by Lee Bond
Denise nodded, heart thumping in her chest. She knew what she was doing. She wanted to do it. She’d heard whispers in school and amongst her friends.
About how to get a better life, thanks to the Church. She knew that if she found the right man or woman, that if she did the rights things for that man or woman, her life would improve. She wouldn’t need to hide from her parents any longer, wouldn’t have to worry about the abuse or the hard words and even harder punishments.
She’d heard rumors of a place somewhere in the city that was a hideaway for people inside the Church, a place where they could go and do the things they pretended didn’t exist any longer, and it’d taken her a long time to find it.
She’d done terrible things to find the Black Altar, and was prepared to do even more things to make certain she never had to go home again.
“And how do you like the place?” Jordan moved closer, sweeping one of his arms around the girl’s snowy shoulders. He watched with amusement as tendrils of beast-driven skin pulsed towards the girl’s neck and shoulders, inching towards the soft skin there, like snakes hunting for a meal.
“It’s wonderful.” Denise gushed, doing her best not to flinch at the man’s tender caress. He wasn’t bad looking. More to the point, she knew who he was. And if he was showing an interest in her, all the better.
Even if he tired of her, she’d be known as someone who’d spent time with Darren Freoli, the Voice of the Church, and so long as there was one other person out there who wanted influence inside the Church, she could use that association –however long or brief- to her advantage. “The music, the people, the …”
“You can say it.” Jordan breathed the words gently into her ear. Up close and personal, the girl’s natural perfume, mingled with sweat and other smells pulled into her dress while on the dance floor became a delirious cocktail. He dragged his teeth gently across the swell of her neck, tasted the salty sweetness. “Drugs. Alcohol. All of it.”
Denise trembled. Wherever Darren’s lips, tongue or teeth touched her, the skin rose up in goosebumps, almost as if they were trying to protect her. “Y-yes.”
One of his hands, smooth and soft yet surprisingly strong, stole up her exposed calf, leaving behind a trail of yet more goosebumps. “I … I’m surprised to find someone like you here, though.”
“Oh?” Jordan smiled against the young girl’s neck. She was willing to go quite a ways, it seemed; even as her own flesh rebelled against his insidious touch, she shifted her legs just so, allowing him access. Could it be? Would he be so lucky to’ve found a woman that’d submit to his deepest of cravings? “You know who I am?”
Denise nodded again, breath catching in her throat for a second as Darren’s insistent fingers probed her upper thighs. This was nothing. This was … this was nothing. “You’re the Voice of the Church. You’re somebody.”
Jordan had it now. The girl was like Gary. She wanted to be someone. She was old enough to’ve grown sick and tired of the tumultuous life caused by Trinity’s unkind managing of the ancient Tenerekian attempt at secession and wanted more for herself, yet she was young enough to still believe gaining that freedom would be easy. The Church uncovered more and more people on a daily basis who believed the same, that the institution could bring them whatever they wanted.
And they weren’t wrong. The Church could and did do amazing things. It elevated the weak and the poor to the same level as the rich and powerful, took drug addicts and transformed them into preachers, took wealthy fools and morphed them into penitent, pious buffoons. All things were relative beneath the impervious gaze of the CoN.
Nothing was the great equalizer.
Too bad for the girl that her future was going to be so very brief.
“And you?” He whispered throatily. The beast was ready. “What about you?”
“I want to be somebody.” Denise half-gasped, half-moaned as Darren did … something … with his fingers.
“How wonderful for you.” Jordan closed his eyes, let the beast out. His teeth, grown into points sharper than any needle, bit right into the girl’s warm, inviting neck.
Hot blood spilled down his gullet in a burst of life become death, and he opened his mouth as wide as he could to keep that brilliant warmth from staining his clothes. The girl writhed and squirmed, trying to break free of his grasp, but alas, she was held tight.
Denise tried screaming, tried kicking and scratching, but Darren’s grip was too tight. Darkness crowded her vision.
