ignorant. Now you know the truth. My truth.”

  Her oversoul’s rich voice filled Angela’s body again, and she felt a sexual warmth in her groin that rapidly grew into an ecstasy that shook her self-control. Desperately, she concentrated on her questions. “What truth? Why am I here?”

  The ecstasy rose up from the base of her spine and branched out into all parts of her body. The light around her brightened for a moment, and she almost missed her oversoul’s reply.

  “Bald Eagle is the Egregore, the entity overshadowing the massed minds of all your countrymen, and this place is Bald Eagle. You have been at war with the oversoul of your nation, so it is no wonder that you were defeated. I have allowed you to come here in order to show you our master.”

  The ecstasy receded. Angela’s awareness surfaced. Like a drowning swimmer, she clung to the ordinariness within her, a life raft for her sanity. “You’re very forthcoming with answers. I expected cryptic oracles or worse.” She took a breath, brushed her hands down her sides, and lifted her chin. “Well, I’ve got news for you. I’m not going to stand by while the world is plunged into war.” She allowed memories of the vision she’d received from Crooked Staff to fill her mind.

  There was silence. Then the air pulsed for a moment, and a wave of anger washed over her.

  “Silver Scimitar and his separatist allies, including Dark Eyes, cannot be allowed to win.” The voice of the oversoul drummed painfully in Angela’s head. “I am the one who attacks them on behalf of Bald Eagle. If I retreat now, they will destroy us all.” The voice grew calm once again. “Join with me, and I shall protect those whom you love.”

  The psychic undertow drew Angela, tempting her to step forward and merge with the form standing before her. Her oversoul represented her highest nature, and she despaired. How could she resist that nature, the source of her being? Yet resist she must, for her oversoul threatened everyone she held dear.

  As if in response to her misgivings, the voice spoke somewhat petulantly. “I will show you something you may appreciate.”

  A shape moved in the endless white. Angela turned to see the massive form of Iron Star stride into view.

  Angela gasped. “I killed you!”

  Iron Star laughed. Cruelty itself mocked her. “How can you kill an oversoul, Angela Jaelle Cooper? Yes, I know you now, better than you know yourself.”

  Unlike her oversoul’s voice, his grating words triggered no attraction within her. Instead, she saw Simon in her mind’s eye, wheelchair bound, drawn over and over into his nightmare and forced to relive it by this creature. Then she knew. This was his oversoul. Iron Star was the only being who had the power to enforce a compulsion of that nature, no matter how strong Simon’s resistance. But this was tragically, sickeningly wrong.

  The injustice of what had been done to Simon stiffened her resolve. Despite the overwhelming presence of her own oversoul, she mentally stepped back, adopting a detached, therapeutic attitude. This both strengthened her will and weakened her body. To disobey her oversoul was to risk the loss of all of her inborn gifts and, perhaps, immediate extinction.

  Angela decided to play for time until she could find a way to escape. “You are ally to my…” She indicated her oversoul. “To this person. That means you’re also my ally, right?”

  He nodded his massive head, still smiling. Something was different. Then she realized that his helmet was off, and she was able to see his face. His features strongly resembled Simon’s.

  “What’s going on? Why is all this happening now?” Angela asked.

  He shook his head. “You, of all people, should know better than to ask that kind of question of me.” His rough voice sounded almost kind. “We speak to you in riddles and oracles so you can find your way and become strong. Be thankful that your oversoul indulges you in this place. I do not.”

  A vision played before Angela’s mind’s eye. Her original world was at war with itself. Armies clashed, wielding the terrible psychic technologies of her people. Millions died. And leading the opposition to the government, her government, was the General whom she saw before her. Yet he was different. Smaller. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized that Iron Star was the oversoul of the General from her ancient past, as well.

  Simon was the reincarnation of the General, her old enemy. Everything fell into place in her
mind: the sense of familiarity with Simon, the strong attraction that Cassandra had for him, and the reason he had addressed Angela as “Lady” in that agonized shout she and Cassandra had first heard, a mystery that had been nagging at her ever since. But why hadn’t Iron Star recognized her before?

  “I hid myself, and you, from all other oversouls.” Her oversoul’s response to the unspoken question beat a gentle staccato on Angela’s heart. “But it’s time now for you to rise to your destiny. You are the last of your people who still remembers the old world. Thanks to you, I live again.”

