“No matter what happens, hold formation,” the commander told them. “You are not individual soldiers. You are the Called.”
Nuri suppressed a shudder. He struggled to likewise contain the adrenaline-rush triggered by watching dozens of enraged heretics charging toward him with weapons blazing, determined to kill him and all other Called soldiers where they stood, but his vital-signs assured him that his attempts at self-control were unsuccessful. He was ready for the kill. His battle instincts were kicking on full blast, and no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, he craved the rush. He enjoyed the power he felt when he extinguished the life of a rebellious offender of the faith, although he’d never looked a victim in the eye and watched as terror overtook them and their life-force floated into the ether on its way to Tscharia.
Will you feel their souls leave their bodies?
He supposed it was that same powerful satisfaction that drove the Duri Masters’ need for expansion after years of ordering the deaths of all opposing them in the fragile colonies. They had to feed their addiction.
It’s no longer about spreading the word of God to them, the alien voice inside his head persisted. It’s about power. It’s about comfort. It’s about control.
Nuri grated his teeth and tightened his grip on the hilt of the laser blade. The heretic horde was twenty meters away and closing. In a matter of seconds, he would be forced to take a life up close again, something he hadn’t done since slaying the pig farmer in the village.
Will you falter?
The readings on his faceplate began to prioritize targets and track the movements of each colonist so it could alert him to imminent danger.
Is this how you serve your god?
“Calm and swift,” the commander said.
Lord of all, be my blade and my resolve.
A bearded hulk of a man in a patchwork atmosphere-suit charged with a seemingly endless stream of bullets preceding him. Each slug pinged off of Nuri’s armor without incident but the red alarm-glare appeared in the upper right corner of the holo-display on his faceplate. He couldn’t take much more abuse without system malfunctions spreading in his suit, especially at such close range. The armor was built to withstand a lot of damage, but two hundred bullets—archaic or otherwise—tended to take their toll.
And I haven’t even killed one of them yet.
Considering many of his brethren were in the same boat, he thought there was a decent probability that the excursion might be just as ill-fated as the disaster with the apostate commander.
I can’t worry about that now.
The heretic’s eyes were wide and bloodshot, his lips cracked beneath a lunatic smile and second-hand rebreather, but with one dodge and a swift upward thrust, Nuri opened his innards to the harsh winds howling through the canyon. It was easier taking the first life with the blade than he’d thought it would be, but he also hadn’t truly stared into the man’s eyes as the blade found purchase and gutted him. The poor soul’s intestines plopped onto the sand before he even had a chance to curse Nuri’s name, as victims of Duri retribution so often did. By then, Nuri had already moved on to the next target that his suit designated for him. The woman whom it deemed the greatest immediate threat to him and the rest of his squadron.
Pieces of living creation reduced to a hierarchy of threat, and a little bit of the Divine killed with each fallen being.
Nuri winced as the woman caught him with a barrage of assault rifle bullets just above the collarbone, but he’d already severed the weapon in two by the time the pain registered and then crashed into her shoulder-first, driving her beneath a stumbling mass of enraged locals. She quickly slipped towards the back of the line, out of his reach, but didn’t return to the city. Nuri lost sight of her as the first wave of pain in his shoulder hit.
Can you taste their fear?
He frowned and calmly dodged another strafing rifle as he surveyed the damage through a system check.
This is all wrong.
The shock absorbers on his suit were beginning to fail, and that was troubling. He shouldn’t have felt the impact at all beyond a light tap. In most cases, primitive bullets were supposed to be as insignificant to a Called soldier’s armor as insects hitting the viewport of a shuttle.
They must have modified the rounds.
Even with such a persistent stream of gunfire, the Called line should have held better than it was.
Are we going to lose this battle? he wondered.
“Pick it up!” the commander screamed over the comm.
Nuri sliced cleanly through the two nearest colonists, still carefully avoiding eye contact lest he lose his composure or resolve, and moved on toward the city gates.
