99 Gods: Betrayer

by Randall Farmer

  “This is a conditional surrender,” Sorrow said, in continuation. “As a basis for further negotiations, we give you Dave and Elorie and you cease your attack.”

  Some surrender. Some gift; he and Elorie had freed themselves. He wanted to tell Nessa and Ken ‘Get more!’, but he did not speak. Dave took one deep breath after another and regained his mental equilibrium, which proved far easier after the fight ended.

  If the fight ended. Given the wide swath of skulls on poles initially outside this place, and the way the fallen Watchers quickly recovered and rejoined the fight, he wasn’t convinced the Watchers were as defeated as they appeared.

  He didn’t want to be here for this; like Elorie, he just wanted to go home, or as close to home as Tiff allowed. He wanted to be with his children again, do something with them. Take them to a kid movie, some throat-gagging G-rated animation they found hilarious. He wanted to be in a place where he would be able to put some real work into making up with Elorie; he wanted to do it right and convince her he was a real human being. He wanted a real job that paid money, not this nonsense, paying him only if he survived. He wanted to deal with real people again.

  If only he could convince himself that any of his desires were possible.

  Ken and Nessa’s nimbus of power vanished from around them and they floated placidly to the ground, on the road outside the fortress gate. Nessa smiled at him from inches away and glared over Dave’s shoulder at Sorrow, who knelt on the road about 20 feet away, between the Telepaths and the gate. He decided that being physically between Nessa and Sorrow sounded unhealthy, so he led Elorie to the side, out of the way.

  Elorie broke their clench as they moved, both of them ending up to the left of Nessa, Party Boy and a fat ugly guy bodyguard of whom Dave had never caught either Nessa’s nickname or real name. Elorie kept hold of his hand and kept the wedding band on her finger.

  “That was a crazy weird fight,” Nessa said. “So, for starters, it’s time you told us who and what you really are.”

  Sorrow shook her head. “Nessa, I am sure you noticed that although you can mentally disable us, you cannot read our minds. Therefore, we do not have to tell you anything, and we are not going to answer your question.”

  Jesus! Dave contemplated telling Ken and Nessa they should just continue the fight.

  “You’re fucking impossible,” Ken said. Dave nodded in vigorous agreement. “How far do I have to spread your component parts before you’re dead for good, bitch? Given how little each part weighs, I might be able to put some of you in orbit.”

  “The physical matters not, the flesh or what passes for it,” Sorrow said. “Our lives have gone on for so long we are become now beings of spirit.”

  Exactly. “One of their names is ‘Fallen Angels’, Ken,” Dave said. He hadn’t told Ken and Nessa the name the Ecumenists used for the Watchers, and he should have. Damned Watchers, mucking him up with their magic.

  “Truth?” Ken said, to Sorrow.

  “I am saddened to admit the mortal is correct. Others do use this name for us, though the name is only half correct,” Sorrow said.

  “The ‘fallen’ half, right?” Ken said.

  Sorrow nodded.

  “Why’d you insist on taking Nessa as your slave?” Ken said. “Did you want to force us to attack?”

  Ah hah, Dave thought. Of course. The Watchers needed to goad Nessa into an attack. Otherwise, the Telepaths wouldn’t meet their rule-bound criteria and wouldn’t be proper enemies. He was surprised the Watchers took two days to succeed. Pikers.

  “As I said before, Nessa is one of our three prophesied redeemers,” Sorrow said. Such crackerjack logic. Step one: find prophesied redeemer; step two: goad prophesied redeemer into attacking; step three: surrender. The Watchers didn’t need redeemers, they needed therapists. An army of therapists. “The more I and several of my peers who are open to mystical knowledge experienced her, the more her aura convinced. This fight… This fight did nothing to change my opinion. If you back away from your true calling, Nessa, you will become as evil as we are. You might even become one of us.”

  “Great,” Nessa said. “Prophesies. I can’t fight words. Might as well call me an olive and lick me to see if I taste like a martini.” And Nessa was no therapist.

  “Nevertheless.”

  Nessa sighed. She seemed far calmer than Dave expected. Perhaps Dave and Elorie did make good stability footstools. “So, if I’m supposed to be so important to you, then what am I?” Nessa said.

