by R. W. Holmes
“Zinerva! Hear me from where you stand, and by your offering, meet me at the crossroads and draw me back to you!”
The celestial sights around Gael grew increasingly bizarre and ominous as he traveled, but nothing seemed to be happening...
Back in the Cathedral, a battle between primal horror and celestial servant continued playing out, and while the angel was an extremely formidable thing in its own right, it was becoming apparent that creating impenetrable barriers and unleashing divine wrath was extraordinarily taxing even for it.
As the fight played out, Kennedy made his way over to a dumbstruck Zinerva.
“Hey, it's, uh, it's okay” he said to her. “That angel is totally gonna pull this out, and then we're gonna get out of here. You won't be going back to Hell for a long time, alright?”
“Huh?” Zinerva murmured absentmindedly. “Oh, right. Going back to Hell... That's probably where Gael is now.”
“Gael is... was a good dude” replied Kennedy. “If they make exceptions, they'll make one for him.”
Zinerva shook her head knowingly. “He summoned me” she said sadly. “He never sought forgiveness from God. And now he's damned. Forever.”
Kennedy grimaced and threw his arms around Zinerva in a hug that was just as much for her benefit as it was for his own, and while Zinerva stared at where Gael once stood, Kennedy was left to watch as the shoggoth slowly wore down the valiant angel.
“What?” said Zinerva.
“I didn't say anything” replied Kennedy.
“No, you did” insisted Zinerva. “You said...”
Kennedy released Zinerva and stood up, his eyes falling on the small imp as she looked about herself in bewilderment. Then, Zinerva's eyes lit up, and she quickly set about using one of her sharper nails to claw a cut in her palm.
“What are you doing?” asked Kennedy.
“I have no idea” Zinerva said quickly, before taking her blood soaked hands and clapping them together over her head. “BUT I ACCEPT!”
Kennedy gasped as Zinerva vanished before his eyes.
Meanwhile, far across the cosmos, Gael was repeating his 'reverse summoning' mantra over and over, each time with more fervor, and praying to Hell and Heaven alike that his words would get through to Zinerva.
And then she was there, the two a mere six feet away from each other, and both had stopped moving.
“See, I had a theory” Gael said as his body began fighting to reach Zinerva all on its own.
“Yeah, what's that?” asked Zinerva, a wide, excited smile on her face.
“I figured, my soul can't be broken,” replied Gael. “It's indestructible, right? Probably? I don't know, it was a guess... But if I was right, then all I really did was lose my grip, which means to fix this I just need to get back to my body and 'grab hold' again.”
“Uh huh” replied Zinerva, her hands growing severely close to Gael's.
“So I was wondering,” Gael started, their hands finally touching, “if you could give me a ride back to Enterprise Island?”
All of existence surged by Gael and Zinerva, just as it had so many times before, albeit with Zinerva doing the pulling this time. When it ended, Zinerva was flung bodily back, across the room, before coming to a halt as she collided with Gael's limp, nigh-lifeless body.
Looking down at the warmth sitting in her hands, Zinerva realized that the 'Gael' she'd brought back was still just a soul. With a glance to his soulless body, she reared the pale orb back and forced Gael's spirit back inside.
“GAH!” Gael cried out, the air in his longs escaping in a great, rasping gasp. “Holy shit that was close. I wasn't even breathing anymore; my body was just waiting to die.”
“Um... you're alive” Kennedy said dumbly.
“That's debatable” Gael winced, before sitting up and looking around himself.
Kennedy turned to look back at Emily and Shay, who had done little more than remain frozen in shock since seeing Zinerva vanish and return with Gael's soul in tow.
“Have you ever seen that happen?” he asked them.
“No” they replied in unison.
Gael sighed and looked at the shoggoth. It was woefully healthy looking, and the angel's face was wracked with the strain it took to continue fighting.
“Okay, Zinerva” he said shakily. “I think it's time to see if all of those spells worked.”
Zinerva nodded, equally shaky, as she helped Gael back to his feet as best she could.
