Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming (The Above Book 1)

by Van Allen Plexico

  Thus I was completely unprepared when he collapsed at my feet.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  As the portal through which Baranak had emerged moments earlier dwindled down to a tiny pinprick of light and then vanished, I managed to get a sense of just how many barriers, how many layers of reality, he had torn through in order to reach this place. Seven. The knowledge staggered me. Never had I heard of such a feat. No wonder he had collapsed; the effort of forcing himself through that many different planes, all in one leap—that alone should have all but killed any of our kind. Looking down at his smoldering form, though, I saw that the jump alone had not left him in his present condition. His gleaming golden armor was dented in places, and scorch marks streaked his arms, as if he had been wrestling with a flamethrower. He had been in a fight, and had taken a considerable pounding.

  All the more amazing, then, when he struggled up to one knee and gazed up at me, very much alive.

  “Impressive,” was all I could say.

  He lunged at me.

  Backpedaling quickly, I released the energy I had stored within myself, aiming a barrage at him. I am no offensive juggernaut, but with my life on the line, and a bit of time to prepare, I can conjure up a few methods of attack. I had hoped not to have to employ them against the god of battle, of course. I had had other plans for dealing with him. But here we were, and my options had grown extremely limited.

  Surprisingly, the column of blue-tinted energy I directed into his midsection rattled him, and he staggered backward, grunting. I repeated the effort as soon as I was able, and this time he crashed to his knees again, gasping, his golden plate mail clanking on the hard floor.

  Now, this was just silly. I could never hope to reduce Baranak to such a condition by myself. He had to have been much more seriously hurt than I had first suspected. Half of me relished the completely unexpected opportunity to finish him off forever. The other half of me—-a half I had scarcely suspected existed until this moment—-held me back somehow.

  Once again Baranak attempted to rise and attack me. If nothing else, I admired his determination. Again I smashed him to the ground, this time leaving him flat on his back, his breathing ragged.

  Baranak lay on the verge of defeat. I had him. He was beaten, though I had not been the one to do the bulk of the work, by any means. Nevertheless, all that remained was to administer the coup de gras. Summoning up the Power, taking aim at his prone form, I looked inside myself for the elation I thought I should be feeling at such a moment… and found nothing.

  I risked a quick glance at the humans. They all hung back, at the far side of the room. They had seen Baranak before, and understood to some degree the power and the danger he carried with him.

  “Finish him off,” Cassidy called. “For God’s sake, man—-you may not get another chance!”

  Cautiously, my energies at the ready, I approached the big, armored form, peering down at his still body. His eyes were closed, but they flickered open again as I watched. I braced myself.

  He regarded me with what looked to be genuine surprise, then scowled. “Enough,” he said in a voice as weak as I had ever heard from him, though still carrying tremendous force of command. Slowly, painfully, he attempted to pull himself up to one knee.

  He seemed sincere about ending the fight, and treachery had never been something associated with him, so I waited. Unsure of whether to help him up or kick him back down, I merely stood there, staring at him. After a few seconds he sought to stand, and reflexively I bent down, helping him up, terribly worried that he might strike again at any moment.

  “What are you doing?” Kim demanded.

  “You can’t be serious,” Cassidy added.

  “Quiet,” Evelyn ordered, and the other two shut up.

  Baranak coughed roughly, then looked at me, unsteady.

  “Lucian. Well.”

  Leaning on my arm, he actually managed a sharp laugh.

  “How ironic.”

  He pulled away, then swayed unsteadily for a second before seeming to regain his equilibrium.

  “What did this to you?” I asked, stepping away again quickly, just in case he renewed hostilities.

  He tried to move, all but staggering forward, then halted again and stood like a giant redwood, swaying in the breeze.

  “I can… no longer… dispute your account of these… Dark Men,” he wheezed. “Four of them… beset me… on the Road.”

  “Four?”

  I stepped back another step, as quickly as if he’d said he brought them along with him.

  “You were attacked by four of them?”

  “Yes,” he huffed, his breathing labored.

  “And yet here you are,” I said, shaking my head in wonder. “At least you managed to get away from them—“

  He glared at me with enough force to knock a lesser man through a wall.

  “Get away? No! I fought them!”

  “Of course, you fought them,” I amended. “That much is obvious. But—“ And I summoned up the Power to full force again, preparing to unleash it upon him, “—you then decided to come straight here, after me?”

  “Not… after you,” he said, slowly regaining his composure. “I had no idea… you were here. I came looking for Arendal.”

  He grasped his helmet in both hands and wrested it off his head. His thick blond beard dripped with sweat; his piercing blue eyes showed no signs of defeat.

  “I sought his help,” he said, “or perhaps a weapon of his, that I could use against them.”

  I blinked. “You came here looking for Arendal?” Somehow, that thought had not even occurred to me.

  Then I started to laugh.

  He glared at me, waiting.

  “Of course you did,” I said. “But I’m afraid I have some unpleasant news. Well,” I added, “unpleasant for you, anyway.” I thought of Arendal lying in the sand with a hole in his forehead. “Sort of pleasant for me, actually.”

