The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones)

by M. H. Hawkins

  Trevor’s eyes drifted behind Azazel, towards the dark alley behind him. It was filled with bouncing emerald lights and emerald weapons that were growing brighter and closer by the second. Charging outcasts. Azazel didn’t even see it coming.

  Trevor grinned at his impending victory. “Like I said, Azazel, gods are dropping like flies.”

  “That they are,” someone said, agreeing with Trevor. The voice came from behind an overgrown tree in the neighbor’s lawn. “I, myself, am a testament to that.”

  The back-alley, backstabbing outcasts were now a step away from Azazel. Their weapons were even closer but… a flurry of sparks followed the voice coming from behind the tree. Flashing past Azazel, they exploded into the would-be attackers, knocking them off their feet and flailing over themselves.

  All eyes shifted over to the pile of squirming outcasts as they toppled into and onto each other, their emerald weapons falling from their rattled hands and scattering around the pile. The injured outcasts moaned and gingerly grabbed at their sparkling injuries. Embedded in their shoulders and stomachs were the sparks that hit them—crescent-shaped, silver-edged blades, the same ones that blindsided and slammed into them—like an illegal crackback—and sent them toppling into each other. The blades were half-buried in the attackers and still sparkling. The failed attackers started tugging at the blades stuck in them. But as the outcasts yanked on the blades, they seemed to rip into their flesh even more, like a barbed spear would. Strangely enough, all of them were still alive. Injured but alive.

  All eyes turned to the tree, where the voice came from. They soon saw a flapping trench coat and a long katana hanging off the man’s hip. “Quite a party you got going here,” he said. He held out his right hand and started to glow, the tips of his finger started to flicker then began sparkling like the crescent blades. He glanced at the pile of outcasts and said, “I’ll take those back, I guess. Then he yanked his hand behind him, and the sparkling blades tore themselves out of the injured outcasts and came whipping back towards the nameless man. Exploding as they cross his path, the blades exploded around him, creating a halo of exploding fireworks around him then disappeared. Backstabbers go first, the nameless man thought then smiled.

  Azazel gave him a puzzled look, trying to put the pieces together. For a moment the man looked like his old friend, Vincent Blackwell, the God of Death, the Dark One. But when the shadows shifted, he looked eerily like the reaper that stabbed him so long ago. And when the shadows shifted again, the face of the nameless man shifted again and returned to normal. Azazel could only mutter, “You.”

  The nameless man walked up to Azazel. Glancing back at the ambushers, he slid his hand over the hilt of his katana, watching as they scrambled on the ground lurching for their weapons. Only when they began retreating into the dark alley they’d came from did the nameless man relax and remove his hand from his hilt.

  Azazel wasn’t alone in his confusion, and the nameless man was trying to put together his own puzzle. He wagged a finger at Azazel—thinking, trying to remember the almost-familiar face. I know him—I think. He’s… a friend, an adversary? Yes, at one time. He was the God of the Fallen, Defender of the Heavens, the Lord of Eagles, Mea’s brother… Got it! The man smiled and exclaimed, “Azazel.”

  With surprise and shock, Azazel turned towards him. “You?”

  “Me,” the nameless man said and shrugged.

  “And…” Azazel gripped his axes tightly and angrily. He was a paradox of emotion, both glad that his friend was alive and also hateful for being imprisoning—and also ready to kill the reaper, Raven, who stabbed him and who deserved to die, for so many reasons.

  “Yes,” said the nameless man. “I am both or them, your old friend Vincent Blackwell—the Dark One—and also the reaper that stabbed you (in the back). But… to be fair, you were trying to kill Mea at the time.

  “Both?”

  “Yes, both. Neither one completely but parts of each, yet… someone entirely different as well.” Further sensing Azazel’s conflicting emotions, the nameless man rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, I know, I know. I’m the same reaper that stabbed you, and I’m also your old friend who also imprisoned you… and there’s a part of you that wants to kill me—really badly. And that, to be completely honest, I can’t even blame you for that. I mean, if the shoe was on the other foot, I’d probably want to kill me too. But, regardless…” He sighed and opened his arms. “Here I am.”