Across the Cathedral, Gael's reappearance had gone unnoticed by all but Allen.
'That was unprecedented...' he thought tepidly to himself. 'I suppose it's time I left, then.'
“Good luck, brothers” Allen announced as he began making his way past the shoggoth.
The other R'lyehans looked on in momentary shock as their leader passed the shoggoth, and then the angel, whose vengeful glance alone threatened to burn a hole straight through the man. A moment of confused panic spread among the R'lyehans as they tried to make sense of what was happening, until a voice called out.
“I've got it!” Zinerva screamed uncertainly. “I-I think I've got it!”
Gael, Kennedy, Emily, and Shay looked on in a mixture of awe and concern as Zinerva, arms raised, coaxed nine separate flames into a ring overhead. It started with the deep, blood red fire of Limbo, and then the lighter, bright red of Lust. Gluttony and Greed were orangish, and looked largely ordinary, before Anger arrived as a starkly yellow flame, followed by Heresy, which was green, Violence, which was purple, Fraud, which was gray, and finally Treachery, which was blue.
“A church feels like a really bad place to be doing this for the first time” remarked Kennedy.
Zinerva clapped her hands together, and the nine flames suspended in the air merged into a single blob of multicolored chaos.
“Oh...” Zinerva murmured uncertainly. “I'm scared of this thing.”
“Good” said Gael. “Give it to the shoggoth.”
Zinerva didn't throw the ball of hellfire so much as she let it go, and as if sporting a will of its own, the flames surged out onto the Cathedral floor. Like a bundle of serpents, it slithered forth, leaving everything in its wake scorched and incinerating the remaining R'lyehans, before leaping through the air like a feral beast and pouncing on the shoggoth's back.
The shoggoth cried out immediately, its otherworldly, slurping wail rattling the pews and windows of the Cathedral, and forcing it to stop its level, calculated onslaught against the angel.
Free to react, the angel swung his sword and split the shoggoth as well, but the arc of light released from its blade stopped just before reaching Zinerva.
“This is amazing!” Zinerva cried as she conjured the nine flames once more. “I'm unstoppable!”
Less with control, and more with reckless abandon, Zinerva threw her arms forward and willed the nine flames forward. The flames struck the shoggoth's split, burning body one at a time, and each time one hit, Zinerva would call up a replacement. Like a living flamethrower she'd become, she reduced the pews, carpet, floor, and most of the shoggoth to ash.
“ENOUGH!” the angel called from opposite the shoggoth's severely reduced form. “YOU THREATEN THE SAFETY OF THE CHURCH!”
“Zinerva, that means stop” said Gael.
“Never!” hissed Zinerva, her malicious tone then replaced by a mad cackle.
“That's an order!” snapped Gael.
Zinerva paused, her head slowly craning to look back at Gael. “I don't think your orders matter anymore...”
“Shay, hit her with a-,” Emily started.
“NO!” snapped Gael, before turning back to Zinerva. “Fine, forget that it's an order” he said next. “Do it because we're friends instead, and because it's going to upset a lot of us if you burn this place down.”
Zinerva laughed dismissively, but found her fires fading and her better senses prevailing despite her actions. The nine flames finally died down to mere whispers of their former selves, and Zinerva, for all of h
er blustering, succeeded in taming her wilder instincts with relative ease.
“Whoa...” she murmured sheepishly. “I kind of turned into you for a second there. Crazy, suicidal you.”
“Yeah, let's both agree to never do that again” replied Gael. “I don't care how deadly doing magic can be, what it's doing to our mind is more dangerous.”
On the other side of the Cathedral, the angel had stepped over to a now cow-sized shoggoth and plunged his divine sword into it. A final, brilliantly luminescent light erupted from within the shoggoth, each ray piercing another of its few remaining eyes, before reducing what remained of the beast to a small, lifeless, stinking puddle of black, acrid ooze.
“Right!” Kennedy said as he immediately stepped up to their celestial savior. “Thank you, Mr. Angel. Now, if it's alright with you, we're going to leave, because I'm pretty sure you don't want us here.”
