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.)
Sun Shepherd plows through another towering wave as the storm howls its fury over them like some enormous beast. Dark clouds above fill with spider-webs of lightning. Water and spray, ripped into jagged fingers by the vessel’s powerful forward speed, lash out at them — pounding the bridge windows. The sturdy ship shrugs off the assault, cleaving implacably through the angry waters, the clean hum of its electric drives — a constant counter to the roaring wind and waves. Mori’s got his grip glued to his “oh shit!” handle. Without it, he’d be careening around the bridge compartment of the swaying vessel like a pin ball in one of those retro arcade games. The metal brief case containing his magical rifle — held firm against his chest. His stomach does a rollercoaster-style tumble as Sun Shepherd drops into another trough. Damn fortunate whoever designed this vessel didn’t cut any corners. He’d have ripped the fucking handle off by now.
Mori glances up toward Beatrice standing beside Finn at the helm. She’s perfectly balanced without holding onto anything. The swaying and jolts do nothing to throw her. A graceful surfer riding through this crazy climate-change-enhanced storm. Her sleek, angelic form seeming to know where the ship will move ahead of time. Mori grins, imagining his wife as some female version of the Silver Surfer. Yeah, his girl’s just about that badass. She’s even got her eyes closed — shifting her gaze out through omnis scientia — ready to warn Finn of the next big wave. The sensor’s a few hundred feet ahead. Mori’s magic-sensitive eyes pick it up as a floating ball of light amidst the spray, the waves, the rain.
Karl and Franz are both buckled in. Earlier, they’d distributed fancy life-vests from beneath the seats. Now everyone’s wearing one of the puffy orange things over their clothes — complete with whistle, strobe, and geo-locator. Mori doesn’t want to think about using the damn things. Being ejected into that sea state would be, well, Hellish. His gaze flickers over Karl and Franz. Though they’re ship’s hands and have probably made this passage scores of times, they’re holding on about as tight as Mori. Franz has his eyes glued to the bow. Karl’s staring at the bridge ceiling, refusing to look at the waves, as his jaw works — chewing on some gum he plopped into his mouth a few minutes before. The sight of the two, obviously suffering the same anxiety as the rest of them, isn’t reassuring.
Beside him, Ivan and Glenda are also strapped in tight, holding on against the storm’s assault. Glenda’s alert, her eyes bouncing between Beatrice, Sadie, and Ivan. Her mouth — a concerned frown. Her face displaying hurt, anger, outrage. Yet fearless. Mori finds himself comforted by her courage. That girl’s something else.Putting everything on the line to save her asshole father.I feel for her. But I’ve really got doubts. Mori grits his teeth as his gaze locks on Ivan. The Russian oligarch’s face is a slack glower. That same emotionless mask Mori’d grown to hate. Bastard’s at last in control of his sea-sickness. That or he’s puked himself out. The boat throws Mori’s stomach through a loop as it slams into another twenty-foot wave face. Maybe he’ll be next to lose his lunch.
Mori’s not sure how Glenda’s earlier outburst is affecting ol’ Ivan. But he’s pretty certain the jackass is going to do them a bad turn. Confronting him with both good-will and reason produces nada. Sadie’d only managed to rope him in on their wild expedition to Heaven by making him feel special. Like this trip to Heaven is some kind of goddamn birthday present. Sure, she’s using him to distract Asmodeus as Myra runs roughshod into Hell. But Sadie, like Glenda, genuinely wants to help the bastard. She’s right. His transformation atop Furze Bank, his wounding by Pride Eaters’ claws should’ve been a wake-up call. Ivan, at times, shows fear. Regret. But these moments of potential awakening inevitably fail. Ivan’s just too corrupt, too cynical to take a good turn. Mori gets the feeling the Russian’s circling back to his usual power-games. Shapechanger — Glenda’d called him.
That rat-bastard’s a ticking bomb.Glenda’s right. This is his intervention. But Ivan’s gotta want it to work and he’s addicted to something worse than any drug.Power.
Mori can sense that power-lust wafting off Ivan. Like the smell of alcohol off a drunk. Ivan’s expression gives Mori’s stomach a worse jolt than even the massive North Sea waves threatening to devour Sun Shepherd. His cop instincts — going off like gang-busters. The way he treats his own daughter… Like she’s supposed to grow up into corruption and become like him. It’s just sick. That shred of love for Glenda Mori sensed in him earlier — now seems little more than a counterfeit.
Asmodeus chose this fucker for a reason.Sadie’s assurances or no, if Ivan does anything to hurt Glenda, if he shows any sign of turning again, I swear I’m gonna knock his ass out.
Mori’s eyes cut back toward Sadie. Her onyx skin glistens with an angelic sheen, seeming to glow in each lightning flash. Her face — somehow continuing to radiate calm goodwill as she braces through the storm. She reaches out a hand, grasps Glenda’s arm. Glenda’s face lifts, shedding some of its hurt and anger. Sadie’s the best. Always trying to do a good turn.
Beep! Beep! Beep! The alarm on Mori’s watch goes off. It’s 7:00 Berlin time. Shit! Mirror Specter’s on its way! Mori glances about the cabin. Beatrice spins on him, her eyes wide. Well, I guess everyone’s gonna see it.
“No help for it now!” Mori growls to Beatrice, then thrusts himself upright. He turns to everyone. They’re all looking at him, temporarily distracted by his sudden agitation. “You’re all about to see something strange! A kind of magical ghost! We’re going to talk with it for about a minute! Pay us no mind!”
Glenda frowns speculatively, like she’s working out a puzzle. Franz’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Ivan’s head tilts forward. A small grin appears on his face. That’s a problem.
“You just said you’re going to talk to a ghost and to pay you no mind?! The one doesn’t go with the other!” Karl shouts.
Beatrice ignores him, turns to Finn. “You’re on your own for a few minutes!” She shouts against the roaring wind and waves.
“I really need you!”
“I know! No helping it!” She waves a hand over her form in explanation. Finn looks at her sidelong, doesn’t get it. Then, the magic of Mirror Specter begins to grow up from her. The sliver tattoos traced on Beatrice’s skin gleam with moon glow. Her hair swirls — lifted by magical force. Light fills the cabin. Everyone but Sadie stares at Beatrice in shock as sparks begin to spill out of her name curse. They hit the deck, smoke for a moment, and then from the smoke rises the ghostly form of his daughter — Myra Helkey. She’s wearing a D20 shirt, has a clean look like someone who just had a shower — shiny. Her name curse is also sparking. Sending out streamers to connect with Beatrice. Her hair, pulled back in a pony tail, seems to drift about weightlessly, as if she’s floating in water. It’s the only visible hint about where this Mirror Specter is coming from. Good.
“Hey Mom, Dad! Other people!” Myra as Mirror Specter says, glancing about the cabin. “I’m about to go…”
Beatrice lifts a hand. “We have an audience!”
Myra’s Mirror pauses, “Yep! Noticed!” She scans the group, takes in the raging storm outside for the first time. The Mirror Specter floats above the deck — untouched by the swaying Sea Shepherd. “Oh… That’s a really bad storm!” A strand of her hair drifts lazily in front of her face. Ivan’s beady eyes glint as he stares. Mori can practically see the clockwork turning over in his skull. Tic, ticking through details.
“Yeah, better make it quick for now!” He says. No use in keeping his voice down. It’s like they’re on stage.
Myra’s Mirror snaps back into action. “Right! Then I’ll just tell you the basics! My better half made it past the beach! She’s now with a group of… kindred spirits! Two blues! A Vila! She just defeated some Poachers!”
“Excellent!” Beatrice says. She’s lifting a hand out, stroking the light form of Mirror Specter. The gesture is heart-rending. Mori knows how much Beatrice misses Myra. How concerned she feels for her as she faces down Hell pretty much all alone. “A Vila! That’s a perfect complement!” Beatrice turns to Mori nods.
“Fanfriggingtastic!” Mori replies. “She’s near the Wisp Fields?!”
“Just at the southeast end. About fifteen miles from Overseer.”
“Fuckin-A!” Mori whoops. “Yeah! Tell her to start her rebellion against those slavers!”
“You think she’s ready?!” Beatrice casts her concern back toward him.
“Babe, you know each day brings new risks! Sooner is better! Plus, a Vila!”
Beatrice nods, glances back at their dumbfounded onlookers. Mori’s pretty sure they’re not cluing in at all. All except Sadie who’s watching on with a bemused expression. Excellent! “Then urge her to push on! I hope she remembers enough… of what we discussed before!”
Mirror-Myra lifts a hand, gives a mock-salute. “Got it! I’m off to H…” She glances again at her audience. “Then I’m off! See you tomorrow at the same time! Love you both!!”
Beatrice’s glow flickers, then goes out. Mirror-Myra disappears — swirling off down her connection with their daughter. Down, down into Hell where Myra’s probably reacting to her own magical set of alarm bells. Beatrice shares a final glance with Mori, lets out a long breath, brushes off a tear. With a stiff nod, she turns back and closes her eyes. All-in-all it went pretty darn well. Except that last bit at the end where Myra’s Mirror almost said “Hell.” He’s pretty sure no-one picked up on it. Based on Ivan’s puzzled expression, Finn’s curious side-long glances, and the befuddled expressions on the faces of Glenda, Karl and Franz, they pulled this little Mirror Specter briefing off with flying colors and no-one’s the wiser.
“I’m watching again!” Beatrice shouts to Finn.
He grunts acknowledgement, then glances at Beatrice. “I’m not going at ask!” He shouts against the storm.
Beatrice laughs. “Better not!”
“Oh what the ever-living-Hell was that??!” Franz shouts.
“You heard her! No questions!” Finn replies. “Now let’s get through this beast!”
Glenda clamps her mouth down on a question she was about to ask, looks enquiringly to Sadie, but doesn’t say anything. Karl keeps chomping on his gum, shrugs. Ivan raises his free hand to his chin and scans the cabin with his reptilian gaze.
Sun Shepherd clambers up another monstrous wave. It feels like climbing a rocky, moving hill. Outside, the sky darkens, the pace of lightning flashes intensifies. Mori shifts his sight to omnis scientia. Through it, Sun Shepherd looks small and vulnerable amidst the churning waves. The fast resupply vessel for Wind-Sun Isle straining at its design limits in the brutal storm. Overhead, a ghostly light appears. The storm hollows out ahead of it, forming a circular corridor through the clouds. A black shape like a dragon with a Nightmare-as-helicopter for its head flies through the tunnel above them. As it approaches, the wind briefly slackens, pulled into its great, demon-formed wings. The roar above them grows, the darkness outside deepens as the Nightmare casts its shadow.
“What the ever-loving-fuck!!?” Karl shouts as he sees it.
“That’s the Curse Rider!” Beatrice cries out. “His Nightmare uses the storm!”
“Fuck! I’m watching it now. What if it sees us?!” Mori instinctively clenches, anticipating the storm-enhanced-Nightmare’s descent. Body and wings of storm spread above them. He feels like a mouse tossed about on a bit of driftwood beneath a raptor. The shadow begins to pass. Mori feels a moment of sweet relief. It missed us! The wind picks up. The Nightmare’s lashing tail, a frigging waterspout, sweeps by about two hundred meters starboard. Winds, flung back out of the Nightmare roar across the waves. Seas build behind the Nightmare as waves stack together into a massive swell.
“Finn! It’s coming!” Beatrice shouts, then points.
Finn, who’d stared wide-eyed as the Nightmare passed overhead, snaps out of his fear-daze and tilts Sun Shepherd’s nose in the direction of Beatrice’s outstretched hand. Toward the enormous wave he can’t yet see. Through omnis scientia, Mori watches the wave build to forty, fifty, sixty feet. The collision alert goes off, sending its klaxon blare through the bridge. A roiling wall of white and blue engulfs the magical sensor running ahead of Sun Shepherd. Mori snaps his eyes open in time to see its daunting form emerge off the ship’s bow. It looms like a cliff, its face is shadowed, hollow.
“Brace! Brace! Brace!” Finn shouts. Everyone clenches tighter to their hand-holds. They’re all already strapped in. Except Beatrice. She reaches a hand out, grabs a handle on the console. The bow pitches down into the trough. Above them, the wave begins to break as its top explodes into a mass of foam. Shepherd’s bow lifts, rises to thirty, forty, fifty degrees. Mori’s pressed back into his seat. Finn looks like an astronaut strapped into his captain’s chair. Beatrice dangles by one hand from her handhold which is now above her head. All across the console, read warning lights are blinking. Powerful engines roar shooting twin rooster tails behind. Its hull groans. The bow pierces the breaking wave and again they are submerged. The churning motion of the wave causes Sun Shepherd to pitch. “Grrrrrrrhhhhh!!” Finn growls as he wrestles with the helm to turn Shepherd upright. Blue water is visible through both front and rear windows. Little rivulets leak down the rear doors leading to the well. Shepherd groans from the pressure, steadily tilts back toward vertical, then explodes through the giant wave’s back. Shepherd’s bow slamming onto the storm-tossed sea surface.
Everyone lets out a breath they didn’t realize they were holding.
“Fuck! Fuck! We’re fucked!!” Glenda curses as she breathes out, then opens her clenched eyes. Ivan, meanwhile, looks like he’s about to get sick again. Even Sadie’s tensed up.
“She’s a strong ship!” Finn shouts from his captain’s chair. Sweat beading on his brow betrays his intense focus. “Made to weather the North Sea and make the fast cargo or personnel runs to and from Wind-Sun! Never you worry! She’ll hold together!” His voice is cracking a bit from the strain. Mori’s not sure if it’s reassuring. He can tell Finn’s just about as scared shitless as Glenda. Whether from the storm, from the supernatural shit he just witnessed, or both, Mori can’t tell.
Beatrice drops back onto her feet as the ship settles. Out of everyone, she seems the most steady. She turns to Mori, lifts her free hand, then points toward the Nightmare boring on through the raging storm. “Where’s it going?!” She shouts to Mori above the waves and engine noise.
“I don’t know, babe! We’re following it!” Mori replies, then turns to Finn. “What’s out that way?!”
“Trekke Pa, Wind-Sun! That’s about it!”
“Trekke Pa?!” Sadie asks. Mori’s gut does another roller-coaster dip — and not from the pitching deck.
“It’s a huge oil platform!” Finn shouts.
“How far off?!” Mori asks. “Can we avoid it?!”
“We won’t crash into it! If that’s what you mean!”
“No! Can we go around!? Stay out of it’s way!?” Mori can feel the fear starting to rise again.
“Not by too much! Not in this mess! We’re already pretty close! Don’t want to get thrown off course!”
Mori’s eyes lock with Beatrice’s. “I think Glenda’s right!” Beatrice says, her face falling as she watches the Nightmare’s waterspout tail whipping back and forth like some oceanic version of the twister from The Wizard of Oz in front of them.
“What?!” Finn asks.
“Yeah,” Mori replies. “That Nightmare’s heading straight for the oil platform! We are fucked!”
“It’s an ambush!” Beatrice shouts back. “Get ready!”
********
Gibbons Crane whoops and laughs maniacally as his Nightmare leaps from the helicopter and into the oil platform. He cracks his electric whip. His worb grinds down on the captured wisps, feeding the demon still more energy. The demon flickers with dark lightning as it courses through the metal struts. Its energy whirls out and down. The oil platform crew looks on in horror. Floats, masses of machinery atop the platform, tentacle-like lines running down to the ocean floor — slurping up Hellish fuels from a wound driven into the sea bed, all shudder and begin to transform. The Nightmare drinks deep of crude and gas. It cries in triumph as it taps great tanks of the corruption juice stored in Trekke Pa’s structure. It yammers with glee as it slurps down the polluting substances travelling up through lines reaching the sea bottom.
The structure groans. Oil leeches out of joints and seams to cover its body. Turning from light-bedecked and red-painted steel to black. Hellish flesh bulges throughout. Terrified crew are engulfed, swallowed up, crushed into its new form in sprays of blood and entrails. Gibbons feasts upon it all. “Yes!!” He shouts in ecstasy, then kicks the helicopter off the fleshy deck and into the storm-riled North Sea. Sinking down beneath the waves. Forgotten. The platform grows scales. Spines rise out. Floats merge into a monstrous squid-like head. Lines rip from the sea floor bottom to become tentacles. A great, bulbus eye sprouts, casts out a baleful gaze. Metal and machinery form mad and mottled patterns along its two-hundred-foot long body. Lights shatter. Oil spills through its skin, belches from its mouth. The Nightmare, the ocean, everything is soon covered by the viscous fossil fuels.
Sparks fly from shattered lamps, fire takes hold, blazes across the oil. A great raging inferno leaps over it and onto the water. Gibbons stands astride the enormous monster, gripping a spine with one hand, lashing his electric whip into the air with the other. Oil platform no more. Now Hell’s Platform. A Nightmare fully transformed into a horror straight from the inner-most-bowels of a ruined world. The oil spewing from the creature, fountaining up through the waves out of ruptured fuel lines, spreads darkness and fire across the ocean surface. The disaster. The storm. The Nightmare monster. The environmental ruin. All combine to draw the eyes of demons. Five Pride Eaters lift their hands. Tear at the space between Hell and Earth with their enormous claws. Their spirits come to float alongside Gibbons and his Nightmare. The pollution and fires lick their forms into being. They latch on to the great Nightmare body, becoming riders of an Eldritch Horror.
Gibbons points out over the raging sea. He knows the location of his prey. He can sense them just miles off through the raging storm. “There!” He shouts to the beast. “There is our quarry! Go now! We will take them!” The Nightmare tips forward, plunges through water and fire. tentacles ripple behind. Gibbons, the demons, the Nightmare tear through the storm. A form of fire, gushing oil, writhing tentacles like towers. Behind them — a black and burning wake.
********
Maxwell Plann, famous climate scientist by day, moonlighting mage by night, and friend to Sadie and Glenda, stands in the Bill McKibben control room overlooking a churning North Sea. A stocky, unassuming figure, Maxwell lifts a hand to adjust his polarized aviator glasses against another bright flash of lightning as rain batters the window in front of him.
