Hammer of the Witches

by Kai Wai Cheah

  And lying was one of his many talents.

  What should he say this time? Ah, yes. He was going to meet a high-level source in Germania who could provide insight into the Hexenhammer threat. Then, he would check in with the federal police to see how they were doing. Why, he could even make time to meet his deputy to assess the threat Hexenhammer posed.

  It wasn’t even completely false.

  Fifteen minutes later he was pleased with the results. It was couched in just enough jargon to convince auditors and bureaucrats while creating the appearance of clarity and therefore honesty. He fired off his memo in the sure and certain knowledge that it would be approved.

  Now he switched on another slate, a cheap device used for a single purpose. The device projected a holographic screen at eye level and a keyboard on his desk. After typing in his password, he counted to three and pressed his thumb to the reader. Any deviation from that procedure would cause the slate to brick itself.

  He logged into a virtual private network, which masked his online traffic as originating from South Afrike. Then, he booted up Tor and typed in a long string of seemingly random letters and numbers, concluding with “. onion.” The browser directed his connection through a network of over seven thousand relays and brought him to a hidden site on the Deep Web.

  The page took a while to load. Such was the price of cybersecurity. In the early days of Hexenhammer, he had had to reconcile two seemingly impossible demands. On the one hand, he had to ensure the websites were thoroughly protected against external attackers—not just to protect the group, but also himself. On the other hand, the group had to be internally fragile, allowing him to take them apart after they had outlived their usefulness. And on the gripping hand, he had to achieve this without Hexenhammer catching on to what he was really doing.

  Setting up Hexenhammer’s cyber infrastructure had taken long weeks of meetings with hackers and experts inside and outside the Organization and Hexenhammer, many hours of careful planning and research, and multiple deception plans. But all that hard work was beginning to pay off. If waiting a little longer for a website to load was the price of success, he would gladly pay it.

  The page finally booted. It was a secure forum promising “free and uncensored speech” about anything and everything. Here, communists advocated tirelessly for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat while insulting fascists, fascists vigorously proclaimed the superiority of totalitarianism while critiquing communists, libertarians struggled in vain to maintain an island of sanity, anarchists laughed at everyone, and regular people tried to talk about other things while steering clear of the politicking.

  Opening more tabs, he typed in more jumbles of letters and numbers, taking him to even more forums with similar premises.

  To outsiders, these websites appeared to be a loosely affiliated network of individual pages run by different people. The reality was that their owners were all part of Hexenhammer. The group’s support staff compiled the information they gathered from those pages and produced regular intelligence digests for the group’s inner circle, the vetted members who knew what was truly going on.

  There were no more digests, of course. The four people who compiled them had been swept up in the first wave of arrests. They didn’t really know much of the group’s inner workings, but they believed in the vision of sovereign Pantopian states free of Wahi influence. He could count on them to tell the media what they believed in and rely on the media to dutifully repeat their words, which was why they were allowed to live.

  For the next hour he read completely in silence, sipping at a glass of cool water. At this time of night, nobody at home would be awake. He could focus completely on his task.

  Hexenhammer was on the ropes. They were panicking. Members were disappearing left and right. Nobody knew if long-time members had simply gone underground or if they had been arrested. Even better, the outsiders, the ones who did not know what Hexenhammer was about, were turning against it.

  Are the mods with Hexenhammer or not? I don’t wanna be associated with a terrorist group. This is way too much, even with what we do.

  Fool me once, shame on me. But there won’t be a second time. I’m gone, and I’m telling the cops.

  u neonazi assholes! u r de scum of de world! i knew something was wrong when i started seeing de 1488 white power memes here. u nazis can go to hell!

  The hit on the refugee camp was heavy, but it’s the right thing to do. It’s the first shot in the war for a free and pure Pantopia. Kick the moose furs back to where they came from. You ready for what’s coming? I’m ready.