Jordan drank deep for a moment more, then took a huge bite out of the girl’s neck as if he were biting into an apple. He sat back, chewing, and watched on as the girl –really, he should’ve done her the courtesy of learning her name, at the very least- tried crawling over the table to freedom, blood leaking savagely from the wide gash.
He frowned. “Not quite as willing as I’d hoped. Willing to go only so far and no further. One day. One day I’ll find a woman brave enough to give all that she is. But not today.”
Jordan Bishop, the beast wearing a man’s skin, snatched one of the girl’s bloodstained hands by the wrist and hauled her closer. Her faint mewling sounds reached his ears and pushed him into a frenzy.
***
Gary stared, almost blindly, at the soundproof booth. Tried imagining what was going on in there. He shook his head. Whatever was happening in that booth was a thing he wanted to remain completely ignorant of. Bad enough he suspected that whoever he sent in there to clean up after Darren was gone would find little in the way of the girl’s presence.
“Nowhere but up.” Gary whispered to himself as he made his way to the bar.
It was time to drink until it was as dark in his head as it was in his heart.
Eye Spy With My Little Eye…
Antal prodded the clear portion of The Cordon thoughtfully, absolutely amazed and mystified at the forces that must've been brought to bear to create the momentary schism in the shield keeping him out. Every time a crystalline fingertip brushed the frictionless, sensation-less patch of nothingness, the Heshii entombed within his immense frame shrieked plaintively, prompting the cruel Kith to rest a palm directly overtop.
The shrieks turned into agonized cries.
Antal loved to torture those who'd brought him to this point, and there was no better -or easier- way to do that than to even come near The Cordon; while the presence of Garth's shield did indeed bring him some discomfort, to the Heshii, it was a Universal-sized brush of stinging nettles looped with electricity that dripped acidic magma. So great was their pain and discomfort that the trapped M'Zahdi Hesh swam through his insides at breakneck speed, flinging themselves against the inside of their crystalline prison once they'd reached a high enough velocity.
The crystalline giant smiled. It was funny, it really was, the state the Heshii found themselves in these days.
Well, millennia, really.
The transformation from being simply the oldest organic creature in the Universe into the being he was now had started so slowly, the occasional scrap of flesh -a fingernail, or a hair, or just a strip on an arm or leg- undergoing some inexplicable alchemical process, shifting from organic flesh and bone into translucent, unbreakable crystal.
The revelation that the crystalline structures replacing his ancient body were physical manifestations of actual extra-dimensional energy had come as a shock to both himself and the reigning Heshii, and when they'd worked up enough power to break through into the real world to discuss what was happening and how best to first slow, then reverse, that process, they'd found themselves ... snared. Unable to flee, unable to exert the kind of pressure and domination they'd once used to oh so effectively control their human minions.
"How you must hate it still." Antal mused, pulling his paw away from the clear Cordon spot. He rubbed his fingers together thoughtfully. So great had been their distress that sensations from the riled up passengers inside his body lingered. "After all these thousands of years, how you must feel …. weak. What pleasure for me.
What joy."
Only, Antal had to confess -if only to himself- that there was no pleasure, merely it’s absence. The endless stretch of Cordon that flashed from one end of the horizon to the other made his greatest accomplishment -the Galaxyship World's End- seem like nothing more than an afterthought.
The creator of The Cordon, the bastard son and prodigal paradox, was also the architect of his madness, of the horrible condition he'd fallen into, and oh, would he suffer! The shrieking, grating, effervescent agony suffered by the Heshii he carried would be refreshing in comparison to the trials and tribulations one Garth N'Chalez would endure for the remainder of Eternity.
What little of that there was left.
Antal turned to consider the flood of Harmony soldiers milling around on the wide stretch of flat road they'd built during their hunt to capture Garth's wayward child, Griffin, and the thoroughly astonishing Chad Sikkmund.