There will be children inside, the taunting voice reminded him.
He held his breath as one of the colonists attacked from behind and dragged him to the ground. Two others joined the effort, pinning him to the surface while the first scrambled to activate the release switch on Nuri’s helmet. If they managed to break the seal, he was a dead man. Even if he somehow managed to survive the toxic wind and the mission was a resounding success, it would show in his suit’s automated report that he’d been exposed to the atmosphere during the battle, and that represented abject failure in the eyes of the Duri Masters. Without any other punishment, the inevitable exclusion from his chance at the trials carried enough shame to be considered a fate worse than death.
Lord of all, be my blade and my resolve.
A fourth colonist joined the party, then a fifth knelt on his shoulders so he couldn’t raise his arms. Nuri could no longer see anything but the tainted sky and the mess of limbs struggling to keep him down. He felt the twist and tug of the original attacker’s probing fingers and knew it would only be a matter of moments before he located the emergency release button and his life was forfeit. Panic predictably took hold and he cried out, thrashing against the smothering weight of five heretics and managing nothing but an increase of internal temperature. What surprised him was the emergence of a separate peace beneath that heavy layer of shock and panic. A sense of relief. A sense of going home.
Can you taste your fear? Do you feel your soul leaving your body?
At last, common sense reasserted itself and Nuri took a deep breath. His suit had an electric shock built in as a last defense in case the situation escalated to a worst-case scenario.
Like this one.
All he had to do was trigger the charge with a single word.
“Purge,” he said with a faltering voice.
A tremendous pulse surged from his armor plating accompanied by a brilliant, electric-blue light. The four colonists who had pinned him beneath their collective weight were thrown against the city gates while the fifth collapsed dead on the spot, his hands still searching for the elusive release on Nuri’s helmet. The man’s cheek pressed against Nuri’s faceplate, eyes wide and bloodshot from the shock of death. His flesh sizzled, and even with the barrier between his heated corpse and Nuri’s nose, the stench of burnt hair and skin filtered into the atmosphere of his suit.
Do you smell his death? the voice asked. Do you feel the weight of his life?
Nuri stared into the dead man’s eye with mounting horror. He could see the soul leaving its body, he decided. It slackened jaw muscles. It vacated the whites of the eyes. It froze the expression in perpetual un-being.
This is how we all will be.
And then another Called soldier kicked the corpse off of him.
“Get up!” the commander screamed.
Nuri leapt to his feet and rejoined the battle. The heretic line had broken while he was down. Their careless use of ammunition out of heroic fear had depleted their reserves and the rest of the colonists had retreated into the settlement.
The rest, therefore, was easy. Everything except the nightmares.
19
The world around them shifted. Suddenly, Nuri stood at the end of a long stone corridor with his laser blade in one hand and a sever
ed head in the other.
The Evil One, he realized, glancing down to see his muscles, bones, and pulsing veins were cloaked in the same blue-white glow he’d so often beheld in Colt’s natural form. His skin was slowly reappearing, too. It wrapped over his innards in opaque layers to overwrite the naked horror he’d become.
Everything is the same, he thought. The stone walls had the exact luminescence as when Colt first thrust him into the trials. It’s all repeating.
The idea of reliving the grim realities of the vision quest threw him into despair. He could barely force his legs to move beneath him.
It is not the same, Colt clarified as he started down the hall toward the shadowed figure that awaited him. A Watchman, no doubt. Perhaps the same one who’d blocked his way at the start. The events may not have changed, but your perception is different.
Free of the distractions that would pull me from the truth, he agreed. Free of illusion. Free of obfuscation. I have found total clarity.
I am no longer human.
I am Hidria.
He held out the laser sword and tossed the severed head of the Evil One down the hallway.
“An offering,” he said. “A bargain.” He paused to reset himself. “Where will you take me?” he asked.