  The nameless man glanced at the army of outcasts, sighed, then looked away. He turned and looked over at Nisha and her wolves. He gave her a nod and said, “I take it that you’re the new Wolf? Fenrir didn’t make it, huh?” There was no response. The nameless man rolled his eyes then said, “So I take it that you’re the strong and silent type. Right? No… Just silent for now? Yeah… No… Not much of a talker?”

  Nisha glared at him and gritted her teeth. Then she finally said something. “Yeah, not much of a talker, not at the moment.”

  The nameless man shrugged it off and looked at Azazel who was still in shock. “I see you got your hands full.”

  Azazel dropped his axes, and the blades cut into the sidewalk, splitting it and wedged their blades in the concrete as the axe handles stuck upright like short beams of black-steel. Azazel grabbed the nameless man’s shoulders, still in disbelief. “You… I thought Lilly killed you but… It worked. It really worked.”

  Knowing that Azazel was talking about Blackwell (him, at one time), the nameless man nodded and smiled somberly. “Blood and power, right? I used the reaper’s body, his reaper blade, and… This.” He flashed a large golden coin, one of Lilly’s. He spun it around his hand, like a magician would do, and the coin danced across two knuckles before vanished somewhere between his twisting fingers. “It’s still not perfect. My memories are still hazy and… I’m still not fully awakened—though I’m not really a god anymore, am I? And I’m still weak from the, ah… change.” He shrugged. “I mean, I don’t even have a name yet but…” He shook his head and shook away the errant thoughts. “That can wait. Right now, it, ah… it seems like you have bigger issues. The electricity’s out for miles, the storm clouds are clumped up and dangling above us, and… oh yeah, the street’s filled with fallen angels and wolves. Yeah, seems like you’re having quite the party.”

  “Yeah, a party.” Azazel said, half-chuckling. “A surprise party.”

  “It would seem so.” The man scanned over the ranks of the fallen angels. Trevor’s bravado had vanished, washed away with his failed ambush, and he was now whispering something to his front ranks and nodding to the side, all the while darting looks at Azazel and his mystery friend. The nameless man looked into the crowd and saw something, someone that made him sad, and he had to turn away. “Yes, this is quite the dilemma.”

  Azazel nodded, and the seriousness of the situation returned to him. He let out a labored sigh, and direness of it all was weighing on him. They were surrounded by enemies, and Trevor was right, gods were dropping like flies. Azazel huffed. “We’re going to die.”

  “Probably,” the nameless man said, calmer than he should’ve been. “I mean, they do have the numbers after all. And yes, we will most likely die.” Then he punched Azazel in the shoulder. But you don’t need to be a bitch about it.” He grinned and said, “Here, how ‘bout you take care of those, ah… rebellious angels of yours, and I’ll take the wolves?”

  “Yeah.”

  The nameless man took a step then turned back to Azazel. “Hey, you know… You know, ah… it doesn’t feel so good, does it? being alone, on the receiving end of a thousand swords.” Then he walked away.

  Azazel huffed, knowing what he was talking about—when Azazel attacked Mea with three hundred of his outcasts, before she came in to her powers, before he told Mea that he was her brother.

  There wasn’t really time to mull over his mistakes. Azazel pried loose his axes from concrete sidewalk and stepped back over to Trevor.

  CH 12: Other Side of the Streetr />
  As the nameless man went over to Nisha, he unsheathed his katana, gave it a twirl, then let rest lazily on his shoulder.

  “I guess the Wolf didn’t make it, did he?”

  As the words left his lips, a burst of light flashed in front of him, and Nisha’s dagger went hilt-deep into the rigged wood of a telephone pole. “No, he didn’t make it.”

  The nameless man felt something wet dripping down his cheek. He dabbed at it, and looking at his fingers, he finally realizing that it was blood. “Huh… Nice shot.”

  Nisha’s armada of wolves were still standing and snarling at him. No, it really doesn’t, he thought, thinking about what he told Azazel—No, it most definitely does not feel good to stand alone against a sea of enemies. The wolves took a step forward, and he readied his blade.