The angel turned a cold, appraising gaze on Kennedy, and then to Gael and Zinerva, and finally Emily and Shay.
“You have ten seconds.”
Gael immediately picked Zinerva up and beckoned the others to follow as he sprinted towards the Cathedral's front door. Ten seconds, as short as it was, was more than enough time for them to leave the Cathedral, and they made it to the exit with half of that time to spare.
Then, with a poof of multicolored smoke, Jacky and Ginger reappeared before the others and blocked the door.
“That was very impressive” Jacky said as she pointed her gun at Gael, prompting a gasp from Emily. “But I don't think you can come back like that if your body is dead.”
“You swore!” Emily screamed at her. “The Fae can't break their promises!”
“Maybe” Jacky acquiesced. “But no one is ever going to find out.”
“Emily and I will go straight to Fairyland!” snapped Shay. “Everyone will know!”
“And no one will believe you” Ginger said as Jacky hugged her close. “Because you're you. Because you lost. Honestly, do you really think this is the first time we're doing this?”
“AH!”
A series of cries erupted from Gael and the others as a massive hand reached out from behind the Cathedral door and grabbed hold of Jacky's skull, before yanking her back and out of the church.
“What the hell was that!?” exclaimed Kennedy.
“No time; angel mad” Zinerva said quickly.
Too legitimately short of time to actually stop and think about what would await them, Gael and Zinerva led the others out of the Cathedral and directly towards whatever it was that had suddenly grabbed Jacky.
A harsh and sickening Crack! rang out just as everyone emerged, and the sight of Jacky's limp, lifeless body hitting the ground greeted them. The creature responsible for it, none other than a very familiar looking goat demon, then picked up the relatively tiny Ginger and simply squeezed her until she burst into a cloud of glitter and dust.
“What the fuck...” Kennedy said as he looked at Ginger and Jacky's remains.
“WHAT THE FUCK!?” Gael screamed as he spied the goat's summoner.
Standing there, beside the goat demon, her skin pale and her eyes drooping with the bags of weariness beneath them, was Angelica.
“Why is the casualty still alive?” asked Shay.
“Hello” Angelica said with a weak smile. “I should probably explain...”
Chapter 11
Death,
And Other Inconveniences
“No.”
Angelica blinked once, before narrowing her eyes suspiciously at Gael and saying, “I was dead. Don't you want to know why I'm standing here now?”
“Sure” said Gael. “But there's still two more shoggoths out there somewhere, so we don't have time for this.”
“Whoa hold on, let me get Cypress back here” Kennedy said as he callously snatched Emily's knife away from her. “We've gotta have enough time to do stuff like that at least.”
“Oh my God! Gael!” Angelica screamed as Kennedy vanished. “Why does Kennedy Adams have a demon?”
“Because he helped me deal with... that” Gael said with a gesture to the goat demon. “And then a bunch of people with faeries showed up and decided that just for knowing me they were going to make sure he was killed too. That happened, by the way, because you decided to summon a demon on your own!”
“Are you going to tell me that was a bad idea?” replied Angelica. “Because I know, Gael. I knew it when my neck was broken, and that was the easiest part of dying.”
“And what about your friend there?” Emily chimed in nervously, her hand stretched towards the goat demon. “Is he under control now?”
Angelica stared at Emily, and then Shay for a moment, before turning back to Gael and asking, “Who's this?”
“Turns out not everyone with a fairy is a complete asshole” said Gael. “She's here because she thinks it's wrong to kill me just for summoning a demon.”
“That's very altruistic of her” Angelica said approvingly, albeit without any really discernible emotion. “The answer is yes, for the record. Artemis has learned manners.”
Kennedy reappeared then, and with Cypress in tow.
“Sorry I didn't come for you earlier, buddy” said Kennedy. “And sorry we don't have your good threads. You can borrow Jacky's if you want, just put her somewhere out of sight, alright?”
