GoneGod World

by Vance, R. E.

  Grinner didn’t seem to notice or care about the Others watching. “I am here for the human.” Grinner’s gaze never left the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who.

  “You … killed … the … Unicorn,” Yara-Uno repeated in a slow and angry tone, each word carrying with it his full ire. “You spilled his blood and now he is no more.”

  “It was painful for me to kill one such as the Unicorn,” Grinner said. “He was a good creature that would have served me well in my new kingdom. But he refused and therefore had to be crushed.”

  “Sure, sure,” the red devil said. “He stood in your way, Yara-Uno understands. But myth says you crushed his innards. Fable says you tortured him. Legend says he died on his back!” This last point drew in some protest from the crowd. To most Others, dying on your feet was a noble death. One allowed a defeated foe to die standing up, or on the back of their horse. But a prone death—that was a coward’s death, and to force one such as Joseph to lie there being tortured … that was an unacceptable insult.

  Grinner shrugged. “Feet, back or knees. All will bow to me.”

  From the corner of my eye, I could see a ghoul and valkyrie flanking the Avatar of Gravity. Fairies fluttered about with staffs in hand. The crowd was near explosion. The minotaur snorted and with it the crowd erupted in jeers and taunts. For the first time Grinner seemed to notice the crowd. Turning around, he addressed them: “Servants of the OnceGods, serve me now and I shall return you all to the realms you once belonged to. I shall give you life anew. And all for the price of obedience. A fair exchange, think you not?”

  “I serve no one,” Yara-Uno said. “Not anymore.”

  “You will bow to me,” Grinner said, turning to the red devil, his hand lifting above his head. But before he could employ his gravity trick, Yara-Uno let out his war cry.

  Dragons roar, centaurs stomp, banshees shriek—and each one of their battle cries strikes terror into the hearts of their enemies. But a Yara-Ma-Yha-Who’s battle cry? It came out as a short “WAAN, WAAN, WAAN!” If I wasn’t on Yara-Uno’s side, I would have laughed. This was the creature that faced off against Grinner? Why couldn’t it have been a wakwak or a hill giant? At least they had war cries I could respect.

  Seems that my lack of fear was out of ignorance, because the crowd all backed away with terror. It was as if the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who’s battle cry was akin to the kraken rising from the deep or an archangel’s trumpet sounding the End of Days. Even Grinner’s smile wavered.

  With the WAAN, WAAN, WAAN!, the valkyrie lobbed his homemade arrows and the pixies shot their pool balls from their bra- and tensor bandage–slings. Grinner took the hits with a whoop, dropping down to his knees.

  “Hell, yeah!” I shouted, throwing a cue ball at his head. “You’re going down!”

  “Ahh, Human Jean-Luc, how kind of you to join us,” Grinner said as he turned off gravity. The pool balls and homemade arrows floated up in the air before they started to circle him. After that, nothing else got through, each new volley adding to the meteor belt that orbited around Grinner. Then the Avatar of Gravity fanned his fingers in the direction of the crowd, each gesture sending a torrent of shrapnel shooting back up at us like bullets fired from a cannon.

  I gotta watch my mouth, I thought. I ducked into the building and away from Grinner’s counterattack.

  “You! Spilled! His! Blood!” I heard and chancing a look outside, I saw the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who’s gaping orifice of a mouth stretch open, as his tiny hair-thin legs propelled him forward at a supernatural speed. He dived into Grinner’s zero-gravity, his arms stretched out like Superman’s big red thumb. Yara-Uno’s left hand held the needle and I thought he was trying to stab Grinner. Apparently Grinner thought the same thing, but only had time to put up a small gravity shield to block the attack. Like I said, the little bugger was fast. But Yara-Uno wasn’t trying to stab him.

  He wanted to slap him.

  Yara-Uno’s right hand flashed up and slapped Grinner’s cheek. With a sharp smacking sound, his palm connected as he cried out, “You spilled his blood! And now I spill yours!”

  Way to go, little guy!

