The scent of solid oaken pews and the sounds of almost a thousand devoted believers singing their hearts out took up just as much memory as the actual sermons themselves. Parables of properly handling money while giving a tithe to God framed deeper messages of sin, fire and brimstone, and the downfalls of man’s flawed character. None rang out more consistently from that preacher’s pulpit than the vibrant scourging of the sin of pride. ‘Pride goeth before a fall!’ the old man would rail, fervent belief giving him energy beyond his years. And yet, it was hard not to be prideful as I stood on a pillar of conjured stone in the early desert light just as the brutal sun started ramping up, giving the air an almost liquid quality as the heat seeped into every crevice. Even with the hints of Arizona’s mirages trying to play tricks on my eyes, my army evoked the deepest pride a man could possess . . . success!
Roughly a thousand strong force of crystalline giants marching towards the gutted hulk of Phoenix, Arizona was enough to bring the tiniest tear to my eye. Glorious, simply glorious. Each one full of enough condensed mana from days in the blazing desert sun to fight for three days without end. [We going with Operation Praise Baby Jesus or Quake and Bake?]
I laughed just a little, Kraken’s latest obsession was my memory of Talladega Nights had him renaming all of my plans and auto-mental background processes. “Quake and Bake baby!” I answered, chuckling even more. “Quake and Bake.”
At my command, Kraken broadcasted the plan to my army, specifically to the earth elemental sergeants in charge of their own mini-platoons. A thousand golems with an elemental sergeant assigned to every group of fifty meant that I had twenty earth elementals ready to do my bidding. This particular plan was the brainchild of forcing myself to come up with a better plan than what I had last night. I could either storm each freaking skyscraper and then seal up the portals and then spend days wasting my time tackling the thousands of square miles of suburbia around Phoenix or . . . I could have my earth elemental sergeants shake the whole thing down for me.
Two groups of fifty golems, each with their own sergeant, peeled off to the left and right respectively as they began the long task of storming and collapsing all of the suburban housing around Phoenix. They were under orders to capture and bring back anyone that wasn’t some kind of undead or evil creature but everything else was going to be one with Mother Earth. The other nine hundred golems with their sergeants started marching on the city.
[I wish I could cry! I’d like to be human enough sometimes just to gleek out a bit of eye moisture with what I’ve wrought!]
Ignoring my over-dramatic familiar, I hopped on the shoulders of the biggest sergeant as we went past the wide eyes of the Luneks staring at my procession. Acantha stood at the corner of a building, scanning the waves of crystalline soldiers. “You too!” I called out. “Get your lazy ass on a big one and let’s Quake and Bake!”
The smaller corporate buildings barely put up a fuss. Creatures of the night tend not to be morning people, especially considering the environment of the morning. The shadowy things evaporated under a single salvo of a golem’s solar flare cannon or a charged crystal bullet and the zombies were nothing more than cockroaches beneath their wide plated feet. We took each of the smaller buildings one at a time as the elementals used their own innate abilities to shake and sink the buildings into the ground, conjuring dirt and stone to completely fill up any and all cracks as my minions outside handled any of the fleeing monsters.
Undead spiders the size of horses tried to run for it only to meet the waiting ranks of stone golems that almost seemed eager to test out their warhammers. With Kraken and the sergeants synchronously keeping everything in line, the silent communication made this entire process creepy. There were no yelled orders, screaming commanders, booms from old-school firearms. The only sounds were screams from the flattened monsters and the squeals of the buildings as their internal structures came apart under the onslaught of magic.
I watched it all with almost bored, dead eyes. It almost seemed like a joke, an irritating interruption to what I actually wanted to do. I did not want to be out here cleaning up a fucking city. I did not want to be in this godforsaken desert burning and flattening any and all possibilities of future opposition. I wanted to be in my fucking smoothie jungle wiling the time away with roasted catfish from my river and a goddamn smoothie! My simmering rage at this grand waste of time that wasn’t actually a waste of time started to roll to a boil.
[Quake and Bake part 2,] I ordered. [Speed this shit up Kraken.] Sending my familiar what I had in mind, I felt his excitement spike.
[Operation Praise Baby Jesus it is!]
Instead of sinking and taking one building at a time, Operation Praise Baby Jesus took a more scholarly approach. It put physics to work for us. The buildings had been sinking down as we moved through the city but now we were simply going to push the skyscrapers over like a felled tree and let the weight of their concrete and steel frames do most of the work for us. [TIMBER!] Kraken screamed as the first skyscraper shook, its frame rippling from the sheared gash in the bottom put there by the elementals. Thirty stories of mass fell over into the next set of buildings, backfiring all manner of projectiles from the tearing metal that bounced off my and Acantha’s shields. As a cloud of dust exploded into the air from the impact, the portal in the basement came into view in all of its purpley glory.
