The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones)

by M. H. Hawkins

  Finally on the ground again, Daikon gasped for air while Lilly’s venom sizzled on his wounded neck. Remaining on one knee while he watched Lilly stubble backwards in shock—surprised that he stabbed her, more surprised that it hurt.

  “You stabbed me,” she said incredulously. “You stabbed me with a dagger.” Touching her wound, she saw blood. I’m bleeding, she thought, panicking. Why am I bleeding? Why isn’t it healing? I should be healing—it should already healed by now.

  “Sorry, but it was necessary.” Daikon wiped away the venom that was seeping out of the puncture wounds on his. Putting his hand to his lips, he sucked and spit the venom off of it. “There are some benefits of becoming a… half-breed, as you so eloquently called it. Back at the stone tower, when you took my blood and… Think of it as an acquired immunity, a vaccination, of sorts. And now… Now your poison doesn’t pack quite the punch that it used to.”

  “You stabbed me and…” Lilly knocked over a tower of books before collapsing into a wall, still pressing against the stab wound in her stomach that was still leaking red onto her once snow-white dress and through her white-gloved fingers. “I’m dying.”

  “No,” said Daekon, “not yet.” He looked at his blood-covered dagger. Its silver edge gleamed through the red coat of blood while the silver blade slowly absorbed the brilliant red it was dipped in. “No, you’re not dying. This dagger, this blade… it was a reaper blade, once. And I—it—needed your blood, the blood of the gods. That’s it.”

  Crumbled against the wall amidst Patterson’s scattered books, Lilly shook her head then looked at her bare feet. Wiggling her toes, she said, “Shoes, you asked me about shoes. They’re overrated, and I couldn’t find a pair that I liked… are you going to kill me?”

  “Kill you? I mean, it would be a fitting end, don’t you think?” Daikon brushed off his trench coat and ran his hand over the chest of it, to smooth out the wrinkles. “You killed me—tried to kill me, took my stone tower, and now I kill you. Seems fair.”

  Lilly looked down at her bleeding stomach, still shocked that it hadn’t healed and still hurt, actually hurt. “Yeah, that was bit overkill. I was angry, okay?”

  Daikon shrugged then sheathed his dagger before going over to Lilly and taking a knee next to her. Maybe he should have hated her, maybe he should have killed her, but he didn’t. Lilly’s life had always been filled with pain. Since the beginning of time, she had been the scapegoat for every one of mankind’s failures, and she was the target of any and all women’s scorn. Demon, banshee, succubus… whore; they called her. And as time went on, they found worse things to call her, terrible, soul-sucking things.

  Then, as if it were some curse from the gods themselves, she was made to suffer further. She became the Queen of Sorrows, the embodiment of the pain caused from any and all transgressions against womankind; from the beginning, throughout, and until the end of time.

  It was as if she was Pandora herself, given a box that contained the horrors of the world and told not to open it, then getting blamed for opening it when something bad happens in the world. Although, unlike Pandora, it was like Lilly didn’t open the box at all and instead had swallowed its contents, taking on the burden for all that’s wrong in the world by herself. As Lilly endured the horrors of the world, who could really blame her for lashing out every once in a while.

  Daikon sighed and unsheathed his dagger. He sliced his hand and made a fist, letting his blood drip down onto Lilly’s wound. “This will help. Just give it a little time.”

  Lilly grabbed on to his hand, gave it a sympathetic squeeze, then pulled it onto her wounded stomach. She sighed then confessed, “I killed the Wolf, Fenrir. He… he quit. He gave up.”

  Momentarily surprised, Daikon leaned his head away in shock. Then, thinking about it, he relaxed and returned to his original position. “Fenrir always looked too much to the past; wishing, hoping, regretting that he could fix what was done. His successor, Nisha, she’s… I like her.”

  “Me too,” Lilly agreed. “I liked Fenrir too, but he… he gave up. He quit.”

  “Lilly, why are you telling me this?”

  “Because, Azazel. He had the same look in his eyes as Fenrir did. He’s breaking. You… her (Mea), you have to help him. You have to give him a reason to keep fighting, to keep living. That is, if you want to.”

  Daikon nodded. “And you?”

