Mori lifts his weapon — heavy with Macto rounds. Its barrel rises toward the five Pride Eaters. They stand on the storm-washed deck. Clawed feet curl up from the solar panels as the material burns them. They’re more solid than the horrors of the Hell Gate at Furze Bank. Less ghost-like. Living demons on the Earth. A shiver of fear climbs his spine. For all the demons’ substance, the world rebels against them more. Air around them warps and twists — tortured by their presence. It makes a ripping sound — a roar above even the howling storm wind. Bone-white and tapered heads all turn. Hollow, light-devouring eyes look past him to focus on Ivan. Claws lift and extend, making gestures toward Asmodeus’s Chosen. Beckoning. Offering flashes of dark magic that swell up in violet strobes between the Pride Eaters’ claws. Ivan’s hands lift. Grasping for what the demons give.
Power — the heroin of Hell.
Behind the Pride Eaters, the Trekke Pa oil platform — turned into a Nightmare mash-up of machine and giant squid — smashes through a nearby wave. It dwarfs Sea Shepherd which rolls and tosses in the shadow cast by its bulk, shrinking beneath smoke rising from the horror’s burning form. The churning ocean around them blackens with pollution gushing from its body. All about, fires light up — dancing across the waves.
Beside Mori, Beatrice’s rapier explodes with the light of a patterned Macto curse. She crouches, ready to spring. Shepherd’s windows take on its silver light. The glass — a frail divider neither demon nor angel seems to notice. Beatrice glances over her shoulder to Sadie, who nods, then snaps her face back to the threat as she lowers into a crouch. Fine dancer’s muscles coil like a spring. “Everyone! Behind us! Ready to abandon ship!” Beatrice shouts.
Finn scampers back, ship’s PA in hand. “Franz! Karl! Get topside!! Now!!” He shouts before letting the microphone slingshot back to the consol. He catches both Glenda and Sadie up in a sweep of his arms. All cluster near the door. Behind them, the well roils with inky water. Oil sloshes up to spatter the rear windows in black. They stare, eyes wide in terror at the Pride Eaters.
Behind Mori, Ivan takes another thudding step toward the demons. Dark light spills out of his wound causing shadows to bend and quiver. We’re losing that fucker again. Shit’s about to get real bad. His weapon stock tucks into his shoulder, the front Pride Eater resolves. He squeezes. The hammer falls. A white-blue bolt streaks from his barrel, smashes through the window. Shards fly outward. All together, the Pride Eaters spring toward the bridge. The front demon jumping into his shot. The Macto-cursed bullet strikes the demon’s head. It explodes in bright sparks that tear through the Pride Eater’s form — burning away like so much flash paper. In a flare, the demon is gone.
The four remaining Pride Eaters crush through the windows, leaving twisted steel and glass shards in their wake, claws rending both wheel house and ship’s consol. Electric sparks flying through the air combine with the flashes of Mori and Beatrice’s magical curses. Mori swings his weapon left, struggling to track the demons’ furious motion. Beatrice thrusts her rapier upwards as she springs toward a massive demon, spinning away from down-slashing claws. Her blade plunges into the demon which bursts in a fireworks flash.
Ivan takes another step forward. His face — hungry. His eyes — glazed. His hands — grasping. Strands of drool drip from his chin. “MmmmmIIIIIiiiiNNNnnnEEEEeee!!!” he shouts as he lunges toward the Pride Eaters. He grabs at the dark sparks of magic flying from the demons’ hands, stuffing each into his mouth like so much diabolical candy. His cheeks bulge. His throat quivers. His belly begins to to swell. Darkness gushes from his wound.
Mori finally draws a bead on his second Pride Eater. Its chest bursts into a spark flower, then the rest of its body flares and strobes out. Beatrice lands on one foot, jumps, flips, crouches upside down on the ceiling, pushes off, then stabs another Pride Eater through the eye. A cyclone of sparks curl out from the strike. Beatrice flips gracefully again to fall with the firelights, landing on the deck once more.
Mori looks sidelong at Ivan’s bulging flesh. At the changes starting to ripple over his skin. They are too late. The already-wounded Ivan need only accept the demonic offerings. No further wound is necessary to trigger his dark transformation. And Ivan has become more than willing, even lustful, at the Pride Eaters’ advances.
“Exorcizamus te!!” Beatrice begins to incant as she levels her blade at Ivan. His girl’s going to have to drive the demons’ influence out of that rat bastard again. Mori squeezes off another Macto round to cover her from the last Pride Eater. It flies wide.
“Nah-ah!” Comes a shout from across the waves. The word carries with it a pulse of diabolical magic that smacks away Beatrice’s spell and briefly leaves her staggered.
Across the water, upon Trekke Pa turned leviathan Nightmare, amongst a coil of twisted metal and pulsing flesh, the Curse Rider stands. Just a couple hundred feet away now, he looks down upon the foundering Sun Shepherd. His black cowboy hat perches on his head, unperturbed by wind or rain. A wry grin twists his features. No humor in that smile. Only dark satisfaction. He lifts his hand. His devil’s lash rises. The souls in his worb scream with pain in answer. Lightning shoots from his lash to spur the Nightmare — urging it on as it lifts its tentacles above Sun Shepherd.
“It was a great hunt! A chase for the ages!” He shouts above the storm-wind. “But all hunts end, as must.”