  His eyes bored into mine, and I could feel his patience evaporating. Quickly I gave him a very brief synopsis of the clash between Arendal and myself on the beach. After I finished, he continued to glare at me, his anger now almost palpable.

  “Then you may have doomed us all,” he growled, “even if you did not kill the others, before.”

  His words struck me like a physical blow, and I almost stumbled. What? Had he just conceded my innocence in the matter of the murders—or at least admitted that some degree of doubt existed in his mind? What had changed? As much as I wanted to pursue that topic further, I also wanted to know how my settling of matters with Arendal could possibly result in any sort of calamity, so I reluctantly bit my tongue and waited for him to continue.

  “We needed Arendal,” Baranak hissed.

  He shifted his gaze to the ground, then, and his voice grew as quiet, as troubled, as I had ever heard it.

  “The City itself is under siege,” he said. “We are beset by an army of these Dark Men!”

  I swayed on my feet, shocked.

  “What? An army?”

  “Yes. And there are more of them than there are gods remaining to defend the City. Many more. They have taken up positions outside the walls.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “I was convinced it was your doing.”

  I glared back at him.

  “I was convinced it was yours, all along,” I growled.

  “Murderer.”

  “Tyrant.”

  We stared one another down for a long moment, broken finally by Evelyn, who had approached us from the side, saying, “Your city! Under attack. Remember? Not to mention our worlds…”

  Both Baranak and I blinked and glanced at her, then quickly turned back to one another.

  “Let us not forget that part of it,” Baranak said. “The demons have returned to the human worlds. You deny involvement in that?”

  “Oh, sure—-I unleashed demons against my own adopted homeworld.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “How far do you
intend to push this absurdity, Baranak?” I demanded. “Can you not see there is more going on here than just me up to my old tricks?”

  Sullen now, Baranak said nothing. Seconds ticked past, as I waited to see if he would press the matter or even attack again. It appeared, though, that he had come to some sort of acceptance, whether he would admit it or not.

  Then I became aware of something that had nagged at my thoughts since his arrival.

  “Your Hosts, Baranak. Where are they?”

  He looked away.

  “Dead. Or near death, anyway.”

  He exhaled, long and slow. He looked more worn down, more beaten, than I had ever seen him—than I could have ever imagined him.

  “They fell defending me, providing a chance for… escape.” The words came hard to him; the thought of leaving a battle before it was entirely over had to gall him. “But I—-we—-needed help. The welfare of the City had to be put first. I—-I had to come here.”

  I did not know whether to feel hatred toward him for all of the harassment he had given me for so long, or sympathy for his current plight. The errand he was now on was for the good of our City, though, and I owed him honesty in that regard.

  “Arendal surely would not have been of any help to us,” I said, “even were he here.”

  Baranak frowned.

  “What? Why?”

  Taking the bag from Evelyn, I unzipped it and dumped out the contents.

  “We found these here, in Arendal’s sanctum,” I said. “He had to have been involved.”

  Baranak stared at the black pieces of armor, then looked back at me, his expression bleak. Breathing deeply, he drew off one of his mail gauntlets and ran his hand over his face. The swagger, the arrogance with which I had always associated him, was gone.

  “This is grave news,” he said.

  He lifted one of the dark faceplates, studied it, and tossed it aside in disgust.

  “If these… things… were never controlled by you, and if Arendal is out of the picture now… then who…?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “But I have my suspicions.” Best to wait for more evidence before accusing his recent right-hand man, I reasoned.

  “Whatever the things are,” he growled, “they are powerful. Remarkably powerful.”

  “From my own experiences, I would tend to agree with that.”

  “They possess abilities similar to our own.”

  I nodded. “Remarkably similar, I would say.”

  He looked at me, frowning.

  And it clicked.

  “Tell me, Baranak—-how can I be a murderer, when no one is dead?”

  His frown deepened.

  “What?”

  “Did you see the bodies?”

  “Of course! At least, the ones who were killed in or around the City, while the Fountain was not flowing. Others I saw after it was restored, when their bodies were brought back to the City, just before you arrived. All were quite dead.”

  “And what became of them?”

  “What?” he repeated.

  “Were they disposed of in the Fountain?”

  “I assume so.”

  “You assume?”

  His frown, impossibly, became still deeper yet. He wiped the sweat from his face again, thinking.

  “There were so many… We held funeral ceremonies in mass, in the main courtyard. The bodies themselves were turned over to Vorthan as part of the investigation. He was to dispose of them afterward.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “And where is Vorthan now?”

  “I… I left him in charge of the defense of the City, while I sought help.” His expression had become unreadable. “We thought that only I… could break through their lines…”

  “Probably true,” I said, “but leaving Vorthan there, in charge, was not a good idea, I think.”

  “You would turn me against him, as well as against Arendal?” Baranak growled.

  Ignoring that, I motioned for the humans to join us outside the doorway, on the broad shelf. The sky was brightening a bit, as whatever passed for daybreak in the place attempted to assert itself. The storm appeared to have blown over, I thought to myself, scarcely guessing the half of it.

  “The only thing we can do now,” I said, “is get to the Golden City as quickly as we can, and hope it is not already too late.” I met his eyes evenly. “There we will find the truth, once and for all.”

