Hammer of the Witches

by Kai Wai Cheah

  I nodded.

  The priest gasped. Clasping his hands, he prostrated in prayer.

  “Eve, your turn,” I said.

  Gunfire rang out in the nave. Heavy PKM fire intermixed with lighter AK bursts. As Eve darted to the altar, I absorbed what was left of my tomahawk and activated my aethersight.

  Streams of multicolored lights weaved through the air, so thick and intertwined it looked like an ocean. These were world lines, tracking the passage of humans and beings through space-time. Rusty red motes condensed into ruby rivers, pointing toward humans. People looked like swirling multihued shells stacked one on top of the other. Blue cones exploded before them, narrowing as they committed to courses of action, expanding as they thought of new ideas.

  Too much information. I slapped down mental filters, willing myself only to see my team and the giants.

  Five humans stacked up on the left side of the entrance. Focused blue lines surged forth from them, sticking to the columns and racing up the ramp. It had to be Pete and the others.

  The giants were huge black humanoid figures. For hearts and brains they had violently pulsing balls of gold and crimson light. Here, I saw them for what they were: daimons driving puppets of meat and bone.

  I peered more closely. Dark chains wrapped around their cores, securing them to the flesh. Odd. Was this what an indwelling spirit looked like?

  The pair on the upper floor dashed toward the south gallery. The remaining two giants were taking cover behind columns, but their world lines would intersect with both Deacon’s Doors.

  “Eve?”

  “Ready.”

  I turned.

  She was…

  In my peripheral vision, I saw pure white light spilled from the core of her being. Layers of gold and royal blue shrouded her like an ethereal cape. She descended the altar as poised and regal as a warrior queen.

  “Well?” she said.

  I didn’t dare to look at her directly.

  “They’re coming,” I said. Still looking away from her, I drew the pistol and handed it to her. “Know how to use a VP90?”

  She took the weapon. “Yes. Let’s do this.”

  Long strings of AK fire broke out. Keith’s team were suppressing the giants on this floor. Three men headed upstairs while the others laid down fire.

  “Cowboy up. Brick, Preacher, go!”

  The rearguard broke positions and sprinted up the ramp. For a moment there was a moment of silence. Upstairs, the giants shifted their positions, getting ready to lay fire on the ramp. The ones on the ground floor sprinted to the iconostasis.

  “Preacher, Fisher. Freeze. The giants are setting up a kill zone at the top of the ramp.”

  “Fisher, roger.”

  As the giants approached the sanctuary, the blue lines transformed into ghostly figurines. I blinked. I had never seen that effect before. One of them headed to the north deacon’s door; the other had the south. The ghost of the one to the north reached into a pocket and threw a cylindrical object into the room.

  A grenade.

  I pointed to the south door. “Longsword, cover that door. I’ll take the other.”

  “Got it.”

  Crouching next to the northern door, I put the tomahawk away and readied my carbine. The door burst open. A flash-bang rolled into the sanctuary.

  I kicked it back out.

  Closed my eyes and opened my mouth.

  The stun grenade erupted in a deafening, blinding fury. A cloud of choking smoke smothered my nose. The giant stumbled in. I stomped on his ankle, and he landed face-first. Raising my carbine, I shot him in the head.

  He picked himself off the floor.

  I fired again and again and again and again, hammering him down, blasting his head apart. When I was sure he was down, I spun around and scanned the room.

  The other giant lay on the floor. Eve stood over him, a smoking pistol in her hands.

  “Clear!” I called.

  “Clear!” Eve said.

  I examined the bodies. They had slung their PKMs and were now carrying MP99s. I scooped up an MP99 and checked the magazine. Hollowpoints. Not aethertips. Useless against giants.

  Continuous volleys of PKM fire rang out.

  “Fisher, Preacher. We’re pinned at the ramp. Options?”

  “Preacher, Fisher. We’re headed up.”

  “How?”

  “Magic. Longsword, on me.”

  “On you,” she said.

  We burst out of the sanctuary. The two giants on the upper floor were on the south gallery, taking cover behind thick pillars. They were laying down fire on the ramp for now, but their world lines told a different story. The one closer to me would continue to suppress my team while the other would dash to the ramp and attempt an assault.

  That would not do.

  I pointed at the closest giant and then slashed my finger across my throat. Eve nodded and jumped straight up into the air. I turned off gravity and leaped. Grabbing the guardrail, I vaulted over and restored gravity.

  Eve closed in on the giant’s flank. It sensed her coming and swung its machine gun around. But it was too late.

  “Hi,” she said.

  And shot it in the face.

  Fire flashed from the wound. It toppled, catching himself against the floor with its left hand. She shot it again and again until the fires finally ebbed away and the monster lay motionless on the floor.

  “Brick, Fisher. We’re on the upper floor. Going to flush the bad guys toward you.”

  “Acknowledged. Standing by.”

  Eve and I took cover behind a nearby pillar. I looked out.

  A PKM roared.

  I ducked back, stone chips biting at my face.

  “Brick! I’m pinned! Flank ‘em now!”

  “Copy!”

  Bullets whizzed around us. Eve yelped, scooting up next to me. I felt heat radiating off her body.