  The handler smiled. Everything was playing into his hands. The ones that condemned the group would cause greater strife and internal conflict. The ones that doubled down on the anti-immigrant rhetoric would be prime police targets—perfect for reinforcing the narrative he was building.

  He checked in on the bounty pages. Here, users were encouraged to post details of targets. People they wanted hacked, slimed, doxed or dead. They would send funds to an escrow account—usually in cryptocurrencies—and when the prize grew large enough, Hexenhammer would act, even if they had to do it under another name.

  On the more moderate sites, the bounties were gone. Scrubbed so completely, it was as if they had never existed. But the more extreme sites still kept them. There, he saw demands for dead cops on the street, dead Musafireen immigrants, dead traitors who sold out the cause. Sure, they were all couched as future predictions—I will pay one thousand dollars if a moose fur is beheaded by next week—to skirt the law, but they were kill orders all the same.

  Excellent. More proof that these extremists had to be stopped.

  He typed out his observations and saved them in an encrypted folder. When the time was right, when the sympathizers had completely turned against each other, he would send in the legitimate authorities.

  Now, for Hexenhammer.

  He logged into the secure site. Hexenhammer also had a forum, but this one was dedicated to requests for support and to share intelligence.

  The forum was on fire. People demanded to know if other users were about, if the authorities had found the page, if other users were in fact undercover agents. In subforums, other users called for help: documents, money, safe houses, equipment.

  Smiling, he put his hands to the keys and weaved his lies.

  ***

  The humans called him Alpha. It was not his name.

  His true name was magnificent and fearsome, an abbreviated echo of the cosmic forces that had create him and his kind. No human could pronounce it; they had too few mouths. Indeed, many of his brothers and cousins could not either. Instead, they referred to him by the title he had earned: the Stormbringer.

  The Stormbringer drifted through absolute darkness. Here was the primordial stuff of Creation. An early group of humans called it Khaos. Another named it Haawiyah. Today it was called the Void. Here was the formless mass of being and non-being. A single thought could summon a palace into existence, and another could disperse it into nothingness. The only constant here was consciousness.

  Here, he was free. No longer confined to a weak body of mere flesh, with only two arms and legs and a single head, he was free to assume his true form. He grew, larger and powerful. Strength and awareness flooded into him. It was like the removal of a blindfold; now he could see countless leagues in every direction and work his will upon anything he saw.

  All around him, tiny flickering dots flitted hither and thither. Now and then they assumed human forms, but most were tiny, shriveled shells. Monsters and daimons chased them, laughing and shouting and roaring with glee, flying through the Void as swift as eagles. In their hands they held swords, tridents, clubs, white-hot pokers, a thousand other instruments of war and torture. Some held captive souls, squashing or choking or smashing them with their hands. In the distance, other natives of Khaos carried off their prizes to the dungeons and torture chambers where screams and moans and pleas and cries never ceased
.

  No one could truly die here. None here had the means to obliterate consciousness. But it did not mean that humans could not suffer. Every time they experienced trauma, every instant their soul-bodies were violated, they experienced every sensation to the fullest. And here in Khaos, they did not enjoy the release of death.

  The souls were not tortured eternally, of course. Given infinite time, anyone can become accustomed to infinite tortures. Many of the victims went mad with pain and horror, no longer responding to whatever fresh brutalities their captors could imagine.

  So they were allowed to escape. To run. To be allowed a glimmer of hope before it was crushed again.

  But Khaos was eternal and unending. Escapees would merely enter the domain of another race of daimons. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. Only countless years of suffering, a brief moment of hope, the exhilaration and desperation of flight, the despair when they inevitably fell into the clutches of yet another group of daimons.

  The current ruler of Khaos had sanctioned this behavior. Warranted it even. Here, away from the Light of Creation, hidden from the gaze of absent gods, there was no such thing as sin or vice—merely the will to power.

  But he and his kind had sworn an oath to a higher power, a power that would make even the Unmaker tremble.

