Hammer of the Witches

by Kai Wai Cheah

  We are coming for you.

  I ignored the voices, gathering Void-matter around me, forming a bow wave. The dark hemisphere distorted the light ahead. I pushed onward, racing to the fading light, shutting out everything around me.

  We burst out into the world. The Void-stuff exploded in light and fury. The shockwave would have toppled most men. The target stumbled and then grounded himself with a powerful rear stomp

  I lunged.

  He brought his machete up, blocking the tomahawk. I sheared it down. He went with the flow and cut out. The blade sliced harmlessly across my left greave.

  He was good. But Eve was coming on his left flank.

  She brought her sword up—

  White light exploded on my right.

  Three more figures appeared.

  Eve tripped. But as she fell, she reached out, shoving the first man aside. I took several long steps back, reorienting myself. Another flash of light. The newcomers staggered. Keith and Bob were right behind them.

  The first target thrust at me. I slipped in, punching the shaft into his blade and then swung for his head. He blocked with his left arm. I hooked it. Sheared it down. Punched the tomahawk into his throat.

  The metal thudded against tough fabric. Gorget. Dammit.

  Before I could flash the weapon into plasma, the man jumped out of range. He brought his machete up—

  Eve scissored his legs out from under him.

  He dropped. I went down with him, driving the spike into his brain. He spasmed and froze. He was done.

  Wrenching the weapon clear, I helped Eve to her feet. The suit issued a low nythium warning. I switched over to the charagma and scanned for threats.

  Bob was mounting an enemy and stabbing away. He had the situation well in hand. But Keith was retreating in the face of superior numbers, his knife slashing away at the two men advancing on him. As one Tango approached him from the front, the other tried to circle to his right.

  Grabbing Eve’s shoulder, I pointed at the flanker. She nodded. I warped.

  We blasted out behind the man, shoving him into his buddy. His friend caught him and pushed him aside. I lunged, striking him down with a single blow. The tomahawk lodged deep in his skull. I tried to pull it free. It remained stuck.

  The last enemy recovered, charging at me. Eve pulled off her pommel and threw it at him. The aetherium ball smacked him in the face and erupted in flame. Closing in, she reversed her sword and slammed the crosspiece into his helmet. He staggered. She hooked her hilt around his neck and pulled him down. He slammed into the ground and remained still. She adjusted her grip and ended him with a lethal thrust.

  Not bad for a pretty girl.

  I scanned again. No more threats. Bob was frozen in time, but I figured his enemy was already dead. Keith gave me a thumbs-up. Eve worked the point into his armpit and thrust. Getting up, she gave me a thumbs-up too.

  I drew a circle around my skull with my index finger and jogged to the breach. It was on the second floor, but in powered armor we could easily jump up and reach the hole.

  My head was starting to hurt again. I shot my fist out to the side and drew a large circle. Together, we released time compression.

  Reloading my nythium cartridge, I yelled, “Cowboy, on me!”

  One last stab and Bob rolled off. The bad guy remained motionless. Keeping low, he crawled to my position.

  A short burst of suppressed gunfire erupted. Bob bowled over.

  I compressed time again. The world paused again. Tiny bullets hung suspended in mid-air, on the verge of touching him. Next to him, there was a frozen fountain of dirt.

  Sheathing my tomahawk, I gingerly scooped him up over my shoulders, careful to avoid touching the bullets around him. I dashed across the field and gently set him down next to Eve.

  I stepped back into the real world. For a moment everyone—Eve, Keith, Bob—stared at me.

  Then, Bob screamed.

  “Stay with me,” I said. “How bad is it?”

  “My… Arm… God… Damn!”

  Bob’s invisibility cloak was ripped apart. His left arm was a shredded mass of meat and bone. Everything below the elbow hung off by a thin scrap of meat. His left leg wasn’t much better.

  “Hang tight. I’ll–”

  “No!” Bob gasped, clawing for his first-aid pouch with his good hand. “Finish! The! Mission!”

