And then it was gone. In its place was a deep ravine, and then a mountain. A river of flame flowed beneath Michael’s feet, and he felt a moment’s shock when he realized he wasn’t being incinerated by the heat he suddenly felt. A river of thick, black water followed soon after, and then another river that seemed more white mist than actual water.
Michael realized he had just seen the Dena-Fol, the Dena-Kan, and the Dena-Tel, the three rivers of Hell: Fury, Pain, and Despair.
A moment later, the walls of some massive city sprang up in the midst of those already a part of the Barrier, and Michael knew he was seeing Dis, the only known city in Hell. He saw hordes of demons and crowds of damned souls who still had their original, mortal appearance. The damned were toiling under the watchful eye of the demons, hauling what looked to be metallic ore from a the black entrance of a deep mine. Then they, too, disappeared and were replaced by another endless plain.
The overlapping landscape passed by more quickly, and Michael could no longer identify the individual land features before they were replaced by another, and then another. He saw another stretch of each of the three rivers, and then suddenly it was over. No more images appeared to mar the scene, and he was left staring at a courtyard filled only with mortals.
All the demons and damned souls who had been fighting a timeless moment before were now gone with no trace left behind. The humans and demi-humans left were all staring about in terrified bewilderment. The noon sun broke through the winter clouds, bringing light if not warmth to the scene below.
They were still alive. There was no one left to fight.
Impossibly, it seemed as though they might have won. Certainly, there did not seem to be any indication that Hell was still in alignment with their world, and the lack of demons hinted that they’d all been swept away with the passing of the immortal plane.
But a gut feeling of discomfiture gnawed at Michael’s heart, and he knew that instead of something having miraculously saved them, something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Interlude
Only eternity is permanent, and that has yet to be proven.
- Violet Paladin Timothy Weatherstone,
“Time: Fact or Theory?” (70 AM)
- 1 -
In some ways, many were considering it a victory. No one seemed to know the reasons why they had been spared, why Hell had not manifested itself on their world and delivered them into the hands of anguish and torment, but they viewed it as a good sign and so celebrated their survival.
It was a pyrrhic victory at best. The brief, sweet taste of success turned to ashes in the mouths of the survivors, who realized the terrible cost the battle had taken upon them. Thousands upon thousands lay dead, their souls gone on to soar in Heaven or be scoured in Hell. The city was a shambles: between the rampaging demons, the inevitable looters, and other random destruction, there was no quarter of the city that had gone unscathed. Too many soldiers returned to their homes to find families slaughtered in their beds, victims of the tunneling demons. Too many of those who survived in the city would never have their loved ones return to them from the Barrier.
The paladins of the Prism returned to their chapterhouse and took stock of their own terrible losses. More than half of the paladins were still on the walls of the Barrier or in the courtyards below, standing the silent vigil of the dead. With their losses, and the original losses of the misbegotten paladin excursion into Hell in the months before the assault, the Prismatic Order was down to less than a third of its numbers of a year before. The devastation of the Order was a terrible blow to the holy warriors, who nevertheless took the fate of their comrades in stride. They had all fallen for a cause, to protect the world, and for a time it seemed their deaths might have meant something.
But for a select group, whose loss was more bitter than that of their brethren, they soon learned the truth of their struggle.
- 2 -
The news of Trebor’s death hit Garnet and the other members of Shadow Company like a lead weight dropped into their souls. There were no platitudes of “He died well.” No one suggested he had “moved on to a better place.” Trebor’s friends and kin mourned his loss with a bitter taste; he had finally held his dream in his hands, and died with it still fresh upon his shoulders. Trebor had been made a paladin only hours before his death, and their sole consolation was the thought that for those brief, shining moments, he had in fact realized his dream.
But the completeness they had felt in having him as a brother paladin now made his loss ache that much worse in their hearts. They cremated the shell of his body and buried his ashes in one of the gardens in the Prism’s chapterhouse. It was the least they could do for him.
The surviving members of Shadow Company stood around his gravesite in silence. Denarae funerals were not supposed to be a time of mourning or of grief, but then this denarae had been unlike any other. They all recognized there was something special about Trebor, a determination to realize his dream at any cost and a faith that had held up his spirits when his dream had been ripped from his grasp.
And something more; something even more powerful than either of these formidable traits; something that had enabled him to look beyond the blindness of his world and accept his fellow men. The trait that had marked his ascension to the Prism.
“Trebor had love,” Michael said softly into the silence. “He was born into a world surrounded by humans and their hate, and somehow he looked beyond that and loved those who hated him most. A man cannot heal what he does not accept and love, and rare is the paladin of any race who could heal better than our friend.”
The Yellow paladin glanced at Trebor’s cousin, Brican, whose animosity toward humans was well-known and had not lessened one bit since joining Shadow Company. He accepted the humans in Shadow Company because he knew them, but his grudge against the rest of the human race was still firmly in place. Brican saw Michael’s stare and did not flinch as he returned the paladin’s gaze.