  “Me? Give up? Never.” Lilly paused then japed, “You’ll have to kill me first.” As she chuckled, the stab wound in her stomach sent bolts of pain through her belly and into her back.

  Daikon sighed then squeezed his fist harder, squeezing more blood into her wound, and Lilly squeezed onto his fist.

  After a lingering look between the two, he let go of Lilly’s hand and said, “Keep pressure on it.” Then looking around and finding one of Patterson’s old t-shirt lying around, he grabbed it and tore it into strips. Wrapping up Lilly’s slashed forearm, he said, “Take it easy. It’ll probably take you a few days to get back up to speed… I’m guessing.”

  After another lingering look, Lilly asked, “Why?” though asking about her current situation. She was asking about Mea. She was everything to Blackwell, and now, apparently, she was everything to Daikon as well. He had done so much for her; negotiating during the great flood (to save the mortals, for Mea), sacrificing his stone tower, giving up his empire, even sacrificing himself and becoming this… all for her, for Mea. “Why her?” she asked, stopping short of asking, why not me?

  Daikon did not have a good answer and instead said, “Because the gods are cruel.” He dabbed at his wounded neck again, this time with his thumb. Sucking the venom from the side of it, like it was an errant dab of cake frosting, he said, “You’re getting stronger. I mean, I’m still immune to it, mostly immune, but your venom’s getting stronger—at least stronger than last time.”

  “And you?”

  “I was just born—reborn—five days ago. I’m getting stronger as well.” They lingered in silence for a moment before Daikon said, “Help us.”

  Lilly turned away from him. “No.” After a long pause, she almost sounded like she was going to change her mind. “Do you think you can really win?”

  “We’ll see.”

  She laughed weakly. “You can’t. You are a fool to think so. Vandriel, the Dragon… they are forces of nature; to you, to me, to the rest of us. They… their sole purpose is to destroy the world, to start over.” Lilly huffed. “I mean, we might as well not even be here at all.”

  “Then help us. Help us stop it.”

  Lilly laughed again before her wound shot pain shooting through her side and turned her laughter to wincing, and Daikon’s hand returned to her stomach and hers atop his. She sighed. “Help you? No, I will not help you. If there’s one good thing about all this, the Cleansing, the end of the world, the end of all this, this age… it’s that mankind will suffer. They’ll finally pay for their sins. They’ll die, they’ll burn.” She paused, took a deep breathe, and then said, “And I would die a thousand deaths to see that,” and then she turned away to hide her sadness and the tears glistening in her eyes.

  “Maybe,” Daekon said, pulling his hand away from Lilly’s wound. “Maybe after this world ends… the next one will be better.”

  Lilly couldn’t help but to chuckle, shaking her head as she did so. She turned back toward Daekon. “Maybe. Another world, another time… maybe the next one will be better.” As their eyes met, neither one was sure if they were talking about the world or themselves. Regardless, it didn’t matter. It was a beautiful lie… nonetheless and all the same.

  Daekon kissed Lilly’s cheek. He brushed aside the mop of golden-blond hair scattered across her forehead then kissed it as well. He said, “Be safe, Lilly,” then stood up.

  Daikon began walking away, ready to step into the shadows, but he stopped when he saw Patterson’s wall. Once covered in newspaper clippings, pictures, articles, and streams of brightly colored yarn and thumbtacks, it was now most
ly bare. Daekon’s melee with the banshees had knocked away almost all of the motley, makeshift wallpaper and revealed what was beneath it.

  On the cream colored drywall was a large, charcoal shaded picture. A white mask shaded with charcoal pen. It was a Japanese Oni (demon) mask. Short, perfectly-shaded horns leaked out of its forehead. The mouth was a well-pronounced, wide, sideways crescent with large fangs dangling from its concaved roof. The eyes were hollowed tunnels.

  Covering the entire wall, the mask was enormous and seemed to be staring back at Daekon as he looked it over. While it was just a sketch of black charcoal on drywall, the mask seemed to be coming towards him, like a tentacle lashing out at him from some abstract cartoon.

  Behind the mask were more masks, a cascade of Japanese Oni masks, demon masks, all stacked atop each other with the large one on top. To the left and behind the mountain of masks, an ocean of violent waves trashed wildly against stone cliff. On the right side of the wall, flames exploded behind the cascading masks like they were coming from some untamed wildfire. The signature at the bottom of the landscape was large and consisted of only one word, Somerset.