The control room, named after a prominent climate activist who envisioned a full transition to clean energy decades before it became a popular rallying cry of environmentalists, is part of a larger structure jutting out from a man-made island. The island — Wind-Sun Isle — is a platform for twenty massive wind turbines. It forms a hub in a constellation of a thousand more across the North Sea. Every inch of the one square mile island’s surface is covered with solar panels. Running through the island are tunnels filled with water turbines that tap the North Sea’s waves and currents. Together these turbines and panels collect enough electricity to power half of Germany each day. Pushing it out as clean current to mainland Europe. Transforming it into renewable hydrogen in the various electrolysis plants dotting the Island. Considered an impossibility just a decade ago, Wind-Sun Isle is an amazing feat of engineering science and act of faith combined. It represents the answer to a Hellish climate in the form of energy from Heaven. A place that will fall to the waves as glaciers continue to melt — unless the world answered in kind with enough energy from Heaven to replace the nightmarish fuels from Hell.
Hope facing off against tragedy.
Maxwell marvels at the place. Revels in its triumph of science and engineering combined. He’d seen pictures of Wind-Sun Isle on the web many times. His presence here came at the request of his associate Sadie. He’d arrived just one day ago. Now he worries about his friends — Sadie and Glenda. The storm has transformed the North Sea into a horror of gigantic waves, falling bolts of lighting, and torrential rain. He’s pushed his magical senses out along the path of Sun Shepherd to finally find it wallowing in the raging seas. Its progress — hampered by the constant pounding. Though just five miles off Wind-Sun, and nearing Trekke Pa, the waves and terrible current are holding them at bay.
“They’re running late,” he says, turning toward his companion — Freja Pedersen.
“Expected, they’ll be lucky to make it here by full dark through this mess.” Freja replies. She towers over the stocky Maxwell. Her long, blonde locks pulled back into a braid. Freja’s an administrator and chief engineer for Wind-Sun. She’s also one of Maxwell’s network of global contacts.
“Maybe it’s time to send out an escort?” Maxwell motions to his left. Outside is a bay housing two solar-electric ships. Bright Spark and Ray Wind. Sisters to Sun-Shepherd. They bob in the wind, waves, and rain even in the enclosure. Freja has them charged up and ready in the event that they’re needed to aid Sun Shepherd.
“Maybe…” Freja says, considering.
Then, out over Trekke Pa, the sky turns bright red. Lit up by a terrible explosion. The flames briefly silhouette a towering form in the darkness. Black as pitch. Flaming. Spewing smoke and shadow. Black tentacles leap up from the fire surrounding it. Then, the great monster, no longer just an oil platform, tips sideways into the North Sea. Burly waves splash and roil around it. Tentacles and burning expulsions of oil swarm behind. That monstrous flaming form — knifing directly toward Sun Sherpherd.
Maxwell doesn’t hesitate. He knows a Nightmare when he sees one. Knew Sadie, Mori, and Beatrice had probably attracted just such a terror. “I’m heading to Bright Spark! Tell Jans I’ll be aboard in less than five!”
********
Mori feels like he’s going to barf.
Sun Shepherd slams over another huge wave. Spray and rain fly. Out ahead, in the darkness, a red light gleams like a demon’s eye. Underbellies of cloud flicker with intermittent firelight. The flickering grows brighter, larger. Oily smoke rises up into the sky ahead. Darkness deepens as smoke joins cloud and gathering dusk. Something massive. A shadow in the belly of flame and smoke begins to take shape ahead. A shape like a knife of fire and darkness — pointing directly toward Sun Shepherd — emerges.
“What is that!?” Karl shouts, his eyes wide with naked fear.
“The Nightmare. Death… pouncing,” Beatrice replies. Mori can see her eyes shifting to a more determined cast. He knows she’s checking her energetic vessel. They’ve had hours to refresh since the train. I’m back to about a third full. She’s probably about the same. Sadie might have half. Not enough. No-where near enough.
“Nightmare?!! Death!? Pouncing!!??” Karl shouts again. Hysterical. He’s got his eyes glued to the rapidly growing form. Its firelight flickers across his face. His own face — a rictus of fear — appears demonic in the hellish glow. “We’re dead, dead… DEAD!!!“
“Everyone! Steady!” Finn shouts. “Someone give me an option!”
“Can you turn the vessel away from it?! Speed up?! Try to outrun it?!” Mori shouts.
“If I turn sidewise to a twenty foot plus swell, we’ll start rolling! I don’t know how many rolls she can take!”
Mori spins toward Sadie. “Can you protect Sun Shepherd from the waves, make it stronger against rolls?”
Sadie’s eyes glisten. She nods. “It’s a solar vessel. My magic will work more strongly with it. I can try.”
“Good!” Beatrice shouts as she plants her feet, then lowers a hand to grab the console. “Best do it now! We’ve got to find a way out of this Ambush! And that Nightmare — it’s coming fast!!”
Out ahead, the Nightmare leaps over a wave as it rushes toward them. Its two hundred foot long, squid-like body covered with metal protrusions, leaking flaming oils, becoming fully visible for the first time. Behind it, a mass of tentacles whip out, flinging smoke, fire, shadow. The shape rises about fifty feet into the air, seems to hang on the wind for a moment, then slams down. Spray, fire, oil splash out from it in a multi-colored explosion.
Karl sees it. Bends over. Covers his eyes. “Dead… dead… dead…,” he whimpers.
In the rising firelight, Ivan’s beady eyes flicker. Mori gets the impression of a predator, at bay for now, just waiting for the right time to pounce.
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
Elation pumps through my body. Heartbeat pounds in my ears. All nerves jolt in celebration. I’m still alive! Our rag-tag force lets out another cheer. I take a breath. No time to celebrate, not now. Maybe not ever. This is Hell after all. I let my moonshadow blade flicker out. The sight of all the dead devils, their gore strewn across the canyon floor, makes me reel. The smell of death — extraordinary. It’s the coolest part of the day. Heat pounds down on me like a hammer. I lean to one side. Catch myself on a boulder, pop out Perry fuckin A, take a long drink.
Mottle must sense that I’m swooning from heat and exertion. He shakes himself, flicks off bits of crushed devil, then returns to cover me. The cool is welcome. The blood coating the inside of him sticks to me. I stumble again, look up. Urdrake and Plumacats are casting about. One walks around with long ropes of drool dripping from its jowls. Are they fucking hungry? Do they want to eat the devils? What do Plumacats and Urdrake eat anyway? I stare at them, taking in the Plumacats’ fangs and claws, the Urdrake’s serrated beaks. A Plumacat licks its jowls, glances at me, then actually frigging meows like it wants to eat the devil carcass and is asking me for permission.
This is too much for me to process. I suddenly feel really damn sick. Then I’m barfing the empty contents of my stomach all over the ground. Mostly just bile and water now. Last real food I had was at Starbucks in Berlin. A whole fucking world ago. A yesterday and a half ago. Frail fucking human who’s now surviving on Mottle injections. I wipe my mouth, make myself stand. I can’t afford a moment of weakness. Not now when everyone is fucking counting on me. Not when Zaya’s conjured up a pack of uber-predators for our allies that I now have to somehow appear strong enough to lead. Mom. Dad. All the souls here — in my name curse, in my shadow, I’m guessing maybe a whole Hell of a lot more than just that — they’re counting on me to get this right.
I glance at my horologium watch. It’s 3:47 Hell time. Goddamn dawn’s gonna break in a few hours. That won’t be pretty. I’ve got a full-on fucking war on my hands. I’m gonna be fighting it in the fucking heat pretty damn soon. I’m already fighting in the heat. It’s like a hundred and five out here. Day’s gonna kick that up to like one-thirty plus. I take another breath, let it out. Everyone’s quiet now. The victory elation has settled down. Some are picking through the devils’ equipment, poking at those weird unicycles, or nosing the corpses. Most are staring at me again. Waiting. Some watched on as I barfed. Great!
I wipe my mouth off, pull myself together, then jump up on top of the boulder I’m standing next to. Hell, if Plumacats can do it, why not me? “We just scored another major success. Here, in this canyon, we plant our second victory flag!” I scan them as I talk loudly. I’m basically imitating my Dad’s impression of a drill sergeant from basic fucking training. I never went to basic — I’m just a frigging seventeen-year-old. But I think I got most of it through osmosis from early childhood. My manner seems to be working. I’ve got their attention at least. “So patting ourselves on the back is in order! But we can’t rest for too long! We just made a shit-ton of light and noise! Plus those were likely just a group of scouts! For now, we need to take stock. If there are wounded, I want to know. If any of you know how to help wounded, I want to know.” I point at Featherstar. “You’re in charge of setting up a detail to manage those who’ve been hurt! If there are casualties, I need to know about it fast!” If there are dead, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Featherstar gives me a speculative look, then bounds off.
I turn to Zorfang. He’s one of the Urdrake who shot beams of light out of their fucking heads. “I didn’t know you could…” I think of the right words for a moment. Oh Hell, it doesn’t matter. “…shoot beams of lethal light out of your heads! That’s crazy useful. Will have to keep that in mind for future. For now, I want you to get a group of Urdrakes to collect all the useful gear here. A lot’s broke. Some’s not. Find out what’s not. Collect it and distribute it. Also — put the weird bikes that still work to one side.”
Forces and Major Events in the Wisp Fields and Razor Hills
Zorfang growl-hums his agreement. I nod. He rumbles off, thick tail swishing back and forth. I lift my voice again. “You both have ten minutes! When you’re done report back!” I’m not sure if they know what minutes is. Doesn’t matter. They can tell from my tone that I want them to effing hurry.
“OK Mottle,” I whisper over my shoulder. “While they’re doing that, can you have the team of six Mottles and Plumacats head up to the canyon wall and fan out? I don’t hear any more of those weird devil bikes nearby. But if they’re coming I want to know.” Omnis scientia’s still floating high above the canyon. I can use that too. But more eyes are always better. I take a breath. This next part is a big risk. But it’s gotta be done. “Also, if any devils got away from our engagement, I want our scouts to hunt them down and take them out. Go for stragglers and small follow-on forces. Take down anyone who can run back and rat us out. Tell them to make a circuit of the ridge-line facing the Wisp Fields, get some eyes on both the fields and the scorpion we destroyed, then report back.”
Yes, Mottle thinks back to me simply, then flies off. He goes to the small group of scouts we organized back in the cave, touches a Mottle named Shade. There’s a brief pause as the two share thoughts. Shade’s Plumacat partner — Grimjaw — growls a couple commands. Then our scout squad bounds off. Our company watches them go. A few Plumacats give yowls of encouragement. Everyone seems to know they’re taking a huge risk for us.
With Mottle off my back, the heat hits me again like a hammer. I’m never going to get used to it. It’s way beyond human physiology to deal with this crazy inferno, the stifling sulfur air. My folks said a good chunk of devil magic’s set up just to keep them going through Hell’s nasty environment. Sure, they’re better adapted to it than humans. But adaptation can only do so much. Worbs and the magic they produce became a kind of Faustian bargain for most devils — enslave souls to survive in Hell. It all happened in the deep long ago when Hell’s environment took a nose-dive for the worst. There’s a reason most creatures left alive in Hell are devils. Many blue devils don’t have worbs. They tend not to live long. Maybe to age 35. When you’re dying off that quick, it’s hard to raise children to keep a species going.
Zaya flies up to me, tipping me out of my momentary reverie. Maybe I’m finally starting to get tired after two fights and hours of slogging through Hell’s crazy environment. “You wouldn’t let me fight,” she says with a cross look on her face.
“Yeah. Not this time. But don’t be too upset. There’s a lot of fighting left. So you’d best get ready for some more action.”
Zaya gives me one last frown. “What’s next, then?”
“Next we get ready to take the fight to them. But smart-like.”
“You have a plan?”
“I always have a plan.” I didn’t have shit. Well, not yet at least. I look at my watch. It’s 3:59 Hell time. I spring up, clap my hands together. I’m still standing on my boulder so I can see everyone. “OK! Time’s up! Zorfang! Featherstar! Mottle! Come back here and report!”
My newfangled commanders shuffle back. Theri and Zel return beside them together with a Plumacat and two Urdrakes. They’re carrying armfuls of weapons which they lay down in front of me. I told them to distribute these weapons. Guess I’ll have to tell them who gets what. Another five Urdrakes wheel the giant spikey unicycles toward us. Wow. Looks like five of their nasties still work.
I wait another minute for them to gather, then speak up, again adopting Dad’s drill sergeant tone. I admit, this part of my new ‘job’ would be kinda fun if the subject of it all weren’t so goddamn grim. “OK! First tell me about casualties.”
Featherstar leaps forward with a proud yowl. “Only three wounded. We lick their wounds now.” I think this is just a figure of speech. But when I follow Featherstar’s lashing tail, I see two prone Plumacats and an Urdrake being minstered to by a third Plumacat who’s actually licking them. I’m too much at a loss to say anything. Which is good. Because I stare on for another moment which is enough for me to notice some kind of white film spreading out with each lick of the Plumacat’s tongue. The film covers wounds, creating a natural binding.
Zaya’s still hovering nearby. I turn to her. “Care to explain that?” I point to the film. I’ve got a lot more questions for Zaya about the Urdrakes and Plumacats. But I’ve got like no frigging time — so I stick to essentials.
“Oh. It’s a kind of natural healing salve they produce through glands in their mouth. It stops bleeding, aids the healing process, can even be used to re-attach limbs.”
Re-attach limbs? That’s pretty potent healing. I file this information for later and carry on. “Fanfriggintastic!” The next question is one I dread to ask. “Any dead?”
Featherstar gives a proud if dismissive flick of her tail. “No dead,” she says simply. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. There are probably going to be dead by the end of today. Still not something I want on my conscience. When a creature dies in Hell, its wisp might reform after a time, if it is strong. Otherwise, second death in Hell means annihilation.
“Good! Excellent!” I say to Featherstar, trying to keep some kind of command presence. I’ve gotta project confidence to keep ’em all together and believing they’re going to live and such. Turning to Zorfang, I ask my next question. “So what’ve we got for spoils?”
“Five of these,” he points to the weird unicycles. His words, though still sonorous, are now much more articulate. “Six of those,” he points to a pile of rifles. “Seven of those,” he points to a cluster of handguns. “Eleven close-fighting weapons. Plus this –” he points to the bag of ammo hanging from Zel’s shoulder. I think for a moment. None of them but Zel, Theri and me know a damn thing about firearms. They’re going to need to learn quick. “Zel — you and Theri pick some Plumacats that you think might train up quick with the pistols and rifles.” Looking at the Urdrakes, I’m not sure if their hands will fit the firearms’ grips. I look at the pile of serrated swords and axes. “Distribute the heavier melee weapons to the Urdrakes. Give the lighter ones to the Plumacats.” There’s nothing here for the Mottles. From what I’d seen, the Mottles are badass enough. Hell, they’re all badass enough.
Theri and Zel start moving to distribute the weapons. They each pick a Plumacat, then immediately start giving it a basic instruction on firearms use. I give them a couple minutes to talk. The Plumacats aren’t going to be very effective with those weapons anytime soon. But it’s a start.
“OK. I hate to say it,” I say, raising my voice to address everyone, “but we’re going to need to get a move-on fast. So gather ’round!” I glance at horologium as the Plumacats, Urdrake, and Mottles cluster in the canyon’s center around me. “It’s already 4:06 AM Hell time. About twenty minutes ago we ambushed a squad of scouts.” I don’t know if this is the right technical term. But the devils on the Vortexes were about the size of a squad. “These scouts are almost certainly part of a larger force that’s coming out of Overseer Tower. We don’t know how big it is. But I’m guessing it’s not too large given the fact that we weren’t a fucking army when we hit the scorpion. So as I said before, we’re going to start moving toward Overseer. That’s our ultimate objective. We’ll stick to this canyon for now. But I want another group of six Mottles and Plumacats to form a …” What did Dad call it?? Oh yeah. “To form some pickets. We don’t want anyone surprising us as we move. So fan out about two hundred yards from us and report back if you see or contact any enemy. Got it?” Everyone is silent. “Good! Now let’s be ready to move in ten minutes.”
I plop down from my rock, gather Theri and Zel, then angle over to the wounded. The Plumacat and the Urdrake both have bullet wounds that the ‘medic’ Plumacat, Velestra, has bound up with her magical spit. The bullets were somehow neatly plucked out and are on the ground in a bloody pile. Both are conscious. They crane their heads to look at me as I approach. The other wounded Plumacat is unconscious with a large gash on his forehead. This gash is also bound up by the magical healing spit. I kneel by the two conscious wounded. “Can you move?” I ask them.
“They can. But no hard work.” Velestra speaks for them before they can answer.
I look at Zel and Theri, then point to the weird unicycles. “I know those are devil machines. I can see their worbs, sense the wisps within their jagged traps. But we’re going to need them now. We’ll free those wisps once we win this battle. If we win. Now I want you to figure out how to use them. I want you each to drive one and then to teach these two here how to drive them.” I motion down to the wounded Plumacats.
“What about the last one?” Zaya asks from her hovering position over my shoulder. She looks at the Vortex, various shades of disgust playing on her green face.
“I’m driving that one. I’ll be carrying the unconsious…” I turn to Velestra, “…what is his name?”
“Rookfang,” Velestra replies.
“I’ll be carrying Rookfang. Now let’s get to Hell’s version of driver’s ed. We only have five minutes.”
It takes more like ten minutes to get everyone moving. Jobs are assigned. Scout groups arranged and deployed. Looted weapons distributed. Rudimentary instruction on firearms use given. Everyone looks confused. ‘Clear as mud,’ is what Dad would say. Sounds about right. The bikes are thankfully simple to use — throttle, breaks, and turning all managed with the handlebars. The fat tires are surprisingly easy to balance on. The seats that rest atop them, if not comfortable, are functional. The machines, Theri and Zel call them Vortexes, are large, powerful, and covered in lethal spines. So using them takes caution. Like everything else in Hell, they burn some kind of nasty fossil fuel spiked with worb energy. All worbs are terrible — grinding down and torturing wisps to access their energy. But the Vortexes have a second setting that activates the worb to get more from the wisps. I tell everyone not to use that button unless they absolutely have to.