“Why does Kennedy's demon look like a fashion model?” Angelica asked Gael next.
“I have no idea, it's an incubus thing” replied Gael. “And Cypress, make sure you grab Jacky's gun too.”
“I have looked forward to the opportunity” Cypress replied as he picked the revolver up. “Do you think anyone will find me strange if I'm wearing womens pants, though?”
“I went through a phase where boys in really tight pants, like Jacky's there, was just...” Emily started. “But that's not important; you'll look fine, and we need to go. With any luck, Allen won't be heading us off at the starport.”
After seeing a friend die, being attacked by the Fae, and watching all of Enterprise Island burn around him, Gael had finally found a spot of good luck. He couldn't include seeing Angelica again in that, because he had no idea what it was about, but after the horrors of the last day he almost couldn't believe it when they arrived at the starport without incident.
It was hardly barren, though. The R'lyehans ship was already gone when they'd arrived, no doubt taken by Allen Olmstead. Also present were a few of the security officers and the civilians they had managed to reach the starport with.
“Okay” Emily said as she hurried the group through to the private bays where her ship was docked. “My ship is right over here. Don't worry about the security officers trying to seize it, they won't be an issue.”
The private bays themselves were much like a honeycomb, with dozens of hexagonal 'bays' lined from floor to ceiling where smaller, private space ships were docked. Each of them sported a control panel that connected to the ship and was unlocked by its ignition key. Upon using it, one could extend a ramp up to the ship's cargo bay and open the doors remotely, effectively barring anyone but the owner from accessing the ship's contents while it was docked.
Cypress grinned as he spied a very familiar captain among the officers trying to force the cargo bay door on Emily's admittedly small, dart-shaped spaceship.
“I'll handle this” he said as he stepped forward.
“You'll do what?” Emily and Kennedy queried in unison.
“Captain!” Cypress called out. “Captain, step away from that ship!”
The captain, tired as he'd appeared before, now looked like he'd just become the oldest person to finish a triathlon. Despite this, his dreary appearance succeeded in drooping even more when he saw Cypress, though.
“You!” the captain spat bitterly, before spying Zinerva, Shay, and Artemis among the group and rolling his eyes derisively. “Do you know how many people died on the way here!?”
“Would you have preferred to do nothing?” asked Cypress.
The captain sneered, but said nothing. Cypress understood, of course. It was his talent as an incubus to understand the hearts of others, regardless of how he used it, and he knew the captain's stress was merely getting the better of him.
“That's our ship” Cypress said next.
“We're tight on space as it is” replied the captain. “You're taking some of these people with you.”
“I wouldn't advise that” warned Cypress. “That ship, with all of us on it, will be the second most dangerous place to be after Enterprise Island.”
The captain's sneer devolved into a scowl, but he turned to leave anyway. To the other officers' shock, he began making his way to the next private, locked ship still docked in the starport.
“Captain!?” one of the security officers called out confusedly.
“Let them go” the captain called back. “They're trouble. Monitor their heading, and then get everyone else evacuating going in the opposite direction.”
“But some of them are-,” the officer continued, his hand stretched directly at the goat demon that was Artemis.
“We don't have time for this!” the captain bellowed furiously. “This whole place is going to be a tomb in half an hour when the life support systems fail, and those freaks over there aren't the ones ripping the life support systems apart.”
The rest of the security officers left, and everyone else was stuck staring on in bewilderment at Cypress.
“Friend of yours?” asked Kennedy.
“Oh, yes!” Cypress said brightly. “I think I might have saved all of these people after I successfully evaded security earlier.”
Emily stepped up to the small panel next to her ship and drew her ship key. Like modern keys, it had a large, conveniently shaped bit of black plastic on one end with the brand logo of the ship's maker on it, but the key itself was green, plastic, riddled with circuitry, and looked like you could slot it into a motherboard.
“Thank God, it's finally over” Emily said as she inserted the key into the panel, which opened the large, cargo bay door on the back end of her ship, and extended the access ramp built into the starport floor.