  CH 20: Demons in the Desert

  In the desert, like all places, the sun rose and fell, and the moon returned as night fell. In the span of a day, Isaiah had faced death and lived, and he was now resting with and cherishing his family with all his heart and with the seven gold coins gifted to him.

  Malick on the other hand had a stranger role to play, as the vessel for the same malevolent god. While he didn’t really have a choice, whatever was left of Malick remained as no more than a voice in the head of his one-time body. The man known as Malick, as he was, was now nothing more than Vandriel’s vessel. Who he was, the part of his soul that survived, was now no more than entertainment for the Lord of Desolation.

  Inches above the sand and crusted dirt, in his newly acquired body with his newly acquired name, Malick glided across the quiet desert and left it undisturbed. Though he was as quiet as the wind, the desert still stirred with muted life and was not completely void of excitement, nor was it completely desolate. Small groups of nomads and scouts— some goat herders like Isaiah, some lookouts for Armand’s romanticized revolutionaries—were sporadically scattered behind the desert’s berms of built-up sand and throughout the nearby mountain ranges. Though for diverging reasons, both sets of men were mindful and keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings.

  Despite this and their searching gazes, most did not see Malick. Appearing more like a compressed sandstorm, he had veiled himself in darkness and splattering sand. Yet the veil did not fully conceal him, and some spectators still ended up seeing more than they should have. Something malicious, something they dared not speak of, something too unbelievable to speak of. Within the sandstorm, two giant bull horns bounced angrily, gleaming rays of gold that were brighter and more brilliant than they should have been. Beneath them, a beast the size of a house galloped atop legs the size of tree trunks. Its fangs were the size of fence pickets and hung down from its grizzled red and black snout. The creature’s blood-red eyes glowed as well, leaving crimson trails of dust behind it as it pushed forward.

  Though they were few, those that saw chalked up the sight to the dark desert and their vivid imagination, and they kept it to quietly to themselves while bottling up the chilling fear that had accompanied the charging bull they saw that still sent chills through them anytime they thought of it.

  Soon enough the sandstorm ended, and Malick he came upon a primitive town. Stopping near the edge of it, he grinned slyly before stepping into the town limits. It was certainly primitive. The houses were made of mud bricks and wooden studs that were decades old and dried and worn-down. Inside the windows of their huts, inside the ones that were lit, old gas lamps hung from hooks and swayed when the wind blew. And if it weren’t for the rusted, beat-up trucks parked near the edge of town, all in a straight line, the village would have looked like something from the 1900’s.

  “Well,” Malick said to himself. “I guess this will do, for now.” The first Malick, the one that was human, still resided inside his old body, and his voice crept into Malick’s thoughts. For what? it asked. “Well,” Malick said aloud and to the voice inside him, “Do you remember Sodom and Gomorrah?” Oblivion? “Yes, exactly. Well, this is kinda like that,” Malick answered himself as he casually walked deeper into the town, just as casual as could be. “This… this town… is wicked, so wicked. A wicked town full of wicked people.” Malick said grinning again, slyly and sneaky.

  All of them? asked Malick’s inner voice. “Eh,” he whimpered. “Most, more or less,” then he kept walking through the town. “It won’t be the first town I wiped off the map. Easter Island. Crete, roughly 3,000 years ago. Then there was Olmec, Mexico. That was a thousand years later, after Crete. Moche, Peru… Roanoke… Cahokia, Illinois… you have no idea what I’m talking about do you?” No, what do you mean? “Well… just wait. You’ll see in a minute.

  Just as Malick finished speaking, he turned his head to see a man sleeping in a chair. Calmly as can be, his chair was leaning against the wall in a side alley as the man slept. Why kill the town? Why kill all the people. “Why?” Malick said, smiling, “to feed.” Malick let out a quick whistle then grinned. “Watch.”

  The shadow behind the sleeping man slinked forward, reaching out of the clay-bricked wall his chair was resting again. Another shadow did the same. Slowly more did as well until he was swarmed by a flurry of shadowed limps. As slow as they appeared, they attacked twice as fast and came down on the sleeping man. He flailed as the shadows jerked him out of his chair and slapped him to the ground, and he had just enough time to let out a half-scream before more hands latched on to him and pulled him into the earth.