  “Not good,” she said.

  “Yeah.

  The giant’s world lines told me it was going to turn the corner and engage Eve and me. I reached for the guardrail, ready to jump off.

  AK fire hammered the air. The world lines abruptly disappeared.

  “Got ‘im,” Pete announced.

  The last giant lay on the floor in the middle of the hallway. Eve and I didn’t take chances; we shot him in the head again.

  The echo of the last gunshot died. An uneasy silence settled in the church.

  It is done, the voice declared.

  Thanks.

  Be well, Luke Landon.

  All at once, the power departed. Suddenly, all the strength fled my muscles. I fell to my knees with a sharp gasp. Eve, too.

  I forced myself up. The charagma on my right hand was still an inert tracery of flesh. I willed the charagma to fold up, and, wonder of wonders, it disappeared.

  I helped Eve back on her feet and linked up with Pete and the others in the central gallery.

  “Thanks for the assist,” I said.

  “No problem,” Pete said. “Is that all of them?”

  “I think so.”

  “Let’s go.”

  When we hit the ground floor, the civilians were starting to get up. A few ran for the exit.

  “Guys, hold on for a second,” Eve said.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She strode out into the middle of the nave. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she yelled, “Everyone! It is safe now! The terrorists are dead! Gather your friends and family and leave now!”

  “What is she doing?” Keith demanded. “The cops are coming.”

  “We can blend in with the crowd,” I said. “Here, hide the guns.”

  I tossed my carbine at him. He caught it. Blinked. Sighed.

  “Fine.”

  He field-stripped the carbine, tossing the parts into his bag. As the men stowed the weapons, Eve continued yelling and gesturing at the exit, cycling through a half-dozen Western languages.

  Across the nave, a priest—the same priest we had met i
n the sanctuary—shouted, “Who are you?”

  “We are Hexenhammer!” Eve replied. “We are here to protect you!”

  At the word “Hexenhammer,” the civilians drew back, suddenly afraid.

  I stepped up.

  “The media lied about us! We are not terrorists! We do not kill innocents! We protected you when no else could! We stand with you, not against you!”

  “Brother, you done speechifying?” Pete asked. “I hear sirens.”

  Eve hadn’t caught the message.

  “We are the protectors of Pantopia!” she yelled. “The hammer of the witches! The defenders of civilization! Your governments may not protect you, but we will! Remember us!”

  I marched up to her. “Eve, let’s go.”

  She nodded. “Right behind you.”

  The survivors were crowding the exit. The security booths had been blown away, forcing them to climb over the smoking debris. We blended in with them, joining the mass of humanity fleeing the bloodshed. Sirens wailed all around us.

  “Split up and regroup at the airport,” I ordered.

  The seven of us went our separate ways. The others would have to dump the weapons and gear.

  I walked off into the sunset.

  Part Three: The Purge

  The proud angel said: “O Lord! The world You have created is perfect, but You left it in the hands of imperfect creatures. Surely they should be ruled by higher beings.”

  The Creator said: “The sons and daughters of Adam and Eve are made in my image; thus there are no better custodians of the world.”

  The proud angel said: “Imperfect beings cannot comprehend Your perfection, nor can they themselves be perfect. They shall destroy the world by their own hands. Better the world be left in my care, that I may safeguard Your work.”

  The Creator said: “You are a created being and not yourself a creator. How can you add to My glory?”

  The proud angel said: “None is as perfect as you, but perfection cannot abide in the presence of the imperfect.”

  The Creator said: “Thrice you have spoken, and thrice you have lied. By being imperfect, you have no place by my side. Thus I expel you from Heaven and throw you to the Earth.”

  The proud angel said: “O Lord, grant me reprieve until the End of Days. I shall walk amongst the children of men and teach them disobedience. By their own hands they shall unmake this world. They need only a push, and they shall fall off the precipice.”

  The Creator said: “Then, verily, you shall be amongst those reprieved. Until the Day of Judgment you shall be the ruler of the world and the archon of an aion of lies.”

  -Apocryphon of Ephraim

  1. Not My Kind of War

  “You are all heroes now. Be proud of yourselves.”

  I couldn’t tell if al-Hakem al-Dunya was sarcastic or sincere. I elected for the latter interpretation.

  “Least we could do.”

  The extraction had gone smoothly enough. Captain Harding and his crew rolled out a crate with diplomatic markings. We met them just outside the airport and tossed our weapons inside the crate.

  As soon as we were aboard, the airship lifted off. The first thing we did was file into the infirmary and shoot ourselves up with medical nano. Everybody was fine. We hadn’t even caught any rads.

  Was it the radiation shield? Sol Invictus? Someone else? Whatever the reason, I wasn’t going to look at a gift horse in the mouth.

  After a quick dinner and debrief, I retired to my cabin. I was completely, utterly, spent. I had expected to wake up in the morning.

  Instead, I woke up inside my mental cabin. Hakem sat across me in human form, his fingers steepled, his wings missing.

  “What happened with the Great Paling?” I asked.

  “It appears you caught the attention of the Phosterians,” Hakem replied.

  “Was that… the Creator?”