  “You are the Daughter of Light, Nessa.” Dave’s eyes opened wide and his thoughts filled with profanity. Georgia had once asked him if he had ever heard any references to a Daughter of Light. She also asked him about two others, a father figure and a son figure. He couldn’t recall all the names Georgia had used for them, though.

  “Holy fuck,” Nessa said. “I had a vision about that, once, when I was confused, a vision where someone called me the Brilliant Woman, capitalized letters and everything. That’s crazy. Well, not about the daughter part, but at least about the ‘light’ part. What am I supposed to do, be a human sized flashlight? I’ve never had the light creation trick. I think I like the Brilliant Woman title better.”

  “Both titles are correct. You are worrying a translation issue,” Sorrow said. “Nessa, think allegorically. You are supposed to morally sustain us until the Father of Darkness finds us the path and the Child of Morning enacts it.”

  Father of Darkness and Child of Morning. Yes, those were the other two, Dave remembered.

  “Morally sustain?” Nessa raised her eyebrows, and then relaxed and crossed her arms. She had come up with one of her screwy schemes, ready to say or do something truly appalling.

  “Keep us from evil.”

  “Hey, Ken! I was right,” Nessa said. She didn’t explain what she had been right about. Ken turned a mite ill. “Okay, I’ll keep you from evil, but I don’t have to stay here or join you to do so.”

  “You cannot command us…”

  “Bets? You have your damned rules, don’t you? I can command you to not do evil, put that in your rules of behavior, and make a rule to forbid violence under any circumstances, even if someone attacks you. No killing, no torture, no violence, no nothing, period.” Nessa’s smile turned into a smirk.

  “This is salvation?” Sorrow said. “Such an order cannot bind us for a decade, an instant in our regard, even such an order from a Telepath of your prowess, even if the order is placed into our rules. Only a fool…” Sorrow paused. “You, however, are no fool. You are aware of something. I read a distant truth in your mind.”

  “Uh huh, you’re right, oh twin of my spirit,” Nessa said. “I know who your Father of Darkness is. You’ve ignored him for centuries – fools. You don’t need decades. You need months, perhaps a couple of years if you keep screwing up like minks. All you have to do is call him to you.”

  Sorrow’s eyes widened. “Lorenzi?”

  Nessa cocked her head to the side, smiled and raised an eyebrow. “He’s the man.”

  “He is nothing.” The look of dumbfounded disbelief did not leave Sorrow’s face. “I have watched and aided him for a millennium, and never seen a hint of anything of the sort.”

  “Sorrow, Lorenzi’s one of the few people able to go toe to toe with Ken and I and come out hale and hearty. He’s done so on multiple occasions. Consider this fight and what you’ve been through. You’ve misjudged him as much as you misjudged the two of us. You’re good at misjudging.”

  “Then who is the Child of Morning?”

  “That’s for you and Lorenzi to figure out.”

  Sorrow matched Nessa’s posture, strutting forward, hands on hips. “You will leave us defenseless!”

  “Look, half of your power is illusion and the other half is pure bluff. It’s not as if Ken and I are Gods,” Nessa said. Ken smiled a well-measured smile at Sorrow, and Dave suspected he had figured out how he would be able to put some of the Watcher’s body parts in orbit. No, he had figured
out how many body parts. At Nessa’s comment about ‘not being Gods’ Dave had the urge to blurt out Elorie’s hypothesis. “Any one of the Territorial Gods could have come by and waxed your asses into skis at any ol’ time, sister. You were already defenseless.”

  Sorrow glared back. She wasn’t buying any of this.

  Nessa sighed. “Dave, you’re better at these explanations. I’m not getting anywhere. You’ve got to be able to do a better job than I can.” She waved her hand. “If you please?”

  Butterflies grabbed Dave’s stomach and squeezed. After what happened in this fight, and how messed up his mind was, he didn’t feel right to be interfering in the negotiations between the high and mighty. He looked at Elorie for help, but she nodded and pointed at him with her free hand. “Help?” he said. Elorie shook her head at his whisper.

  Dammit! Dave turned to Sorrow, carefully not letting go of Elorie’s hand. “How long have you been on Earth?” he said.