  None of the creatures here bothered him. The native daimons gave him a wide berth, even if it meant temporarily releasing their prey. More than a few humans would rather be captured than fly into him. Even those who did not know him fled the moment they saw him. Only the ignorant and the blind approached.

  The Stormbringer had no time to waste. He merely seized those who came too close, crushed them in his massive hands and tossed them toward the nearest gang of daimons. The remaining condemned souls quickly gave him a wide berth.

  He felt no remorse. Only the guilty inhabited this place, and they deserved everything they received.

  The Stormbringer sank deeper, deeper, deeper. He held his destination in mind, and Khaos itself rippled around him, its essence carrying him where he needed to go.

  There were few permanent structures in Khaos. His destination was among the oldest, largest and most recognizable. When the gods still walked the Earth, they had fashioned this place out of Khaos for a singular purpose: to punish evil.

  A circle of scarlet fire burned in the distance. He oriented himself to the circle and accelerated with a single thought.

  Now he floated above a river of boiling blood covered in flame. Centaurs patrolled the boiling river, armed with bows and tridents. As the Stormbringer approached, the centaurs scrambled to attention. The senior of the duty party slammed his fist against his chest.

  “Khaire!” the centaur shouted.

  “Khaire,” the Stormbringer replied, landing next to him. Here was one of the few places in Khaos that had actual firmament.

  “Are you well, sir?” the centaur asked. “When you were Called, we had no idea what to expect.”

  The Stormbringer nodded. “I am as well as can be. What about the rest of my party?”

  “They have recently returned. They are inside, waiting for you.”

  “Excellent. What happened during my absence?”

  The centaur shook his head. “It was terrible, sir. We’ve logged three hundred and eighty-two attempted unauthorized departures since you left. No actual escapes, but… we had a few close calls.”

  When the Stormbringer and his kin were around, none of this would have happened. Everybody knew what would happen to anyone that tried to escape the dungeon of the damned.

  “Who tried to escape?”

  “Mostly humans, sir. We rounded them up without incident. But the Titans attempted to stage a breakout. Again. We contained them at the gate. Barely.”

  Rage burned through the Stormbringer. It was bad enough that the humans were Calling the denizens of Khaos to serve their ends. The ones that had abducted him and his kind from this place did not understand the forces they were playing with, nor did they care about the consequences of their actions.

  They would pay. Dearly.

  “Very good,” the Stormbringer said. “Return to your station. I will personally handle the problem of the humans who Called us.”

  Three enormous walls the size of skyscrapers ran the length of the burning river. A regiment of centaurs patrolled the battlements, bows and spears in hand. The spaces in between the walls were filled with boiling tar, corrosive acid and spikes covered in venom.

  The Stormbringer arrived at the massive gate that controlled the one clear path through. In front of the gate was a jet-black hydra. Fifty heads sprouted from its enormous body, peering in every direction.

  “Stormbringer!” the hydra shouted. “You have returned!”

  “Yes, Gatekeeper. I am free.”

  Cheers and whoops boomed from its fifty mouths.

  “Welcome back, Stormbringer! Tales of glory have we for you!”

  “I heard the Titans tried to escape.”

  “Yes! A terrible crime! But we held them back!”

  “Give me the short version.”

  “While you were Away, they conspired in their pit to escape! Using their bodies to shelter their foul deeds, they dreamed shields of pure adamantium and charged the gate! They withstood the arrows of the centaurs, the traps we laid for them, the razor whip of Lady Tilphousia herself! But not I! I stood at the gate! I held them back, with teeth and claws and venom! I bit, and I spat, and I clawed at them and held them back long enough for your brothers to rally and send them back to the pit!”

  “Well done, Gatekeeper. You have prevented a calamity.”

  The hydra lowered to its knees and brought all fifty heads to the ground.

  “Thank you!”