  “You see.” Malick said, calming his inner voice. He turned his attention to a second-story window in another clay-bricked house. A man appeared in the window. With a thick black beard, the man leaned out the window with a lamp dangling in his hand, looking for the source of the half-scream he had heard. Halfway out the window, his head swiveled back and forth as he curiously looking out on his quiet mountain town. Sucked back into the window, he too was consumed by the shadows. His lamp offered no relief and was instead tumbling out of the window flicking light on its owner and the shadows pouncing on him. The lamp toddled over a small tent below the window then burst on the hard, cracked dirt; splattering a fiery mess as it shattered.

  From another building, Malick heard a scream before the shadows silenced the screamer. You said, to feed, his inner voice whispered to him. To feed whom? your… shadow whisperers? “Them? No. They are the ones taking them, but they do not need to feed, they’re angels… they were angels, and they do not need to feed, at least not on flesh. They feed on the darkness of men’s souls.” Oh. “Yes. No, these people… These people will feed my… pets, my swarm.” Swarm? “Yes, my swarm, my agents of desolation. You see… the last cycle, the last age, was the age of beasts. So, my swarm had to be able to kill beasts, effectively, and efficiently. A different cycle—five, ten, fifteen cycles ago. I don’t know. It was a long time ago—but that one was ruled by sky-creatures. So, that time, my swarm had to be able to kill sky-creatures… effectively and efficiently. So… Do you see what I’m getting at?” Yes, I thinks so. So what’s this… cycle, ruled by? “This one? This is the age of men, the age of wonders, the age of miracles… of metal.” He looked back at the line of beat-up pickup trucks. “Men drive steel chariots that feed on fossilize creatures of past worlds.” Gasoline. “The live in towers made of rock and steel. Giant metal sea creatures roam the world and spit fire at their enemies. Other sea creatures have giant flat head and spit out metal dragons commanded by men—who spit fire from their wings. The common man can use a small metal box to pull stories from the heavens themselves. Yes, my friend, this is the age of miracles… so many miracles.” And how do you destroy a miracle? “How do you destroy a miracle? by showing them horror, by devouring their mira
cles; and my swarm will devour them all.”

  Malick yawned and covered his mouth. “Ah,” he moaned, “it’s so late, such a long night. I’m so tired.” Bang! The sound brought him back to alertness, and he snapped his head to the side, towards the banging sound of a door flapping against its poorly measured doorframe. The muffled sounds of slamming furniture and broken glass followed, and the crying and yelling came next, all echoing out of the chaotic house into the otherwise quiet street.

  A woman squeezing a wool blanket-covered bundle to her chest came next. Bursting out the swinging door and stumbling out onto the dirt street. Slamming her foot into a rock, the woman went down and her knee slammed against the ground as she did her best to protect her blanket-covered bundle. Stumbling to her feet and wailing, the woman limped forward. Frantically looking around and limping, she finally saw Malick and straightened her path. Hobbling forward the best hat she could, she still dipped each time she put any weight on her busted knee. She was still hollering for help as she clung to her blanket-wrapped bundle.

  Malick heard another cry—a shrill, higher-pitched one—come from the woman’s bundle, and he knew what was in it and why she was so protective of it. It was a baby.

  Finally reach Malick, she crumbed at his feet, and now both the woman and her baby were wailing loudly. She continued pleading for help in a dialect of Middle Eastern dissent. Because Vandriel inherently understood them all, plain as day, he never took the time to learn their origins or any of their differences.

  Still emotionless, he looked down at the woman, studying her inquisitively like she was a painting and not a person. Her eyes were puffy, and her right cheek was smeared with red paint. Beneath her nose was a darker shade, chunky, and it was smeared across her other cheek, just below her purpled eye and above her puffed up lip. A red handprint was on the blanketed bundle in her arms, and another one was wrapped around the sleeve of her robe. “Help me,” she begged. “Please, please help me. He’s going to kill me. He said he’s going to kill me, and I think he really means it this time. Oh, god. Please help us. Help me—please—you have to help us—please. Please, I have a baby.”