  They were about to take another step, but a single word halted them. Nisha held up an open palm. “Hold!” she hollered. Then, as quick as their impending attack would have been, the wolves stopped snarling, licked their chops, and obediently sat down. Their eyes flashed azure-blue then immediately dimmed to their normal, natural color. Gods’ blood, he knew.

  “What is your name?” Nisha asked. As she waited for an answer, Nisha attached the two halves of her glaive then twirled it around her like a razor-edged baton, letting its blades spin around her like wild lawnmower blades.

  “My name?” he asked, dabbing at the bloody slash painted across his cheek. It’s red, he thought, shocked at the sight of it. It’s red, not the black sludge that it used to be. Instead it was bright red and looked normal, almost human. Though it was the entirely wrong place and wrong time for it to happen, it was finally sinking in that he was a different person.

  Another poorly timed event followed. Memories flashed in front of his eyes and overwhelmed by his reality. Starting up like a clip-show of his past, it ramped up into something made up of all the horribly violent clips from a thousand war movies. Gunfire rattled through his eardrums. The jungle. It was hot and humid. He was walking through a thick, rainy jungle, and dark-green elephant ears slapped against his face and splashed basins of rain against him; soaking him, even more so, in rain water while more rolled off his saturated uniform and down his chest. The rain was warm and wet, but the humidity and heat of the jungled sapped his energy to the point of sleepiness until handfuls of hand slapped his face and the hot, dry air burned its way through his lungs. The desert. Sand grinded against his sweaty, boot-strangled feet as he marched. He wiggled his toes around for a moment of relief, but the sand only found a way to creep further between his toes and enhanced his discomfort. The sling on his shoulder was slipping off, and he yanked it back onto his fatigued shoulder. “C’mon, Jones! Pick it up. Quit falling back—the same goes for all of you.” The voice was his sergeant’s. So was the hand that shoved him forward. Stumbling forward, his rifle banged against his back before it went back to grinding into his shoulder and jabbed him with each step he took. Each step he took kicked up buckets of sand and made each step twice as draining. His sloshing steps became firmer, pounding against the balls of his feet. A concrete wasteland, a bombed-out city. Bombs exploded and shook the ground. A gray dust cloud came barreling down the street. He dove behind a busted concrete wall, by the skin of his teeth, while rubble shaved off the skin of his knees and arm. “Take cover!” someone yelled, too late. His ears were still ringing from the blast, and the one after it, when he turned two soldiers mouthing drowned out words to him. It was too late for them, and another gray cloud of dust and debris came crashing in and swallowed up the two soldiers. Another explosion sent the earth tumbling again, harder and closer than the last one, and like the two soldiers before him, a heavy gray cloud swallowed him up as well.

  The smoke was gone, and he heard a gaggle of yelling about God, glory, and ‘til the last man. He looked down and saw chainmail. The sword in his hand was too big, heavy, and clunky. Looking out, he saw fields of invaders with blue banners flying. “Fire!” He was standing atop the castle wall, and now was ducking. The catapult launched, and a giant stone rocketed over his head. Another one was shooting through the air, this one coming from outside the castle. It crashed through the archaically mortared stone blocks that made up the castle wall, right below him, and sent him tumbling beneath the broken bricks. It was gone, and the smell of powdered stone was replaced by the sweet-smelling, oaky scent of gunpowder. He was suddenly holding a musket. “Fire!” a man yelled, his voice crisp and distinguished. A hundred flashes followed, and the sound of a thousand exploding crackerjacks rattled his eardrums. The shots sprayed a formation of men in red coats, and the first rank fell. From behind a tree, he finally fired himself, and the flash and smoke of his musket blew back into his eyes and stung them. “Fire! Someone else yelled, from further away, and something bit his shoulder and sent him spinning around. “Fire!” yelled someone else, from a different group of red coats, and they lit up in a mask of flashes and smoke. He was bit five more times, all at once, and then collapsed to the ground, like the red-coated men had done.

