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

by Van Allen Plexico

  Baranak and I exchanged glances momentarily. Neither of us fancied the idea of leaving Karilyne in the middle of a fight, no matter how tough she might be. As Baranak started to shout a reply, though, the silver goddess reached out and grappled again with Vodina, and the two of them tumbled backwards into the water.

  “Karilyne!” we both shouted as one, starting to move forward.

  She surfaced momentarily, a green hand grasping at her face, her own fist striking down repeatedly into the water. “I have her,” she cried. “Go!”

  The Power fluctuated again, then dropped further. It had become dangerously low. We had to act, and now.

  Suppressing further debate, Baranak and I abandoned our lady of silver and black and raced along the Road once more, the humans in tow. We told one another that Karilyne could best Vodina, even in the water. We told ourselves it was for the greater good. And we cursed the entire situation from top to bottom.

  The situation, of course, only grew worse.

  Emerging from what had turned out to be a long valley, we topped a rise and faced an open plain, flat and dusty, with no end in sight. What looked like an asphalt-paved highway out of antiquity ran like ribbon across it, just ahead of us. As we neared it, a portal shimmered open, its energy halo sparkling white, with traces of red lightning forking through it. From out of the circle stepped another Dark Man.

  Immediately Baranak and I took up defensive stances, both of us cursing this additional delay.

  Instead of attacking, though, the Dark Man stumbled sideways, moaning softly. This possibly constituted the first sound I had heard one of them make. The moan was followed immediately by a much louder wail, as of someone in great pain. The Dark Man reached up to his own head with both black-gloved hands, clutching at himself.

  “What do you make of this, Lucian?” Baranak growled.

  I merely shook my head, waiting to see what would happen next.

  We did not have long to wait. With a sudden cry, the Dark Man tore at the blank mask covering his face, managing after a few seconds to pull it away. For a moment the face was obscured, as the dark figure kept ripping and tugging on the hood and other garments covering its upper body. Then, pulling the last shreds of black fabric and armor away, he stood revealed to us.

  Arendal, his white suit rumpled and torn, scorch marks streaked across his skin, stumbled forward. His glasses were missing, his clawlike hands empty.

  Baranak wasted not a second; he rushed forward, his voice shaking with fury.

  “Are you the traitor?” he cried. “Are you?”

  Arendal looked at us, eyes blank, and I could see that he was not himself. More even than Vodina, he seemed a zombie, animated by an outside force.

  “Watch out,” I called to Baranak—as if he needed protection from anyone or anything.

  The God of Battle ignored me and seized Arendal by the collar, lifting him up. Golden energies flooded along his arms as he shook the slender god roughly.

  “Speak!” he commanded. “Confess!”

  Then Baranak gasped and recoiled, hurling the other god to the ground.

  “His forehead,” he said, pointing.

  Coming up beside him, I looked down at Arendal where he stiffly struggled to rise.

  From a distance, I had not seen a jewel on his forehead, like those that had been so prominently attached to Vodina and to the Dark Men. Now, though, I could tell that he, too, wore one. His, though, had been barely visible, so deeply was it implanted in a small, round hole in his forehead.

  The hole created days earlier by my pistol.

  Arendal still fought to rise, one hand reaching out in a jerky motion toward us. Baranak and I both tensed, preparing for attack. Instead, he opened his mouth and gagged, seemingly attempting to speak, his words choking in his throat.

  Crimson energies flared from the sky then, one tendril striking Arendal and connecting with the jewel. Crying out, he fell backwards to the dusty ground. Then, before either of us could react, he leapt up and charged at us.

  Baranak stood impassively and waited until Arendal got within an arm’s length away, then swung his huge, golden fist out in an almost casual motion, striking him against the side of the head.

  The slender god tumbled away, arms and legs flailing, until he rolled to an eventual stop in what looked to be a very painful position. His suit, now filthy, hung from him in tatters as he once again attempted to rise.

  Baranak and I moved to stand over him, ready for further action.