  Hakem simply shrugged.

  “And what does that mean?” I asked.

  “As you have seen with Sol Invictus, divinities can imbue ultra-pure aetherium with their essence. Think of it as a small fragment of themselves. The question then becomes, did you contact the Creator, a shade of him, or something else?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “From your perspective? None.”

  I folded my arms. “But you do acknowledge that there is a Creator, separate from the Source.”

  “Are they now?” Hakem asked, smiling. “Al-Asul is the Source of All. They are the embodiment of the cosmic forces of creation, organization and destruction. Among Their many aspects is Al-Khaliq, the one who brings things into existence out of nothingness. What is the difference between Al-Khaliq and Ktises, he who also creates out of nothing?”

  “So they are the same being?”

  “Al-Khaliq and Ktises certainly share many of the same properties.”

  “That’s not much of an answer.”

  He smiled. “Observe.”

  He extended his palm. A blue skeletal tesseract materialized, floating a foot off his hand. It was a four-dimensional object, a cube within a cube. No matter where I looked at it, it seemed wrong, with lines intersecting at impossible angles.

  The outermost faces turned a translucent red. The innermost faces were untouched.

  “Notice the areas shaded in red,” Hakem continued. “Do these eight sides comprise the entirety of the tesseract?”

  “No. There are eight more sides inside it.”

  “Good. Now, watch.”

  The tesseract rotated. The innermost cube passed through the outer cube, growing larger and larger, while the outer cube seemed to shrink into a smaller polygon. In an instant, they swapped positions. Now the red cube was on the inside. The new outer faces turned green.

  “Do the green faces now represent the entire tesseract?”

  “No. There is still the red cube.”

  “So it is with the Most High. I entrusted to Alim knowledge of only a small part of the infinite, enough for humans to begin to grasp the truth, and the Theograph is no different.” He closed his hand and the tesseract faded. “Of course, the tesseract is just a metaphor. The Source is far greater than you can possibly comprehend.”

  For an archangel he was awfully evasive.

  “How about if you just tell me if there’s a one true god?”

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  “Why not?”

  “I am not allowed to. Humans cannot understand infinity. The truth is so magnificent and terrible that it would destroy the unprepared mind. It would erode your free will and take away your ability to choose, to act, to believe of your own volition. This I will not do. You must come to the truth by your own power or not at all.”

  I sighed. This line of questioning was going nowhere. If a god—Hakem’s or someone else’s—was going to intervene again, I needed to know what would trigger his appearance.

  “Why did the divine intervene at the Hagia Alethea but not elsewhere? You’d think that with the Unmaker running around, he’d be more direct.”

  “I will not speak for the Phosterians. But the Divine Plan is so perfect that once it was set in motion, the Source had little reason to touch this world.” He smiled gently. “Besides, there are angels, pagan gods and jinn roaming the world and acting more directly, and all things serve the Source. Why act when other hands will?”

  “Eve is some kind of New Age hippy. I’m an… well, not a believer. Why would the divine help us?”

  Hakem smiled gently. “Are you not the progeny of Adam? The children of those whom They love most? The Source loves all beings. However, They will favor those who act in accordance with Their will. This is not the first time the Source has directly intervened in the world and, I suspect, won’t be the last.”

  “Won’t that signal other gods to act?”

  “Yes. And more. The events at the Hagia Aletheia have caused the Divine Plan to unfold along a new track.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His all-
white eyes narrowed.

  “I have seen the flows of Time change course. I have felt world lines snapping and new ones forming. I have heard the laughter of the blessed and the howls of the damned echoing across all of Creation.

  “Know this: by your deeds you have announced your existence to every shaytan who dwells in Haawiyah. By your deeds you have demonstrated that you are an agent of the Source. By your deeds you have chosen your side in the eternal war between good and evil.

  “The shayatin will come for you. The Unmaker himself has a personal interest in you. They will come to claim you—not just your life, but your eternal soul. They will seek to corrupt you, bit by bit, until you fall into their clutches. And every step of the way, they will arrange events so that you feel it was your choice all along and that you were always on the side of righteousness, fighting for the greater good. They have had thousands of years to perfect their art. And I have seen too many good men fall.

  “I will be with you. But I cannot abrogate your free will. I cannot make your choices for you. The best I can do is advise you, but the choices are yours alone to make. Choose carefully.”

  Pretty words. It was a great way to avoid answering the question directly. Or maybe he felt I couldn’t comprehend the Plan, so he limited it to how it would affect me.

  “How do I protect myself from these manipulations?”

  “You need a steady moral compass, a firm heart, and an indomitable spirit. You must cultivate virtue and recognize the signs of vice. I would suggest studying religion again.”

  “Your religion, I suppose?”

  “I won’t make your decisions for you. But even if you do not believe, I’m sure you understand that the world faiths have one thing in common: all of them are vehicles for the transmission of virtue across the centuries. Yes, humans and institutions have failed to live up to the standards of their faiths again and again, but it does not mean the faiths are themselves completely worthless. If you would do battle with the Father of Lies and the Archon of the Aion, you must know the nature of Truth and Eternity.”

  “Understood. But what does this mean on a strategic level?”