  “CONTACT!” Eve shouted and ripped off a couple of short bursts.

  A gigantic bellow shook the world. It wasn’t a shout; it was a force of nature. The wall trembled. Rubble shook. Eve flinched. My helmet cut off all sound.

  Heads flew out of the breach and windows and doors. Heads, floating in the air, not attached to a body. As they passed, I glimpsed burning red eyes and grinning razor teeth. Right behind them was a storm of… arms. Powerful, muscular, disembodied, flying arms. There was a weapon in every hand: pistols, knives, bats, carbines, sickles.

  More arms burst from the ground under the bodies of the dead psions, picked up their weapons and floated into the air. A flurry of heads materialized in the sky.

  I blinked.

  What the hell was…

  The eyes turned on us.

  The weapons followed.

  I compressed time.

  Everything and everyone around me froze in space-time. The bodiless heads and limbs hadn’t followed me; thank God. I took a deep breath and studied the situation.

  Eve was fending off a sickle slashing at her throat. Keith aimed at a head. Floating gun arms encircled us, forming a hemisphere. Other heads radiated outward from the house in every direction.

  A portal opened before me. It was a circle of complete darkness, with white light flashing at its rim. An infernal choir of howls and screams and cries blended issued from the abyss.

  A figure stepped through.

  He was a glowing man. Naked, but no genitalia. Every inch of him seemed sculpted by the hand of a Renaissance genius. His eyebrows formed a V, his lips were perched in a V, and his chin was so sharp it looked like a V. Six bat wings, dark and leathery, protruded from the back.

  The portal closed behind him. He smiled, his all-too-human eyes sparkling.

  “This is the end, Luke Landon,” said the Unmaker.

  6. The Stormbringer

  “I was wondering when you’d show your face,” I said.

  The Unmaker chuckled. “As you know, I have a very busy schedule. Events to shape, souls to retrieve. Consider yourself fortunate that I made time for you.”

  Inching toward him, I rested my hands on my hips. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing much. Just your–”

  I drew the tomahawk and swung—

  He snapped his fingers.

  My body froze.

  I willed my hips to turn, my shoulders to rotate, my arm to complete the arc and bring down the axe. Nothing happened. I ordered my eyes to blink. They remained locked open. I tried to breathe. No air entered my lungs.

  The Unmaker grinned. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. You’re getting predictable.”

  He had caught me in a closed timelike curve. Any infinitesimal motion by any particle within the curve would return it to its starting point. For all intents and purposes, I was frozen in place.

  “What do you want from me?” I repeated.

  My lips didn’t move, but I heard my voice all the same. I’d seen this before, but I still hadn’t figured out how it worked.

  “As I said, nothing much. Just your soul. I told you before I have a place reserved for you in the Basileon Abyssou. That was not a lie.”

  “Not interested.”

  His laughter rang loud and clear in the silent world.

  “You may not be interested in us, but we are interested in you. By your words and deeds, you have proven irrevocably that you are one of us. You belong in the Void with us.”

  “You lie. That’s what you do best.”

  “Thank you, but no. That, too, was not a lie.”

  “Said the lying liar as he
lies.”

  The Unmaker ignored me. “I know what you’re doing. You’re just stalling, buying time for Hakem to show up, yes?”

  He blurred. And suddenly he was in my face.

  “You’re wrong.”

  His grin stretched across his face like a crescent moon made of pearls cut into cubes, too broad and too massive to fit on a human face. Dazzling sparks danced in crazed patterns across his eyes.

  “Hakem isn’t coming,” he said. “I know his rules. I have not interfered with the world. I have not given any party in this battle any undue advantage. By his rules he cannot act. No one is coming to save you, Luke.”

  I tried to flex my muscles. Nothing happened.

  “This doesn’t count?” I asked.

  If anything, his grin grew wider.

  “Of course. Everyone is equally frozen.”

  “If everyone is frozen, then there’s nothing you can do to me.”