We finally start rolling out at 4:23 AM Hell time. More than three quarters of an hour after our fight with the scouts. I’m getting real damn anxious about follow-on forces that haven’t arrived. I’m conjuring up things to be paranoid about. I loft omnis scientia, sending it out toward Sunken Crag even as we move north among the hills. The Mottle-Plumacat teams of scouts fan out to our right and in front of us — venturing as close to the Wisp Fields as they dare while still keeping cover. The Vortex roars and spews stinking clouds of pollution beneath me as our main force continues down the canyon. The wisps within it moan in pain. The noise makes me cringe. It reminds me of a banshee wail. I’ve never heard a banshee wail. But this is what I imagine it would sound like. I take a breath. Ignore the horrible stink and sound. I’ve gotta think about next moves. But I really need to figure out where the bads are before I commit.
**********
Corviss plunges toward the ground, barely rights himself, then skips and skids to a stop. His last minute teleport saved his life. Above and to the left, a fireball blooms in the air five hundred feet away. It consumes the space where he flew just moments before. Hissing in terrified frustration, he threads his way back up into the air. Careful to stay low, he flees as fast as he can fly back down toward the wisp fields.
“Amagash you fool!” Corviss spits. But he can’t entirely blame Lavross’s lieutenant. No one expected the mage to have an army backing him. Her! He reminds himself. “Her,” he hisses out loud. He can still see her clearly — dripping an extraordinary excess of magic, sparks flying about her like the fireworks of some victory celebration held by Asmodeus on the battlefield of Avernum, a blade made of pure curse magic held in one hand, a shield like a spectral rosette blooming in front of her. He’d only ever seen two mages. Three now. This one was by far the most potent. The most brazen in her use of magic. He was certain Regina, high in Overseer, would’ve tasted the flood of power, seen the lights and explosions blooming over the Razor Hills. Lavross would’ve noticed as well. But both could only guess what they meant.
“I’m the last survivor. I must let them know.” Corviss didn’t see all his companions die. But he might as well have. The ambush was as sudden as it was fierce. No-one could survive that. The Mottles, Urdrakes, and Plumacats numbered three or four score at least. Other rebels — two blue devils stood with the mage. This was worse than any mere machination of Regina’s regional rival — Lanvfer. This was a rebellion of the old sort. Of the kind that hadn’t happened for hundreds of years. Corviss spits in disgust. There were still only seventy, eighty perhaps. “But how did so many hunted gather together? How did they organize?”
Corvis realizes he’s talking to himself as he flies, swift as his battered body will carry him toward Lavross. He can just make out the large scorpions lumbering across the Wisp Fields. Too slow for his liking. “All is well. I know her whereabouts. Once I report, Lavross will know what to do.”
**********
Out across the Wisp Fields, riding his Vortex, Lavross scratches his chin and frowns at the explosions flowering above the Razor Hills. The fireball rounds are familiar. Those lines of light are energy beams from at least ten Urdrake or he is a fool. It seems he was wise to send Amagash out ahead rather than lead the scout force himself. Looks like Amagash is getting more than he bargained for. This thought draws a chuckle from Lavross as he signals to Talith, his third in command and the remaining Overseer in his Century.
“Take another Lance and head into those hills. If Amagash needs help, back him up. And, get me a fucking report on the enemy’s number and location!”
Talith gives a smart salute, then drives off with her Lance. That’s two Lances deployed, violent contact made, and he still didn’t know squat. He sends out a command, adjusting the movement of his dwindling Century toward the explosions, and glances angrily at the scorpions. If he needs to pour on the speed, he’ll have to leave the beastly machines behind. He had the sinking feeling this night was about to turn into a shit-fest real quick.
***********
Qlul and Landrax are startled from their investigation of the scorpion’s wreckage by a loud series of explosions above the Razor Hills. Qlul’s just picked up a bit of glossy green membrane before he’s distracted by the loud rumble. About four miles off, the thunder of fireball rounds tear through the air. Sharp rifle reports crack. Then lines of light shoot up into the sky. “What the fuck?” Qlul exclaims as another explosion roars out of the hills. “It sounds like Amagash is getting his ass kicked over there,” he says to Landrax.
Landrax isn’t looking at the explosions. Instead he’s staring at the bit of insect-like membrane Qlul is holding in his hand. “Oh fuck,” Landrax says as he stares at the wing.
“What?” Qlul says.
“Well, you know I used to be a Poacher right?”
“Yeah, get to the fucking point.”
“That’s a Vila wing shedding. They’re really damn rare. But I’d bet my horns on it.”
“Vila?” Qlul asks, stunned for a moment more. Then, he looks back to the rent wisp vats on the scorpion. “Fuck? You think?”
“Whoever hit this scorpion, opened up those wisp vats. Maybe they we’re just looting the wisps. Maybe they took them for another reason.”
Qlul’s mind is catching up quick. “If there’s a mage and a Vila they could…”
“… shape a lot of fucking wisps into forbidden forms. Those lights look a lot like something the Urdrake can do. They’re not so rare as Vila these days. Tough buggers. I captured one once. Near blasted my face off with lights like that.”
“Oh fuck! We have to report back to Lavross and quick!” Ignoring the plight of their companions in the Hills, Qlul and Landrax mount their Vortexes and rush swiftly back toward Lavross.
**********
High up in Overseer Tower, Regina Rouge continues to scan the Wisp Fields for her new prize. Unable to rest, she instead revels in the imagined hunt, anticipates the taking of a great mage wisp. Her body lights up with energy. Like some primordial leviathan swimming through ancient waters, she tastes the air for her prey. Every now and then, she detects a tantalizing hint. The air is full of rumor of him.
Then, after hours, her patience is rewarded. A flood of magic rushes up from the Razor Hills. She feels it before she sees it. The outrush heats her face like Hell’s sun. Her sensitive eyes detect the broad arc of powerful curse-magic shining up from the Hills in a rain of sparks. It is a stunning display. For a moment, she’s taken aback at how much power the mage expends in what must be merely one or two magical castings. Then the air above the Razor Hills lights up with explosions and white rays of energy.
“What?” Regina is seldom at a loss for words. But, for a moment, she’s mystified by what she’s watching. “Urdrake?” she says as understanding begins to dawn. “How?”
Regina will puzzle this mystery out in due course. What is clear now, though, is the mage isn’t some cat’s paw in one of Lanvfer’s games. What’s happening on her lands is something else entirely. If multiple Urdrake and a mage are hiding out in her Razor Hills… it means a rebellion of the old kind may be underway. And Asmodeus hates nothing more than vile organizations of old kind on Minos, much less reports of them striking at any of his resources. These are Wisp Fields. One of the most precious land commodities in all the Hells. Regina cracks her Holocaust Scourge at her attendant. “Get me Dressler and a Dark Psychic. We may need to deploy the other Centuries.” Startled by her sudden mood-shift, her attendant skitters away.
************
Grimjaw’s powerful form springs across a deadfall. Above and behind him, the Mottle — Shade — billows out, forming a wing. Together, they fly fifty feet then land on a precipice over-looking the Wisp fields. His streak lands beside him. Five companions for his hunt. Just hours before, he was a frail wisp captured in a scorpion’s vat. It felt like being in the stomach of a great monster as it prepared him for digestion. Its horrible Hell magics stunned him, then began to taint his very being. Terror didn’t even begin to describe what he’d felt. But now the meaother Zaya and the feaother Myra had gifted him with a vicious and powerful body. A Plumacat form possessed of raptor eyes, feather-like fur and armor combined, deadly fangs and claws, sacks of healing salve at the back of his mouth, and a muscular form as powerful as that of a moderate-sized tiger. They’d made him into a hunter of hunters, a predator who preys on the slaver race. They’d partnered him with this majestic Mottle that granted him flight, camouflage, and a vibrational sense of everything around him. He rejoices in his new form, at his helpful allies, at the opportunity to do vengeance on those who sought to enslave him in the worst way imaginable.
It’d taken perhaps two hundred hearbeats for the swift Plumacat and Mottle streak to free themselves of the canyon, to leap over the ridge line, and to peer from this high hilltop down onto the Wisp Fields below. Grimjaw scans the land about. His eyes, keen as any bird of prey, make out minute details. He immediately sees the larger force of devils out among the drifting wisps. They’re in the middle of the fields. Four scorpions, eighty riders. Another ten riders breaking off to head in his direction. Grimjaw shifts his gaze, carefully scanning for any other movement. Then he sees it. Below him and moving in the direction of the larger devil force is the red thread of a flying serpent. An Uktena — as meaother and feaother had called it. Grimjaw growls in frustration. The Uktena is too high up. Too distant to strike. But it is slow-moving and doesn’t seem to notice the smaller force of ten riders. It will take another hour or so to reach the large group of devils.
Map of Recent Events
Shade tenses. Something comes, the Mottle’s words form in Grimjaw’s head even as its senses merge with his. He can now feel a vibration off to his right. He turns his head in time to see two of the spiked, one wheel bikes roar out toward the Wisp Fields’ center. They’re heading out from the ring of debris marking the destroyed scorpion. In about a minute, they’ll pass a hundred yards in front of Grimjaw’s position. He growl-signals to his team. His Mottle touches the others. His intent for them to strike spreads through them as emotion and thought. Careful to use a ridge-line jutting out from the hills to mask their movement, Grimjaw leads his streak closer in. They fly-run-fly down to a low rise about twenty feet above where the Hellish unicycles will pass. Grimjaw tenses, his streak-mates smile in anticipation. The bikes arrive. Grimjaw pounces, Shade unfurls. The combined force of his jump and the Mottle’s flap propels him thirty feet up. At the top of his flight’s arc he extends his claws, locks his eyes on a prey. It is the front biker.
“Qlul!!!” the rear biker bleats in terror is at sees Grimjaw descend. Too late!
Claws catch in the devil’s flesh. The Plumacat’s jaws close over the devil’s head. There is a satisfying crunch. Wet blood floods his mouth. He turns, with flesh in his mouth, to his streak-mates. They have dispatched the other rider. No more screams of warning from that one.
Grimshaw swallows the delicious-tasting devils’ flesh. “Good! It is good!” he growls. For a minute, he and his streak are taken in by the devouring. Shade ultimately shakes him out of the frenzy. “Yes,” he snarls at last. Shaking his fur a second time he snaps at his streak to drag the carcasses and bikes into a depression. He does not have time to revel in his hunt’s success. He must return to Myra. Must report the prey’s position. Satisfied these prey won’t be telling their fellows another word, Grimjaw, Shade and his streak leap-fly back toward the canyon. Grimjaw licks his fangs. The hunting tonight has been excellent.
**********
The nasty Vortex is giving me a fracking headache already. The fucking thing stinks. The wailing worb is a thousand times worse than a crying baby. You know, the kind that sticks burs of pain through your ever-loving ears and all the way into your effing brain. Yeah. Imagine that but ten times worse. It’s not just the sound. It’s the fucking fact that I know I’m torturing those souls just by riding this fucking infernal machine. That’s what it’s like riding a fossil fueled, soul-sucking Vortex. And I’ve only been at it for like five minutes. Feels like a fucking million years. According to horologium, it’s 4:28, Hell time.
The canyon cuts deeper into the hills. The land grows more jagged and threatening. I check on Rookfang. The big guy’s sprawled across the Vortex behind me. Still unconscious. Lucky to be him. I turn to look back up at the green-black puke of the late-night, early-morning Hell sky, stars barely visible, the moon Charon squatting down on the horizon like a frog when I see the silhouette of a Mottle and Plumacat fly overhead. They land with barely a sound beside me. Then five more pairs ghost down. It’s creepy and slick at the same time. Makes me jump just a little. They’re all covered tail-to-nose in blood. For a second I freak out. Then I realize the blood’s not theirs. I throttle down the Vortex and enjoy the blessed ever-loving silence of my ringing ears. Damn things should carry like five hundred warning labels.
Jumping off the Vortex, Mottle and I land lightly beside the scout team. It’s clearly the scouts. I’d recognize Grimjaw’s elongated fangs from a hundred feet off. I look the scouts over for a moment. Yeah. They are covered in gore. It was real bad for whoever or whatever it was they took down. “OK. Tell me what just happened.”
Grimjaw pads forward, dark eyes taking me in. His black feathers remind me a bit of what I learned about velociraptors. Feathered dinosaurs. Although I’m pretty sure velociraptor feathers were colorful and this Plumacat looks like some crazy mash-up between a black tiger and an eagle of some sort. Like seventy percent black tiger thirty percent eagle, but who’s counting. He flops down comfortably next to me and begins washing the gore off with his tongue. Maybe that’s eighty percent tiger?
“We scouted as you requested.”
I ordered it. But who’s splitting hairs. “Report what you saw.”
“There is a large force of about eighty Drivers in the Wisp Fields. They’re about halfway down from Overseer Tower. The Uktena escaped and is flying toward them. It’ll take about an hour to reach the force. There’s a smaller group of scouts out ahead and heading toward us. Perhaps another ten. We also ran into a couple of stragglers from the last group. We pounced them. They were heading back from the scorpion’s wreckage. Seemed to be in a hurry.” He continues to lick himself.
I give him a pat. “Good work. Damn good work.”
The Plumacat gives a rumble that sounds like a purr. “It is a pleasure. I delight in turning predator into prey.” His dark eyes twinkle with relish and something else. Perhaps satisfaction.
Grimjaw’s information is key. His taking out the two scouts probably saved us some time. Maybe the element of surprise too. I’m worried about that Uktena. It saw us. Probably got a decent account of our numbers. I don’t know if it’s figured out how we gained those numbers. I look to Zaya. The Vila’s flying a little bit off to my left. She’s hung back ever since we started using the Vortexes. She’s frowning and has a disgusted look on her face. I totally feel the same way about these disgusting machines. But each of them houses like ten wisps. And that might prove to be crucial to our next effort. They’re too heavy to drag. So we’ve gotta ride them.
Everyone has stopped. They’re staring at me. Waiting for orders. I’m in a kinda crucial moment. It’s go big or go home time. Go home’s not an option. I step back from Grimjaw, turn to my company of the transformed. They cluster around, large, feeling eyes stare down. The Plumacats and Urdrakes are predators. They kinda terrify me. But I remind myself that they’re a part of Hell’s order. Maybe they’re even a last-ditch reaction by nature here to throw off the destructive, world-wasting devils. The Mottles are a comfort. Though they too possess the capacity for great violence. It’s how you survive in this broken world. The way of the sword, the tooth, the claw. And now is the time to walk that path or be destroyed.
“Grimjaw and his scouts just discovered the enemy’s position. There’s about ninety bads down there in the Wisp Fields. Ten more scouts are headed toward us. The larger group’s also out there. But they’re moving slower on account of the four scorpions they’re bringing with them. They only outnumber us slightly now. But they still have a major advantage in organization and hitting power.” I’m kinda impressed with myself. Dad really beat tactics into my head with all the war gaming as a kid. Plus, you know, D&D can actually teach you up on tactics pretty quick if you’ve got a good game master. Dad was the best — always throwing me into the shit. Since like age seven or so. “We can’t let them survive this night. Overseer has much greater numbers to command. If they find us here, they’ll use that force as a base, then send out more fast-moving reinforcements to hem us in, pin us down, and annihilate us. So now is the time for us to strike a blow and take down those devils!”
The Plumacats yowl in support of my suggestion. The Urdrakes, inspired, raise their voices in a growling song. Even the usually chill Mottles seem taken in by the predators’ bloodlust.
“So we are going over that rise. We are heading out into the Wisp Fields. And we are going to take down those devils. Are you ready!?”
Their uplifted roar of response is deafening.
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
The blocky digital letters of my magical horologium watch tell me it’s 3:13 AM Hell time. I’m wide awake. Sure, I’m hot as Hell. Sweat’s running off me like a waterfall. Legs sore from all the goddamn walking, running, flying. Landing. Yeah, landings are the worst. Eyes burning with all the sulfur crud in the air. Lungs feel like I’ve smoked about a thousand packs of cigarrettes. Tongue tastes like fucking rotten eggs. Yep, they’ve managed to devil my damn tongue like an egg. I’ve been here all of fucking 35 hours.
I look over toward our motley company. The ninja-devil-turtle godzilla-things called Urdrakes stare back at me with their glossy, unblinking lizard eyes. It’s weird and cute at the same time. Not cuddly-cute. But lizard, turtle, godzilla cute. Hey, I’m into godzilla, OK? Deal. Beside the Urdrakes are a floppy-hoppy arrangement of Mottles. A bunch of them are now hanging on the wall. Great. An army of tapestry bats. Original Mottle is in a pile-up of them. They’re doing the touch-telepathy thing. Feathered Plumacats prowl around the cave. One brushes by, its feathers soft and prickly on my neck. Zaya, the green-skinned Vila, is in a ball beside me. Her soft breathing would normally lull me. I’m too jumped up for that. Probably adrenaline. Plus the fear. Definitely the fear. I turn to Zel and Theri.
“We should move again.” My eyes land on Zel.
He shrugs. “Worried?” he asks.
Damn straight I’m worried. We just hit one of Overseer Tower’s giant scorpions. Hard. The magic and destruction we unleashed — visible for miles around. Lit up the goddamn Hell-sky. Then we freed a boatload of their captive wisps. If there’s one thing devils take goddamn serious, it’s the souls they’ve trapped and subjugated. I try to compose myself. “Look. If they don’t know what’s happened by now, that we hit one of their scorpions, they’re fools. I’m guessing whoever’s in charge up there in Overseer didn’t get there by being a fool. So we need to keep moving.”
Theri puts her rough, clawed hand over mine. It’s weird and comforting at the same time. “You got us this far. What do you have in mind?”
Yeah. I got everyone into some deep shit alright. I take a breath, then jostle Zaya. She slowly rises, rubbing her eyes. “You’re going to want to be awake for this,” I say to her. I motion to Mottle, Zorfang, and Featherstar. “Over here, we’ve got to talk.”