“Trebor forgave,” Flasch said next. “God Himself only knows the extent of the injuries and insults he received or overheard from the thoughts of those around him, but Trebor forgave people their petty hatreds. Knowing him as we did, I don’t think there’s anything in this world he would not have forgiven someone, particularly one of his friends.”
Flasch stared hard at an oblivious Danner, whose eyes were locked on the overturned earth where Trebor’s ashes now rested.
“Trebor would never hold even the slightest grudge against those he loved,” the Violet paladin said gently.
One by one, many of the other members of Shadow Company spoke up and lauded their friend and comrade. A few spoke of their childhood together, most had only known him since joining the company. The only notable silence came from Danner, who was widely regarded as Trebor’s best friend, even above Flasch and the others.
Danner remained silent throughout the entire funeral, wrapped in an impenetrable armor of guilt and sorrow. As they all slowly turned to walk away, Danner was the last to leave. He knelt beside Trebor’s grave and held his hand over the freshly turned earth. Even then, he did not speak, but silently mouthed words of apology to his slain friend. Then he slowly stood, turned, and walked away.
- 3 -
Afterward, the Shadow Company officers met up with Birch and the remnants of his jintaal in one of the training classrooms in the Prism’s chapterhouse. Nuse, James, Perky, and Garet had survived the battle in relatively good form. They gathered with Danner and the others at Birch’s request. Moreen, Alicia, and Hoil were also present.
“We were all wrong,” Birch said. He was the only one in the room standing, and he stared silently at the door for a long moment before breaking the silence.
“I remember almost everything now, however little good it does me,” he said. “We were all working under the assumption that Mephistopheles was trying to impose Hell on our world, but the King of Hell has a much larger, much more problematic goal in mind. He never wanted our world, he
wants what was denied him untold eons ago, before the dawn of creation. He and the other demons and all of Hell were cast apart from Heaven, and now he has returned to assault God’s throne.
“Except God does not sit on the throne of Heaven, any more than Satan sits on the throne of Hell,” Birch said heavily. “You were right, Marc, in thinking that the symmetry of Dividha was a sign of something more. God and Satan have both removed themselves from taking active roles in the world and even from their own separate planes of existence.”
“How do you know all this?” Hoil asked. He was not quite skeptical. Not quite.
“I remember almost everything from my own imprisonment, and some little bit from Kaelus that is no longer locked away in his own mind,” Birch said. Then he sighed wearily. “I was all but dead. There is no doubt about that, but Kaelus caught me at the threshold of death and did something to me that brought me back. I felt him struggling to save my life and force my body to survive, and when that didn’t work he took it a step further. He gave me a small piece of himself, a sliver of his own self – his āyus. I am now part immortal, in a similar but very different way than Danner, for he comes by his heritage naturally.”
Marc cleared his throat reluctantly.
“Yes?”
“I’m afraid it’s more than just that, Birch,” Marc said. “I read through some of the texts Vander had recommended to me, and I found something on the way immortals reproduce.”
“What?” Garet said in surprise. “Why would immortals need to reproduce? They’re immortal.”
“That’s just a convention of language,” Marc said in disagreement. “As we’ve seen quite plainly, they can be killed, so they aren’t immortal in the strictest sense of the word. They do not, however, die of natural causes. If no one attacks and destroys an immortal, whether angel or demon, then it would theoretically live on until the end of time. But since they can and do die occasionally, namely in the Great Schism and in our own war with the demons, they naturally have to have a way to replenish their numbers.”
“Go on,” Birch said.
“For an immortal to reproduce, they do pretty much what you described,” Marc continued. “They divide their very essence and separate a small piece of themselves. But for an immortal to do that, it lessens their āyus, which is their strength and power – well, it’s like you said, it’s their self, much like the souls of mortals. The general masses of demons and angels are without strong, individual identities, because they have little or no spiritual strength of their own, so it’s no big deal when a regular drolkul or a rank-and-file angel divides itself to create another drolkul or angel – so long as they have the strength to sustain such a division. I guess angels are a little different, since they don’t divide into species like demons do – they’re all angels, just of different strength classifications.”
He saw more than one set of eyes glaze over, so Marc quickly hurried on.
“But as immortals gain in strength, they eventually develop a strong identity of their own, and they’re reluctant to let go of that sense of self,” Marc said. He was suddenly very glad for the countless hours he’d spent poring over the books Vander had recommended, even at the cost of his sleep sometimes. He felt slightly didactic addressing this group, a feeling heightened by their training locale. “Technically, Mephistopheles himself could divide his āyus and create another version of himself and, depending on how much of himself he gave, it would either be mindless or could have enough power to develop its own personality right away. It would not, however, be just another Mephistopheles running around. It would become an entirely separate demon, with whatever power he had granted it.
“But for a demon like the King of Hell, that’s an abhorrent thought, because he could very likely lose his throne if he lessens his power in any way. The more powerful demons and angels never divide themselves, because they lose standing in the hierarchy of their existence.”
The others stared at Marc as though he’d grown a second head. He shifted uncomfortably.
“So what you’re saying…” Moreen said, but couldn’t finish.