  He laughed. “You’re not half as clever as you think you are, Luke.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The suit flashed a warning. Low nythium.

  “You still retain control of your consciousness. You can still control space-time through nythium. But what do you think will happen when you finally run out of nythium?”

  “I still have my covenant.”

  “And? You still can’t move an inch from where you stand.”

  I bent the world to my will, folding and compressing space, positioning myself away from—

  He snapped his fingers. The world bent back into shape. I pressed against it, but it was like trying to demolish a diamond wall with a pillow.

  “Nice try. But all your efforts are in vain. Millions upon millions of men and women thought they could escape my reach. But I am the Archon of the Aion. When fire was the height of human innovation, I was there. When the first chieftain ordered the first war and slaughter and rape, I was there. When the first monuments commemorating the blood-soaked glories of the first empire were built, I was there. I know your kind. I know everything you will say or do. You will come to me, Luke. Embrace the inevitable.”

  “When I pop out into the real world, I could always get off the X.”

  “Yes, you could. But your friends? You would leave them to die?”

  “They are psions, with aetherium, and these… these things come from the Void.”

  “And you think you can neutralize the daimon with a paling? That’s not going to work, Luke. A paling reinforces reality within its area of effect. It can only keep out a daimon if the daimon is outside it to begin with. If the daimon within the paling, fully manifested–”

  “It won’t be able to use magic.”

  He laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  “Oh, Luke, did you really think this daimon is using the power of the Void? Let me tell you a secret: you face a hekatonkheir.”

  Oh.

  Damn.

  He smiled. “Oh, you recognize it? At last.”

  Legend described a hekatonkheir as a giant with fifty heads and a hundred arms. The more prosaic truth was that it was giant that could manifest and independently control a vast number of heads and arms, the former to scout the area, the latter to wield weapons and kill everything within its reach.

  The last recorded summoning of a hekatonkheir was in World War Two, when the Hellenic government mounted a last-ditch attempt to resist the Nazis. By all accounts, the hekatonkheires went mad with bloodlust and slaughtered friend and foe alike. Since then, no one had ever seriously considered summoning one again.

  Except Project Conjurer.

  “It is still a daimon,” I said.

  The Unmaker’s laughter rang loud and clear and deep, an irresistible force sweeping through my mind and blowing down everything in its path.

  “Hekatonkheires are no mere daimons, Luke. Each of them possesses a fragment of the light of Creation.”

  All thought fled my mind. Nythium drained from its cell. The Unmaker continued smiling at me.

  “How?” I whispered.

  “They are not jinn Hakem molded out of the essence of the Void, nor are they mere daimons born from the dalliances of divinities in days past. No, the hekatonkheires were the sons of the earth and the sky, made to serve the gods in war. What you think you know about daimons and jinn does not apply to them.

  “Possessing the Light of Creation, they, too, can manipulate the fundamental forces. They do not need to draw strength from the Void. A paling will not stop them. If anything, it makes it easier for them to manipulate the world.”

  This was going to suck.

  “Yes, Luke, it will, indeed, suck. You see, the gods set the hekatonkheires to guard the Void and prevent its less-than-savory inhabitants from leaving. At least until they were summoned. The hekatonkheires consider it their sacred mission… one which humans interfered with by forcibly tearing them from their stations, implanting them in human vessels, and worst of all, controlling them.

  “Hekatonkheires were the strongest and fiercest creatures the gods made, stronger and fiercer than even the Titans. This one is furious beyond human ken. And now he has been given leave to direct the full range of his power and wrath at you.”

  I fired Hakem’s charagma, maintaining time compression. My headache returned at full force.

  “You’re only delaying the inevitable. You won’t leave here alive. If you expend your nythium and return to the time stream, the hekatonkheir will target you, and you will die. If you expend your soul, your biological functions will shut down, and you will die. If you try to pull any fancy tricks, you will pointlessly expend your nythium or your soul, and you will die. So, you see, Luke, this is the end. No matter what happens, you will come to me.”