Mottle shuffles out of his pile. Zorfang is already standing nearby. He leans closer. Lux from omnis scientia shines through the crystals ridging his back, casting little rainbows. My magical sensor’s hovering over my left shoulder. The amount of magic it takes barely means a thing to me now. The wisps sheltering in my name curse and shadow are pumping out a torrent of energy for my curses. Featherstar leaps up onto a boulder, then looks down at us imperiously. Definitely a cat. “Right. So we need to get moving. And since Overseer’s our objective, there’s no reason we shouldn’t head that way. They won’t expect a force as large as ours. Hopefully. We can use that to our advantage. Especially if we take a good position.”
I turn to Zaya, Zel, and Theri. “So what do you know about the land here? Any strategic points where we might gain an advantage?”
Zel and Theri exchange a glance. “There’s Sunken Crag,” Zel replies.
Theri nods. “It’s a deep canyon running between these hills and Knife Lake. Filled with nasty Scrabbers and Stelo-Mal. The wisp slavers in Overseer avoid its depths. One large bridge crosses it. The bridge has four watch towers. Each with a guard of about ten.”
A Live Reading of Helkey 29
“Scrabbers?” I ask. I know about Stelo Mal. That was Bob. Remember Bob? Yeah. That guy. He’s still with me here in my shadow. Chillin with all the other one hundred and two villains.
“Scrabbers are giant spider-crab devils. The Form Makers often turn wisps into them in this area,” Zel replies. “Deadly. Vicious. Mean.”
I think I might’ve glimpsed a Scrabber earlier tonight. What I saw looked damn nasty. I liked what I was hearing. “OK. We’ve got a shorta plan. Better than no plan at all. We head for Sunken Crag. As we do, we send scouts to figure out if Overseer’s sent a force to hunt us down. My bet is it has. We need to know where it is.” I turn to Featherstar. “You seem friendly with the Mottle Zephyr. Can you find about six others who’re willing to team up with a Mottle?”
Featherstar licks her hand. Long tongue lolls out. She then uses the back of her hand to clean behind an ear. Looking down at me, she finally replies — “Yes. I know six who’ll take a Mottle. What do you have in mind, faeyowther?”
“You’re already quick. I’ve seen you bounding across the cavern. Teamed with a Mottle, you can fly for short distances. Plus the Mottles will help you hide. I want you to scout out toward Sunken Crag and Overseer Tower. If there’s a force coming at us, I want you to find them, then report back. Don’t get into any fights unless you must. This is a scouting mission, clue?”
“Yes,” Featherstar purrs. “A stalking mission.”
That’s not what I said. But it’ll do. I’ve got omnis scientia which should help me get a wide view of the surrounding land. But that’s like having just one lookout on a high point. We needed to make sure we saw any devil force first. Then we could get ourselves into a better position. Plus, the bastards are bound to have their own scouts. We’d have to avoid those. Which brought me to my next aim.
I turn back to Theri and Zel. “So can you tell me what kind of eyes and ears these devils have? We need to deal with those.”
“All sorts,” Theri replies. “Psychic red devils with wide-ranging senses, forces riding rapid, one wheeled machines called Vortexes, horned flying snakes with an ability to teleport short distances called Uktena. Also, a Hell Lord can sense a mage wisp like a shark can sense a drop of blood in the water.”
Great. That made things tricky. It also provided opportunities. I turn to Mottle. “I’ll need all the remaining Mottles but you to spread out in pairs of two around our force. I want ’em to hunt down any of those flying snakes that come close. Small groups of four or less Vortex riders too. If more than four show up, send a flier back to me. Break up into groups of three. Don’t attack unless you have surprise and double the enemy’s numbers.”
Mottle slaps his tail on my arm. I can feel him quivering in excitement and fear. Yes, he sends to me. This is really happening. “Alright, everyone. Get ready. I want to be out of here in ten minutes.”
***********
Overseer Lavross rides into the Hell night, a toothy grin on his face, his dark worb bulging with tortured wisp energy. A rifle and a Night Axe are slung across his broad back. The Vortex beneath him eats up ground. The fast, lethal vehicle sends a thrill through him as its single, spiked wheel digs up furrows — a stinking cloud of exhaust and a hail of dirt clods trailing along behind.
Seven Lances of Vortex riders form around his four scorpions and command center. In each Lance are ten red devils. True fiends driven by lust for profit willing to do the hard, necessary work. The motley cavalcade is in high spirits. They clatter weapons against the flanks of their Vortexes, shout profanities, gun their engines ’til the entrapped wisps howl in torment. Lavross’s grin widens at their enthusiasm. It’d been long ages since he last hunted a mage. Many of these devils had never seen a mage hunt. Now they’re part of the myth. Lavross lets them have their frolic.
An eighth Lance, led by his lieutenant, the Overseer and former Hunter Amagash, runs out ahead. Amagash is already beyond sight. But Lavross is certain the scouts share in his Century’s enthusiasm. Amagash’ll scout the lands around the destroyed scorpion, then return with his report. If all goes well, Lavross will run down the attackers tonight.
Lavross scratches his horn in impatience, glancing at the slow-moving scorpions. His toothy grin fades back into a cavernous mouth. These lumbering machine-beasts tower above his Century. He doubts he’ll need their massive claws, bristling gun platforms, and devastation tails — capable of harvesting wisps and turning their raw energy into terrible force. They’re slowing him down. Yet Lavross is loath to part with the security their presence provides.
If it’s only a mage with a handful of rebels or undesirables, then Amagash will make quick work. The young devil will then try to claim most of the reward. Amagash had already tried overshadowing him once or twice. If that happens, Lavross’ll have to devise a way to take credit. Such subtle social maneuvers aren’t his forte. Lavross finds himself wishing he’d personally taken command of the scout force. But the suspected mage and his rabble demonstrated surprising lethality in taking down a scorpion. The machines, though large and slow, pack a serious punch. Either the mage is lucky or he knows what he’s doing. Luck or experience — Lavross doesn’t know which is worse. His hand drifts down to his chin, giving a speculative scratch. His mouth returns to its toothy grin. Hah! He’s more than happy to allow his lieutenant to take the risks! An unknown force with a dangerous leader! “Good luck, Amagash,” Lavross grumbles to himself. His voice sounds more genuine than he intends.
Early positions of devils and rebels in the Battle of Sunken Crag
Up ahead is Sunken Crag. The dark canyon gapes beneath a green-tinted night sky. Shadows lay deep, covering much of the Crag’s interior. Down there Scrabbers and Stelo Mal engage in endless struggles for dominance. Preying one upon the other. The Crag’s depths — a deadly gladiatorial pit where winners eat the losers and grow strong. Filled with super-predators, few who venture into Sunken Crag return alive. Lavross, lifts his eyes to the great bridge crossing a narrow portion of the Crag. It spans five hundred feet. Buttressed with heavy stone and dark steel forged in the pits of Mechanum, this structure provides the best, easiest passage across Sunken Crag. Its battlements and four towers form a strong point. One needed to deter the Crag’s predators while defending Overseer’s main approach.
Occasionally, some of the more rational Stelo Mal or Scrabbers will emerge to trade with the devils of Overseer. For the most part, they come out only to raid, devour and loot — as is the way of things in Hell.
Lavross’s thoughts break as his Vortex roars across the bridge apex. Spreading out to his left is the stinking, poisonous expanse of Knife Lake, to his right, the dead-falls and defiles of the Razor Hills. Lavross salutes the Crag Bridge guard. Their captain does him the honor of arraying his four Lances atop the towers, then tossing sulfur into the flames to light the fires green. Lavross grins at the gesture. One his reputation commands.
Its scorpions lumbering, its Vortexes roaring, Lavross’s force flows out onto the wisp fields beyond Sunken Crag. Up ahead, he can see some smoke plumes from Amagash’s scout force through the darkness and bobbing wisp-lights. The mists from earlier are long-since dispersed. His sensitive devil eyes drink up the night, providing clear sight and detail.
Across those wisp fields, already miles ahead, Amagash’s Lance howls through the night. The rangy Amagash wears a black-dyed Mottle trench coat. A recent prize he had specially tailored to house rows of jet metal spikes on the arms near his elbows and shoulders. Metal plates within the coat clatter in the wind as his Vortex tears up ground. At his shoulder, Corviss the Utenka flies. The red serpent threads through the air like living flame.
“We come near to the place,” the Utenka hisses.
Amagash grunts his reply. They top a rise, then descend into a depression. The scorpion is plainly visible below. A burned-out hulk in a ring of black ash hinting at a severe explosion. The Lance pulls up to the scorpion. Amagash calls a halt. Ten devils grow quiet as they take in the destruction. A couple crack brash jokes, tossing a small skull back and forth as they banter. Amagash dismounts, motions to Qlul, his second, to accompany him, then does a quick circuit of the wreck. As he reads the signs, Amagash begins to grin.
“Just a small group,” he says to Qlul and Corviss. “Only four sets of tracks. Two of them are fliers, though.” He points up toward the hills. “They looted the wreck, then headed off toward the land rise in that direction.”
Qlul nods. “I see the same. Though they hit that scorpion hard.”
Amagash scoffs. “Moved well and were good hunters, I’ll give ’em that. But they were lucky to take down the scorp’. No need to report back. We can take them ourselves.” He motions to Qlul. “Stay here with Jorlix. Investigate the wreckage. Let Lavross know we’ve headed into the hills.” He motions toward the highland.
“Is it wise?” Corviss hisses. “We are already few.”
Amagash spins on the snake, watches it thread itself into uncomfortable knots, then gives a confident grin. “It’s just a rag-tag little band. Nothing we can’t handle. Plus, I’ve got you for eyes and ears, right?” He turns and looks out into the hills. “They’ve probably gone to ground in some crack or crevice. Should be easy enough to smoke out.”
Corviss continues to spin nervously. Amagash takes joy in the little snake’s discomfort, then revs his Vortex engine. “Immolators! Onward!” he shouts the name of his Lance, they form up on him, then with a roar they head up the land rise and into the hills.
**********
I can hear the machine noise the moment we exit the cave. I look around. It’s not a great position. We’re in a canyon with only one visible escape. The Urdrakes, Plumacats, and Mottles all stare at me. A Plumacat blinks. I know the staring’s an affirmation of my leadership. No pressure! I’m seriously freaking out. We’ve all been thrown into this weird, must-survive relationship. It involves a lot of flash decision-making. I’m sure they’re all not-so-happy putting their frigging fates in the hands of some 17-year-old kid.
Sound’s approaching fast from up the canyon. I don’t have time to send any scout other than omnis scientia. Whatever’s coming will be on us in about a minute.
“OK. We gotta act fast! But not without info! Give me a second to look!” I listen to the rising sound of approaching engines, then loft omnis scientia toward it. Dark, smoking lands expand below as the sensor rises, then shoots up the canyon. It scans left. Then I see them. Eight red devils riding fat, single-wheeled vehicles sprouting pipes, belching long tails of smoke, and tearing the ground with wicked spikes. Their leader is a tall, thin devil wearing a cloak crafted out of Mottle skin. This pisses me off. I like Mottle skin on a living Mottle. Not for some devil’s sicko trophy. All devils are heavily armed — bristling with rifles, pistols, and various melee weapons. Omnis scientia ripples with magical detection. Ahead and above the devils, a red thread flies. Must be an Uktena — one of the devil snakes Theri and Zel warned about.
“There are eight devils on weird bikes and an Uktena!” I shout as I shift focus away from omnis scientia. “Ambush! We’ll ambush them! Mottles, up on the canyon wall! Plumacats and Urdrakes, hide among the boulders! Now!”
I spin on Zaya. She’s just started to emerge into the canyon. “Back in the cave! You’re too important to risk!”
She gives me a huffy look, then fades back. She’s the only one able to give wisps form. I’m the only one who can help her. But I’ve gotta lead this fracking fight. I don’t have time to argue. I’m glad she listens. I spin toward Mottle, Theri, and Zel. “You guys, follow me! Mottle, I need you!”
I storm off toward the canyon center. Mottle lands on my shoulders. His contact momentarily causes my senses to blur. He bites me. Doing the weird reverse vampire thing, he injects food and vitality into my neck veins. I immediately feel better as coolness and a rush of energy spreads through me. His form supports my body. My steps elongate into bounds. Theri and Zel run up beside me. All around, Plumacats are crouching, Mottles are hanging onto the canyon wall, blending in with the rocks. Urdrakes are pulling legs, arms, heads and tails into their shells, plunking down among the boulders. Once withdrawn into their shells, they look like a bunch of spikey rocks. This might just work.
I lead Theri and Zel past our new force of rebels in Hell. Reaching the canyon center, I turn and begin to gather my curse energy. “Those devils coming are heavily armed!” I shout to all in the canyon. “They’ve got that advantage! If they investigated the scorpion, they probably only expect us!” I point at myself, Theri, Zel and Mottle. “We’ll be bait!”
Zel and Theri give me a look that basically says what the fuck??? I Ignore them and continue. “Let’s make a show! Give ’em what they expect to see! Then, when they get in among the Urdrakes, Mottles, and Plumacats, we all pounce! Got it!?!?”
There are growls, yowls, and shuffles of affirmation.
“Good!” I turn to Theri and Zel. “No fireball rounds except for the Uktena. You can blast that flying snake to Hell if you want.” I point into the air. “Our friends on the ground are too close together.” I wave them toward my back as I face up the canyon. “Now! Get behind me! Be ready!”
The sound of diabolical engines growls loud in my ears. I don’t need omnis scientia to see the fire snake now. I lift my hand. Tap my energetic vessel. It is full — just two hours after emptying to help Zaya shape the Urdrakes, Plumacats, and Mottles. Sparks fall from my name curse, lighting up the whirls of my magical tattoo, casting deeps shadows around us. Lunen! Svert! Umbra! I shout. The sound echoes through the canyon as my moonshadow blade forms in my hand. I’m kicking extra energy into it. I’ve got loads to spare. The effect is one of blacker-than-black shadow, piercing silver moonlight spilling around me, and a loud sound like tearing as the blade’s magical substance hungrily devours Hell’s caustic air. I lift this sliver of destruction up and behind me. Then, I hold my left hand up in front, readying a spell for the devils’ attack.
Both Theri and Zel are grinning despite themselves. They have their rifles out, loaded, barrels poised. I admit, I feel pretty damn badass. We’re all gathered. Ready.
The devils on their weird spiked wheel unicycles turn ’round a bend in the canyon. Spray of pollution and crud kicked up from the ground trails behind their fat, mean-looking vehicles. At last visible to my naked sight, their leader points his gun at me. His devil’s eyes alight with hunger. He’s perceived my magic. His deep-red skin — a sign of devil nobility. Not a Hell Lord. But the kind sensitive to Curse Magic.
Not like he fucking needs it. I’m making quite a show with sparks spewing out of my name curse flying everywhere, moonlight glow surrounding me, and blade of frigging black moonshadow held aloft in my hand. The devils’ eyes all lock on me as they rush forward.
“The mage is mine to capture! Slay the rest!” The leader shouts in Minosian to his companions. They fan out, gunning their engines, aiming their vehicles like lethal missiles toward me, Theri, Mottle and Zel. The leader and two devils — one on each far end of the formation — lift their guns.
Clypeus! I shout, bleeding another large plug of energy from my swelling vessel into the protection curse. Sparks fly from me — converging to form a spectral shield of white like the unfolded petals of a flower in front of me.
Three guns report. Hell-bullets shoot out. Their trace lines speed toward Theri and Zel. They explode against my shield, then ricochet off in streaks of molten metal. Mottle quivers in rage. He’s finally noticed the leader’s coat. I lift my moonshadow blade. The devils approach the ambush point. More bullets impact against my shield. The devils’ leader is taken in by battle rage. “Little mage! Your wisp is forfeit! My mistress…!” He never finishes.
“Now!” I shout to my companions, then fling my curse-sword. It flips end over end, cutting the air like a roaring scythe. It tilts, spins to the side, then shears directly through the devil’s leg and his weird unicycle in one go. Damaged and deformed, the machine tumbles, rider flying headlong through the air to land with a crunch twenty feet from me. One of his horns breaks off from the impact. His body lurches and quivers.
Zel and Theri emerge from behind me. Zel raises his rifle. Theri follows. Both shoot fireball rounds into the sky. The red streaks rise to meet the flying serpent. It seems to waver, then is engulfed. The ball burns like a brilliant sun, illuminating the battle below. Urdrakes spring up from the shadows like so many monsters. Their heavy hands, snouts, tails lash out. They come away with arms, chunks of metal, spines. Those further off from the fray angle their shells toward the riders. Light ripples up their spines. Collecting in the crystals near the Urdrakes’ heads, it shoots out like frigging laser beams. Three converge on one rider. The devil is lopped into three pieces as his cycle careens off, hits a boulder and explodes. Plumacats pounce. Some fly on the wings of mottles. Two more devils are ripped from their seats by slashing claws and fangs.
I reform the moonshadow blade in my hand. By the time its shadow and light touches me, the Mottles are swooping down. There are only two bikers left. They’re engulfed. Their bones crunch as the Mottles use their muscular forms to crush them. Ouch. Before I can move, Mottle is flying off my back. He covers the distance between us and the prone leader in one leap. The guy is seriously fucked up. Blood gushes out of his leg stump as he struggles to grasp one of his many weapons. No luck for him. Mottle takes him in one swoop, rolls up his body like some wicked bat candy wrapper, gives him a nasty squeeze, then pushes out pulpy and shattered remains.
It all happened in maybe 30 seconds. Holy shit! We won! The words form in my mind first, then I shout them out in exhaltation. “We won! We fucking won!” My cry is infectious. Plumacats yowl, Urdrakes roar, Mottles flap. Theri and Zel join in the cheer. Zaya bursts out at last to sing her own celebration.
Yeah, we just won another freaking battle. Holy shit, do I feel lucky! But this lethal dance with the devils of Overseer Tower has only just begun.
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
Gibbons Crane howls in diabolical fury. White-hot sparks rain over his body. His human form, a gift of Asmodeus’s court, is tatters. His devil flesh — now naked for all to see. Not that any regular human wretches are nearby. The angel-mage, Beatrice, guided them away to safety before she and her companions trapped him here. The train stationary. Angelic magic locking him in, pummeling him with curses. His prey more distant with each passing minute. He can still see her. Beatrice Lushael — arrayed in glorious light. Rapier held before her like a dare. Her delicious wisp fluttering — delicate as butterfly wings. How could he not rush her? Claim her wisp for his own? A crown jewel among all his enslaved prizes.