They’d given good chase, all of them. It didn’t matter if they were merely hollow shells, echoes of the soldiers that he’d eventually begin churning out once the war had begun properly. They’d drunk deeply of ex-dee, burning through their lives quick as mayflies to build the long road from the nearest waystation, and for that, they deserved respect. Antal raised a hand and fired a pulse signal into the air, bringing all million or so soldiers to a complete and utter standstill.
It was eerie for Antal, even after all this time; they were frozen solid, not a single atom moving against his commands. Were anyone to sweep into the area with life sign detectors, all they’d pick up were small blotches of heat too diffuse to mean anything. Were anyone to walk amongst them, hindbrain screaming in their ears that they were in danger, all they’d see were uncanny statues.
Perhaps one of the members of this hypothetical team of visitors would be bold enough to draw a weapon, to test it against the weird statues littering the Long Road, and then, perhaps, they’d uncover the truth.
“But not today.” Antal shook his head. No, as much as he might like to have the opportunity to fool with Garth and whatever minions he eventually brought to the fight, he knew –as well as anyone- that when The Cordon fell and their forces clashed, it was going to be a balls deep, fast and furious eruption. It might drag on for years, but that initial spate?
Armageddon. True and glorious Armageddon the likes of which the Unreal Universe or it’s absentee creator, the so-called Engines of Creation, had never seen. Any destruction caused by the Heshii or the predator-species, the Bruush, would not only pale in comparison but be scorned.
“We will show them the way.” Antal nodded, then pulsed another signal into the air. These poor souls had earned their respite. There was no need to ask them to loiter any longer. Until he considered what it was that this window into Trinityspace represented and how best to exploit it, they were unnecessary.
Upon the edge of the road, where Kith Antal’s clone army stood, a colossal wave rolled through the million strong army, and there seemed to be a kind of soft, willowy sigh that traipsed alongside the shivering motion; wherever the wave passed, Harmony soldiers literally burst at the seams, spilling brightly colored splashes of thick light that began following the wave. Soldiers by the thousands burst apart, adding their essence to the mix, so that by the time the last of the million men fell to pieces, nothing remained of them except a swirling, diffuse ball of energy.
Antal gestured, and the orb broke loose from it’s ‘earthly’ boundary to zoom towards it’s master, filling the heavens on all sides with eldritch, wistful light.
As it grew closer and closer, it shrank and shrank, remaining matter and energy becoming so compressed that by the time it reached the massively crystalline warlord’s outstretched palm, it was no bigger than an oversized basketball.
The Kith gazed into the reflective sphere, smiling brightly at the sight of one of the Hesh –it was getting so hard to tell them apart these days- trapped in the corner of one of his eyes. Drawn there by the impossible to miss ex-dee imprint generated by the Soldier Orb, the Heshii was now bound up in the dense crystal veins of that eye. It’d be some time before the idiot broke free.
“You are freed from service for the time being, boys.” Antal tapped the sphere with a finger and it burst apart like a soap bubble. All the power, all the matter, all the effort that’d gone into creating a horde of soldiers capable of not only moving at near light speed but building something at that pace … dissipated.
It was as if they’d never been.
Antal spun on his axis to confront the Trinity Window once more. Somewhere on the other side of that clear patch of Cordon, his scurrilous reverse-grandson and Chad Sikkmund hid. The Kith could feel them, just there, just beyond reach, plotting and scheming and preparing. They knew things about the functionality of the Galaxyship and his plans to rain destruction down atop the entire Universe, things that no man beyond him should know.
Antal supposed it was his own fault. From the very moment that Griffin Jones had appeared, impossibly teleported into the very center of the Galaxyship, he’d been stricken with deep moodiness, an irascible irritation that’d gnawed and gnawed and gnawed at him. Looking into those hostile green eyes, seeing only the bluest of blue. Catching sight of … him … in the fiery Texan’s jaw or the sweep of the nose, or even in just how some words were said … oh, it’d taken every ounce of caution to use Griffin Jones instead of killing him right there on the spot.