The Curse Rider then lowers his lash. Devil’s magic flows from it, leaps across the tossed and burning sea, then plunges into Ivan. The changes in his flesh accelerate. His body twists, lurches, bulges. Flickering, his spine elongates as black metal pins shoot from his flesh. His jaws engorge and grow a hedge of teeth. He falls down onto four clawed paws. Barbed spines emerge from his back — each popping out with a loud snap! A tail bearing a mass of these spines rises up behind Ivan — now returning to his terrible combined wolf, demon, porcupine and stegosaurus form. The shape of Asmodeus’s Chosen. His yellow, slitted eyes focus in on Beatrice as she dispatches the remaining Pride Eater with swift, precise blows.
Too late!
Franz and Karl at last burst onto the bridge. They stare wild-eyed at the monster Ivan has become.
Smash! CRASH! CRACK!! Three tentacles slam down onto Sun Shepherd. The vessel shrieks as it is bent and broken by terrible force. The hull splits beneath them. The burning, polluted ocean swarms in.
Praesidia! Sadie shouts as she forms a protective bubble around Finn, Glenda and herself. Beatrice does one of her leaps directly over Ivan just as his jaws snap hard on the empty space she occupied moments before. Landing between Franz and Karl with a watery splash, she shouts Una! Then, casting a spark into Sadie’s protective barrier, she incants Lanuae! Franz, Karl, and Beatrice’s forms all flicker out, then burst into being amidst flowers of sparks inside Sadie’s shield.
“Hey! What about me!?” Mori shouts as water floods in and the ship breaks apart around him. Ocean envelops him and he’s left to hold his breath and swim like hell for Sadie. Luckily, Ivan’s pulled away by a swirl of current. His knife-like spines at a safe distance for the moment. No incantation’s possible beneath the water. Mori can’t vocalize his magical curses. Sadie, Beatrice and the rest don’t sit idle in their protective bubble as he struggles. At the urging of Sadie, they stand and run together. The effect is like a giant hamster ball spinning toward him inefficiently through the water. Mori chokes back a wry laugh and swims harder.
Beneath the pollution floating on the storm-riled surface, the water is clearer. Omnis Scientia, pulled below the waves at a nudge from Beatrice gives an expanded view. Mori can see the Nightmare’s gigantic form — like some burning, oil-spewing, sky-scraper sized squid — floating way too close for comfort. Its tentacles writhe and lash as it tears Sun Shepherd to pieces. The Nightmare as hellified oil platform seems to hold an awful grudge against the solar-electric vessel. Ivan kicks and thrashes in the current. He got rolled pretty hard by a big wave that Mori somehow managed to duck dive under. Surfer’s old instincts doing double duty.
The thought brings a reminder of Myra as a kid at the Cape Hatteras that once was. His kid was a real badass on a boogie board. Good times, those. He grins as he kicks into Praesidia, knifes through the barrier, then pops into the air bubble with a gasping intake of breath. Sadie had shouted Una! Just a moment before from inside the bubble to include him. Otherwise, he’d have bounced off it like a giant beach ball.
The bubble is moving with surprising speed beneath the water. A glance through Omnis Scientia tells Mori that Sadie applied a Mobilis curse to the barrier as the group started doing the hamster-wheel thing. It’s now turning fast and swimming roughly in the direction of Bright Spark. Mori scrambles up to join those jogging in the ball. Beatrice has linked hands with Franz and Glenda — helping everyone coordinate as Sadie’s magic aids their movement. For now, running away from Ivan, the Curse Rider, and the leviathan Nightmare.
“Holy Hell!” Mori gasps as Praesidia pops to the surface, then rolls along through the waves. “We lost Ivan!”
“Not quite yet.” Sadie replies, pointing across the storm-tossed North Sea to where Ivan is doggedly swimming toward them. His great, spiked tail lashes in a wave face about two hundred feet away propelling his massive bulk toward them. His eyes gleam with yellow rage. His mouth gapes with hunger, spilling venom into the already befouled sea. That goddamn bastard’s a devil turned sea wolf. Mori wants to say it out loud. But he doesn’t on account of Glenda. She’s jogging beside him, sobbing quietly, staring in stark disbelief at the monster her father has become. Mori puts a hand on her shoulder. He wants to say something to help her. He knows he ain’t got shit. He just gives her the best reassuring squeeze he can muster.
Mori lifts his rifle which, by some account of gods or providence or just flat luck, he managed to hold the fuck onto. Sighting down the barrel, he draws a bead on Ivan the monster as he swims toward them with surprising speed. Lashing tail churning the black and burning water to thrust the demon-wolf like a missile through the raging sea. Behind Ivan, the machine and flesh bulk of the leviathan Nightmare flails its tentacles then leaps toward them. SMASH! ROAR! It flies hundreds of feet through the air then splashes down in a great spray of foam and fire. The Curse Rider atop the oil platform turned hell beast lifts his head to laugh. The noise of his diabolical glee mixing with the tortured scream of wisps in his worb, the furious roaring of the storm wind, and a piercing wail of a howl that springs from Ivan as he lifts his lupine maw to lend his own monster’s voice to the hunt.
********
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
(Looking for another chapter? Find it in the Helkey Table of Contents.)
(Enjoying the story? Want to help support the continuance of this tale? Please like, share and subscribe.)
Scribbler’s Fantastical Workshop 
robertscribbler
/ September 19, 2022Some edits and updates to follow. We are now approx five chapters away from the completion of Helkey Book 1!!
LikeLike