It was a trap! So obvious! So irresistible! He, the great hunter, render of mages’ souls, Asmodeus’s own hand on Earth, played for a mere pawn! Now held in a cunning bottle.
Gibbons takes a breath. The air around him is super-heated by his wrath. By the destruction raining down on his devil’s form. Chairs burn. Plastic and metal melts. Windows crack. His eyes flick up and down the cursed caboose. The solar train itself is an insult. An impossible fantasy. Yet here it exists. No Blood of Earth sacrifice to Asmodeus fuels it. His Nightmare cannot possess it. Not enough delicious harm for his demon steed to latch onto. To take control. They chose this sacred ground to counter him, to mount their own attacks. It worked. He tips his hat, still whole on his head between his devil’s horns, to the mages who concocted this trap. Worthy prey. He should’ve sensed this was holy ground. The quarry, Beatrice, Mori, Ivan the Wolf, were all too distracting. The prizes too great. Their abilities — surprising.
“It’s been a little while,” he drawls to himself, reflecting on the last time prey put up such a fight. “More than a Century.” His Curse Rides are mostly straight-forward affairs. His diabolical might reaping souls like so many sheaves of wheat in a thresher. “Now I’m checked.” He says the word with amusement and rage combined. He does not lightly suffer delay. Defeat is unacceptable. Yet he must admit his setback. This holy train will never serve his Nightmare. The fate of its passengers — a distraction. There’s no victory to be had here. His true prey — long-gone.
But there may be a way to escape. To return to his hunt. Gibbons tilts his devil’s eyes toward melting plastic dribbling down onto the floor like so much slime. He reaches a clawed hand down, scoops some up, holds it up. The plastic gobbet ignites. Petroleum inside it burning off in red-blue flames. Blood of Earth. A delicious bit of corruption in this otherwise evil-free train. He conjures his wisps, flipping his lash until ten enslaved souls leap to his command. Each rising in a rictus of pain. He bleeds the wisps into the oozing plastic. They animate it, causing it to rear up in a promontory of burning plastic slime. Shifting his focus to the praesidia bottle confining him, he drives the wisps forward, lifts his right-hand six-shooter, then fires his third black bullet into the trap. Its black orb bows out, splashing over praesidia causing it to flicker in momentary darkness.
“Now!” He shouts, lifting his left hand to claw the air, lashing wisps to rush forward. Wrapped in Blood of Earth plastic, they rise. Confronting disrupted praesidia, they flow through its barrier. The plastic then splots onto the train’s wall. It touches the spirit of his Nightmare demon-steed. The Nightmare howls in victory, latches onto the familiar substance. Takes molten plastic for its new form. The wisps pop out, then flow back to his worb. His Nightmare, now given form, rips a hole in praesidia. Sending out pseudopods, it tears off a train window, then flings it into a nearby field. Gibbons springs. A whirl of sparks and flames surrounds him as he emerges. He lands on his feet — one hand holding his hat, the other holstering his pistol. He is free!
The Nightmare plops down from the train’s window. It flows over the ground, rising up in a swell of slime beside him. A nearby police officer sees them, then flees. Tabbing his radio, he sends a frantic call for help. Gibbons smirks at his terror. A delicious thrill — refreshing to his diabolical spirit. Free from the continuous barrage of macto curses, his mock-human flesh drinks up the fear and begins to reform. It slowly re-covers his devil flesh. His clothes also reweave and repair.
A cluster of police officers rushes around the train. Lifting weapons, they shout for Gibbons to raise his hands. Gibbons laughs, gives a tip of his hat to the officers, then bounds off toward the burning trees. Each leap covers twenty feet. A few stray bullets snap around him. If any hit, he doesn’t care. His Nightmare flows along beside him. Too small to ride, he allows it to keep its plastic form. Screams of fear from passengers, eyes glued to windows as the Nightmare’s burning blob flows beside his half-devil, half-human form, buoy him. Their terror — too delicious a banquet to pass up.
He angles away from the holy train. Its presence recedes to his right. He leaves its field of influence, running a bit more crooked, feeling a little stronger in his wickedness. Then, he’s plunging through the burning wood. Hot fires surround his body. Choking smoke enters his lungs. It almost feels like home. Almost. About ten more bounds and he’s through the flames. He emerges onto a back-road. Cutting past the fires, he finds one of his thralls. A Berserker who laughs maniacally as he hurls another Molotov Cocktail into the inferno. Seeing Gibbons, he grins, then gives a Nazi salute. “Mein fuhrer,” he says with relish.
Gibbons grins back, tips his cowboy hat. “Hey, buddy,” he says, “I need your mount.” He points to the motorcycle parked by the dirt path. It doesn’t matter if his words are English. His connection to the Beserkers is strong enough for telepathic communication. His thrall hears the words in his native tongue.
“Ja!” he says with a slavish smile of devotion. Walking over to the bike, he kicks the stand, then presents it to Gibbons. “Es ware mir eine Ehre,” the biker replies, waving his hand with a flourish. His eyes spark with delight as Gibbons mounts the bike.
“Hey, thanks,” Gibbons replies. “Now go on,” he says to his Nightmare. The horror sluffs off its burning plastic form, then inhabits the rumbling motorcycle with a purr of demonic delight. The bike grows as the Nightmare’s possession takes hold. New tail pipes form. Black smoke belches. Ghostly flames flicker along its flanks. It lurches, gives an eager growl — headlight blinking like a monstrous eye.
“Heil dir im Siegerkranz!” the Berserker shouts as Gibbons drives off in a shower of dirt and smoke — flames belching from massive tail pipes. He lifts his black cowboy hat, waves a salute, then guns it down the path and toward the Brons. A stiff wind meets him. Scent of storm in the air among the forest fire smoke. The sky grumbles its malcontent. Evening shadows lengthen as a dark bank of cloud runs in overhead. A wall of titanic columns pushing up and up, spreading wide at the top. Their bases appear to grip the horizon with trailing talons. Gibbons grins. It’s his kind of weather — pumped up by the hot breath of foul fuels as they rise from millions upon millions of infernal engines ranging the Earth. Each a supplicant to Asmodeus’s dark power. They feed a great miasma of Hell’s heat riding Earth’s winds. This storm gobbled the heat greedily — growing from a gentle shower into the great monster above him. Gibbons lets go of the handle bars, allows his Nightmare to drive, and embraces the storm’s hellish winds. What a wonderful servant of destruction! No devil-stifling solar train. But a hellish storm gorging on fiendish fires. This is something he can work with.
Thunder rumbles from across the North Sea. His quarry moves amongst its towering waves. Destination uncertain. He senses them like a hunger in motion. No sight. Just a tension pulling away from him. Drawing him taut. He lowers his hands to the grips, angles his bike onto a main road, guns it up the ramp and onto Route 11. Turning north, he buzzes an angry motorist, smiling maniacally into the flipped bird, then ignites the throttle. Raucous acceleration blasts him up to 120 miles per hour. At this rate, he’s just six minutes away from his destination. The Oil Vessel Trold and its helicopter pad in Esjberg’s port. The Vulcanlundre corporation tends to its massive North Sea oil platform — Trekke Pa — with this vessel. Gibbons remembers it well. A gigantic, squat platform with its drill piercing sea bottom, pumps sucking up devilish fuels. Its tender ships mooring at Esjberg on the shrinking Dutch coastline. In his mind’s eye, he can see it along with the location of every oil facility dotting Europe’s lands and beyond. He knows them far better than most Catholic priests know their churches. Well he should. They’re shrines to Asmodeus’s presence here.
His quarry’s flight across the North Sea pointed almost directly at Vulcanlundre’s Trekke Pa oil platform. Its ship, the Trold, kept a helicopter on its landing pad. Just the kind of machine his Nightmare could easily inhabit. Once Gibbons took the ‘copter, he could then take the platform. No. This hunt was far from finished. In fact, he was about to kick things up a notch.
Gibbons cuts onto the off-ramp. Barreling through a red light, he jumps a barricade, then slams down onto Esjberg’s streets. Sidewalks are disappointingly empty. He rides in along a walkway, hoping to run over a stray pedestrian. Everyone’s inside. Huddling against the storm’s raging approach. Rain begins to fall. To Gibbons it tastes good. Just like wet cigarette butts. Turning down a side-street, he emerges into an industrial center. At the road’s end is a chain-link fence. Its padlocked shut. He ignores the barrier. His Nightmare blasts through the fence like a footrace winner crossing the tape. Metal shrieks. A twisted wreckage is left behind. Gibbons turns, tires squealing, fire blasting from tail pipes, water flying, across the parking lot. Shipping containers, cranes, and trucks blur by. In front of him the blue-hulled Trold bobs in the waves. Its red deck rocking. Fat, white helicopter squatting on a green pad like an overfed seagull. Beside the ship is a large pile of gravel. Gibbons races toward the gravel, shoots flames out the back of his Nightmare motorcycle, then explodes into the air. Trailing black smoke, he flies fifty feet, then lands with a squeal of tires on the helicopter pad. Rain pounds down. Smoke swirls up from his Nightmare. Back in the ship terminal, onlookers shout in surprise, then fear, as the smoke rises up into the shape of a skull, its eyes seeming to momentarily spark with ball lightning.
Gibbons senses, more than hears, their cries. Grins. For a moment indulging in this new feast of troubles. Then, cracking his knuckles, arching his back, he turns to the helicopter. With a snap from his whip, he channels diabolical energy out of his worb. The wisps trapped there scream in delicious pain as the worb’s cruel structure grinds them down. The Nightmare melts out of his motorcycle. The cycle shrinks down — looking odd and derelict sitting on the pad. A ghost shape rises up from it, taking on a horse-like form outlined in orange-red fire. In a flash, it jumps the ten feet to the helicopter. Gorging on petroleum fuel, it bulges through the craft, granting diabolical aspects. The rotor transforms into a shape like a bat wing. Hooked talons sprout to grasp the landing wheels. Long fangs grow from the vehicle’s nose. Its tail rotor takes the shape of a horn. Cockpit glass ignites into two flaming eyes. Its sliding door opens like a mouth — rimmed with serrated teeth.
The cries of those in the terminal fall into shocked silence.
Gibbons whipsaws himself through the open door, slams it shut behind him, then sits down in the cockpit. Grasping the throttle, placing his feet on the pedals, tweaking the collective, he naturally connects to his mount. No flight expertise necessary. The Nightmare-possessed vehicle is simply his to command. He engages the throttle. Batlike rotor blades turn, cutting through rain and storm. The Nightmare wails through the helicopter engine as its combustion engine revs up. It blasts out a ring of fire that neatly cuts the safety lines.
“Won’t need those,” Gibbons grunts as he pulls back. His new beast springs up in a whirl of smoke, flinging fire into the rain. Behind, the platform is left rent — ruined by the Nightmare’s talons. They rise to meet the storm. It seems to stoop to swallow them. The Nightmare shudders in delight as rings of cloud form around them. The diabolical storm enfolds the Nightmare — speeds its passage by generating a tunnel of air. Within this cavity, the Nightmare grows to still greater monstrosity. Taking on aspects of storm. Its spirit bulges beyond the helicopter. It drinks up the flying rain, clothes itself in howling gusts. A shape like a great black dragon grows out of it and into the sky. The helicopter becomes its head. Giant wings of turbulence thrust out. A trailing tail dips to the ranging ocean surface to become a waterspout. A Home Guard helicopter, sent to intercept the hi-jacked bird from Trold, Esjberg is buffeted by one great sweep of the Nightmare’s ghost-storm wings. Control lost, the Defense helicopter careens into the monster’s swinging tail. There it spins in three loops before being ejected — slamming into a towering wave face that swallows it whole.
The Nightmare rages through the furious storm. Joining with it, the Hell-beast becomes its most intense feature. A demon from a ruined world steadily entangling the Earth, the Nightmare roars over miles upon miles of towering waves. It slams the sea surface with wings of howling winds. It thrashes its waterspout tail. Observers on ships and planes marvel in terror. A teen posts a clip of the Nightmare dragon-cloud with lightning eyes onto Instagram. The huge frontal storm striking most of Europe with hurricane force, causing hundreds of billions in damage, gains a new name that explodes onto social media — Storm Kaiju.
At last Gibbons and his Nightmare emerge above the Trekke Pa oil platform. His monster stoops above. The platform tosses through towering seas below. The Nightmare seems to take the platform in its jaws. The helicopter head drops down on a neck of storm. It a swirl of fire and a howl of winds, it lands. The mouth-door swings open. Sirens blare as the watch triggers a security alarm. Gibbons grins, opens his arms to the oil workers watching him through a nearby window. Then, he activates his whip. The worb grinds its wisps. Their shrieks of pain spur his Nightmare. It leaps from the helicopter in a gout of rain and fire, rises in an arc in the storm’s mouth of darkness above the oil platform, then it plunges down into the massive structure with a spectral cry. One of the oil workers, hearing its banshee’s howl, is reminded of the Nazgul’s cries from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Then, the great platform groans as it begins to take on a monstrous aspect beyond any of the oil workers’ worst imaginings…
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
Gibbens Crane and his Nightmare roll like a fossil-fueled thunderstorm over I 35. Their oily procession provoking the blares of honking horns, stiff middle fingers, and shouts of road-rage anguish. Demons gather to slurp up the grief. To fan it further. Not far behind, a man on a Harley fingers his Glock and thinks about what he’d like to do to some hombres downtown, mass-murder glinting in his eyes. Big, black Nightmare-as-Hummer spews out a cloud that covers all four lanes. Confederate flag snapping its naked, hubris-fueled racism. Combustion engine pistons pumping out their angry staccato.
It’s a short, if raucous, four minutes to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Gibbens grins all the way. He’d forgotten how fun it is to punk humans. To get them all riled. The angry looks, loud profanity, and posturing is simply delicious. He sends an electric whip-crack to his captive wisps. Their anguished cries of pain add to his sadistic pleasure.
Coming, too-soon, to Presidential Boulevard’s departure lanes, Gibbons gives the Nightmare-Hummer one last coal-rolling gun of the engine, then cuts off a pair of newly-weds to get to the curb. Soot rains down on the, now miserable, couple. Gibbons pops the door, uncoils from his seat, and springs onto the side-walk. It’s early afternoon and the airport bustles moderately in anticipation of the late afternoon rush. Giving no care to bystanders, Gibbons cracks his electric whip again, summoning the orange transformative glow from his worbs. Nightmare melts back into a towering shadow as the Hummer simply vanishes. Onlookers gasp. But a fearful denial soon sets in as their fragile minds rationalize various explanations. The bad dreams are already forming. Many will spend the night tossing in mindless terror as the Nightmare grips them.
Gibbons and his Nightmare-shadow walk through the entrance. He pulls out a pack of Marlboro Reds. The kind that cut your lungs with fiber-glass when you smoke them. He lights up, glaring at a security guard approaching him. Orange light crackles in his eyes. The guard freezes in fear. Gibbons continues smoking even as masked passersby stare. Puffing like a chimney, he saunters up to the quick-pass line, cuts the five people waiting there, walks through the metal detector. There is a loud blare. Three TSA agents spring up as if waking from a stupor. Gibbons fixes them with his brimstone stare.
“You boys are doin’ bang-up work here. Keepin’ the natives from gettin’ too restless,” he says, taking a long pull on the cig and causing the cherry to glow bright red. “I think it’s time for a well-earned lunch break.” He cracks his electric whip. His captive wisps cry out in pain. A devil-magic spark leaps from the cigarette’s cherry and shoots through each TSA agent. They freeze in terror as they briefly glimpse various horrors of destruction swirling in Gibbon’s soul-eating gaze. Gibbons flicks his cherry on the stupefied supervisor and lazily walks by.
The concourse is only moderately trafficked. It’s disappointing. Gibbons has to work to get in people’s way. To force them to avoid him. He zig-zags against the flow of humanity — occasionally stepping on the odd toe or putting the occasional wimp on his ass. Each interaction spreading grief, rage, terror. He’s doing yeoman’s work for his liege here. But he can’t wait. Berlin is 13 hours away by normal flight. Not like this flight is going to be anything like normal. It’ll still take hours. His quarry won’t wait.
He plops down in a chair near his terminal. A silver-blue Boeing 777-300ER is parked just outside his window. Its graceful body swoops and tapers back to a tall, Jet Blue tailfin. This fossil fueled beast will suit his purpose just fine. He draws another drag from his cigarette, smiling as nearby passengers move away from him, complain to the steward at the gate, or haul away squalling brat kids. The steward approaches. Gibbons simply blows smoke in his face. The diabolical taint carried in that miasma puts the loser into a pathetic stupor. He stumbles off, briefly catches a glimpse of the Nightmare, then sits down in a fear-paralysis.
Gibbons barely notices as he swirls the smoke with his index fingers. The curling threads form a scene of Ivan the Wolf howling atop Furze Bank, Beatrice and Mori slaying Pride Eaters, then briefly exorcising the demon from Ivan. The scene — dancing and flickering with Hell-fire — draws a smirk from Gibbons. He can plainly see the deep wound made by the Pride-Eater’s claws in both Ivan’s body and wisp. A complete channel for demonic possession. This will make his hunt easier. It will also please his Lord. Ivan is already teetering at the edge of full transformation. What a pal.
The flight is starting to board. Gibbons doesn’t have a ticket. No matter. He cuts the line, ignores the orderly boarding procession, and struts down the jet bridge. A couple puffs of devil’s smoke confounds any protest from stewardess or pilot. It’s all just too easy.
Gibbons enters the filling plane and plops down in first class. The boarding will take a little while. He pulls his black hat down over his face and treats himself to a little shut-eye. Delicious Nightmare gathers through the link in his mind as he focuses on that beast of perpetual terror. It takes up most of the first class cabin. Its pall of fear dragging down each newly-seated passenger. This makes Gibbons’ smile widen as he gathers his wisp energy — meditating on a new Nightmare form. This one a possession.