  “I can’t tell you,” Sorrow said. “This information isn’t for you. I don’t want your deaths on our hands.”

  “Your secrets are dangerous?” Dave asked.

  “Yes,” Nessa said, surprising Dave. “But you know too much already, Dave. It’s already too late, according to something I learned from Portland during your last captivity. More can’t make things worse. Marked for death is marked for death.”

  Dave shivered at Nessa’s tone. Some other crap had hit the whirling blades.

  “Tell me anyway, Sorrow,” Dave said.

  “Embrace then your doom; I have warned you as is proper. We have been who we are for roughly five thousand years.”

  Dave nodded. Let Sorrow keep her secrets hidden under the error bar. He would let Mr. Lorenzi dig out the year and month.

  “You’ve meddled with human civilizations?”

  “You want a list?”

  Damn. “How so? What have you done?”

  Silence.

  “Sorrow, you’d better answer,” Nessa said.

  “We have done things we need to be redeemed from; things which cut us off from God. Without God, evil is inevitable, and so we fell. What more do you need? You are familiar with what happens when evil gets the best of us,” Sorrow said…in sorrow.

  Dave nodded. He could live without the predictable gory details.

  “So why’d the Ecumenists attack you?” Dave said. “John Lorenzi believed the Ecumenists figured out the 99 Gods would be driven insane by worship, and they thought you were behind the problem. Our group concluded the Ecumenists thought you would corrupt, or had already corrupted, the 99 Gods. Is either hypothesis correct?”

  “The first is not correct in the slightest. We who are the Watchers are firm monotheists. I believe the Ecumenists even knew this to be true. The second is partially correct.” Sorrow glowered at him. “Mortal, the Ecumenists attacked us because they had learned about our prophesies of redemption.”

  “And?” Ahh. Georgia had referred to the Daughter of Light and the others as part of some ‘hidden redemptive prophesies’ of the Ecumenists. This was all the same.

  “They thought our desire for redemption would cause us to corrupt the 99 Gods,” Sorrow said. “They sensed our evil but not the goodness also dwelling within us. They sensed the promise of our redeemers but thought our redeemers would be evil and do evil as well.” Sorrow’s name was apt. The pain in her voice wrenched tears from Dave’s eyes. A magic trick, he hoped, nothing more than magic.

  He did have the urge to kiss Elorie again and drive the pain away.

  “What’s the connection between the Ecumenists, the Angelic Host and the 99 Gods?” Dave said. “The Ecumenists were convinced some connection existed.”

  “Of course there’s a connection, fool,” Sorrow said. She shook her head. “God does hear prayers and he does act on them and the Ecumenists were experts at praying. Some of them became in spirit what they desired to be half a millennium ago, after God answered their prayers.”

  Dave couldn’t believe his ears. His mind twirled in confusion and disbelief; his questions evaporated into the dusty air. The throng became silent. Sorrow’s implications couldn’t be right. Surely this mess couldn’t have such a mundane origin.

  “The Angelic Host are dead Ecumenists?” Ken said, breaking the silence. Sorrow nodded. “Holy crap!”

  Dave closed his eyes for a moment, trembling. If true, this was bad, very bad. The Ecumenists were rabidly anti-modern and despised all aspects of modern civilization with a passion. No wonder the ‘test’ of the Angelic Host seemed weighted against modern civilization! No wonder everything seemed so hopeless.

  “Nothing about the events troubling you is simple. All is complex and nuanced. God tests the Host as much as he tests humanity and the 99 Gods,” Sorrow said. “God tests all of us. Punishment for failure by any of the parties will be swift and eternal, barring actions of saviors and the like.”

  “I getcha,” Ken said, and he turned. “Uffie, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

  “Sorry, Ken, this is all above my pay grade,” Uffie said. “I wasn’t an order giver, I was an order taker. Nor did I belong to the Ecumenist order when I met Nessa, because I had changed my allegiance to a separate and new group, a group less than a generation old.” She shook her head, sad. The Indigo. Dave didn’t fully understand what the Indigo represented, or their import, other than ‘unique’ and ‘large’. “I had no idea about any of this. I certainly didn’t help pray the 99 Gods into existence. Nor was I aware of the fact some of the old dead Ecumenists had become Angels.”