  The vision of that ancient war resumed, and as the battle raged, the impression of a powerful Presence came over her. The impression grew in strength, and as it grew, the scene within the vision acquired a deepening reddish hue until her old world glowed with the color of blood.

  “Behold the power of the God of Battles.” Iron Star’s grating voice contained an element of reverence. “He is the Lord of Warfare, who destroys the weak and rewards the strong.” With that statement, he replaced his helm on his head and stood at attention.

  The awe in Iron Star’s voice was incongruous. Yet it made a bizarre sort of sense that the hierarchy of spiritual beings did not stop at the oversouls or at beings like Bald Eagle.

  Angela tried to see Iron Star’s face within the shadows of his helm, but all that she could glimpse were his glowing eyes. “Simon is your incarnation on earth. You have tormented him for years now with that nightmare. That’s not the act of a loving oversoul.”

  “He is weak, yet within that weakness he conceals great strength,” grated that voice, echoing in the helm. “Behold his strength.”

  Another vision came to her of the Great Crater with its bubbling pool of noxious liquid in the center where she’d entered this world. Half-submerged in that pool, the great crystal, wrapped with sinuous cables, glowed with sullen power. Like a hellish movie reel, images from Simon’s nightmare flashed within it. Those dreams, as well as the dreams of others, trapped within the crystal, gave unholy power to Bald Eagle.

  But where did the Root Hexagon come from? Answers to her questions, as always, yielded more riddles. She stared at the powerful form of Iron Star, standing proudly and yet subserviently as any soldier would.

  Angela hugged herself, feeling her own strength faltering beneath the intense gaze of her oversoul. “You worship the personification of war and glorify it. Why?”

  The light of her oversoul grew brighter as if to answer. But it was Iron Star who spoke in his grating voice:

  “In ancient world,

  As time unfurled,

  Peace did rule,

  O’er mortal fools,

  Then love was lost,

  And light as well.

  As darkness fell,

  The strong prevailed.

  Then arose a traitor fair,

  Who led away the people there.

  Now is fought the greatest war,

  To battle-hone the blade once more.”

  She considered the oracle. Its meaning unspooled within her mind. The “ancient world” referred to the place of her own origin, before humanity had arrived on earth. The fall of her people beneath the spell of darkness referred to the rise of the one called the Soul Thief. But the “traitor” had to be Angela herself. She’d rescued her people from certain extinction when she opened the way to their new home, and now this was telling her that her act was one of treachery rather than heroism.

  Angela shook her head. “I’m not buying it. War’s greatest beneficiary is the carrion crow. It destroyed my world and my people. I rescued most of the survivors and brought them to earth…”

  She stopped. Another vision intruded upon her awareness. The troops of the American armed forces, as well as airborne support, marched on the Middle East to fight the next world war. Over them, invisible to their eyes, a gigantic Bald Eagle loomed, draped with the colors of the flag. Opposing them was a massed army under a gigantic Silver Scimitar, radiating hatred of the Eagle. The scene was tinged with the same reddish hue she had seen over the world from which she had originally come. That enormous, ancient Presence once again filled her with dread.

  “War followed us here,” she whispered. “Humanity inherited him from us.” Her legs betrayed her once again, and she collapsed, giving in to despair.

  Cassandra leaned anxiously over Angela’s comatose body. “She’s so white. She’s not breathing. Simon! Angela’s dying.” She heard a thump from the direction of Simon’s bedroom.

  She placed her hands just above Angela’s face. Cassandra shivered, feeling the cold radiating from her girlfriend’s body, and moaned. “No, no, no no no.”

  “Call 9-1-1. Now!” Cassandra refused to look away from Angela, whose body could vanish at any moment into worlds of nightmare. Simon’s anxious voice could not penetrate her concentration as she reached out with her mind to find her beloved. An aching void lay where she expected to find Angela, but she pushed farther.

  —Angela! Come back!—

  The image of her girlfriend’s laughing face brought tears, blurring Cassandra’s vision. She refused to let go, to give up. Another image came to her, this one of Nadia, smiling warmly at her grandniece. Cassandra turned her panic-driven strength to reach out to Nadia.

  —Nadia! Help me!—

  At first she got no reply, but then her inner eye opened. Nadia sat in her customary chair in a dark room, her eyes closed. Cassandra’s vision closed on Nadia’s face. The older woman’s eyes opened suddenly, revealing pits of darkness that engulfed Cassandra, and a new vision came to her.