“Um… Excusez-moi, tall, dark, and terrifying, but you are in my seat!!” The exclamation comes just as Gibbons finishes readying the path for his new devil’s magic. He tips back his hat. The newcomer is a pink-haired they with silver-painted long finger nails. Their androgynous face sports all the latest eye make-up. Gibbons attempts to blow smoke in the influencer’s face but discovers his cig has burned out. He pulls it out of his mouth, then flicks it on the interloper.
“Disgust!” they shout as they swat the butt away. Extending a finger, they tap Gibbons on the chest. “Learn to be less rude! How in God’s no-longer-so-green Earth did you get that cig on a plane, dear? Not that I wouldn’t mind one myself, but… Get out of my frigging seat! Oh!”
Gibbons has produced another Marlboro, igniting it with fire from his fingertip.
“Neat trick, dearie, what are you? Some kind of black magic man?”
Gibbons blows smoke in their face. They stumble off in a stupor, careening in disorientation through the cabin. “Ugh! I broke my nail!”
Gibbons’ smoke has now filled much of first class. This has a momentary pacifying effect on those sitting nearby. Some are confused by Gibbons’ smoke. Others brood over it. A few are intrigued. Then the dark, animalistic impulses born upon Gibbons’ miasma begin to take hold. Terror, rage, and various other dark passions bloom. The result is a general hubub as couples begin fighting, children shriek, and individuals either cower or engage in some form of mischief. Through it all, the poor stewards and stewardesses have their hands full. No one notices the smoking devil, spinning his black magic out of enslaved souls in torment, sitting among them.
The aircraft staff manages to get the unruly passengers under some semblance of control. The plane door closes. The cabin pressurizes. Gibbons feels a few bumps as the aircraft begins to taxi out onto the runway. They come to the markings showing the take-off pad — stripes of black and white stained brown by jet exhaust. The plane spins, pointing its nose toward the long strip of concrete and readies itself to launch.
Engines begin to rev. Their banshee wail fills the cabin. With a crooked smile, Gibbons flicks his wrist. The cries of wisps rise up to accompany the engine wail as diabolical magic courses out of Gibbons’ worbs, up his arm, along to the tip of his cigarette. It whirls there for a moment, then atomizes the cherry — bursting out in a split-flash of orange lightning that envelops the aircraft. With a spectral cry, Gibbons’ Nightmare is taken in by the hell-lightning. Its shadow expands to cover the body, wings, and engine of the aircraft. Silver metal darkens. Wings become serrated like those of a bat. A shark-tooth mouth design sprouts in the plane’s nose. Fins like those of a drake unfurl along its spine. The blue corporate emblem twists and flickers. It takes on various shapes — flickering between hammer and sickle and swastica before settling on the swastika. The engines enlarge. Their intake edges become serrated teeth.
Gibbons’ Nightmare now possesses the aircraft. Its engine revs louder. The banshee wail rises to a scream. Passengers add their own cries, white-faced, as giant gouts of flame shoot out from the jet engines, extend 300 feet behind, and ignite the grass. A man flails in his seat. Gripped by terror, his heartbeat gives way to full coronary arrest. The stewards are too shocked to notice — taken in by the spectacle of horror that is their kaiju aircraft.
Gibbons laughs out loud. Glorying in the chaos and terror. In the cockpit there is shouting as the throttle rams forward on its own, directly by a ghostly Nightmare hand. The plane rockets forward — born on a plume of smoke and fire. It howls down the runway. Engines open wide to spew their hellfire and black exhaust. The wings seem to flap and the beast-as-aircraft blasts into the sky. The shrieks of passengers grows louder. A poor child shits himself in terror. The stench and screams adds to Gibbons’ maniacal joy.
The plane climbs more like a rocket than an aircraft. Rising into the sky like some strange reverse meteor, it blows holes through clouds. Oil-thick spume falls from the smoke clouds behind it, raining pollution over the land below. It rises and rises, the sky darkens, clouds below seem tiny. The cabin pops and hisses with pressurization. A businessman points — exclaiming at the tiny dots of regular jet traffic passing far, far below.
Gibbons’ new Nightmare machine skirts the edge of space, moving far faster than a normal jet. They’ll arrive at Berlin Brandenburg in just 7 hours — about half the regular flight time. Gibbons puffs his cig as he takes in the shocked-to-silence passenger cabin, hears the pleas for assistance over the radio being transmitted by pilot and co-pilot through the closed cockpit door.
A passenger shakily makes his way to the lavatory. He opens the door, enters, and unzips. He sits down. But his momentary relief turns to terror as the Nightmare grips him with jaws that emerge from the toilet. He is clenched in the spectral maw, shrieking as he is shaken back and forth on the seat. Blood spouts from his nose, flowing down the front of his dress suit. A vessel inside his brain has ruptured from the Nightmare’s assault on body and spirit. His cries grow slowly weaker as he hemorrhages. A stewardess approaches the lavatory, ventures a glance inside, recoils in fright at the scene of the man gripped by spectral jaws. She musters some courage, grabs the man’s hand, pulls him. The jaws grip him tight as they struggle. At last, they relent and she falls to the ground with the dying man atop her.
“Help!” she yells to a second trembling steward. After a moment, some passengers aid her in carrying the Nightmare-stroke victim back to his chair. From that moment on, no-one dares get up to go to the lavatory. A number relieve themselves in their seats.
Gibbons continues to merrily puff away on his cig. There will be more sacrifices to the Nightmare possessed aircraft as they continue their swift passage. As is fitting. This dark new reality seems to have dawned on the passengers who stare out their windows in terror, hide beneath coats and blankets, or even crouch on the floor. Ghostly forms now run up and down the length of the passenger cabin — taking the shape of grasping tendrils, toothy maws, or wicked eyes. They are literally riding along in the belly of the beast.
Gibbons lets out a satisfied puff of pollution. He’s done his work for now. His Nightmare will handle the passage. Lowering his hat over his face, he settles in for a well-earned nap. His nap is not a human sleep. It is a fugue shared with his Nightmare as they feast together on the terror of the passengers. As they glory in each new life taken in terror for the sake of Hell.
Six hours into the flight and 13 victims later, Gibbons wakes from his feasting fugue. He leans over his seat, reaches down to a cowering passenger. With a rattlesnake strike of his arm, he wrests her cell phone from a clenched grip. She whimpers but offers no resistance. He lifts his new prize, a gleaming iphone, taps it, and infects it with one of his wisps. This one is a demon. A taken Pride Eater. One of a handful he keeps for a special occasion. The Pride Eater rifles through the phone as Gibbons whips it with his electric lash, readying for his call. A pentagram appears on the iphone screen. Orange devil’s script blossoms in a glowing circle around it.
“Ivan Volkov, prophet of Asmodeus,” Gibbons speaks into the pentagram. The screen vibrates as the Pride Eater seeks Volkov both on Earth and through the cellular network. Its demonic form surfing through each connection even as its senses locate Ivan sitting at the Mio Bar in Berlin. The Pride Eater shrieks its ecstatic joy-hunger as it causes the bar tender’s phone to ring.
“Hello, this is the Mio Bar, how may I help you?” the bar-tender’s voice crackles on the line in German.
“Yes, I’m lookin for someone at the bar. Name’s Ivan. Might I speak with him?”
“He’s here. Just a minute.”
Gibbons cracks his devil’s grin. There is a rustling as the phone changes hands.
“Da? Who is it?” Ivan’s voice crackles through the connection.
“It’s your good friend, Mr G. — representative for Mr A.”
“Don’t know you.”
“You see, that’s where you’re mistaken, old Ivan. We’ve known each other for quite a long time. And our recent meetings at the top of Furze Bank Tower have yielded great reward. We gave you the gift of power earlier tonight. Power to destroy the wretched folk who afflict you. More is on offer right now. All you need do is say ‘yes, I accept,’ and it’ll be yours.”
Silence and crackling sounds over the connection. An image of the bar-scene, carried to Gibbons by the Pride-Eater’s sight, flickers over the iphone screen.
“Come on, Ivan, what will it be. You want to let that negro continue to disrespect you? Or you going to show him who’s boss?”
There’s silence for just a moment longer, then Ivan says — “Da, I accept.”
Gibbons’ grin widens in triumph. “Very well! Now here comes the stuff!” Gibbons taps the phone and the Pride Eater flows down the line and into Ivan. Gibbons watches the screen with satisfaction as the Russian begins to transform. As he starts to attack Jonas Herrington. Then Beatrice and Mori are there, weaving their protections around Ivan, knocking the Pride Eater contact out of him. The Pride Eater shrieks with anguish as it flees back to Gibbons’ worb. The pentagram and diabolical writing fade from the iphone.
“Fucking jackholes!” Gibbons curses as he tosses the iphone to the ground. Its face-plate shatters. The girl in the next row whimpers but doesn’t dare reach out to retrieve her phone. Gibbons’ moment of rage soon fades. He has now scented them a second time. His quarry. And once he catches scent of a quarry, there is never hope of escape.
The Nightmare aircraft shrieks through the starlit sky as it plummets down its fiery tail toward Berlin. Airport a-bustle with siren wails as emergency crews gather. The pilots have at last sent their mayday signal ahead. A confused response team sprays runways with foam. Air traffic controllers track the aircraft swooping down on Brandenburg Airport like some dragon out of fiction. News media is all abuzz with talk of hijackers and terrorists. The sky looks like a meteor-fall.
Stewards and stewardesses are doing their best to prepare the passengers for impact. The plane is moving too fast. The landing gear won’t lower. Fire from the Nightmare envelops the craft as runway lights grow into focus before them. One of the pilots goes into shock and begins to hyperventilate. He passes out. The other tries to wrestle with the yoke which, possessed by the Nightmare, jerks back and forth, ultimately punching him — cracking his skull wide open.
The plane slams down onto the runway with both pilots incapacitated. It careens in a shower of sparks. Steel and titanium rend open, the jet twists, a wing flies off. Passengers are hurled in all directions — still attached to seats or ripped from them. The plan shrieks to a halt, jet fuel exploding into fire.
In the midst of the inferno, untouched by fire, Gibbons stands from his rent chair. He casually kicks away a large piece of debris that obstructs his passage. It must weigh about 1,000 pounds. It flies off like a child’s toy. He walks from the wreckage and onto the tarmac. Booted feet splash in the pools of burning jet fuel. He does a little murder-joy skip out onto the grass, waltzes to the fence. Lifting his hand, he calls his Nightmare back to him. The plane slumps and shakes, withering back to its original if now-broken and burning shape.
Fire engines and ambulances surround it — sirens blaring. Streams of flame retardant bathe the burning form. Rescue personnel comb the area for survivors.
“Asmodeus, lord, accept this sacrifice of mortals, call forth thy Terror Hounds to take what victims you will. For the glory of Hell!” Gibbons incants. At this last phrase, the hounds emerge — ripping wisps from the victims scattered through the burning wreckage and out across the runway.
Gibbons then grabs the fence. Peeling back a section of links, he steps through the gap and onto the road. With a whip-flick of his wrist, his Nightmare again transforms into a gigantic black Hummer. He mounts, then blasts off toward Berlin, eyes set to his quarry.
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
Eastward, The Lake of Fire realm of Hell’s Ocean burns. Bubbles of gas rise up from sea floor to surface – igniting swaths of flames across purple and green waters. Waves and currents roil with combustive spume. It is one of Hell’s terrible wonders – this expanse of burning water. Devils call it fire-paw in mockery of Earthly cat’s paw gusts rippling a far more wholesome fluid. A testament to how far into ruin the world they were entrusted to care for fell. Its once life-giving Ocean now poisonous and wracked by fire.
South and west, the Burning Lands tell their own tale of exploitation, abuse and catastrophe in their endless eruptions of black smoke. Great fields of coal up-thrust from deep below lay bare to air and fire. Fingers of lava run through it all – forming a fossil fuel caldera stretching for hundreds of miles. The lava spills out, burns the coal, reduces it to gas, liquids – much of it aflame. The busy devils of Mechanum crawl across it. Taking a hundred monstrous forms, they drive endless ranks of slaves before them to mine it, capture it, transport it from these ever-burning lands. A network of ghastly trains accepts the fruits of this dangerous toil – passing it on through crawling, flying or rolling infernal combustion engine vehicles to various globular outposts. Each engine of this vast industry possessing a mortal’s wisp. Literal mad ghosts driving terrible machines.
A lava river with flaming coal floating atop its flood winds away from those burning fields. It flickers the underbellies of clouds vomiting lightning, never rain. It flows through a land of escarpments — coiling at last around a mighty fortress before quenching its rage in The Lake of Fire.
Hell’s Fortress Invicti, Burning Lands, and Lake of Fire
If Myra were here, she’d be reminded of Ivan Volkov’s wall photo of a tar sands mining operation. Though that would seem but an essay to Hell’s complete diabolical work of destruction-as-industry spreading for hundreds of miles in every direction. But Myra is not here. The person, if he could be described as such, whose eyes behold this terrible scene is none other than the Curse Rider — Gibbens Crane. He sees it all from his perch at the fortress’s open gate with eyes long-since made insensitive. The fortress’s mountainous battlements rise behind him. Razor towers crawling with Hell’s monsters and machines stretch up and up. Electric eyes and the light of wisp energy crisscross its great bulk like backlit spider veins. Vapors lifting off it give the impression of a made volcano facing the ruin-of-nature volcanic land before it. Fortress Invicti. To him, this terror scene is typical. Two great catastrophes — one rising up from the world, the other cynically crafted — both terrors that long ago became normal.
He sits atop his Nightmare – a horse-like machine crafted of coiled metal, flaming claws in place of hooves, an enslaved wisp for a soul, a roaring engine for a heart, pipes blasting out pollution. He has heard the call of Asmodeus’ Chosen. He now knows the names of enemies who would steal this mighty prize. Beatrice Lushael. Robert Mori. In his descent, Asomdeus’s courtiers gathered ’round, entreating him to take every action to secure Ivan for the designs of Hell on Earth. In gestures of command, they lifted their vulture bodies to form the pose of wisp-rending capture, saying — take the offending mage wisps at all costs.
Gibbens Crane adjusts his black hat, tightens a bolo tie, straightens the baldric of bullets crossing his torso. He rests a hand on the polished obsidian and hell-silver handle of a long-barreled revolver. Upon his left shoulder, a triad of bulging worbs gleam with fickle blue light. A thousand wisps powers each. The third one is a recent gift from Asmodeus – given to aid his new hunt. Gibbens looks out into the distance, lashes his wisps with an electric whip-flick of his left wrist, and issues an order as they scream in agony.
“Serve the hunt and you will know relief. Show us the swiftest path through Hell and Earth to our quarry – Lushael, Mori. On Earth, they were last seen in Berlin. What is the closest concordant Hell Gate?”
Thus tasked, the wisps sacrifice spiritual energy to reach out, to create a map of active permanent and temporary Hell Gates, to note their relative locations on both Earth and Hell. In a pained shout that echoes through Gibbens’ uncaring ears, they affirm his command. Their energy dances, showing the way. A nearby Gate opens on an escarpment not a mile from here. It leads to a supposedly solemn chamber in Austin, Texas. There, a number of state leaders are pontificating over a decision. The larger number’s thrust is to make it harder for youth, black, and brown people to vote. The same majority is also pushing an attempt to stifle clean power sources that don’t come from the combustion of Earth’s blood fossil fuels. Pride Eaters and other demons have assembled to rend open this gateway. To stare with malign interest upon those entrusted to protect the people who elected them, but who are instead slicing away their rights while ensuring ever-more hellish living arrangements. Though Pride-Eater interest is fierce, the gate will last mere minutes.
Gibbens flicks his wrist again, releasing slave wisps from pain — for now — and kicks spurs against the Nightmare’s metal hide. Electric current arcs into the beast, it lifts its head to issue a ghostly cry of anguish, then explodes forward. A carpet of blue flame spreads beneath each clawed foot-fall as it takes flight toward the Hell-Gate. Bearing Gibbens over the molten river in a swift gallop, Its engine heart roars with effort. Black clouds of smoke spread wide behind. They blast through hot air in swift ascent, then turn toward the gathering of demons. In less than a minute, they descend toward a black vertical rift. The Nightmare lifts its head to give out another anguished wail. Demons scatter. Gibbens and Nightmare blast through.
They penetrate the outer darkness, drift toward the Arch of Time, snap through, then rise into a chamber filled with arguing legislators.
“The future needs of Texas require good energy and the kinds of jobs that matter most to Texans,” one says as he lifts a sheaf of papers. “If we wish to attract renewable factories like Tesla’s at 10,000 employed, we must stop clingin to harmful fossils which keep hurlin storms and fires at our ‘lectric grids.” He is a young man named Jeremy Seto, as indicated by the name plate on his desk.
“There is zero scientific proof, zero evidence for the representative’s taudry claims of disaster,” an older man drawls while adjusting a pair of coke-can glasses. Peter Murdlock – according to his name-plate. “Besides, our oil workers will be put out by your draconian support for expensive wind, solar, and EVs.”
“Proof? Look out the window! Look at each new report from the actual scientists of most respected agency. I don’t know what kind of science the representative refers to in his contrarian claims. But our oil workers can do good building clean geo-thermal, lithium, solar, and wind!”
Gibbens emerges in ethereal form on the debate floor. Just another evil ghost among legislators. A Pride Eater sits on Murdlock’s desk, teasing away strands of red thought with claws running through his brains. The Demon could possess him given time and enough hubris. Not yet. Gibbens is far less limited. His hundreds of enslaved wisps allow him to take form on Earth should he choose it. Just one of many dangerous traits. For the moment, he decides to remain unseen. He walks his Nightmare through the chamber, up stairs, past the security station and metal detectors, and out through the front door. A faint smell of gasoline – the only tell-tale of his passing.
Gibbens leads his Nightmare onto the sidewalk and away from the Capitol. Turning into a side-street, he flicks his left wrist in a whip-crack gesture once more. The wisps give another ghostly wail of pain as they draw forth energy to give him form. A red-orange glow passes over him – rising from the tips of boot spurs, passing up over his body before at last enfolding a black cowboy hat. When the light departs, he is fully formed. He fishes a pair of sunglasses out of a breast pocket, unfolds them, puts them on. The Austin air is a cool 105 degrees. Pleasant, compared to Hell. The orange glow leaps over to his Nightmare – shaping it into a massive black Hummer with smoke-stack exhaust pipes sprouting from the roof and huge coke-cans busting out the rear. Sides painted with streaming flames. A Confederate Flag flies from a pole near the back.