  “Noooo…” he gasped, his mouth forming a distorted “O” as he brought up both hands before him in an almost pleading gesture. “Not… meeeee…”

  Baranak eyed him warily, waiting.

  “We do not have time for this,” he growled. “Some resolution must come, now.”

  “If this is what has become of him,” I said, looking down at him, “I think he’s gotten only what he deserved. He was a part of this from the start, I’m certain.”

  Arendal, or what was left of him, slumped forward, looking down at the ground.

  “Yessss…” he managed to gasp through deadened lips. “I… thought I was… the mastermind…” He sobbed then, once. “But I was… played… was the biggest pawn… of all…”

  He looked up at me then, calmness and clarity coming over his features for the first time.

  “The biggest pawn…” he gasped, “…except for you, Lucian.”

  I only nodded. This was scarcely news to me, anymore.

  Baranak glanced at me, then, and I could tell that, probably for the first time, he had begun to realize I truly had been framed. Then he returned his attention to Arendal.

  “Who?” he demanded. “Who was your partner?”

  “I did not know…” he said, his voice now very rough, very ragged. “Did not know he would kill them… Kill so many…”

  Interesting, I thought. If Arendal actually believed the gods were dead, perhaps he spoke the truth.

  “Who was it?” Baranak yelled, reaching to grasp Arendal by the throat. “WHO?”

  “Vor—“

  He gasped, choked, and the jewel popped from his forehead, landing at my feet. A tiny tendril of red energy trailed from it, back to the wound in his forehead. The air seemed to go out of Arendal then, and he collapsed limply. Baranak released him and he fell to the ground, unmoving.

  The tendril of energy vanished.

  I lifted the jewel and looked into its depths. Inside, a tiny spark of light swam, just as it had in the jewel I had taken from the pistol with which I had shot Arendal before—the jewel I had given to Alaria, I recalled. This, I knew beyond question, was that same jewel.

  As I watched, the light flickered, died. The jewel grew dark in my hand.

  Arendal seemed to sigh, once, softly, and then his body crumbled to dust, disintegrating before our eyes.

  Startled, Baranak stepped backwards, nearly stumbling.

  We looked at one another, wordlessly. There was nothing to say.

  Again the Power shifted around us, dropped.

  We had very little time remaining to reach the City.

  We ran.

  # # #

  At last the gates of the City loomed before us.

  “The Dark Men are gone,” Baranak said as we approached. “They had surrounded this area, laying siege.”

  “I fear I know exactly where they are now,” I replied.

  His face hardening into quite possibly the most fearsome and intimidating expression I have ever beheld, Baranak strode forward.

  We gathered before the gates, all five of us, we improbable rescuers of the eternal realm: three humans, hurled out of their universe and their depths; the golden god of battle, my eternal foe and constant tormenter, now my only trusted ally; and me, the erstwhile dark lord, home again at last to save the City he loved, or die trying.

  The gates were closed. Each of us who called that place home, however, carried the key within ourselves.

  Leaning forward, resting both massive,
armored hands upon the golden surface, Baranak pushed.

  The doors resisted.

  He groaned, redoubling his efforts.

  Still they did not budge.

  Louder he groaned, and I knew he had bent all of his will, as well as his strength, to overcoming the resistance. Moving up beside him, I lent my own efforts to the job.

  Those gates could hold back an army, but they could never withstand the force and determination of the master of the City. With a shudder, they parted slightly, the light from inside spilling out. And then, as if some invisible barricade had been removed, they gave way and swung easily open.

  We strode onto the gilded streets of our Heaven, our eternal realm. Palaces and towers lined the broad avenue ahead of us, jewels glinting from every surface, but I saw no one on the terraces or balconies, no faces in the windows. Once again I experienced a visceral reaction to the sheer emptiness of the place, but I shoved the feeling down through force of will and buried it.

  “Beware,” Baranak growled, “for the Power ebbs low. We are extremely vulnerable.”