  In zero-gravity everything floats, even little red Australian vampires. As Yara-Uno floated up, his octopus-like suckers latched onto Grinner’s cheek, making it look like Grinner was holding a big, red balloon with his teeth. Grinner shuddered as Yara-Uno’s eyes brightened and his mouth widened. Don’t get me wrong, Yara-Uno already had a big mouth, but it somehow fit his little red face. The smile that widened on his face was unnatural. He looked like … Grinner. Apparently, when the Yara-Ma-Yha-Who sucked your blood, he got a little bit more of you than red and white cells.

  He got Grinner’s powers.

  “You spilled his blood,” Yara-Uno repeated.

  “How can this be?” Grinner said as he, too, started floating.

  The two of them floated up into the sky. They must have gotten a hundred feet up when Yara-Uno’s face returned to normal. He was shutting off his new powers.

  “And now I spill yours!” Yara-Uno shouted one last time as they fell.

  A valkyrie dove out the window and caught Yara-Uno as Grinner fell to the Earth with a shattering BOOM!, and I could see from Yara-Uno’s approving look that he’d left the last bit of juice to increase gravity and give Grinner a big, crater-causing taste of his own medicine.

  The minotaur and centaur didn’t hesitate. They charged Grinner as the pixies slung more pool balls. The minotaur brought down his hammer and the centaur stomped Grinner with his hooves. They were winning, literally trampling him flat.

  Then the Earth shook. Slabs of asphalt tore from the ground, slamming into the creatures over and over. The minotaur managed to roll out of the way, but the centaur was crushed.

  The army of Others, seeing the death of their comrade, now seemed to understand what and who they were up against. They also knew that it was now or never. Everyone charged, each of them glowing, shining, a halo of rage encompassing them—they were all burning time. A lot of it.

  But Grinner was no longer caught off-guard and he swatted them down like flies as he continued to hurl down debris. Bodies flew up only to be squished down again. Grinner was pulling no punches, and I suspected that mercy and forgiveness were quite low on his godly priorities. The road beneath me ran rainbow with blood as goblins bled green, orcs gray, pixies yellow and centaurs purple.

  I couldn’t just watch anymore as Grinner turned these poor creatures to mulch.

  One of the things that made me good at killing Others was that I was good at using their physiological weaknesses against them. Angels were strong except where their wings met their bodies. Fairies were fast, but couldn’t fly against the wind. Minotaurs were sturdy, but they were damn near blind. Grinner had to have a weakness. I remembered the way he smiled and how that friggin’ grin of his would touch his eyes and move them. They always shifted left or right, never up or down. And given how good he was at countering ground attacks, I figured that his eyesight was excellent at scanning the horizon but not so great at seeing attacks from above. The harpy that had escorted me to the top floor shot her bow, missing yet again. In her latest attempt, the arrow flew straight up into the air, not getting anywhere close to Grinner. I whistled at the creature and pointed at the top of Grinner’s head, miming the gist of my plan. Thank you, TinkerBelle, for all those years of practice!

  The harpy swished into the air, grabbing me by the shoulders and moving to drop me on that damned Grinner’s head. The minotaur saw what we were up to and charged with war hammer in hand, coordinating his attack with the drop.

  This was going to hurt.

  The harpy dropped me and, with sword in hand, I fell. Falling is easy. Timing my sword’s swing while falling is not. I pulled back my arm, getting ready to strike at Grinner’s head, just as the minotaur drew back his war hammer for a body smash. If we had hit, it would have been a synchronized slash and smash that would have divided Grinner in two.

  But we didn’t hit.

  We w
eren’t even close.

  At the last minute, gravity ceased, stopping my fall right out of reach of Grinner’s head, while it increased a thousand-fold for the minotaur. He collapsed to the ground, crippled under his own weight.

  This was new. I’d seen Grinner do both, but never at once. He looked up at me and, with an admonishing finger wag, said, “Tut, tut, tut—we can’t have you falling and hurting that precious head of yours.” Then the freak blew me a kiss, and, still looking up at me, grabbed the minotaur by his left horn.