Three golems stepped forward and launched a slew of sunstone grenades through it just before two sergeants sealed and buried it two hundred feet deep. Having an army made this easy. Step one, knock over skyscraper with summoned elementals. Two, kill anything that comes out, especially if it resembles anything from a horror movie. Three, grenade/seal/bury otherworldly portal ASAP. Four, sink all debris into the earth and move on. It took all day but the process was easy. I barely had to lift a finger as my army steamrolled all opposition. Turns out, even demons from another plane of existence can be flattened like errant crickets if you hit them with enough mass. Bugs, zombies, demons, skeletal necromancers . . . all fell to Operation Praise Baby Jesus.
“And that . . . is how you fucking clean up a city!” I declared, hopping off my ride and rounding on Acantha as I shielded my eyes from the glare of the setting sun. “Questions? Comments? Concerns?”
“I uh, how the . . .” she stuttered. “How did you expect ME to do what you just did? You used an army!? I work with fire but this is a desert! Completely unreasonable!”
“Fine, fine,” I conceded, holding my hands up a bit even as I halfheartedly teased. “Not my fault you couldn’t handle one little task. I woulda thought that an alien witch would easily be able to take on one desert pustule.”
The snap-hiss of a down live-wire crackled through the air heralding the opening of a portal. Whipping around as several more opened up off the east towards the suburban part of Phoenix, insane laughter rang out much louder than any human had the right to be.
“So much light in these morsels! Feast my children! Bring me the shiny one full of power! His soul will fill me for centuries!”
I didn’t know where they came from simply because it didn’t make sense. One second I was reveling in the feeling of accomplishment and the next I was shoulder deep in swarms of feral zombies screaming for blood. Humongous beasts, amalgamations of draconic skeletons, sat at the edge of the city, their clawed feet sunk into the ground as their ribs opened up to form a giant circle where within that format a portal nested. At least fifteen of the portable portal skeletons vomited an unending stream of undead and demons. I tried to get a good look at the freak floating above his rising tide of rancid minions but the horde had my full attention.
At least half of the zombies were armored and the rest were misshapen as if the necromancer had experimented on them, adding extra layers of dead muscle and bone or combining several bodies together to form a sickly whole.
My golems really shone in this kind of battle though. The facts simply didn’t work out in the other dude’s favor, but that would change if I couldn’t get those main portals closed. Undead flesh clashed with unyielding, magically reinforced crystal as the backline of golems opened up with crystalline bullets that completely decimated the shrieking hordes. That bought me enough of a reprieve for me to glare at Acantha who overcame her shock at the sudden turn of events and jumped in to assist. As she furiously chanted from the back of the golem she was riding, a ball of eerie green fire raged into existence, spinning and glowing like a miniature star.
Just before she released it, I pulled on my stores of power and simultaneously softened the hard packed dirt in front of my army with my earth sorcery while conjuring incredible amounts of water, turning the area between the front line and the portals into a thick muck that hampered the undead’s advance. The hundred or so undead that had actually made it into the ranks of my golem army were quickly put down by a few smacks of a hammer or a crystal round but two of the fuckers actually got near me.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Swinging Gungnir with my enhanced strength, the first zombie’s chest exploded inward as mace-form Gungnir flashed with power but the second zombie used the first as a springboard to aim for my head. A holy-water arm lashed out and bisected it in mid-air, saving me from the spray of rotting guts. The smell alone was enough to add fuel to the flames of my anger that had been stewing all day. Drawing on my power yet again, I focused on the giant portal skeleton thing and forced the earth beneath and around it to shoot up spikes of pure granite, skewering every part of the abomination and shutting off the portal. Again and again, I focused my magic, slowly cutting off the supply of enemies even as the floating necromancer screamed in rage.
“Swat him,” I growled at Acantha who was still charging her fireball. Reaching out with a tendril of mana, I reinforced her personal stores of energy with my own and the fireball grew to the size of a beachball.
“Wrath of Sol!” Acantha screamed, leaning back and launching the fireball into the sky where it settled about fifty feet above all of us. Opening her eyes, I noticed that they blazed the same color as her floating ball of death. Screaming again, fully in the throes of exercising her power, Acantha pointed and the floating fireball lanced out dense spears of flame that completely incinerated everything it touched. Within the space of five seconds, every portal-bearing skeleton had been torched to ash.
