by C L Walker
The old Agmundr could have done it, but I wasn’t that person anymore. Even with the rage burning inside and the desperate need to save my love, I wasn’t that person. I had haunting memories, images of the things I’d done and the screams, fire, and blood of my life. I didn’t need to add this as well. I couldn’t add it, or I risked going mad.
He would hurt her and I could stop it. That was the beginning and end of the argument. I had given my life to keeping her alive and no matter how she had hated it, I had lived for it. She thought my life had been easier than hers but she was wrong; she’d lived longer and had some bad experiences, but the things I had done for her had changed the world for the worse.
I was the monster the new gods whispered about. I was the beast who appeared to destroy civilizations. I was worse than any plot by any god, and I didn’t want to be anymore. I wanted to stop, to rest. I wanted to be free.
I stopped running. I was in an endless snowfield, mountains rising in the distance. Wind whipped around me, and the sky was covered in dark gray clouds. There would be life here, somewhere, but I couldn’t see it.
“Come out,” I yelled, amplifying my voice with the power of the tattoos until it shook the world. “You know I’m here and you know why. Get out here.”
A creature shambled toward me. It was humanoid and covered in long, matted, white fur. Its face was messed up, dominated by a round mouth with rows of twitching teeth within.
“Tell me what to do,” I said to the angel. “This can’t be my future. It can’t be what happens next.”
The angel stopped walking when it was close enough for me to hear what it was saying.
“I know of your visit, but not your plight.”
“You’ve seen me arrive. Now see yourself telling me the answer to my question.” While we stood in silence the wind picked up, howling in the space between us. “Talk.”
“We don’t fight and this world doesn’t die. Beyond that the only words I know to say are these.”
For a ten foot tall furry beast, the angel was quite eloquent.
“We don’t fight?” I said. “Let’s see how your future holds up.”
The tattoos lit up and the snow around me melted. I raced toward it with fire wreathing my arms. I was going to kill it just to prove a point.
I stopped at the last moment. The angel stood still, its eyes closed, awaiting its fate.
“What’s wrong with you?” I roared. The fire died as the tattoos grew dim. I could feel the cold again and I welcomed it, if only in the hope that it would cool the fire inside me.
“You will leave now,” the angel said. “When I see you next you will carry the fate of a world in your hands.”
“I don’t want this anymore. I want to change, to have a different life.” I was confessing to an angel in an alien heaven, and for some reason it felt good. It helped me focus.
“Some of us are locked in our fates, while others can change.” The angel put its hand/paw on my shoulder. “I cannot see your fate and I don’t know which one you are.”
“That’s really helpful,” I said.
“Then I am pleased,” it replied, not noticing the sarcasm. “You should leave now. You are in a rush.”
“Why did you say that? How do you know?”
“This is just what I am supposed to say now. I don’t really—”
“I get it.” I took its hand/paw off my shoulder carefully and turned away.
“Good luck, Agmundr.”
“Thanks.”
I ran through the heavens again. I didn’t know what I was looking for, if I was looking for anything. A heaven with a million souls; I had seen many and knew I could find them with ease. And yet I kept running, kept dismissing the heavens that zipped by in a blur.
Invehl’s stated reason for wanting the heavens set adrift was to stop the people within from migrating to earth and ruining things, but that wasn’t happening. It never would. There would be some from any hells that opened up, but that wasn’t what he wanted.
I arrived where I now realized I had always been heading, at a heaven of white marble and gray tents stretched between fantastic statues. An amphitheater as wide as a modern city, the sides reaching high into the sky, with a temple at its center and tens of thousands of souls in the stands. They bowed their heads and cried out their love for a deity long dead, while four angels in the form of upright animals stood beside the temple and observed their worship.
It was a heaven that only the nobility had been allowed to enter, along with their favored slaves. It was a heaven that required complete faith to enter and the reward was an eternity spent on your knees. It was a heaven I had spent my childhood dreaming of one day seeing, even while knowing that it wasn’t a place for people like me.
I stood on the outskirts of the heaven of my birth kingdom, and sent out the tattoos to find the heartstone I would bring back for Invehl.
Chapter 19
The gate had opened high on the side of the amphitheater and I was surrounded by the squalid homes of slaves. They looked up at me as I passed, curious but unwilling to confront me as they went about the mundane chores they’d spent their lives doing: cooking and washing clothes, arranging flowers to present to their masters, and trading scraps amongst themselves in a somber market-like atmosphere.
I walked down the roughhewn steps and toward the temple. The tattoos hadn’t found the heartstone yet but I knew where it would be. I knew what they were all worshipping and what the seed of this heaven was.
The slaves took up the highest two-thirds of the heaven. They hurried past me, two lines of busy people going up and down, to and from serving their masters miles below. Beyond the slave section was the start of the nobility, where the tents were larger and more widely spaced, and I couldn’t see any activity at all.
I had been taught from birth that only the nobility could enter heaven, that they were the chosen and had been elevated for their purity. Their righteousness had ensured they were born into wealth and power.