He winds up like a rattlesnake and slithers in through the already opened door. He throws it shut, revs the engine, and then roars out onto Austin’s streets. Shoving through traffic, he coal-rolls vehicles trailing behind – giving them a taste of sulfur-laden black smoke. Angry curses add to the cacophony of snarling engines. He pushes the shades up and chuckles. Griefing locals is but one of many privileges. Taking a late turn, he cuts off a whole lane of traffic, belching smoke, then guns it onto I 35 South. Honks blare behind. He flicks them a lazy bird while passing beneath a sign reading — Austin-Bergstrom International Airport – 5 miles.
Myra and co.’s journey of the past two weeks has been quite the wild ride!
(Spoiler alerts follow). We started with Myra losing a good portion of her memory by drinking a magical potion — The Memory Draught — for a cause she now knows little about. Her only information regarding her mission is that it involves breaking her into Hell for some greater purpose through the Hell Gate as golden toilet bathroom used daily by the sinfully prideful Ivan Volkov. Her capable mage parents then whisk her off — slipping her into Furze Bank HQ. It’s a corrupt financial institution heavily involved in funding Hell-on-Earth fossil fuels and one crawling with demonic influence. They’re aiming to get Myra through the Hell Gate that Ivan Volkov unwittingly opened. After Myra slips through the Gate and arrives in Hell, her mage parents — Beatrice Lushael and Robert Mori — are left to deal with three nasty Pride Eater demons and Ivan himself. Ivan is possessed by a Pride Eater and forced to transform into a demon hybrid wolf. But Beatrice and Mori manage to exorcise the demon and escape from Furze Bank with the hapless and semi-rescued Ivan in tow. (End of spoiler alerts).
Modern Climate Fantasy
Myra’s journey takes place in what I’m calling a modern climate fantasy. Modern, because the action occurs at a place and in a time very similar to that of the real world. Climate, because the larger series uses the issue of climate crisis as a fulcrum for both world definition and the nature of how conflict, crisis, and resolution occurs through the story’s arc. It could well be said that the Arisen Worlds exist in the climate of climate crisis. With that particular world-destroying and crisis enhancing force acting as a moral theme upon which the story pivots. This is not at all foreign to fantasy — which often grapples with forces that threaten existence in various ways. Though this particular revelation of climate crisis as a malign force fueled by villainous acts may well be rather unique.
The Earth of Myra Helkey suffers from the early stages of climate crisis, much like our own. It suffers from the corruption of businesses and some political structures by bad actors, much like our own. It has experienced the disruption of emerging infectious illness, some driven and others enhanced by climate crisis, much like our own world. Of course, there are key differences. One is that the situations — climate and geopolitical — are somewhat advanced on Myra’s Earth. It’s a world perhaps 5 years further on than ours and probably in a worse way than we will hopefully be by that time. It’s also a place that includes magic in the form of curses used by mages. And it is here that we encounter a pretty clear distinction between the Arisen Worlds Earth and the real Earth of the present day.
Mages Who Form Connections Between Worlds
Mages are a rather small subset of the population on Arisen Worlds Earth. But they are of extraordinary importance to the story. Myra’s immediate family members are all mages. Moreover, these mages operate in an underground network throughout the Arisen Worlds setting. This becomes more of a theme as the story progresses. But you can already get a sense of associations and connections with mages in the story’s early phase. As a connective element, the most important aspect of a mage’s original magic is a special kind of wisp or soul that is able to channel spiritual energy from the multiverse itself. This is their special ability. One they can be born with or one they can awaken to through a lifetime. There is much thought and philosophy among mages about the universality vs the specificity of magical talent. Some believe it is in-born. Others believe that it arises from learning and experience and that all wisps are capable of making the magical connections that a mage wisp forms. But most pivotal to the Arisen Worlds is the fact that mage wisps can connect to spiritual energy from other worlds. And the two other worlds in close enough alignment to Earth in the multiverse to lend such energy consistently are Heaven and Hell. So mages serve as the main element in human society linking Heaven and Hell to Earth and are active in deciding the future path of each world.
Hell — A Ruined World Cynically Reliant on Exploitation for Survival
So, in the context of Myra’s story, what is Heaven and what is Hell? To be clear, though Judeo-Christian themes play a role in the fantastical conception of Heaven and Hell in the Helkey setting, these worlds are actual living (or dying) planets with host life and civilizations. As very basic concepts, each is a world that has endured its own existential crisis and dealt with it in an entirely different way.
Hell, for example, chose the path of authoritarianism, greed, murder, hate, and exploitation. It not only ignored its own climate crisis, it nihilistically reveled in it. As a result, Hell is a ruined world shades worse than Permian extinction period Earth filled with the corrupt, the murderous, the foul, and the vile. It’s hot, toxic, and you mostly can’t trust anyone. Hell has its own original life and inhabitants. These are the devils. But they are life native to the world of Hell as well. Individually, not every devil is morally terrible. But the circumstances of the world of Hell make it difficult if not impossible to achieve high moral standards. This involves the inherent nature of Hell — one of shared crimes and depravity which are cynically seen as the only way to survive. The dire nature of Hell’s world lends itself to these cynical assumptions — which are fed by its autocratic tyrant Asmodeus.
Hell as depicted in the Arisen Worlds multiverse and its super-continent Minos. This basic rendering of Hell is the larger setting for Myra’s future adventures. Notice that this — many shades darker than Earth — world features a convergence of multiple continents into a supercontinent and has a toxic green-purple world ocean locked in a Canfield type state (some of its waters burn). This world map is my original rendering using artistic design software. As Myra continues her adventures in Hell, I’ll provide regional maps for her travels that include more detail. Her first series of adventures occurs in Infernia which is located near the center-east portion of the land mass. Mori and Beatrice’s parallel adventures occur on Earth and, possibly, in Heaven. New maps will be made as they’re needed.
Hell could not exist as a world unless it had some outside resource to prey upon. This outside resource is the soul or wisp. Since before its fall into ruin, Hell was a magnet for the more vicious and harmful spirits of dead human beings. And in ancient times these wisps were governed in Hell by fairer rules. Rules that allowed the wisps to become a part of Hell’s more difficult life but, after ages of learning and reform, were permitted to return to Earth. This system was corrupted by Asmodeus into a form of wanton exploitation and enslavement of wisps for the power they contained. For Asmodeus was the first to learn how to enslave and harness wisps to gain personal power. This original hellish ‘innovation’ allowed Asmodeus to conquer Hell and to place himself as its ruler. Asmodeus’s exploitative ‘advancements’ extended to the world’s resources. And Hell was rich in fossil fuels. Combining wisps with Blood of Earth fuels gave more power to Asmodeus’s fearsome engines and war machines. Millions of souls burned in Hell’s combustion engines which drove Hell’s environment to its present vicious state. Now, Hell is reliant on wisps from Earth for life support machines, environmental control, and enhancements to physical resilience. And it needs more wisps every year. So the design of Hell is to ensnare more wisps by encouraging harmful activities on Earth, which would make Earth more like Hell in the end.
Heaven — A World that Survived Catastrophe to Form a Great Society
In direct opposition to Hell is the realized world of Heaven which contains multiple living worlds orbiting an Orange Dwarf Star. Like Hell, Heaven, which was called by another name at the time, experienced its own terrible existential crisis. This occurred as a series of gamma ray burst events coming from the center of Heaven’s galaxy. At the culmination of this thousands years long series of events, one of the world’s more powerful and far less benevolent beings ignited a mountain of oil that formed a kind of fossil fuel caldera on Heaven’s home world. The combination of periodic blotting out of Heaven’s sun due to cosmic dust excited by the gamma ray burst and increased greenhouse gasses from the burning caldera resulted in terrible swings between hot and cold.
The opposite to Hell in cosmic polarity, Heaven attracted the wisps of the benevolent deceased of Earth. These became reincarnated as various living creatures in Heaven. Many arose from the life-giving and creative magic of dreams — that connects all of Heaven’s creatures — as selfless heroes who directly confronted the crises faced by Heaven. They joined with Heaven’s natives, who were already more closely and powerfully tied to the natural world and held life as sacred, in various great works and adventures to shore up the life supports of Heaven. To strengthen life and to create technologies and magics that worked to make life more vital and beneficially cooperative. In this way, Heaven overcame its difficulties to become a much stronger multi-planet worlds system capable of resisting even the worst forms of catastrophe.
Like Hell, Heaven is not without its internal oppositional forces. Some of these come from heaven’s populace who’ve grown jaded, cynical, greedy, or selfish. These rise as villains but are quickly countered by the many responsible folk — the angels — living in Heaven. Others come from the Outer Darkness — demons attracted to Heaven’s bounty and seeming innocence. Unlike Hell, human wisps are given form and place in heaven naturally and without prejudice. They are not distinguished from native angels. The society of Heaven is democratic and one in which power is shared and gained by merit. There are great beings who earn respect and renown, but there is no centralized ruling force. Heaven instead is the source of a variety of vital ideas and benevolent innovations. Heaven’s religion is one in which Love resulted in the formation of the multiverse and they have a myth of a creation deity that is three in one — mother creation that is all things, the father creative force that inspires new life, growth, change and progress, and the invisible spirit or ghost that connects all things. Lethal disease has been defeated in Heaven. The lives of its inhabitants are immortal, only passing their wisps into the multiverse if they choose to. The world of Heaven is itself a vital riot of life and living things. A beautiful bounty in harmonious, yet still growing, balance with itself.
The Earth in Discordant Entanglementwith two Arisen Worlds
As Hell seeks to prey on Earth and draw it into its destructive influence, Heaven seeks to enlighten, enable, liberate and advance it. Heaven is grateful to the wisps that came to its world from Earth and gave aid. Heaven wishes to return the favor. It sends angels to Earth to try to help it find a way out of trouble and conflict. It forms alliances with mages to fight against demonic and diabolical influence. As a result, the forces of Heaven and Hell come into conflict on the battleground of Earth. As there can be no compromise with the zero-sum attempts at conquest and exploitation coming from Hell, this results in discordant entanglement. Discordant — because there can be no harmony with the zero-compromise forces of Hell. Entanglement — because the future destination of Earth is tied up in the destination of the cosmic polar opposites of Heaven and Hell. Arisen Worlds — because Heaven and Hell have both passed their crisis points to reach their future pathways. Hell toward ruin and Heaven toward the celestial civilization.
(For more information on the Arisen Worlds of the Helkey series check out Helkey Lore.)
Beatrice watches as Myra does an acrobatic handplant, suspends for a second, turns to look at her one last time, and then is snatched into the Hell-Gate’s opening maw. A part of me goes with you, Beatrice thinks. But she knows it’s more. She’s sending her only daughter into Hell — with zero knowledge of the secret plan they have to break her out. Only trust and Myra’s self-made Mirror Specter guide set to awaken when she enters Hell. It seems a thin assurance to her now, but the guide, a little ghost of a hitch-hiker riding down into Hell on Myra’s wisp, is packed with helpful intel. Preset to give Myra just the amount of information she needs. To help keep Myra alive and on plan as she ventures through the most vicious of worlds. It’s all part of their bold strategy. Maybe too bold. A seriously risky plan Beatrice dares not even think of now lest the stray memory be caught up by a sensitive listener.
In front of her, the ridiculous Ivan Volkov still sits on his golden toilet. His face in blank shock at her shout to the Pride-Eaters. They’re invisible to him, for now. But given how much sin they’d already slurped from Volkov, his blissful ignorance wouldn’t last long. Better now for him to know early so he has a chance to understand. Not that it’s likely to do much good. Volkov is probably a lost cause. Probably. But she’d been surprised before.
“Una!” she shouts, gathering the power of her curses. She rushes forward, making the bound across the marble in two leaps. She spins in mid-air between two demons lifting their claws to attack. They have semi-form here. A hit from any one of those wicked claws could be lethal. Hunger ignites in their eyes as she channels the curse energy to the tip of her blade. It gleams – starlike – then she slams the rapier tip flatwise onto Volkov’s forehead. The curse energy transfers into him with a white-hot flare.
Video blog for Helkey 6
Ivan can see the demons now. His shock turns to frenzy. He stands up, tries to run, but is tripped up by his pants. He falls face first in front of the bidet, cracking his elbow on its golden rim. He howls in pain. The place where she channeled Una into his forehead is an angry red. That’s going to bruise. She’s holding the curse in place for him. He has no mage talent as such. But his demon energy is strong and it grasps the curse hard in its jaws. He’s muttering now as one of the demons bends its head down – ethereal spittle dropping on Volkov. “Red… red…” he stammers as he notices the wisp energy wafting off him. He looks at Beatrice. “What did you do to me!!” He shouts as he crawls away, whimpering, from the Pride Eaters. He has apparently forgotten his pants. They are down around his ankles.
Mori springs into motion. Racking the slide on his over-grown rifle, he sights in on the first Pride Eater. The weapon erupts in a hail of blue-white bullets. Its ammunition is heaven-blessed curse energy. Macto curses. The bullets rip through one of the Pride Eaters. Great holes appear in its form. These grow larger as it looks down at itself in shock. It charges toward Mori. But the rapidly growing holes consume its form in a bright flash of falling sparks after just three steps.
The second Pride Eater leaps for Beatrice. She sees its enormous claws tearing toward her as she rises from her lunging curse delivery to Ivan’s forehead. She’s over-extended, so her best move is to spin away. She does a barrel-roll in mid-air as she avoids a series of vicious slashes – then nimbly lands on one grey-booted foot as the other points back behind her. The rapier tip shoots forward like a comet.
“Ivan!” she shouts. “You’ve endangered your soul! These demons hunger for your hubris!” Ivan’s face melts into panicked disbelief. Yes, Ivan, the monsters in your closet really do exist. Her riposte strikes one of the Pride-Eater’s clawed hands. It ripples with white light. Sparks flow from it. Then the hand – claws and everything – bursts into red mist. The Pride Eater pauses in surprise. Serious error. Mori sights in on the thing’s head. A brief trigger-squeeze and another blue-white bullet erupts from the rifle’s barrel, its flash casting shadows across Mori’s angular face. The bullet makes a perfect, purple-rimmed circle in the hollow near the demon’s cavernous nose. The hole spools outward in a widening spiral of sparks like one of those Fourth of July spinners. Now headless and handless, the demon falls. It twitches once, then explodes in a red-spark outburst. The sparks arc through the air like a flower of flares.
“Shit!” Mori shouts.
Beatrice turns her head. The third Pride-Eater has caught up to Ivan. He is raving in Russian, then switches to English as the demon sinks an ethereal claw into him.
“Not this soul. Protected! Was baptized! Was baptized!!” His tone has turned to pleading. His eyes imploring to Beatrice – as if she were somehow both cause of his current trouble and source of possible mercy.
Unfortunately for Ivan, he is not protected. Not in the least. To the contrary, he summoned these demons. His Earth-wrecking work at Furze Bank culminating in self-deifying daily dumps from the golden toilet on top of Berlin drew them the way road kill draws carrion birds. Pride Eaters. Some of Asmodeus’s favorite nasty errand boys. These were the things that came to Ivan. Day after day after day. Over time, one of these nasties had managed to spin a spirit tether between it and Ivan. A demon’s dog chain for his hubris hound. Beatrice can see it as a trailing lead of red mist rising from Ivan. The wound he now suffers would typically be lethal in a variety of ways. But for the spirit tether, instant heart attack, aneurism, hemorrhage… any number of things all resulting in death untraceable to its demonic source would have befallen him. But for poor, tethered Ivan, the effects of such a wound can be at once less final and more horrific. A Pride Eater’s long claws are very useful for gouging away a wisp’s protective coating, for developing its tether, and for using that tether to invade the wisp — possessing body, mind, and spirit. Of course, the natural protection over Ivan’s wisp was already greatly weakened by his own harmful thoughts and acts long before the demons arrived. The Pride Eater just came in, like a vulture swooping down on a dying creature, to finish the job.
“Baptized…” he wheezes pitifully as the impossibly long claw sinks deeper, questing beneath Ivan’s flesh. Then the demon possession takes hold. The Pride-Eater shimmers. Beatrice is bounding toward it, lashing out with her rapier. Mori is swinging his rifle around, drawing a bead. Sword and bullet strike toward the demon in unison. The Pride-Eater flickers, wriggling as if suddenly consumed by thousands of worms, then shoots into Ivan’s body. The mages’ weapons meet only the air where it once stood over Ivan.
“Oh, holy Hell!” Mori curses again. His weapon’s magazine is empty. With practiced motion, he ejects, pulls another blue magazine from his pocket, inserts it into the chamber, and pulls back the charging handle.
Ivan is writhing on the ground. His body is now flickering, bulging, growing larger. There is a sickening crackle as muscles and bones rearrange. A fur like thousands of black metal hair-pins shoot out of his flesh. His jaws elongate. Great teeth sprout and grow pointed. His eyes yellow. Four limbs become four legs. A row of larger, wicked and barbed spines emerges from his back. A tail sprouts from his rear. The tail’s end is tipped in barbs. At the shoulder he is now easily five feet tall. From tip of nose to tip of tail – 15 feet. He’s transformed into some horrific mash-up of wolf, demon, porcupine and stegosaurus all rolled up together.
He lifts his maw and lets forth a great howl. The sound echoes through worlds. It spirals down into the Hell Gate. It crosses the darkness and enters the Arch of Time. Into the wastes of Infernia where Myra is now just beginning to get her bearings it roars, out beyond the terrifying metal madness that is Mechanum it clangors, through the battles now raging in Avernum it explodes, past the terrible slave prisons of Carcerus it keens, and echoing at last across the great spires of Asmodeus’s impenetrable fortress Invicti on the shores of the burning purple ocean of Hell it wails. Somewhere, in that great black fortress, a Curse Rider hears the call of Ivan the Wolf, puts on his wide-brimmed black hat, and begins to make his way down to Asmodeus’s stables in search of his Nightmare. For at Ivan’s possessed summons a new Curse Hunt is begun. The Curse Hunt for Beatrice and Mori.