The hooded figure bent slowly to retrieve the head of the Evil One, carefully brushing blood and dust from the dead thing’s horns. “By the end of this day, you will know the face of the Devil,” the Watchman spat. “Not tricks. Not illusions. You will know what it means to have your soul ripped from your body before your eyes. You will see the agony of Tscharia.”
Nuri stopped walking just as the corridor widened into a square. He nodded. “I’ve already seen my soul ripped from my body. It is happening right now.” He held out his arms to display the blue-white glow emanating from his veins as new layers of skin continued to envelop him. “And I will never see Tscharia. Not as a corpse. I am Hidria now, and I cannot be unmade.”
The Watchman squinted with rage. “We kill Hidria,” he growled. He circled Nuri where the hallways intersected and motioned down a corridor bathed in darkness. Suddenly, Nuri was surrounded by a horde of the red-masked Watchmen. At least one blocked each hallway, and unlike the first time he’d encountered the wraith, there were no doors nearby he could use for escape.
“You no longer need to fear for your life,” Colt said, appearing beside him in her physical form gripping a laser sword with an ornate hilt curved in the face of a pale horse. “You are Hidria now. You are fear.” She pressed her back against his and ignited the weapon with an electric hiss that made his still-growing skin prickle from head to toe.
“I am Death,” he said calmly, drawing back his blade.
The Watchmen cast their red masks aside ceremoniously—a gesture of extreme hatred among their kind considering the disfigurement and menace of their naked faces—and all nine attacked at once.
Nuri and Colt reacted in turn and parried each blow from the Durakian steel employed by the guardians of the undead realm, not landing any kill strikes but repelling the first wave of attacks without overly exerting themselves. He could hear Colt’s robe swish through the air with movements so graceful and abrupt that the Watchmen opposing her quickly withdrew to regroup.
“Can they kill us?” Nuri asked over his shoulder. He ducked beneath a swinging blade and kicked the legs out from one of the Watchmen, stabbing toward his throat but missing the mark when another wraith opened the new flesh surrounding the ribs beneath his left armpit.
He threw his head back in agony and cried out, rolling away from the raining blows that followed. He didn’t have much time. The Watchmen wanted to finish him while he was on the ground. Pain was a black, rotting worm that dove between his ribs and spread its poison up into the base of his neck. It pulled greedily at his new knowledge and identity as though it existed solely to suck his life-force and convictions.
And it probably does, he thought.
He managed to kick off the wall separating two passageways just before three blades converged where his head had been, then used the adjustment in momentum to catapult to his feet with a backwards flip that nearly sent him crashing into Colt. Her peripheral senses alone prevented a catastrophic impact. She drove forward just before his feet connected with her, impaling one of the Watchmen against the stone wall and swirling around to decapitate another before he could parry the blow.
Colt inhaled deeply and crouched down. Her physical form began to disappear again, but she looked him dead in the eyes. “This is your battle,” she said with more than a little regret. “I cannot intervene any further.”
Nuri wanted to know why, wanted to plead with her that he was wounded and wouldn’t be able to fight seven of the Devil’s swordsmen on his own, but she was gone before the words formed on his lips and he had to duck beneath a vicious hack from a Durakian blade a moment later.
“Your witch is gone,” the first Watchman snarled. “You’ll bleed out long before we get a chance to take you to the corpse fields of Tscharia. But don’t worry. Plenty of horrors await you in the Godless universe.”
“No,” he growled, twirling his blade derisively.
They all attacked at once. He parried, ducked, dodged, rolled, leapt, and hacked, but all he managed to do was survive without thinking through a sequence of moves. He could only react.
“What good is this?” he screamed, hoping Colt would hear him somewhere in the ancient temple and fly to his aid. He jumped and landed a kick square in the jaw of one of the wraiths while blocking a two-handed hack aimed at his throat but landed hard on the floor, barely managing to slide beneath a lethal jab. “I thought the Hidria were Peacekeepers. Like God!” he shouted again. “Why must I fight?”