If I had wanted to see an afterlife I had to make myself useful to them. The only way to join them was to earn my place by serving well, and giving them everything I had to offer.
I could see now, after all the years and thousands of religions, that this was carefully designed to keep us down. The commoners could only see this place if they did what they were told and didn’t complain. Any sign of dissent was an excuse to kill. The slaves running around me would be slaves forever, and they counted themselves lucky.
The tattoos found the heartstone where I had thought it would be, in the temple at the center. The angels guarded it from even the nobility, and I knew what I’d find when I arrived.
I had never been comfortable serving, not in the way my society required. I had been raised to fight and that was what I did, joining the army and the endless campaigns of expansion. I had planned to earn my place in blood and treasure, and I had given my all to that goal.
When the king realized his lands were about to be taken from him and he needed to change tactics, he announced a grand competition, open to anyone. Whoever won a series of challenges and battles would have his daughter’s hand and be elevated beyond their low birth and receive a seat in heaven.
I looked around the amphitheater and marveled that I had ever wanted a place. I wondered what I would have thought if the king’s gambit had succeeded and the kingdom had been restored; would I have taken my place here and been content, worshipping a god long dead for the rest of time? Would I have accepted my family and my friends as slaves to my whim, and taken them with me?
In my heart I knew I would have. It would have chaffed and I would have been curious as to how this was all the afterlife offered, but I would have taken it and been happy. I would have brought my lowborn family and friends with me, and I would have had them serve me for eternity, and I would have thought it was right.
Water flowed from the top of the heaven down regularly spaced aqueducts to a pool surrounding the temple. The nobili
ty could bathe and refresh themselves there, but I watched the lower born steal tiny gulps of water as they ran to and fro. That seemed to be all they got.
I dashed down the steps to the grand tents of the nobility. I had seen all I needed to confirm my suspicions and strengthen my resolve.
The noble dead didn’t spare me a glance as the slaves had. They were absorbed with conversation and prayer, their every whim catered to and therefore not worth thinking about. In their minds I was one of the many who didn’t deserve to be there, who had only been allowed in on their sufferance, and I was beneath notice. My presence was background to their afterlives.
I wanted to see if the king who’d elevated me was there. He would be higher up, where I was. Only the first families, the ones who had forged the kingdom in fire, were allowed near the temple.
I didn’t know if I wanted to see him, and I wasn’t sure why I was reluctant. I had failed the task he’d set me, hadn’t been frightening enough to drive the enemy away or smart enough to fight them. I had taken Erindis as my wife but I hadn’t fulfilled my end of the bargain.
But that wasn’t it, I thought. I didn’t want to see him because it would anger me further, driving me over an edge I didn’t want to approach. This man had failed his kingdom long before I was drafted, and he’d tried to buy his way out with his daughter’s innocence. I hadn’t thought about it at the time but it was clear to me now, and I hated him for it.
I hated them all. Even the slaves and servants were contemptible, for adhering to the ridiculous and unfair rules of this supposed paradise. They deserved what was coming. Of all the thousands of heavens I had traveled, they were the only ones I knew I wouldn’t regret destroying.
I didn’t look for her father, or any of the court who had died the day the enemy attacked our city. I didn’t care, or at least that’s what I told myself.
Within the temple would be a spear. The first king’s weapon, which he had used to tear apart the old world and build his own kingdom. He’d burnt everyone who didn’t swear him fealty and he’d built a religion around himself in the aftermath. He’d made himself a god.
He’d faded by the time I was tasked with killing all the gods. I hadn’t faced him in battle, hadn’t even thought about him until years after, when I realized the only good thing that might have come out of my master’s orders had been taken from me by my failure to protect my kingdom. When his followers died or were absorbed into other cultures the first king had gone the way of all the gods I’d killed, fading into obscurity and irrelevance.
I arrived at the pool and the temple. I couldn’t tell from up in the poor section, but the angels were twenty feet tall and carried weapons to defend themselves. The nearest angel – a bull-man with red horns – turned to look at me.
“Hello, Agmundr,” he said, his voice rumbling through the entire heaven. “We have been waiting for you.”
Chapter 20
He spoke in the long dead language of my home. It was a simple tongue, aggressive and direct. The lack of nuance spoke volumes about my culture.
I replied in English. “You know why I’m here.”
“We do,” he said, changing to English as well. “We will try to stop you.”
“But I will win.”
“Perhaps.” He stood on a pedestal above the water but stepped down now as he spoke. The water in the pool came up to his knees. “The future here is uncertain.”
“Or you’re just saying that because that is what you’re supposed to say right now.”
I willed power into the tattoos in preparation. I had depleted their store rushing through the heavens but there would be enough to start; once I had taken down one of the angels I could replenish for the rest.
“Perhaps.” He stepped out of the water and filled the gap between the pool and the first of the noble’s tents. “You could stay here, if you wanted.”
“This place is a hell,” I replied. “Pretty and well disguised, but a hell none-the-less.”
“And yet it is your rightful place. Look at your people and realize what you’re missing. This is where you were meant to be. You and Erindis.”