[Focus!] Kraken reprimanded as I looked around in awe as the destruction my vassal had produced. I had to give her credit, holy fuck that was cool! But Kraken was right. With a mental command, every single golem focused on the necromancer and as one, unerringly blew him out of the sky. As the shattered body pieces fell out of the sky, Acantha leaned forward, screaming and pointing as the fireball rocketed into the falling remains, detonating the pieces out of existence.
Putting the muck to good use, I had it clean up the battlefield before returning this part of Arizona to its normal dusty scenery. Acantha collapsed as I pulled my mana feed back to myself, her stores of energy completely spent on that apocalyptic display of. Leaving myself an honor guard of a hundred golems and two sergeants, I had the rest of my army join the cleanup crew that was storming all of nearby suburbia while I made my way back to the crowd of Luneks holed up west of here.
Severak and his group of Luneks were not exactly excited to see me, but their relief was apparent in the complete change of attitude. Apparently, summoning a crystal army that can wipe out a freaking city engenders its own form of respect. Remy and Fernando, on the other hand, were ecstatic to see Acantha, who in all fairness had probably kept them alive and was only barely associated with the person that murdered their friend and unshackled their minds. Keeping my petty thoughts to myself, I kept myself busy off to the side by conjuring stone dishware and putting conjured water in the cups and Centauri meal cubes on the plates. After making sure Acantha saw me pointing at them to let her know that it was available, I walked off to my dome-icile, haha, not domicile.
Disappointment was all that I found there. This is the spot I had picked out for my golems to bring me people or prisoners that they’d picked up from covering the city and suburban area but nobody was here. Other than the gaggle of people I didn’t recognize in the building with the Luneks, nobody else was alive? Really? Walking into my dome, a voice I hadn’t heard in a long time greeted me.
“Power agrees with you, mortal.” Sitting in my house on my conjured stone chair was Hermes himself, or Himself? Not sure how the pronouns work since deities are fucking real. Last time I saw him, he was an eight foot golden gymnast’s dream whose presence you literally couldn’t feel. This time he was quite a bit shorter and definitely more material around the edges, a bit less godly if you will.
“I have less to offer in the way of refreshments,” I said cautiously, again conjuring stone dishware and filling with water and Centauri meal cubes respectively. One plate in the middle I did put the last bit of my precious Taco Bell that I got from New Miami. “My apologies for the lack of comfort, I wasn’t expecting guests.”
Waving it off as he pulled out a cigar, looking at me for assent before lighting it. Giving a quick nod, I shaped the floor to have another chair and sat across from Hermes as I rested my head on my knuckles. Sitting across from a deity could mean any number of things, although mythos and experience would intonate that most of those possibilities were nothing good. “Worry not,” he said, giving the air a good puff of delectable smoke. “I’m not here on business and since you’ve clearly divined, I’m a bit uhm . . . less. But, since that gives me a bit more freedom, I thought I’d check up on the last mortal recipient of a gift from me. What makes you even more interesting is that you’ve survived encounters with both Flamel and Merlin, not to mention a few angels and demons. I’ve so enjoyed watching your tumultuous life but what bothers me is the simple lack of connection you’ve had! Numerous women, most of them incredibly beautiful, have walked in and out of your life and none of them so much as garnered a look from you! Why!”
“Huh?”
The almost incoherent rant continued. “What good is a mortal’s story without romance? Where is the fire of passion to temper the throes of combats? The softness to bend the steel? Adam and Eve, Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Ron Weasley and Hermoine Granger!”
“The last two aren’t even real!” I interjected only to get waved off again.
“Don’t beleaguer the point mortal! Your life is almost boring but would be incredible if you had some damn romance! AND . . . since I’ve been diminished due to my overt helping with one measly acorn, I have even more time to gaze at the temporary fleetings of mortality that come and go like glorious sparks! But you! You’re an ember with a potential for a fire! You can live so much longer than the rest of them!”
The stone cup cracked in my hand. “It was your acorn that ate my woman,” I oh so quietly snarled.
“Another twist to what could be an epic romance for all time! Stolen love! Heartbroken hero finds solace in another, forever pining for his true love!” Hermes almost fell out of his chair as he leaned back. “His lovers fading away through the centuries as he endures past their mortal coil! Oh what fire!”