  “Oh, no, thank you. You performed the duty that the gods had entrusted to me. I am in your debt.”

  “It is nothing! We all serve!”

  “That we do. Now that I have returned, allow me to resume my duty.”

  “Of course! Stormbringer, hail and welcome to Tartaros!”

  Gatekeeper lumbered aside. The gate swung open. The Stormbringer stepped through and walked the narrow road that led to the heart of the Tartaros.

  Tartaros was the place where villains went to suffer for their mortal crimes. Tyrants were locked inside bronze bulls suspended above eternal fires. Burning metal flowed down the throats of thieves and robbers. Rapists hung from wooden boards, held in place by iron cuffs around their wrists, ankles and neck, perpetually strangling them.

  At the center of the field, there was a gaping maw from which no light escaped, only a constant stream of curses and oaths and blasphemies from the mouths of elder gods. Two of his brothers stood watch at the precipice. They saluted him as he approached, and he returned the gesture. Later, he would speak to them, but for now he had to report for duty.

  A great castle with a tall iron-gray turret dominated the punishment field. At the top of the tower stood a woman in a dripping blood-red robe, a snake curled around her waist. In her right hand she held a whip coated in razors and venom. She beheld him with burning red eyes and nodded.

  “You have returned, Stormbringer.”

  Her voice carried across the leagues that separated them, entering his ears like a breathy whisper. Despite the great distance, he knew she could see him clearly from her post.

  Stormbringer lowered to a knee. “Yes, Lady Tilphousia.”

  “What happened?”

  He recited his tale, starting from the Calling and ending with the blast that had sent him back.

  “Your race was made for war against the most terrible beings in Creation,” she said. “The humans’ conflict is beneath you.”

  “They had no right to Call us for such a petty quarrel, much less enslave us to their will.”

  “Indeed. Once again, the humans have succumbed to hubris. And we paid the price.”

  “I heard of the Titans’ attempted escape.”

  “Yes. When the humans responsible for
this event die, I will do everything in my power to bring them here.” She smiled. “Perhaps I shall give them to the Titans.”

  “A fitting punishment.”

  “What manner of magic did they use this time?”

  “I know not. But it was far more powerful than the last time. Not even I could break it.”

  “Troubling. If they could shackle you, I fear what else they can do.”

  “Could they rescue the Titans?”

  Despair flitted across her face. “I hope not.”

  “I heard snatches of their plans while I was Away. I believe they shall Call my brothers and I again and compel us to serve them.”

  “Very well. We shall be ready next time. If, or when, they Call you, I charge you with studying their magic and defeating it.”

  He slammed a mighty fist to his chest. “Understood.”

  Rising to his feet, he extended himself in every direction. Positioning his eyes and hands to cover every inch of Tartaros, he observed his subordinates carrying out their eternal duty and the suffering of the inmates. Whenever a guard slackened in his work, he was there to chastise him. If a condemned soul showed even the slightest hint of rebellion, he was there to smack him down and to redouble the punishment. Whenever he discovered a major infraction, he whispered into Tilphousia’s ear. If she felt merciful, she lashed out with the whip; if she wasn’t, she released her snake.

  He paid special attention to the great pit. All he saw was darkness. There was no sign of the Titans. He could only guess at the punishments the gods had devised for their elders. And even then, the Titans would not be contained forever. The moment their vigilance slipped, the Titans would attempt to flee.

  He ached to lay his hands on the Titans for their transgressions, but even he could not peer into the void, much less touch anything within. He had to content himself with fantasies of what the Titans were going through and memories of what he had done to them so long ago while watching for the ripples in the darkness that signaled a potential breakout.

  Meanwhile, his main body found an empty patch of land. Sitting on the ground, he closed his eyes and began to dream. Fresh, green grass sprouted from the barren, rocky ground. It was a mere simulacrum of grass, of course; it wasn’t even alive, and his race was not given the gift of Creation. But it would suffice.