Erindis would have liked this heaven, but she had changed since then. I hadn’t realized how much, but I no longer thought this was the place for her. She was less the clueless princess than she had been when I’d known her in life. She was more serious, more worldly, as I should have expected but never had.
“You could rescue these people,” I said, though this time I didn’t expect him to do it, and I didn’t really care. “You could take them and leave before I do what I must.”
“Must?” His booming laugh echoed around the city-sized amphitheater and had people looking our way in the thousands. “You have all the choice, now. Your orders come from someone you don’t need to listen to, and your actual master speaks words that can be interpreted however you want. Must is a strong way to describe your situation.”
“I grow bored of this discussion, angel.” The tattoos erected magic shields around me as red lightning crackled against my skin.
“As you wish, your highness.”
He swung his sword, dragging the immense thing through the air faster than anything that size should be able move. I stepped aside and it dug into the ground where I had been.
“Are you going to do this one by one?” I said.
“I do not need help to defeat the faithless.”
He yanked the blade from the stone and stabbed at me. I took a risk and let the shields take the brunt of it. The blade deflected to the side and opened the angel up for attack.
I leaped into the air, flying for his face with the full power of the tattoos propelling me. I grabbed the horns on his head and rammed my knee into his face, breaking the thick bones beneath. Blood covered my pants and fed the tattoos beneath.
As he fell I put my feet on his face and pushed away, blasting power out of my feet and further crushing his head. When I landed near the spot I’d started from he was wheeling backward, trying to keep his balance.
A low growl sounded from behind me. I spun to find a humanoid white tiger approaching.
“Agmundr,” he said, growling loud enough to terrify the nearest souls. He had gauntlets with bloodstained metal claws jutting from them.
“Already?” I said. The tattoos were singing with the power of the bull angel, eager to do what they had been built to do. I was violence personified and these were obstacles to my goal.
This was what I had been built to do. Not to have friends and get involved in city politics. Not to interpret commands from my masters or try to save those they wanted dead. I was this, the moment before bloodshed. I was the terror in the hearts of enemies facing their end.
The tiger slashed at me with his metal claws and grabbed my arm as it swept by me. I was lifted off my feet by his strength and slammed into the temple. It shook, statues falling from the roof.
I directed as much power as I could to my hands and crushed the arm of the tiger angel. He screamed at the pain and gave me a moment to tear the metal claws from his hand. They were too big for me to use as gauntlets but if I held them with both my hands they might make a good weapon.
I jumped from the wall of the temple and slashed at the tiger’s exposed midsection. He tried to dodge but I was already within his defenses. The metal tore at his flesh and the organs beneath, spraying me with his blood and gore.
The bull was coming back as I landed. His face was a mess and he was running more or less blind, but he was healing and would be a threat again in no time. I aimed a kick at the tiger’s leg and snapped his shin, then turned to face the bull again.
“This is your place,” the bull said, his words slurred. “This is your heaven.”
“Then I will take it.”
I sped up, moving too fast for the souls looking on to follow. The world slowed down until everyone looked to me like a statue frozen in time. When the claws shredded the bull’s throat the blood didn’t have time to erupt from the wound befo
re I had cut the angel’s head off.
I slowed down to watch my enemy fall. Though his blood fed my power and he was my enemy, I felt no joy. I was violence, and yet it sickened me now.
I dropped the clawed gauntlet and took up the bull’s sword. A shriek sounded from around the temple and I knew who was coming next.
An eagle-headed angel with a spear spread his wings and took to the air, soaring over the temple in moments. The nobility gathered nearby screamed loud enough to match their guardian angel, their terror driving them higher in the amphitheater.
The tiger was healing even as he growled in pain. He attacked again, moving as fast as I had. The tattoos barely had time to speed me up before he was on me. Tons of muscle crashed into me and drove me to the ground, crushing me beneath the magical shields.
Claws scraped the shields and they darkened as they spent the power I’d liberated for them. My back was on the ground, swimming in the gore of the fallen bull, but there was no more power to steal there and I had no other supply.
I brought the sword to bear, swinging it with all my enhanced strength and fighting against the giant on my chest. The tiger blocked the attack with his exposed hand and the blade cut straight through, coming to rest in his shoulder. He screamed as the angelic blade destroyed whatever it touched. He leaped away and the blade dragged through his flesh, cutting through the bone and removing his arm.
The eagle launched a spear from on high. It deflected from the weakened shield, which took more of my dwindling power to keep me alive. I scrambled to my feet in time for another spear to crash into the shield and drive me to my knees. The tiger growled as it came back into the fray.
I grabbed the nearest spear and threw it at the tiger with all the strength I had left. It skewered him, piercing his heart. He fell to the ground beside me, dead. I shoved my hand into his side and let the tattoos feed.
The eagle had another spear raised and ready to throw, but I was ready this time. The spear whistled through the air, aimed at my head, and I leaped up to meet it. I snatched it from the air as I spun, then used my momentum to send it back where it had come from. It ran him through, exited his back and flying high into the amphitheater. His body crashed into the tents of the nobles, crushing those too slow to run.