“Ah,” said the blue-eyed dragon, smiling while waving a knowing finger. “The tree-leapers. Now I remember. Quite formidable beasts, if I recall correctly.”
Sipping his ale, it came spewing out of the old man’s mouth, squeaking through his old, cracked lips. “Formidable? They were a damn nuisance. While my pets weaved through those giant forests and around those monstrous trees, those damn wolves would just fall out of the sky. Of course with the giant leaves and the glare of the sun, my pets couldn’t see them, and those damn wolves—with their curled talons and narrowed vision, would just tear through the wings of my pets. Or! For the stronger—or at least the more-skillful ones, they’d just drop out of the sky, and the wolves’ talons would just slice in-between my pets’ layered scales, and they’d just tear through them. And then, my damn pets, my dragons, would just start crashing, falling out of the sky… and slamming into one of those giant, magnificent trees of yours. And the tree-leapers, it’d just leap off the falling dragon and onto one of those great pillars of bark, scurrying up them like it wasn’t nothing… Then they’d let out some victorious and mocking howl as they went back to bounded from tree to tree.”
The blue-eyed dragon was laughing hard, and his eyes squinted and sparkled even brighter, like sapphire shards. “Like I said, formidable.”
“Yeah, well, I eventually got them, all of them—even though my pets had to burn it all down—the forest, not the wolves. But those weren’t even the worse. The damn bear-wolves were the worst. That whole ordeal took years—decades even, if I remember correctly. Bear-wolves. You remember the bear-wolves, right?”
“Remind me.”
Again the old man waved his hand dismissively. “Of course you wouldn’t remember. Not that it mattered, but you slept through the whole episode. Bear-wolves, they were giant snow-wolves. Twice the size of lions, they were nearly the perfectly predator. Their fur was white as snow—which turned out to be quite useful—because, you know, they hunted in the snow and lived in the snow and blended in with the snow.” The old man huffed then continued with his story. “Of course, that was what made them such great predators, and it was also what made them so hard to hunt. Those giant… mutts, they’d go out hunting, take out a mammoth white-bear, eat the bear, and be gone by the time the snow was stained. ‘course by then—by the time my pets could catch their scent, the bear-wolves would already be finished eating, and they were already gone. But at the kill site, their scent was still there. The smell was still strong… and it lingered. The bear-wolves, they would roll around on their kill—you know, ‘marking their meal,’ before they fed. And then, when they finished eating, they’d burrow beneath the snow and tunnel back to their lairs. ‘course their scent would die out somewhere between their retreat and the falling snow. But at the kill site—at the kill site, their scent would still be strong as hell. Next thing you know, I got twenty-thirty dragons picking up the bear-wolf’s scent—the same exact bear-wolf, mind you. And then the next thing you know, I got twenty-thirty dragons aimlessly circling a giant, empty snow plain—for days on end. All of them hunting the same damn bear-wolf that’s now hundreds of miles away and gone—and that’s perfectly hidden in the snow itself.”
By now the blue-eyed dragon was howling in laughter and could hardly breathe. “Wha-what’d you do? How’d you finally get them?”
The old man leaned forward with wide eyes. “Get them? That wasn’t even the worst part. This was the worst part. Bear-wolves… did you know that bear-wolves are solidary creatures and can hibernate for two-three years at a time. And some would even hibernate for up to four-to-five years, depending on how bountiful their last feast was. So, as a result, it’d take about four-to-six years to kill just one of the things… to kill one damn bear-wolf.”
The old man’s friend was still howling with laughter and waiving his hands gleefully.
“It’s not funny,” said the old man sternly. “We eventually got them though. It was a stroke of luck was that the bear-wolves would only breed once-a-decade, so I was eventually able to whittle down their numbers. Had they mated like the river-rabbits of old, we’d still be hunting the damn things. Don’t get me wrong. In the end, to get the job done, I had to take a more hands-on approach. So I had my dragons melt whatever snow they could and send the blocks of ice out to sea. Although that presented a different list of problems in itself. While dragons can spit fire and scorch the earth and have very large, very sharp teeth; they were never the most intelligent reptiles ever.