  At the far end of the avenue lay the great basin, a circular bowl of white stone perhaps a hundred yards wide, set into the ground, its lip raised up about four feet above street level. It contained the pool from which the Fountain sprang. One look at it confirmed his words and my fears. In place of the usual towering geyser of cosmic energies at its center, roaring up from none-knew-where, instead existed a mere sputtering trickle. What little remained of the Fountain could be seen bubbling just above the top of the ceremonial stairway and platform that extended out over the basin.

  The state of the Fountain was not what caught my attention, however. As the five of us raced along toward the main square in which it lay, we saw that the basin had been surrounded by figures in black. More of the “murdered” gods, I was certain; their bodies perverted into mindless servitude. From high up on the platform extended myriad forking tongues of red lightning, each reaching down to touch one of the Dark Men below. The creatures writhed at the touch of the current, almost basking in it.

  If what I suspected was true, the violation was even worse than I had believed. Not only had he bent them to his will, but he had made them utterly dependent upon him, upon his channeling of the Fountain’s Power to them via himself. Anger swelled within me, and I started forward again.

  The golden god of battle arrived first. He fairly shook with rage, and his voice echoed off the walls of the deserted city. “Who dares?” he roared. “Who dares pervert the golden realm so?”

  “Show yourself, Vorthan,” I yelled, and Baranak looked back at me. I’ll give him credit; stubborn as he was, he no longer seemed surprised.

  A figure moved into view at the head of the stairs, atop the platform. Neither his rich red robes nor his uncharacteristic wearing of gold and jewelry could disguise him from us. We knew his face quite well. Mottled bald scalp, black goatee, eyes burning red; our rugged, powerful god of toil had seemingly joined me in moving beyond the limitations of our Aspects—a proposition I found more than troubling.

  “I have no more reason to conceal my activities or myself,” Vorthan said, granting us a mock salute.

  Reaching into his robes with his left hand, he gestured with the other, and the horde of Dark Men parted before us, allowing us a pathway to the foot of the stairs. When we had moved past them and reached that position, he bade us halt.

  “You no longer present a threat,” he gloated. “Only a bare few remain to oppose me. The rest now comprise my dark army.” He raised his bare arms, blacksmith’s muscles bulging, and crimson energies flowed from his clenched fists. I could only guess he had devised some way to channel much of the remaining Power from the Fountain directly to himself, or perhaps even to store it up when the flow ceased entirely. That tracked with what I had already theorized—that he had attacked the others when they were powerless and he himself was not.

  So Vorthan most likely retained all his energies, all his potency. Meanwhile, Baranak and I existed as little more than mortals. At that moment I believed our predicament could scarcely grow worse.

  “All of the City is mine,” Vorthan crowed.

  “Ours,” a melodious voice corrected from behind him.

  “You!” Evelyn gasped, moving between us to gaze up at the new figure on the platform.

  Baranak and I watched in stunned silence as our lady Alaria strode to the edge and stood beside Vorthan. Alaria, as beautiful as before, her thick, auburn hair a halo about her, her black dress shimmering in the light. Now, though, she carried with her an air of danger and terrible power, enticing yet utterly deadly, that radiated outward as a palpable, tangible force. Alaria, who had released me from the dungeon and had provided clues along my journey of discovery and self-discovery. Alaria, who had used me, I saw now, as a pawn, with which to distract and misdirect Baranak every step of the way. I couldn’t have done it better myself.

  “A pawn,” I whispered then, and remembered where I had just recently heard that word spoken, through dying lips. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had used Arendal just as thoroughly as she had used me. For different ends, of course—him, for his weapons and his knowledge; me, for my reputation and my usefulness as a decoy—but to equal effect. She and Vorthan had played us all for fools. And I had been so blinded by my anger toward Baranak and Vorthan that I had never seen it, never suspected.

  “Why?” Baranak whispered, his carefully ordered world collapsing around him.