“Is that I have the beginning sliver of a demon developing within me,” Birch finished for her, his voice cutting in like a headsman’s axe, “and if it can develop separately from Kaelus, there’s a chance it will not be so benign as my current inhabitant.”
“Not only that, but consider this,” Marc said. “Kaelus was an extremely powerful demon, second only to Mephistopheles himself, which is why the King of Hell feared him so much. Kaelus was apparently also released by Satan to accomplish a specific purpose, whatever that may be. If he’s given over a piece of his āyus to you, will he still have enough strength to accomplish his goal?”
They stared at each other in silence, searching for answers none of them had.
“I don’t think Kaelus would have taken a chance on something he wasn’t sure about,” Birch said. “Both with respect to his own power, and the nature of the budding āyus inside me.”
“Perhaps,” Marc said. “It’s entirely possible the āyus has truly become a part of you, which would essentially meld its immortality with your individuality, and there would be no danger to you.” He paused. “Or at least, that’s my guess. It’s not like this has ever been done before,” he said a bit defensively when they glared at him.
“Yes, it has,” Danner said quietly, surprising them all. He’d said almost nothing aloud since they had learned of Trebor’s death.
“Me.”
They all turned to look at him. Hoil’s face looked troubled.
“How is it possible for an immortal being to mate with a human?” he asked pointedly. “Immortals obviously wouldn’t have the natural, internal biology necessary to create a child, would they?”
“No,” Marc said slowly, “although perhaps if they were able to completely take human form. Your mother obviously maintained a wholly human form while she was on Lokka, so I’d have to assume she also created the necessary, ah, internal biology, as you said. Unless we’re fundamentally misunderstanding how Danner was created, she would have had to had the same genetic mechanisms for making a baby as any human.”
“And if mortal and immortal combine?” Danner said grimly, bringing his friend back to the point at hand.
“What? Oh, yes, I think you’re probably right.”
“What?” Hoil asked. “What do you mean he’s right?”
“Danner is half immortal not on some genetic level, because immortals don’t really have anything like that, at least not that we know of,” Marc explained. “Instead, he would almost have to have been born and created just like anyone else, then infused with his mother’s āyus. She divided herself and gave her own sliver of essence to your combined seed, which eventually became Danner. It might be worth speculating how and if this might one day be passed on to his children…”
Marc trailed off at the grim look on Danner’s face.
“It really doesn’t change anything, dad,” Danner said, his expression softening. “I’m still your son, and I still came from a joining of you and mom, just not exactly in the way everyone else comes into being.”
Marc looked uncomfortable.
“Finish it, Marc,” Danner said firmly. He didn’t know what his friend had to say, but Marc’s hesitance made Danner suspicious.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about what’s been happening to you since we first noticed your heritage, and specifically about what you said happened when Trebor died.”
“And?” Danner asked softly.
“And it’s almost as if it’s evolving or even mutating inside of you,” Marc said. “You’re certainly more powerful than you were before, that’s plain to see, but the obsessive control it takes over you, especially when demons are involved, is probably not something normal. Maybe it’s because of the mixture of human and immortal, I don’t know.”
Something tugged on the edges of Birch’s memory. A conversation he’d once had with someone. Something about the huma
n soul.
“The potential for ultimate good mingled with the capability for ultimate evil,” Birch murmured. “The ability to choose is the greatest power a mortal or immortal can ever have.”
Then Birch remembered the source of that comment, if not the rest of the conversation, and he shuddered involuntarily. It had been none other than Satan Himself who had said those words to Birch.
“You’re right, Marc,” Birch said, too softly at first to be heard. He repeated himself and then had their undivided attention.
“The human soul is a mixture of good and evil, and we have the ability to choose between the two,” Birch said. “Free will. Danner’s heritage is Heavenly, but because he is half mortal, he has the ability to apply that power toward evil, should he so choose. It is a holy power, yes, but it might just as easily become tainted and turn unholy if the wrong decisions are made.”
Birch turned to look seriously at his nephew.
“Mortals were never meant to cope with the sort of power inherent in our immortal counterparts, and your power seems addictive, as you’ve said,” Birch said. “It consumes you, and it feeds upon itself to draw you ever further within its grasp. If we had a choice, I’d say never again use your powers.
“But I doubt we have that luxury,” Birch said, and suddenly he looked much older than before. His shoulders slumped, and he looked tired. “I somehow doubt Heaven was expecting this sudden shift any more than we were, and Hell may very well have taken them completely by surprise. The Iridescent Gates could be under assault or even be overrun even as we speak.”
Their conversation lapsed into silence as Birch’s words brought a pall over the room.
“So what?” Hoil asked with a shrug. They all turned to glare at him, and he flinched slightly, but did not back down. “I mean honestly, if the immortals want to continue some age-old feud between themselves, why shouldn’t we let them? As long as they leave us alone, why should we care what happens?” He scowled at them. “Now don’t look at me like that. I don’t like the thought of the wholesale slaughter of angels, but neither am I exactly a man of God. What does some internecine civil war between immortals mean to us?”
The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) Page 59