“I had them clear out those ice mountains of old… Well, tried to, at least. Of course, the dragons heard something else, associating ice with the oceans.” The old man paused and shook his head. The whole thing was so stupid, he recalled. “Picture it, a dragon carrying a giant block of ice out to sea… instead of burning it, or melting it, or doing one of thousand other smarter things to get rid of the ice. By the time I realized what they were doing, one-out-of-four of dumb things were already dead, died from exhaustion—carrying blocks of ice, flapping their wings to exhaustion, carrying these giant… ice cubes out to sea, because they thought that that was what I wanted. So dumb. And of course, carrying giant ice cubes out to the sea is ridiculously exhausting, so the dragons would end up wearing themselves out and crashing— crashing into the same block of ice they were carrying. Most ended up killing themselves in the process, in the stupidest way possible. ‘course, it never dawned on the dumb creatures to ask a question or come to me to clarify what their mission was.” The old man shook his head at the frustrating memory before laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. Reminiscing about the old times had lightened both men’s moods. And seeing his sulky friend laughing was enough to make the old man happy as well. “So, yeah… maybe dragons weren’t the best choice, not always. And wolves… God, how I hate wolves. Did you know that there are still tribes of man-wolves and shadow-shifters out there? That was part of the deal, a part of the Wolf’s sacrifice. And don’t mention it to him, but those shadow-shifters… I don’t think I could have ever finished them off.” The old man eyeballed the two tavern mutts that were now lurching around their ankles, apparently taking a liking to his friend. “There are even other, smaller wolves that survived… the watchers-of-men, I think I heard them called, once. This cycle though… this cycle, I got something else in store.” The old man nodded. A self-satisfying, secretive grin came across his lips. “This time won’t be like the last.”
“I should hope not,” sighed his friend, “for your sake.”
The old man chuckled, but just then and as randomly as can be, the old man began thinking about the centurion. And as the thoughts lingered inside the old man’s head, a smile crept across his lips. “Hey.” He reached across the table and playfully shoved at his friend’s armored shoulder. “Give me two of your coins.”
The blue-eyed dragon gave his old friend another sideways look. Seriously? You have coins of your own, he thought. If you like the centurion so much, give him two of your own coins.
“Come on,” urged the old man, nudging his friend again. “Come on. You know you’re not going to use them, and I’m saving mine for a rainy day.” Now pouting, “C’mon, do it. Let me have them.”
“Fine. Wait. Two?”
“Yeah, two. You know, in case he finds a friend. Hey, I need someone to spread my stories around, right? I like to see which ones survive the rigors of time. Just think, one-two-three thousand years from now, someone’s going to be talking about smoke snakes and mountains spitting up dragons. Now, c’mon. Please.”
His friend huffed before twisting his hand around and making two large coins appear in his palm, from out of nowhere.
But as the old man grinned and reached for the coins, the blue-eyed dragon pulled them back. “But there’s a catch. When you finishing pampering the centurion, kill the tavern owner.”
“Yeah, of course,” the old man agreed, reaching greedily for the coins. “Now, c’mon. Give me ‘em.”
“And I’m going to release t
he Dark One. And then I’m going back to sleep. I grow tired of this game, with these… mortals.”
The old man slinked back into his seat and huffed like a child. “The Dark One? Why? You’re going to release him after his… tricks? After he and Lilith made that backroom deal over the flood?”
“I am. Let me guess, you’d kill them?”
The old man huffed again and continued whining. “Why’d you even let them do it, the great flood? We should have just wiped them out, all of them. Start over, start up a new cycle.”
“That was the plan, wasn’t it? But I changed my mind. Before the flood, the mortals were no more than feral animals—certainly not as docile as the previous cycle, but they just needed time to cool off… and the great flood allowed them time to do just that, to cool off.”