Beatrice feels shivers over her body at the sound. She knows the howl entered the Gate. She knows in her gut – this is a summons. She knows half of Furze Bank HQ must have heard it as well. For Ivan was now a hybrid demon-human. Not just a mere possession. But a full-on transformation only the likes of the Pride Eaters could bring out. He exists both as ethereal – which is that shadow realm the demons typically inhabit on Earth – and as corpus. Live and in the flesh.
“He just rang one hell of an alarm bell,” Mori says, sighting in on Ivan the Wolf. “You handle the exorcism curse!”
Beatrice points her blade at the massive demon-wolf. It is lowering its head, still getting its bearings, still becoming accustomed to its new form. They have time yet. Mere moments. But it should be enough. The transformation hasn’t fully taken hold.
“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica protestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii!” She incants as she points her sword blade at the wolf demon. A kind of bow shock of light has formed in front of her sword.
“Una!” Mori shouts and the bow shock extends to his rifle.
Ivan the wolf lowers his head and growls. It is not like a normal wolf growl. This comes out more like a grating growl-cough.
“Omnis legio, omnis congregation et secta diabolica!” Beatrice continues as the bow shock grows brighter.
Outside the chamber of the golden toilet there is shouting and the pounding of feet. Guards are at the outer door. Ivan takes an awkward step forward. There is terrible power in those muscles. He doesn’t know how to use them just yet. He crouches to pounce, but his legs splay too wide on the slick marble flooring.
“Ergo draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica ADJURAMUS TE!” Beatrice finishes. Together, her weapon and Mori’s phase fully into the ethereal realm. They will target the demonic part of Ivan with this abjuration’s full force. Its bow shock is now extreme. A bright light that briefly turns the Furze Bank HQ executive water closet into a light house tower. Beatrice lunges forward, Mori shoots, the still awkward demon wolf as Ivan lashes out with iron-fanged jaws. Sword and bullet strike the beast carrying with them their bow shocks of light. Ivan’s fangs clamp down on Beatrice’s leg. The exorcism rocks through Ivan’s body. It evaporates all demonic flesh it touches – leaving only human flesh behind. The Pride Eater is excised. Nothing of it remains. Ivan shrinks back to his original shape and stature. He is completely naked. All his clothes are in shreds on the floor. Beatrice cries out in pain – looking down at her leg-wound oozing blood and poison.
“Einfach! Halt!” The guards have kicked the frosted doors open and are drawing their pistols.
“Time to go!” Mori shouts. He grabs Ivan with one arm. Beatrice follows, but has to limp as searing pain shoots up her leg. Mori levels his gun at the globular glass window, waits one more second for the exorcism curse to fully fall away, and fires. The far larger than normal bullets riddle it with enormous holes. It swiftly loses integrity and showers down, filling the room with shards. Permanent curses, woven into their clothing, protect them from the sharp, though mundane rain. The guards, however, are not quite so lucky. They flinch, cover their heads, and slip back down the stair for protection.
Ivan is shaking, incoherent, covered in little nicks from the glass. An ugly black scar has formed where the Pride Eater entered him. He is yammering Russian, English, and occasionally tries to howl. Beatrice takes his other arm as she and Mori run to the edge of the tower. Dropping all other curses, they jump off while yelling the “Pluma!” curse together and then “Una” as Ivan starts to fall faster. The shared curse energy causes them to descend at a gradual if still gut-wrenching pace. It’s like a fast lift down.
“Well, you wanted to get Asmodeus’s attention. To draw it away from Myra. I think we did that in spades.” Mori says with a cynical half-smile as they glide toward the street with Ivan between them.
“Grand spades,” Beatrice replies. “That howl rang all through Hell and into half of Berlin. Who would’ve expected Ivan here was so far gone? I thought if we convinced him to come with us after seeing the demons, he might take us up.”
Mori gives his crow-cackle laugh. “You think he’d be scared into doing what’s right? Hah! No plan survives contact with the enemy.” He shifts his gaze to her leg. “That looks bad.”
Beatrice nods. “It is. Some of his venom got me. We need a healer.” She can feel it burning in her veins. Her head is already starting to grow heavy. The outer borders of her vision blurring.
They land on the pavement. Beatrice stumbles. A few onlookers watch them in stunned surprise. One points at Ivan. In the distance, sirens begin to blare. Far above, flashlights are gleaming through the wreckage that was once the Furze Bank HQ executive water closet. Ivan suddenly seems to realize his surroundings and covers his private parts while making a scrunched-up expression of embarrassment. Mori throws his leather jacket over the Russian after transferring his ammo to his jeans pockets. He’s light on it anyway. The jacket is rather long and Ivan is rather short. The combination results in a modicum of modesty – even if Ivan does look like he’s wearing a high-cut onesie.
“I’d call this a serious wardrobe improvement,” Mori says, cuffing the still confused Ivan on the shoulder. “Man, pink is definitely not your color.”
Beatrice swoons a little as her vision darkens for a second. She’s not in the laughing mood. That look on Myra’s face is still stuck in her head. A piece of her is still with Myra down in that hell. She looks to her leg. “Left a piece of Hell in me too,” she says, imagining it’s pretty incoherent, but not caring. “Let’s get moving before you have two invalids to deal with,” she says lifting her head to Mori. It takes far too much effort.
“Well, it’s a good thing we know a healer, isn’t it?” Mori replies. “Come on. It’s off to Marienkirche to see our old friend Sadie. Glad we had a back-up plan.”
We move swiftly down the halls toward Ivan Volkov – pausing at corners to make sure we’re unobserved. Mori is handy with his brief case. It has a switch that shoots out a signal interruption for any cameras in the halls. Mundanes and their tech are our most likely trouble up until the point when Ivan starts the big sploosh. I’m not too concerned about actual live demons rampaging right now. But our contacts with Felix and Gannon have me more than a little freaked out. Their wisp-hungry paw-prints, claw and tooth marks are all over the damned place. Part of me is wary of stumbling on mangled corpus, blood, viscera. Less likely this side of Hell. But man were those guys freaky with their combined curse resistance and pigs in shit wallowing happiness with just plain wrong. I slip my sweaty hand into my pocket. I produce my cell phone. I breathe out. I turn it on. The time is now frigging 6:23. I have 7 minutes left to live.
Omnis scientashows Volkov again alone. He’s shaken off the red-head fem exec. He licks the last of the crumbs off his fingers, then thrusts a hand in a pocket. He pulls out an ear piece. Plunks it into his right ear. Flipping out his phone, he produces what looks like a play list. But he doesn’t turn it on yet.
“Really?” I whisper to my parents.
Beatrice shushes me. “He’s right down the hall,” she mouths more than speaks.
“But, musical dumps? Really?” I mouth back, pointing to the scene floating before us.
Mori smirks. I know he’s trying not to nervously laugh. He clasps me on the shoulder instead. Trying to reassure. But the effect is opposite. He does this every time he’s worried around me. Doesn’t calm me down for squat.
Ivan approaches a door. He produces a key card. We rush up to the corridor corner about 50 feet behind him. I peak around. The facing hall is bordered on one side by clear glass. I have an unobstructed view of the Berlin skyscape unfolding for miles and miles. The lights of evening are flickering on in the gloaming. Those distant storms have mostly departed leaving behind feathery cirrus that shade the sky in hews of pink and blue. At the end of this picturesque hall Ivan comes to a stop. The omnis scientafades out as I see him in the flesh for the first time. My weirdo thought is – I’m taller than this man.
Ivan swipes his card over the reader. There is a little ‘beep’ as his access confirms. He turns the latch and I get a glimpse of marble floor ending in a platform edged with golden stairs beyond. He passes through the threshold. The door begins to swing shut behind him.
Mori lifts a hand. “Teneo,” he incants, casting a holding curse on the door. It swings shut and seems to close. But I know better.
Omnis scienta returns as we walk down the hall to the door. Ivan is moving across a marble floor with metal eagles ringed by circles embossed into it. There are three eagles. The eagle to the right appears poised to prey on the center eagle while the eagle to the left looks away. What they stand for, I’ve got no clue. But they seem way too fascist for comfort. Ivan comes to a set of ascending stairs as we reach the outer door. The stairs are golden and rise along the side of a black wall of glossy marble in juxtaposition to the white floor. The stairs terminate at a golden platform facing a frosted glass pair of double doors, each with another eagle emblem upon it.
We stop at the outer door as Ivan approaches his inner sanctum. He pauses for a moment, flips out his phone, then pushes play. Omnis scienta pulses with the sound of a revving engine and squealing wheels followed by heavy metal music.
“Gimmie fuel, gimmie fire, gimmie that which I desire!” rocks our eardrums through the sensor. Ivan Volkov is playing Metallica.
He lifts his arms wide to finger tap a rhythm. With that goblin grin, his face looks kinda like a bat. Rocking out to Metallica in a pink polo shirt. OK, then, a pink bat. He breathes deep, then opens the double doors. Inside is a globe-like chamber that seems to jut out into the sky. Most of the wall and ceiling is glass. The floor is a semi-circle of black marble. Toward the center is a raised section of golden metal. It’s probably actual fracking gold. Upon it is perched a single golden toilet with a golden bidet beside it. Ivan makes his way toward the toilet.
We’re still at the outer door. Mori gives it a little push. The latch never caught. Mori’s Teneocurse held it. It slides open without a sound. We enter, pouring in over the white marble and three eagles. The door shuts behind us, releasing a spark as Mori lets go of his curse. Holding two curses at the same time takes serious concentration. Mori’s had omnis scienta going for more than a half hour now. That’s true grit. Mori doesn’t show it. Hasn’t even broken a sweat.
We move halfway up the stairs, careful to stay out of sight through the doors. They’re frosted glass. So semi-opaque. If we bob our heads forward a little, we can see Ivan’s form as a pink and khaki blur through them. Omnis scientashows quite a bit more. I’m kinda thinking I don’t want to watch what happens next.
Ivan is on the pedestal. He turns toward the glass and looks out over Berlin. The sound of Metallica is raging through our sensor. Mori lifts his hand and whispers – visus capitis – adding a modification to his sensor. Our perspective of Ivan blurs and shifts once more. We are now seeing through his eyes. Thank goodness. Looks like we’ll get the PG-13 version.
The view from where he’s standing is spectacular. At his perch he appears to be flying over the city. The glass walls bend in, giving the illusion that his platform toilet floats on a golden pedestal in a circle of black marble in midair. Above are the fading colors of twilight sky. In front, to the right and left, the German countryside rolls ever outward. Dim, but still visible in shades, mists, and little twinkling lights. Below on every side is all of Berlin bustling with evening activity. Cars and trains move like little toys. People seem insect size. Ivan’s fiddling with his trousers. He begins to unbuckle his belt. There is a zipping sound. A rustling of clothes. My phone says 6:29. The shit is literally about to go down on those poor people heading out to dinner or slogging through the still scorching evening outside air.
Ivan lowers himself onto the golden toilet with a happy sigh. He makes little motions with his hands to the music. “I am king,” he says in English at a break in the song and then sings along, badly and off-key – “Oooo wanna burn, fuel is pumping engines…”
There is a loud farting sound. I flinch. It sounds like a trumpet – continuing on for a good five seconds. No-one ever said anything about temporary Hell gates being aromatic. Well, maybe not entirely PG-13 either.
“Faetor oculorum,” Mori encants, now weaving in a fourth spell to our shared sensor. At first there is no distinction other than some red strands that look like fire rising up around Ivan. Yeah. That’s demonic influence all right. Like the guy has been rolling around in it. But other than Ivan the environment starts out pretty clear.
Ivan is still singing in narcissistic fugue — “Gimmie fuel…” and then a wet ‘plop!’
Below him, the glistening black marble pools. It seems to swirl hungrily. The little golden pedestal appears to float upon it like an autumn leaf skimming the surface of a dark, bottomless sea. I startle as a ripple of purple-red light flashes in its depths. Tiny, at first. But growing in size. I have a vision of a shark beginning to rise toward an unsuspecting sea otter floating on the surface. Another light appears. Then another. The edges of the marble begin to flicker, steadily bleeding into a circle of spectral red flame.
“This is it, Myra,” Beatrice says. “When I say go, I need you to run to that circle. Mori and I will make a distraction. Hopefully one that will last a year.”
I don’t fully get what she’s saying. But I guess that’s the whole point. I’m committed now. Hell I’m pretty much defiled. I will never be able to scrub this whole event from my memory. Ever. I nod, “I’m ready mom,” I reply. I can’t say ‘I love you’ because that would feel like a too-permanent goodbye. But I grab her arm and squeeze. She is suddenly holding me. So is Mori. He is just there as this big crow-like presence.
“Now Beatrice,” Mori says softly.
Beatrice strokes my hair, looks into my eyes and chants the curse — “Indespectus.” My body suddenly fades into invisibility. I hold my right hand up. I don’t see anything. I have gone completely blank. I turn to see if I have a shadow. Not even that. It’s a little disconcerting. Frack. Mom’s never used this one in my presence before. She’s still holding onto my left arm. I’m still getting my new invisible bearings when she taps it and invokes the second curse – “Infernum Clavis!”
Oh shit! That’s my name curse! Sparks immediately begin to fall from my arm. These are not entirely invisible.
Beatrice is pushing me forward. “Go!” she says, throwing away all caution. I spring up, driven by some kind of inner surge of bravery I didn’t know I had. There’s a niddling in my mind that I actually trained for this action. My muscles sure as hell remember what to do for some reason. I’m at the glass frosted doors. Mori has already rushed forward to kick one open. With his right hand he has pushed a third button on his briefcase.
Not the third button!
I spring forward through the door. My curse-enhanced sight shows the magic circle – now clearly formed. It is fully red and double ringed. Angry words in alien tongues fill out the gap. From the black marble, three spectral shapes have arisen. They appear to be formed of flesh and sinew without skin. Humanoid. But at least 7 feet tall. Their heads are skull-like but taper in the back toward points. Their hands distend into wicked claws the size of hedge shears. Before now, I’d only heard tales of the Pride-Eater demons. Yet here were three towering directly in front of me. Clutching hungrily at the glistening red tethers streaming off of Ivan’s inner wisp. They’ve gathered over Ivan – who is now playing the air drums on his golden toilet. One reaches out to stroke at Ivan’s head with a massive talon. It flicks some of Ivan’s thoughts from his mind. They appear as more red mist. The demon’s long tongue flickers out and laps at the bad-thought-mist like a cat lapping milk.
“Swallow future, spit out hope…” I hear it hiss along to the song. Hey, demons can enjoy Metallica too, I suppose. Information I really didn’t want to know.
My boots squeak as I race across the marble floor toward the circle. I’ve got more than a little fear driving me on now. Pride-Eaters are serious bad mojo. The three demons don’t notice me. Ivan is too wrapped up in his Metallica and hubris-high to hear the sounds of my footfalls. I definitely notice the serious stench of his farts and offal. Whew! I don’t give a flying fuck at the godsdamn moment as I make my way for a portion of the Hell gate not presently occupied by demons.
Mori is in the doorway. He pressed the third button, remember? There’s a whirring sound as his briefcase begins to transform. Yeah. Cool, right? A frigging transforming briefcase. The front section pops upward, extends and narrows, the bottom section splits, the back section elongates and widens, the handle stiffens and produces an optical scope. A few seconds later, Mori is no longer holding a black briefcase. It’s now a dreadful-looking magical, long-barreled assault rifle. He spins the optical on his scope and lifts his weapon into the ready position. From a pocket in his leather jacket, he produces a blue magazine that, to my curse-sight, crackles with divine energy. What’s he gonna do with that? Protect Ivan?
Not my problem. I am now at the edge of the circle. Sparks are flying from my arm. One of the demons tilts its head curiously at the falling light. It lifts a clawed hand. Its tongue flickers out – tasting the air. It doesn’t see me. But it senses something.
“Hey! Over here!” Beatrice has moved up beside Mori in the double doors. Her rapier is out and is glowing like a golden-silver beam of sunlight through a window on a winter’s day. The demon turns its eyes toward Beatrice.
“Blyat!” Ivan curses as he now sees my parents standing in the door, one holding a full-on overgrown assault rifle, the other a freaking sword. Another loud fart escapes his ass.
Beatrice’s shout has bought me the second I need. I jump into the air, cross the magical circle’s threshold, flip forward, and do a hand plant like a skater on my left arm. My hand hits the marble and for a moment I am suspended upside-down — staring into that black, flickering with red, marble. My active name-curse dumps sparks into the gateway which lights up brighter. It flashes once. Like a camera shudder opening. I fall face-first through it.
Darkness surrounds me. The sparks from my arm drift about me like lazy stars as I fall. My stomach is now in my throat. I shout “fuuuuccckkkk!” I can’t help it. I’m plummeting to my death or worse. Above, Ivan and the demons are rapidly receding, they don’t even notice me. No Earthly sound seems to cross the threshold I just breached. Though the harsh ethereal scrapes of Pride-Eater claws is quite loud. I shift to face the direction of my fall. Ahead is blackness and a little rainbow dot. The dot rapidly grows as I approach it. It bends into a rainbow arch that seems to stand on a rainbow floor. As I drift still closer, the colored archway moves in three dimensions – becoming a circle. It is the frigging Arch of Time. To pass from one world to the next, you have to go through it. Time seems to slow. The darkness in the center of the Arch bends toward me. I feel that I bend toward it. There is a ‘pop!’ and a feeling like I’ve been turned inside out. I am through! The darkness blurs away into a greenish glow as I tumble onto hot sand and take a gulp of noxious air.
I somersault three or four times before I come to a sprawling stop. Spread eagle on the ground, I look up at the green as goo colored sky. To my left, oily clouds of black smoke rise from an array of jagged dark-metal towers. Above, a merciless sun beats down. Beside the sun is what looks like a floating black web. It casts shade below it – providing pitiful relief to the scorching lands.
“We did it!” I choke in the rotten-eggs air. “We fucking did it. Holy Hell! Oh my gods! I’m in fucking Hell. What do I do now!?”
Scribbler’s Fantastical Workshop 