  This time, I laughed. Or at least, I projected the thought of one.

  “What’s so funny?” he demanded.

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  I still had one last trump card to play: the pure aetherium in my hydration bladder.

  “SOL INVICTUS!”

  Light and clarity flooded my mind. In that moment, I knew.

  “What did you just do?” the Unmaker said.

  I fired my other charagma. The Void and the Light wrestled for dominance.

  The fallen angel gritted his teeth. “This isn’t fair.”

  A new portal opened behind him. The chorus of the damned pounded my ears. Pain exploded within me, as though I was being ripped apart at the atomic level. I shut my mind to the Void and turned to the Light.

  “This is NOT over, Luke Landon!”

  The Unmaker stepped through the portal.

  It closed behind him.

  Time resumed.

  The guns fired.

  An aura of golden light blazed around my right hand. Gravity and electromagnetism bent to my will. Bullets flew from muzzles and halted in mid-air. Blades warped and twisted and broke. Heads and arms within my area of effect flew off in every direction, crashing into the wall, the ground, each other.

  A fresh idea filled my head. I followed through. The bullets clumped together. Turned around. Launched.

  A hail of metal exploded outward, shredding the hekatonkheire’s heads and arms. They dropped from the sky, bleeding and twitching and smoking. Others exploded outright.

  “Fisher? What the hell did you just do?” Keith demanded.

  “No time to explain,” I said. “Warp to the attic. Eve!”

  I held my left arm behind me. Eve took my hand.

  I switched to my other charagma and pulled on the Void. The world disappeared into darkness. Swirling chaos surrounded me. All around there were heads and hands and eyes. Some were tiny, other the size of oceans. Within the hands I saw swords, clubs, spears, guns, lightning bolts, mountains.

  We popped out into the real world. Crates and other junk were piled high in the corners, but the attic was otherwise empty.

  Keith materialized on the other side of the room, cradling Bob in his h
ands. As he set Bob down, he said, “Fisher, what in God’s name is going on?”

  At the same time, Pete got on the radio. “Fisher, Brick. What the hell happened out there?”

  I hit the radio switch. “Fisher to all call signs. We’re fighting a hekatonkheire. Those heads and arms are part of the creature. Shoot them.”

  Keith shook his head. “What did you just do, Fisher? Never seen that before.”

  “It’s an electromagnetic shield.”

  It wasn’t exactly the truth, but I didn’t have the words to describe what it was. In my mind, I had sensed complicated equations slipping out of the grasp of rational thought, governing the laws of gravity and electromagnetism and God knows what else. They had danced together as a dynamic, coherent whole, defining reality—and how it could be rewritten.

  He pointed at my right arm. It was still glowing.

  “And what is that?”

  “I’ve been experimenting,” I said.

  “Doesn’t… matter,” Bob muttered. “So long as… it works.”

  He twisted a tension bar with his remaining arm, locking a tourniquet in place. Grunting, he reached for his pouch again.

  “Will you be fine?” Eve asked.

  Bob whipped out a bandage. “Yes. Finish the job.”

  A head burst through a window. I fired on it. Eve and Keith followed. It fell apart in a smoking mess.

  “What was…?” Bob began.

  The head saw us. The giant knew we were here. And that meant…

  I reactivated the shield.

  Automatic fire chattered all around us. Heavy bullets ripped through the walls and floor, producing clouds of sawdust and wood chips. The shield held, arresting the bullets in flight. With a roar, I threw the rounds back, and the guns went silent.

  “That. Was. Awesome!” Bob said.

  Eve giggled. Bob packed his other wounds with gauze. The bandages we used were impregnated with kaolin, a clay more ordinarily used in cosmetics, stopping the bleeding instantaneously.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  And my legs gave out.

  Eve caught me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just. Tired.”

  Strength bled from my limbs. Blood pounded in my head. My migraine threatened to split my skull. I gulped down a hit of ambrosia. The headache subsided, and my muscles grew stronger, but the pain was still there.