The old man huffed, knowing that his friend was right. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Besides, the Dark One has been imprisoned long enough. And in the coming millennium, there are going to be many deaths and many damned souls that will need to be farmed. And who’s going to do it? You? Would you like to take on that role?”
Though the questions sounded rhetorical, the blue-eyed dragon was, nonetheless and all the same, waiting for an answer. Do you want to do it?
“No,” the old man whined.
“I didn’t think so. Just think of his release as… less of a release and more of a condemnation of servitude. We’re early in this cycle, and the Cleansing is far away. There is much to come.” He slid the two large golden coins across the table but kept his hand over them. As his friend went to grab them, he said, “Wait,” and his old friend pulled back his hands. The blue-eyed dragon added, “don’t forget about the tavern owner,” then he finally pulled his hand away. They were large golden coins, larger than the currency that the old man was using. Embroidered on one side, where Nero’s head might have been, was a raised dragonhead that was exquisitely carved from gold.
“I won’t forget.” Giddy that he was finally getting the golden coins he desired so badly, the old man was back to smiling and bouncing around. And still grinning, he slid the golden coins off the table and into his cupped hand and said, “It was the meat, wasn’t it? It tasted… off, slightly off. Didn’t it? Although… truth be told, I barely noticed it at all. It was the rye—the rye in the ale. It was heavy, heavy enough to dull the taste, dull the senses, all of them. But the tavern owner, yeah, consider him dead.”
Looking across the room, the old man spotted the top-heavy barmaid that he liked so much. And she spotted him as well, the generous tipper. And she smiled and waved at him. And the old man returned her smile and nodded back at her. Then he asked his friend, “What about her, the tavern owner’s daughter? Should I kill her too?”
The stranger looked over at the barmaid, watching her as she coughed into her hand—a grizzly cough with blood. She slyly wipe it off on the hidden rag tucked into the side of her apron, frown, smile at a nearby patron, nod, then go off to help another one. The black lung, he knew. She’d have one—two years tops—before she died a slow, painfully death.
The blue-eyed dragon sighed and, just for a moment, he looked sad. Lingering on her, she seemed to have stirred some hidden emotion inside him. And she, sensing his stare, looked back at him and smiled at him—a soft, sorrowful smile—then went back to work.
She was now clearing away some dirty platters that were covered in goat bones and grizzle when she had to choke back another cough, as she tried to hold onto her smile. But as the cough died down so did her smile. She knew what was coming—death, and her eyes turned hopeless. Then she stepped off to help another patron while a different, drunker one pawed at her ass as she passed by him.
“Hey,” said the old man, “the daughter. Did you want me to kill her too?”
His friend shook off the thought and said, “No, that won’t be necessary.” He slid another one of his golden coins across the table. “Save her—no questions, no complaining.”
The old man nodded, without any questions or complaining, and he took the gold coin. “Alright.”
“After all, we’re gods, not monsters.”
“Not yet anyways,” said the old man, grinning again. He hopped out of his seat, patted his friend on the back, and dashed out of the tavern to chase after the centurion.
Prologue Part II: Love is a Battlefield
Three days, give or take, was all the time it took to determine which souls were worthy of paradise and which ones were damned. Upon death—and seemingly by some strange internal device, the human soul was able to judge its own righteousness, its own worthiness. And as the air seeped out of their lungs for the last time, and as the engines of their hearts stopped pumping life through their veins and sputtered to a stop, as their beautiful bodies became no more than lumps of decaying flesh, the human soul became the judge and jury of its own fate.
Through the shadow of death and by reviewing every one of their mortal deeds, their actions, and the intent of each; like a corporate accountant and by using some unknown formula, the human soul began its examination, weighing the good and bad deeds of the person’s life, deciding whether they were worthy of heaven or deserving hell. It didn’t always make sense, and the soul’s judgement of itself did not always coincide with the person’s beliefs or their conscientious understanding of good-and-evil. Still, the human soul was often more right than it was wrong, and almost always, it a better judge than most mortals.