  As far as I could tell, it was out of malice more than any tactical gain that he crushed the minotaur’s horn, turning it to dust that hung in the air. The minotaur howled. To the ancient Greek monster, losing a horn was the worst of all possible fates. When we would fight a troop of Others, we’d always try to find a minotaur in their midst and shoot at his horns. This would drive the beast into a berserking fury. Berserking meant not thinking. And not thinking, when up against a trained and coordinated Army, meant easy pickings for us. Like I said, I was good at what I did.

  The minotaur swung wildly. There was nothing he could do and Grinner knew it. With a cackle, he propelled the mighty humanoid bull through the air and into the building across the way.

  Grinner turned to me and said, “Now you.”

  The air got heavy and I dropped to the ground, pinned under tons of atmospheric pressure. I was a goner and knew it.

  Then I heard a terrifyingly sweet voice from above. “Cease! Leave the human alone!”

  Hellelujah! The archangel Michael had arrived.

  Chapter 4

  Life from Above

  “Leave the Human Jean alone!” trumpeted Michael as he descended from the sky. The Billy Goats Gruff were also there, surrounding Grinner, each staying over thirty feet away.

  “What concern is it of yours?” Grinner asked. He took a step toward the largest of the Gruffs, who in turn took a step back, keeping the distance between them equal. At first, I thought the distance was arbitrary, but then I looked around at the carnage that surrounded Grinner. Nothing really extended beyond those thirty feet, with the impact of his destruction lessening the farther away it got from him. I felt stupid—how had I not noticed that before?

  “I have vowed to uphold the law on this plane of existence,” Michael said.

  “Human law,” came Grinner’s reply, with disdain on human.

  Michael shook his head. “Mortal law.”

  “Why,” Grinner pointed at the archangel, “do you insist on protecting a mistake? Does your god still command it or is it sentimentality that compels you?”

  “It is neither,” Michael said, but did not offer his reasons.

  “Tell me, Archangel Michael, did He tell you He was leaving? Or did He just go, leaving you behind like so much unwanted garbage?”

  Michael just stared at the Avatar of Gravity, his face betraying nothing.

  “I see,” said Grinner, then his eyes flickered as if he remembered something and he spoke in a language I did not understand. But to say this was a language would be incorrect, because human language has structure, cadence, and a flow to it. It is why we can distinguish the babbling of a baby from a language we do not speak—there is a certain rhythm to the words. There was no rhyme or reason to the sounds that Grinner uttered, but nonetheless Michael nodded and responded in the same alien language.

  Tongues—the undecipherable language of the gods.

  I watched in awe as two beings born at the dawn of time conferred in their shared non-language. Grinner nodded, then pointed to the sky and, again speaking in tongues, said something that shocked Michael. From his reaction, it was something he clearly did not want to hear, because the archangel trumpeted the command to attack and the Billy Goats Gruff began slinging stones at Grinner. The first few hit him before he could manipulate the gravity around him, but then he changed their trajectory, shooting the stones back at the Gruffs. The largest Gruff, Magnus, charged and Grinner sent him flying straight up. The other two Gruffs also attacked—and all the while Michael watched without comment or action.

  With the Gruffs attacking Grinner, Gravity’s Avatar was no longer paying attention to the fact that he was slowly crushing me to death. I had maybe five minutes before I passed out. Another ten minutes and I would never wake up again. And all the while Michael was doing nothing, letting the Gruffs continue their tactics that only served to keep Grinner’s mind off of me and on them.

  Then it hit me. Michael most likely knew that I was the key to Grinner’s plan. From his reaction to their little chat, I was sure that Grinner explained all that happened, offering him the same deal he did Joseph and the Others that fought him before Michael arrived. Serve me as you did your OnceGods and I will restore all. But Michael could not accept the ascension of another being besides his God. That was against his nature and what the first Fall was all about. But even though he wasn’t powerful enough to stop Grinner, he still knew that without me, the bridge would be lost forever. Michael was a force of good and he could not outright kill me. But he could allow me to be killed, and that was exactly what he was doing now.