  “This is beyond understanding,” I snapped before either of them could reply. Truth be told, I did not want to hear their justifications. It all struck too close to home for me, in more ways than one. Even I, the dark lord, had never conceived of going so far as to render my fellow gods into mindless slaves.

  “What I want to know,” I said, “is how.”

  Vorthan’s lips parted in a cruel grin.

  “You would,” he laughed.

  He drew a large red jewel from his robes—surely what he had been clutching there before—and held it aloft. It was similar in appearance to the smaller ones we had encountered so often of late, but much bigger.

  “All the gods,” he cackled. “They’re all in here.”

  He held the gem before him, leering at it, madness dancing in his eyes.

  “So very efficient,” he continued. “One of my finest works. It took but a few centuries to construct—a synthetic gem replicating the properties of the very jewels that powered your weapons, Lucian.” Looking at me, he chuckled. “The gems that, in your weapons, merely stunned… but, given a few modifications of my own, grew capable of drawing out a god’s life force, imprisoning it within, and leaving the body a perfect, empty vessel… possessing some degree of power, and needing only… control.”

  I thought of Arendal, and how I must have done the same thing to him, back on my island, that Vorthan had done to… to so many of us. I shivered. At least the three gems in the humans’ guns had been acquired directly from Buchner; they could never have done the damage Vorthan’s gem had. For this, if for little else at the moment, I was grateful—I did not need anything more on my conscience.

  Baranak glared at me, once, surely for my unintentional contributions to Vorthan’s dark accomplishments. Then he returned his attention to the lunatic before us.

  Vorthan gazed into the gem’s dark depths, and from my vantage below I thought I could see flecks of color swimming within.

  “All the souls of the gods—if such is your preferred term—held within, and their bodies mine to command. Though capturing them drained away most of their individual Aspects and abilities, they remain powerful soldiers in my army. Powerful… and obedient.”

  At that, the row of Dark Men snapped to attention and all turned toward us. There were dozens of them.

  My mind worked frantically, searching for a way to turn this to our advantage. I took a few steps up the stairway, Baranak automatically following. I focused on Alaria, trying somehow to know her mind, to u
nderstand what dark desires and motivations had driven her to this end. Unexpectedly, I found she was already staring at me, seeking my own thoughts. I met her eyes and knew then what she wanted. I do not know what she saw in mine, nor do I want to know, but she must have felt it was enough.

  “Thank you, Vorthan,” she said then. “Your expertise has been most useful, and your assistance most appreciated.”

  He frowned, but was not able to look back at her in time.

  The silver cane of Arendal appeared in Alaria’s hand, white lightning flaring about it. She raised it high. Then, with a cry, she planted its sharp, pointed tip squarely between Vorthan’s shoulders.

  The god of toil gasped once, his eyes wide, then fell to his knees, his crimson energies gushing out through the wound opened by that mighty weapon. He toppled forward, the large gem spilling from his fingers and bouncing just past Alaria’s outstretched, grasping hands to tumble down the stairs.

  It skittered to a stop at the feet of the human, Cassidy. He picked it up and peered into its shimmering depths, oblivious to all else around him.

  Baranak rushed up the stairs, apparently thinking Alaria an easy mark now, or perhaps believing it had all been a ruse, to defeat Vorthan. Betrayed by his chivalry and his condescension, at the end.

  Even as Alaria noted that one of the human men had caught the jewel, she drew the cane from Vorthan’s back and held it at her side. “Oh, Baranak,” she greeted him. “You muscle-bound fool. You think Vorthan had the cunning to mastermind all of this?”

  He recoiled, but too late. The deadly weapon struck again, piercing his golden armor and biting deep into his chest.

  Shoving Baranak’s gasping form aside, she fixed her gaze on Cassidy. “Give me the stone!”

  The human captain raised his pistol but could not fire. She had virtually hypnotized him. I had seen it so many times before, when she would venture to the mortal realm. Men could rarely withstand her Aspect and her will, manifested as overpowering beauty and desire. Cassidy found himself walking up the stairs, the jewel proffered in one hand.