  “Perhaps,” Baranak was saying, “perhaps that—“

  He never got to finish the thought.

  Crimson lightning flared and split the sky in half, accompanied by a deep, rolling boom.

  “They are upon us!” Baranak shouted, pulling his gauntlets and helmet back on.

  With a cry, golden energy trailing from his fists as he moved, he rushed forward, just as a crimson portal shimmered open across from us and two Dark Men charged through it. The collision shook the foundations of the world, and all three of the big figures sprawled across the ground, dangerously close to the ledge.

  Motioning for the humans to retreat inside the chamber once more, I summoned as much of the Power as I dared, flooding my body with its essence. Then, a shield of my blue energy firmly in place around me, I strode forward, a part of me shocked at the very notion that I was going into battle alongside Baranak.

  The Golden God climbed to his feet quickly, roaring. His fists, glowing now like suns, smashed against the Dark Man nearest to him. The ebon figure, deathly silent, shuddered from the blows, but recovered and initiated its own attack, hurling crimson lightning bolts back at him. Baranak staggered, but advanced again.

  The other Dark Man turned to face me, and I redoubled my shields even as I rushed into the fray. We met halfway across the rocky shelf, and I managed to elude two blows while striking my opponent with a series of quickly-hurled blue spheres, each of which sent him stumbling back a bit but none of which did any real damage.

  Meanwhile, his anger and outrage only recharged, Baranak advanced on the other Dark Man once more. His fists moved like twin hammers, and the figure in black became the nail. The Golden God delivered such a beating then that our City would speak of it in hushed and reverent terms for millennia afterward, if any remained alive to do so.

  On we fought, for what felt like hours, and the rains came again during that time.

  Drenched and muddy and above all bone-weary, I fought on as best I could. All too soon, my strength flagged; I am not, after all, the god of battle.

  Some part of me watched the clash from outside myself, and wondered at the very fact of it. Diving into battle is not a thing I have traditionally done often, or willingly, or well. Yet I found that something drove me on, spurred me to action, pushed me to go all out against our foes. As most of my attention remained focused on the Dark Men, a small sliver of my mind diverted itself to understanding just why that might be; what could be urging me to violence.

  Hate?

  How long had I hated Baranak? Forever. He represented everything I despised in a leader: the arrogance, the simplicity of thought, the belligerence against anyone espousing different views.

  Hate, then. Hate for Baranak, though? How could that be pushing me to battle, when I was fighting alongside him?

  Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t so. I did not hate Baranak—-not any longer. I disliked his stubbornness and his arrogance, yes, but among our kind he hardly held the monopoly on those traits. I wanted to convince him of my innocence, or at least to end his pursuit, but in the depths of my once-black heart I could find no more evil designs directed at him.

  The hate that drove me into the battle and pushed me to pursue it to its end could only be hate of those who had brought all of this upon us; upon the Golden City, upon the gods themselves, and most especially upon me!

  There, then, lay the true targets of my hatred: those who would harm the City. I loved that City even as I, dark lord that I was, loved myself—and, as I have said, the City always reflects in its beauty and its glory the
esteem its inhabitants hold for it.

  Perhaps the sharp blows my skull absorbed from the Dark Men contributed to my revelation, but in any event I became convinced then of a possibility I had suspected since first leaving exile: our natures and our Aspects might actually be able to diverge. Was it conceivable? Could we grow beyond our old simplistic restrictions and definitions? I had always found it odd that we gods were so much more than mortal, yet so confined within Aspects staked out for us in the unknowable depths of the past. Maybe the potential had always been there. Maybe something inside us changed when the Fountain was stopped and restarted. And maybe it simply took immortals a long time to grow up and out of our selfish, petty preoccupations. Whatever the case, I felt with certainty that my world was broader now than it had been before.

  All of this passed through my mind in the time it took Baranak to drive one of the Dark Men to its knees and the other to force me back toward the cliff’s edge, about to strike. All of this and one thing more: If we could become more that we had been, if our natures were not encompassed entirely by our godly Aspects, then perhaps the outcome of my long quarrel with Baranak was not a foregone conclusion after all. Perhaps it did not have to be one or the other of us. Perhaps we could coexist, somehow.

  Finding encouragement where none had existed, I moved. The black fists descended but the blows missed their mark. I rolled quickly to my right and scrambled to my feet, energized by something of which I’d known precious little, lately: hope.

  We clashed again, and I actually managed to hold my own for a while. It would be a lie to say I bested the creature in any real sense, in a straight-up fight, but I gave a decent enough accounting of myself to retain some shreds of self-respect, and to cause Baranak an expression of surprise, once or twice, as he snuck an occasional look at how I fared. Nevertheless, the Dark Man surely would have beaten me had not fate intervened. Fate took the form of a shattering blow dealt by Baranak to his own foe, who in turn stumbled backward and into mine. The two sprawled out on their backs, limbs entangled. This was all the opening Baranak needed. Lightning crackled all around as the god of battle pounced upon them, his eyes burning with rage. His huge fists, two golden blurs, pistoned up and down, delivering thunderous blows that smashed them into the ground and took the last of the fight out of them both.