  Whimpering on the ground, he grabbed at his painful, leaking wounds. A stampede of motley dressed colonists came in like a freight train, charging and trampling over him. Blinking, behind the blackness of his eyelids, he didn’t know how much time had passed, but the sun was lower than it was before. A man was standing over him. A red coat. The man in the red coat scratched his sharp chin then grinned until his lips stretched into a big yellow-teethed smile. Then he jabbed a bayonet into the nameless man’s chest. He gasped until he was again standing and uninjured.

  Confused, he looked around and down again. His hands were covered in steel. Gauntlets. His motley colonial attire was replaced by a armor, the color of silver and polished. A red cross was over his left breast, where his heart was. A wall of horses thundered towards him and plowed over him.

  The sound of stomping hooves became the drumming of helicopter blades. The thumping filled his ears. The sun blinded him until, through squinted eyes, he saw the flock of helicopters hanging above him. Their spinning blades kicked up a fierce windstorm of dust and debris, and he could barely see the green uniforms charging up a hill. Following the herd, he charged up the hill with his platoon until machinegun fire rang out and everyone hit the ground. On his belly, a man crawled past him. He stopped next to the man and said, “C’mon, Jimmy. We got to clear the area before the Huey’s (UH-1A helicopters) get back with another drop.” Then he went back to crawling up the hill. Jimmy followed until a mortar round exploded near him and sent chunks of dirt flying until…

  The air became calm and cool. The sky was suddenly gray along with everything else. A bombed-out city that was half-destroyed. A man in a patchy camouflaged uniform bumped into him and ran past him. More men ran past him, shouting at some faceless enemy. Gunshots rattled from across the street and peppered the gray-bricked wall behind him. “Get down! Get down!” he heard, but it was too late. A flurry of bullets bit into his chest. He gasped, trying to breathe, but instead of air, his breaths were wet. His lungs were already drowning. Knowing it was blood, it suddenly tasted like water as he coughed it up.

  Coughing painfully, his lungs burnt from the liquid as they attempted to squeeze out whatever liquid was in them. On all fours, he grabbed at the ground and only found handfuls of wet sand. More men ran past him, splashing him as they did so. Coughing again, he heaved whatever water was inside him onto the splashing waves. Wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, he could taste the gritty salt water on his lips. More bombs exploded and shook the beach and showered him with exploding sand. When he raised his head again, he saw more green men running past. He finally got to his feet and joined the others, again charging forward with the other soldiers.

  The killing came next, all in violent flashes, all with him as the killer. With a fist full of gray cotton, a knife was in his other hand… then it disappeared into the chest of a plump gray uniform.

  A flash of light turned him into someone else. His enemy was sl
ick and shirtless. With both men fighting for their lives, he grabbed his enemy’s hair and slammed his face into a broken Greek pillar.

  Another flash of light. Bouncing atop a horse, an arrow bit into side and snaked itself between two of his ribs. Another arrow hit his horse and sent the animal rearing, and he was tossed from his horse and into a mud pit. Scrambling onto his feet, a gray metal man was swinging an axe at him, but his oversized sword crunched through the metal man’s belly before the axe came crashing down. Then, slamming down his blade, it carved into the back of someone’s dented armor, getting stuck. Trying to wedge his sword free, a hammer slammed into his heart and threw him backwards.

  Another flash of light. Barefooted, he scrambled over the ground, towards a broken, poorly-made spear. Reaching it just in time, he rolled onto his back and pushed the spear upwards, into the naked brown chest that was hairless and covered in scars. His attacker dropped his primitive hatch. With a haunting look of surprise, his attacker fell on top of him. He could feel the broken spear slide through his attacker until it exited the man’s ink-stained back.

  The flashbacks continued, and the nameless man was now panting and sweating frantically, consumed with panic and anxiety. While the flashbacks were relentless, the nameless man succeeded in carving out a piece of his consciousness, and with it, he was able to reflect on the flashbacks, memories. Putting the pieces together, he realized that the flashbacks were. They were moments from Raven’s life—his past lives, from when he was still a human and before he became a reaper. How many? he wondered. How many times has he—I—been reincarnated? How many wars had he fought in? With so many past lives, and so many wars, how many? he wondered. How many people have I killed?