Colt’s emanation wavered to life over the shoulder of another Watchman, who unknowingly used the distraction to his advantage by striking Nuri just below the eye with the hilt of his black blade.
“No one said you need to fight. You can always surrender.”
Nuri tasted acid in his mouth instead of the coppery blood he was accustomed to. The distraction proved costly yet again as another Watchman stabbed him through the leg before he could swing his laser blade to deflect the blow.
He wanted to scream but held his tongue, knowing his agony would only give the keepers of the corpse fields greater satisfaction in victory. Instead, he staggered to his feet and sought refuge against the wall, where the Watchman that Colt had slain was still pinned down with melted stone settling into his gaping wound.
“What is the point of this?” he demanded as he hacked savagely at the seven advancing Watchmen. It was a graceless press. He threw all his weight into each blow, expending unnecessary energy but also managing to catch one of the creatures off guard. He separated from the parry and swung around to tear the wraith in two just above the waist.
Six, he thought with satisfaction.
Then he saw the black emptiness where the blade had skewered him below the knee and his stomach turned sour. The blue-white skin that shrouded Colt had consumed him now, but the spots where he’d been touched by the blades of the Watchmen were black with rot. And they’ll never return to normal, he realized. No matter what form I take, their mark will always be there. I’m tainted.
“We all are,” Colt said.
The six remaining Watchmen removed their cloaks simultaneously and grinned a challenge beneath their yellow, soulless eyes.
Nuri growled and started swinging wildly before they had a chance to coordinate an attack. Fighting for survival was a whole new experience compared to the remorseless slaughters he’d grown accustomed to as one of the Called.
I’m failing, he thought. I should have more control of my actions and emotions. Violence against God’s creation is an affront to His Holy Name.
“Violence is sometimes necessary,” Colt countered, watching as he stabbed a Watchman through the stomach and flipped sideways over the next. The wounded wraith didn’t drop but he favored his left side where
the laser sword had pierced him, and Nuri mercilessly struck at the advantage. “It’s the same paradox I mentioned earlier.”
“You said destruction of any part of God’s creation was destruction of God Himself,” Nuri grunted, blocking two blades at once and driving both demons back with a roar. “All violence is evil, then. It is all sin. Even against servants of the Evil One.” As if to accentuate the point, he drew the blade over his shoulder and whistled it down at the exposed back of a reeling Watchman. He used all the force he could muster in close quarters while staying mindful of the other wraiths.
“That is not wholly true,” Colt said. One of the Watchmen hissed and swung his blade through her, but it had no effect on her emanation. Just as she wasn’t able to physically intervene against the creature while straddling the two cosmic realities she inhabited, they couldn’t touch her, either. “We cannot know God’s mind. It is entirely possible that He created certain elements and adversaries in order to strengthen our faith. To force us to contemplate the deepest recesses of our being and respond to His call to return home.”
“He created Tscharia knowing that some of His creation required eternal separation from Him. Suffering for predetermined sins they had no choice but to make.” Nuri bent backward as a blade stabbed for his head, then completed a back-flip to avoid another that sought to undercut him at the same time. He felt the landing all the way through his bones, and that worried him. It meant he was still vulnerable so long as he was in his physical form, and he didn’t yet know how to jump in and out of realities the way Colt seemingly did. After everything he’d endured to become Hidria, though, he refused to allow himself to die so near the final Divine Revelation. His own personal apocalypse.
“A paradox, surely,” Colt agreed. “One we cannot understand with our limited perception, except to say that Omega has committed to loving us enough to imagine free will, and we are the ones responsible for corrupting it, not He. Yet even Hidria do not know everything about God.” She wove her way between the five remaining Watchmen—four a moment later, when Nuri at last hacked diagonally through the chest of the one he’d stabbed in the arm—and stood directly in front of him, blocking his view of the wraiths. “There are reasons to fight, though,” she said. “Such as limiting the suffering of others by wiping out the disease at the root of their misery.”
Colt: The Cosmic Prayer (Hidria Book 1) Page 23