To gaze upon Griffin Jones had been to see his father, Garth N’Chalez. And to be reminded, constantly and continuously, of that man’s deplorable deceit.
“It goes beyond that.” Antal drew back and slammed a fist big as a mountain against the Cordon’s new window. Nothing. Not even aftershock or reverb. Antal held enough power in his body to shatter buildings with no real effort, but The Cordon just … drank it in.
“Garth’s plan is so much more than mere deceit. There isn’t even a word for it. No, the only way to balance the unspeakable cruelty of that man is to create something similar, visit it upon him every second of every hour of every day for the next million years. I will devise machines to hold the Unreal Universe together if needs must. I will keep this festering boil we’ve called Existence functional until I am fully satisfied. And that will take some time.”
Satisfied –even though he’d already been quite certain of failure- that the clear spot was still just as immune to his tremendous power as it’d always been, Antal turned to different tactics; he’d been too far away from the scene of their egress to witness the exchange and interplay of powers being utilized to affect their escape, but that didn’t mean he was unable to glean answers.
Far from it. So very far from it. He was Kith Antal. The Galaxyship was his to command, in every sense of the word. Transformed into living ex-dee crystals and drawing on the power and knowledge of the entombed Heshii had given him unparalleled control over everything under his command. Were he to will it, all the planets he’d captured en route to The Cordon could be unspooled, their impressive amounts of matter redirected wherever he wanted, transformed into whatever he demanded.
Something as paltry as looking into the past? To behold the traitor and the madman’s efforts at freedom?
Simple as pie.
The very air around him was already reacting to his wishes by revealing splashes and splotches of color that were representative of Griffin and Chad. Focusing as only someone as he could do brought the whole scene to life.
Kith Antal, Destroyer of the Universe, settled in to see what could be seen.
***
Hindsight.
It was a bitch.
Antal wished that he was better at seeing how things would play out before he made his decisions.
If he’d been just a bit better at that, he might not even be the being he was now. He might not be the maddest thing in all Creation, there was every possibility that he wouldn’t be home to a clutch of shrieking disembodied extra-dimensional space locusts hell-bent on Existential destruction, and he might
not be in the situation he was in right now.
“But I had so much fun.” Antal could still hear Griffin’s agonized cries as the power he held inside was channeled outwards to move the entire Galaxyship at speeds the lumbering vessel itself had never been capable of reaching, could still see the ex-dee spawned fire seething through the man’s veins, transforming him from a traitorous Kin’kithal into something quite wonderful.
“Such fun.” Antal whispered the words a second time. Jones had deserved it. They all deserved what they got, in spades. As he had filled Jones’ head with tales and stories of just how the Universe was going to suffer and the many and various ways he planned on torturing N’Chalez, Jones’d screamed anything and everything he’d ever learned while working for Trinity.
A seemingly mutual exchange of concepts and ideas. Not necessarily an even exchange, mind, and there was the matter of the nihilistic agony coursing through the red-headed Kin’kithal’s implausibly resilient body –really and truly, the number of times Antal had witnessed Griffin’s body split open by the torrential flood of ex-dee fire, only to see those wounds seal shut in an instant, were much higher than expected- to contend with, but even Griffin would have to admit to some level of give-and-take.
The Kin’kith, for example, could tell Garth everything he knew. About the War, about the style of destruction. About the clones themselves, the powers they possessed, the skills they’d bring to the table. About the planets full of carefully nurtured Cordon-freaks, and their special powers, their awe-inspiring tech.
In return, Antal knew about the Enforcers, knew about Latelyspace, and how it was positively lousy with all kinds of hytech devices.
“Hm.” Antal frowned. Now that he thought about it, Griffin had come out ahead of the game in every way. He knew more about the Plan, about the enemy, about everything.