  I’ve been told that close to the end you see your entire history flash before your eyes. Here, under that suffocating weight, I was as close to the end as I had ever been. I thought about what Hermes had done—his sacrifice. I thought about Bella and the Ambassador, and all those wasted years I had spent angry and distant. I thought about my promise to her.

  But then the more mundane memories entered my mind. I thought about the One Spire Hotel and its collage of guests. I thought about Paradise Lot and its insane collection of shops and temples and restaurants. St. Mercy’s Hospital and Miral’s attempt to do good. I thought about mortal pain—hunger, lack of sleep, thirst and how bad Others were at being mortal and how abysmally terrible they were at filling out forms. What was that Once’s name? I wrote it on that first form I filled out … Asal, the Ass of Kvasir? He was so grateful, said all I had to do was call out his name and he’d be there. Swore it. An Other’s vow. And oh how seriously Others took their vows. Their promises. It was an unbreakable oath … almost magical in nature …

  “Asal,” I whispered.

  Nothing happened.

  “Asal!” I cried out.

  Michael looked at me curiously, perhaps wondering why my last word would be that of a strange onocentaur whose name never made the history books.

  “Asal!” I said once more.

  “Yes,” a voice brayed. “You called?”

  ↔

  From friggin’ nowhere, I heard the trot of hooves on asphalt as Asal appeared and said, “Human Jean, how shall I be of service?” He stood right outside Grinner’s radius of effect.

  “You big beautiful talking donkey! Get me out of here,” I said.

  Asal dug his hooves in the ground and said, “As you command!” He walked into my personal waterfall of gravity, the weight of the air pushing him down as he entered. His knees buckled, his back strained, but like any stubborn donkey built to shoulder heavy burdens, he stood strong and continued to walk. Step by step, he got closer until he was able to reach down, picking me up and putting me on his back. I worried that my added weight would bring him down, but he was too stubborn to fall. He took heavy step after heavy step until he got out of Grinner’s sphere of influence. Outside and free, he trotted away.

  As glad as I was to be pulled out of the fray, I really wished some Other with a bit more speed had come to my rescue. Asal’s donkey legs carried on much like a donkey did—slow and stubborn.

  I looked over at Michael and yelled out, “Your plan to do nothing didn’t work. Now it’s time to do something!”

  Michael nodded at me, respect in his eyes. “You are resilient. Perhaps even worthy of the redemption you seek.” Then he turned to Grinner who was dealing with the Gruffs’ annoying distraction. Grinner was slowly winning, with only Hunter, the eldest of the Gruffs, still standing.

  Michael spread out his wings, his primary wings
spanned twice the length of a city bus. His two smaller sets of wings swathed his body, and with that done, he wrapped his primary set over his shoulders. It looked like he was clamping on armor . Enveloped by his own wings, he took the tips of the large wings and propped them under his chin. Then his hair made way for the layer of feathers that rested underneath, forming a helmet. No, to call what I saw a helmet would imply that they were somehow in the same league. This was more like a second skull. I didn’t think there was a gun with a high enough caliber to scratch its surface.

  Michael stepped into Grinner’s radius. Step by step, the archangel drew closer, wading through that immense weight as if it were the shallow end of a pool. Grinner saw the archangel’s approach and with a push, knocked the Steve Gruff down on his goat-tail.

  He turned his full attention on Michael, straining as he called down more and more weight. But Michael still moved forward, an outstretched hand reaching for Grinner’s neck. Grinner took a step backward, calling down even more weight. Michael faltered, and I thought for sure he’d go down. But then he stretched out his third, lower wings, and using them as crutches, and took another step forward.

  Grinner hissed and said, “Have it your way!” putting his two hands together. This gesture caused the air to literally compress, and it hardened into a block of oxygen and hydrogen, nitrogen and every other gas in the atmosphere, turning them into a substance as hard as stone and as transparent as glass. It fell right on Michael’s head and I thought for sure that the archangel would be crushed to a pulp … but he wasn’t.