  Quiet covered the group, quiet enough to hear water dripping nearby and the nickering of a horse.

  Nessa thought for almost a minute before speaking. “Well, this explains why we’ve been declared anathema and why the Angelic Host has a bounty on our heads. The Angelic Host don’t want their tawdry origins exposed,” Nessa said. “Heh. They’re as petty as anyone. Angels my bony ass.” The look on her face said ‘I have them now’.

  Dave couldn’t share her optimism. This sounded like a disaster to him.

  “There is a way for you Telepaths to win, Nessa. If you wish to doom the Host in the eyes of God, find a way to get the Host to personally slay you,” Sorrow said. “Such an error would guarantee your faction’s victory, as your importance transcends the minor and sordid affairs of these 99 Gods and their Host.” Beside him, Elorie shivered and stood up straighter. Yes, this was the sort of information she had squeezed out of the Watchers.

  “What are you, then, to be able to make such statements?” Nessa said. “Can’t you even tell your Daughter of Light?”

  “Not unless you decide to stay with us,” Sorrow said. “It would be better for you to do your worst to us than for the knowledge to become public. We have only a little power left, but the consequences would be deadly.”

  They must fear something horrible, Dave realized. Something someone – or a great many someones – might do to them would make the Watchers’ already bad situation even worse.

  “Fine,” Nessa said. She clapped Dave on the shoulder. “Get along little doggie.”

  Dave winced at Nessa’s order to continue questioning. He guessed Nessa was able to hold her stream of consciousness together for only so long before her thoughts found the rapids. He turned to Elorie for help. This time she nodded and whispered a single word.

  Gods.

  Dave turned back to Sorrow. “Based on what we experienced in the fight, and other things, Elorie’s convinced you’re Gods, similar to or identical to the 99 Gods,” he said. Several of the bodyguard crew snorted. Nessa and Ken didn’t react. “Are you?”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “My belief is not important,” Dave said. He had seen Dubuque and worshipped him. He had met Persona. “You did impossible things in the fight, Godly things. But you’re different than the 99 Gods.”

  “What you mean is we are too weak to be Gods,” Sorrow said. Dave shrugged, embarrassed. “This is true as well. To say mor
e, though, would just give us to those who might use us as weapons. Free our evil. Which you cannot want.”

  “True.” He paused and looked at Sorrow, hoping for his unconscious tricks to help. No dice. To his mortal eyes, Sorrow remained fully human in appearance. “So, following this line of reasoning, Elorie also suspects you know how we can rid ourselves of the 99 Gods. Can you help us, and is this something you can tell us about?” Dave said.

  “I possess an answer, an answer you do not seek: you cannot rid yourselves of the 99 Gods. Such is impossible,” Sorrow said. “In your idiom, the 99 Gods are the genie and they are most firmly out of the bottle. Once out you cannot put them back inside. They are yours, and welcome to them. May you reap what you have sown.”

  Dave’s heart sank. The best solution to the problems caused by the 99 Gods had always been for the 99 Gods to go away. “We, us normal mortal types, didn’t do a thing.”

  She shook her head. “Nevertheless, your only solution is to endure. If you want to survive the 99 Gods, you must become a part of their vision of humanity, or you must convince them to become part of your vision for humanity, and you must do all of this without triggering an internal war among the 99 Gods. You do not want to experience such a thing, trust me.” Sorrow shook her head and her life dimmed for a moment. “All else leads back to the same fate. You will have to restart your civilization from the beginning.”

  Dave opened his mouth, but Sorrow interrupted.

  “Your question is foolish, Dave, so do not bother to sully the air with your words,” Sorrow said. “Look what Ken and Nessa did to us. What use would we be in any physical struggle against the 99 Gods? She is correct. We are nothing but awe and illusions.”

  “I think you’re sandbagging, Sorrow,” Dave said. “You surrendered before Ken and Nessa defeated you.”

  “I will trade you for the answer, Dave,” Sorrow said. “Will you and Elorie pledge to make sure that Ken and Nessa pass the information to Johannes d’Lorenzi, about our belief? He is one of our prophesied figures, the Father of Darkness. He must learn of his destiny.”