“What you mean to say is that you’re bored!” I squinted at the deity in front of me who’s eyes held an unhinged gleam. When Zeus was bored, he raped chicks while in the form of a bull or a swan. I really don’t want to know what a bored messenger deity would do. That desire ran aground on the beach of my don’t-give-a-fuckness right now. Sure, I could bang a couple forest ladies who were more than willing back home, or maybe spark something up with some hot alien gal in New Miami or a freaky one in New Richmond, but I don’t see anyone else getting ready to assault the holds of the undead. My concerns right now are so much greater than getting it on, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why it was different for this particular home invader.
“Look, I’m not here to threaten you mortal, I like you.” Hermes paused to examine his cigar and bask in its scent before giving another puff. “But I’m not the only one around here, and you’re turning into a crux point. The more you involve yourself with the broader tapestry, the more you’re going to get noticed. Just a friendly warning from someone who’d like your story to continue, assaulting the Poles will put you on the map. That’s all I can say without another judgment.”
“Did you uh, did you ever watch the show Boston Legal?” I calmly asked even as my butthole was quaking in fear. “Not sure how up to date on mortal shows you are.”
“William Shatner is brilliant!” Hermes screamed, hopping up and pantomiming. “I object!” Sitting back down, he looked at me with an upraised eyebrow. “Why? What are you getting at?”
“Well, let’s talk about this like lawyers do . . . we can talk in hypotheticals,” I mused. “Hypothetically, what might happen if I were to hypothetically continue on with my plans to assault the undead fortresses in the North and South? Only hypothetically speaking of course.”
“Oooh, acting! Just like Shatner!” Hermes grinned, his cigar smoke framing his features, giving him a smoky trickster god look. “Let’s say, hypothetically speaking of course, if you were to hypothetically continue with your plans, then hypothetically, several hypothetical options might happen. Hypothetical one, you might be drafted into the Judgment Paladin Corps of Hyperion god of Light due to your effectiveness at combating all kinds of evil. Hypothetical two, you might trigger a greater war with the Lich Empire and their Vampiric allies. And third, hypothetically speaking of course, you might become the focus of multiple deities of the different flavors, like the hypothetical deity of love since you’ve lost your own loved one, the hypothetical deity of justice and light, the hypothetical deity of death and the underworld. If you hypothetically continue on your course of action, then the minions of those hypothetical subjects might just turn their eye upon you.”
“Fuck.”
“And what woe would betide the mortal who hypothetically slew a fire dragon by drowning? Or murdered a witch who was within her rights to colonize a scoured planet? Or what might happen if anyone learns that a certain sorcerer with incredible power is building his base on said scoured planet? Especially a sorcerer that is friends with a cultivator? Oh my, the drama!”
“Fuck.”
“What would the Sects think? Their own sorcerer slaves long dead and their enchanted items gone to dust as their own cultivating children grow up without such comforts or trappings of power? What a prize such a powerful sorcerer would be!”
“FUCK.”
“But hypothetically speaking of course, what might they all think if they learned that a sorcerer single-handedly cleansed his world, what power that hypothetical sorcerer must have to be able to take all of that on by himself! Who would dare bring such threats to a mighty being of magic when gifts might turn his benevolence on them with much less pain or loss?” Hermes leaned in closer to me, the smoke moving out of the way as his intense eyes locked onto mine. “Hypothetically speaking, mortal sorcerer, do you know why Merlin is untouched? Why does Flamel roam around and nobody dares to come near him except in pure supplication? Fear. Both have immense power and are feared. Wild magic and poisonous alchemy can touch many from afar.”
“Is it better to be loved or feared,” I whispered, weighing the hypotheticals in my mind.
“In your case, feared. Much better to be feared.”
A cold shiver went down my spine as I considered my options even as a small question poked at the back of my mind. “Tell me, hypothetically, what’s in it for you? Why even tell me? What does one such as yourself have to do with a mortal like me? My slice of eternity does not conflict with your own and I can’t see any hypothetical benefits for you?”
“You call it life, but we call it a Game. And what better way to play the game then plan many, many moves ahead.” The sound of thousand falling feathers rushed by as Hermes vanished in front of my eyes leaving a small round marble on the plate where my precious Taco Bell used to be.
A trap. Everything in me screamed that it was a trap. That little green-blue marble that resembled a miniaturized Earth. There wasn’t even a note next to it to explain to me what the fuck I was looking at. After a minute of arguing with Kraken about how to go about figuring this out, I cracked and touched it with a finger.
I’m not the deity of magic, but sometimes things get lost in the mail, sometimes, things like this.
The words rang through my skull as a very condensed pack of information shot from the marble up through my arms and into my brain where Kraken caught it, redirecting to a quarantine container of mental sorcery. As we both slowly consumed the packet after many intense scans, it became clear exactly what it was . . . instructions on how to make a real Grimoire.