  Angela knelt, naked, in a cage made of bones. Blood dripped out of her eyes onto the ground and matted her hair. She wept, great quaking sobs shaking her body, and hugged herself.

  All around the cage tangled a sea of decaying bodies dotted with crows and half concealed by thick clouds of flies. The stench sickened Cassandra. A massively armored man stood by the cage, thigh deep in the bodies. He lifted a gigantic hammer high above his head to smash the cage and Angela with it.

  “Angela.” Nadia’s voice echoed and boomed. “Your cage of bones holds your freedom, too. Come home.”

  Angela knelt in the white brilliance of the palace of her oversoul. A great passivity weighed on her mind and heart. Though she continued to resist the pull of her oversoul, out of habit, it no longer mattered what happened to her, whether dissolution or extinction. Iron Star had departed, unnoticed by her.

  For some time now, a childlike rhyme had been repeating in her mind. It tugged at her, though she couldn’t remember why. Turn, turn, turn away. I will never go astray.

  The meaning of the phrase began to penetrate the fog of guilt and despair. Nadia had sent that to her when she had first arrived in the Overworld. Nadia, whose own oversoul, Crooked Staff, had rescued her and guided her for so long, called her back to herself.

  Angela’s pulse quickened. She’d been there far too long. There was no appeal to her own highest self, no help for her or the world from that one. She was her own enemy. But staying there would accomplish nothing except her death, resulting in the final erasure of any opposition she might muster, however weak. She would leave Cassandra alone in the world. That thought, more than any other, galvanized her.

  She staggered to her feet, closed her eyes, and whispered, “Cassandra. Beloved. Help me.”

  “You deny me?” The voice was sad. “I am your true beloved.”

  The orgasmic pull toward the oversoul grew overwhelmingly strong, tempting Angela almost beyond her strength. Such union would have been bliss everlasting and the end of her inner strife. But her love for Cassandra acted like an anchor, holding her fast against the tidal pull. She visualized Cassandra’s face and form and the touch of her hand. Her heart began to burn with heat again, and she cried out with the pain.

  As if in answer to that cry, there was a crisp snap, like a wineglass stem breaking. A whirling, nauseating dizziness came over her, and she tried to open her eyes. A huge, brightly lit blur
swam in her vision, and a sensation as of a mighty vice squeezing her head forced her eyelids shut again.

  The weight of passing seconds fell upon her, once more parceling out the moments of her life. She groaned.

  Cassandra gasped as Angela groaned and stirred. “Oh God, Angela. You’re alive.” Bending as far as she could from her chair, Cassandra clasped her beloved tightly.

  Angela moved feebly in her embrace. Cassandra looked down as Angela sighed through cracked, red lips. Her eyes were still closed and gummy, and she looked as if she had lain on the couch for days.

  “Simon! Can you get her some water?”

  “Right away.” He wheeled into the kitchen.

  “I’m never gonna let you go there alone again,” Cassandra whispered, cradling Angela’s head.

  “Here.” Simon handed Cassandra the glass.

  She dribbled some onto Angela’s mouth. Her darting tongue licked at the moisture, and her eyes fluttered. Cassandra dampened a corner of her shirt to wipe away the crumbs of sleep from Angela’s eyes. “Take it easy. You’re home.”

  It took another five minutes before Angela was able to sit up and finish the water. Color had returned to her cheeks, though she still shivered. Cassandra had wrapped her in a blanket that Simon provided, and she sat next to her, holding her hand.

  “I nearly didn’t come back.” Angela’s voice was raw.

  “We were worried sick. I couldn’t reach you or feel you anywhere.”

  “I think Nadia, or her oversoul, found me there.” Angela’s pale, lined face was beaded with sweat despite her shivering. “Cassie. I’m lost. There’s no hope for me.” Angela started weeping quietly as she hunched over herself, her face in her hands.

  Cassandra pulled Angela’s hand to her heart then kissed her fingers. “Don’t say that.” She squeezed her shoulders. “You showed me there’s always hope.”

  Angela’s voice was slurred with weariness. “Not for me. I met my oversoul. She’s also the oversoul of my people. Our original, prehuman people. You have no idea what that was like.” She took a shuddering breath. “And she’s a servant of something much bigger—the oversoul of our country. America.” She lifted her tear-streaked face out of her hands, and her eyes met Cassandra’s. “Iron Star is still alive. He’s Simon’s oversoul.”