To come to a fair and righteous decision, the soul needed time—time to sift through all the details of a person’s life. Their actions, their feelings, why they did it? Why you stole that $20 from your mom; why you punched Bobby Haritisy in the 5th grade; why you cheated on your wife. And regardless of how eventful a person’s life was or how long they lived, the soul’s judgement took the same amount of time…
Three days, more or less.
East Sussex — October 17, 1066
Three days after the Battle of Hastings
The field was covered with rusted armor, splintered spears, dented shields, and swords—all notched or broken alike. The bodies were too numerous to count but were mixed in with the battered metal and splintered wood, and the corpses painted the scene in a porridge of mud and dark, iron-rich blood.
The two nearby hills were covered in similar debris, but the tree line to the left was not. Instead the tree line was alive… alive, loud, and boisterous. With its branches covered in fattened crows waiting to resume their feast, the tree line erupted in loud cawing as the birds grew more impatient by the second.
Still the crows waited. Sensing the unworldly presence, they dared not return to their feast or interfere with what was happening. Instinctively, they knew that they would have to wait, wait for the reapers to feed and leave before they could return to their plentiful banquet of death.
“No, not that one,” said the Dark One, the man known to some as the devil and (eventually) as Vincent Blackwell to others. He jabbed his finger at an almost ghost-like figure that more shadow than spirit. “Not that one, that one—the shade, the one with the dark aura. Yes, that one.” Wearing a thin suit of black armor without a helmet, he nodded at the reaper to convey correctness. And his reaper, clad in black armor as well, released the glowing aura that he was holding and grabbed onto the one that his master was pointing at. Blackwell threw up his arms, frustrated, ran his armored fingers through his hair, then sighed. “Yes, that one. That’s very good. So you can follow directions.”
Just then, he did a double take, not believing what he was seeing. The glowing, ghost-like figure that he just saved was stepping over to him, like he was a normal person. Puzzled, it was looked around at the field of corpses and the armored men that were dragging some of them to hell. Looking at Blackwell and as glib as he could be, he said, “Thank you. Did we win?” He sounded more English than French, but Blackwell couldn’t tell for sure. All languages sounded the same to him, and he understood them all alike and just the same.
“Did you wi
n?” Blackwell said sourly, echoing the spirit’s question. He scanned the massacre of bodies littering the ground beneath his feet and thought: “yes, this is what victory looks like,” but didn’t say it. Instead he said, “Yes, you won, most certainly. You fought very courageous and were quite heroic, and your efforts were instrumental to your side’s victory.” All lies, most likely lies. He added, “You did well… For god and glory, and all that.” And Blackwell went back to looking over the battlefield.
“Sir?” the spirit asked, tugging on Blackwell’s arm, trying to get his attention again. “Sir, are you the grim reaper? Are we going to heaven? Are those your ferry men? No… wait. You’re not taking me to hell, are you? Are you? Wait, is there even a…”
Still scanning the field, this time looking for something different, Blackwell ignored the nagging spirit but nodded towards a well-lit figure. Clad in white armor with a thin golden aura, it was an angel. ”Hey!” he called out, gesturing for it to come nearer. “Hey! This is one of yours. Come, come now—and be quick about it. You need to claim him.” Then, low and to himself, he said, “Before I start sorting through the loop-holes and devising a more interesting, painful fate for him—one that doesn’t involve so many stupid questions.”
The angel nodded to him and walked past Blackwell, shooting him a hard glare of contempt as he did so. Then the angel did as he was instructed. Putting his hand on the curious soul’s shoulder, he dragged the spirit a few feet away from Blackwell and through some more corpses, and then both the angel and soul began dissolving into sprinklers of golden glitter that were slowly vanishing, stretching up and into the heavens.
“Hey,” said Blackwell, addressing the annoying spirit that was just bugging him. “Don’t let him fool you. The angel. He has all the answers to all your heart’s desires. He is an oasis of wisdom. Part of his job is to quench your thirst for knowledge.” And Blackwell earned another contemptuous look from the now-fading angel.
The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones) Page 4