The knights of New Byzantium marched Cassie and I through the swamps toward their boats. Cassie was still out of it, and I had to half carry her. She was very pale and was deeply inhaling through her nose and slowly exhaling out of her mouth. “We’ll be ok,” I whispered in her ear. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” The knights didn’t say a word as we loaded into their small boats and set sail toward their ship. It’s very difficult to get into a small wooden rowboat without touching the water at all, and it’s even harder to get someone else that’s only half conscious into a boat without either of you touching the water. Cassie, the slit-helmeted knight, and I all got into the same rowboat; he rowed while I held onto Cassie resting her head on my shoulder. “What’s your name?” I asked the knight.
“I am Sir Shen,” he replied simply.
“Good to meet you, Sir Shen though I admit it would be a more pleasant experience without the abduction,” I quipped.
“I apologize for any inconvenience, but thou hast business with the emperor,” he replied completely seriously. If I had been in a better mood, I would have tried to crack his ultra-serious demeanor, but Cassie was half dead, and we were being kidnapped.
“Was she submerged in the waters?” Shen asked me, gesturing to indicate he was talking about Cassie.
I nodded somberly. “Her soul has been stained, but as she still has breath, the damage is not permanent. It would heal naturally in time, but the court wizards may accelerate the process,” he said. “If I am not mistaken, thou have the smell of the stain as well.”
“I pulled her out,” I said shaking at the thought of the water touching my skin… no, my soul. “You offer aid to someone Constantine might execute?”
Shen smiled at me, “The emperor rarely dispatches assets.”
“He might think I’m a better asset dead than alive,” I voiced my fears.
The rowboats reached the ship; like everything in this goddamned place, it was grey. The wood was grey, the sails were grey, even half of the crew was grey, but the flag that flew above the sail was red with a yellow double-headed eagle. The colors were muted, but at least they weren’t grey; the ship was large with several non-knights, presumably citizens of New Byzantium to run/clean the ship. I didn’t get to see much of it as we were hurried below the deck. I’m not sure if the room we were in was supposed to be a prison, but it was a small room with no windows and nothing on the walls. Shen directed me to sit on the ground; I eased Cassie down and rested her head in my lap.
The journey was long… it was probably only a few of hours, but it felt like it took forever sitting in a little box wondering if my friend was ever going to be ok while a silent knight that would execute me in a heartbeat if ordered loomed over us. It was also a very bumpy ride; I guess whatever offshoot of Styx we were on was turbulent, or maybe we had moved on to the main river. You might be wondering why I didn’t grab Cassie and try to escape the knights; well, I sure as fuck couldn’t beat them. Maybe a few of them, but they don’t die easily, and thirty plus two wizards? I wouldn’t have gotten two feet away before they chopped my legs off and carried me to Constantine. After an hour or so I rummaged through Cassie’s bag and found some chips and water. I tried to get her to eat, but she only drank a few sips of water. I laid down and tried to sleep; whatever was coming next, I’d need my strength. I was asleep for maybe a couple of hours when I awoke to the ship slowing.
“Are we there?” I asked groggily.
“Nearly,” Shen replied. “Come.”
Cassie had regained some of her color and was able to walk on her own while I carried the bag. The ship had come to a stop next to a great wooden dock. The sailors were tying the boat down and deployed its anchor. There were numerous other ships with regular people (save for a grayish tint to their skin) unloading and loading goods to go to different parts of the empire as well as a navy: twenty or so ships identical to the one we were on. Beyond the dock were enormous stone walls; they were at least 100 feet tall with a huge wooden gate that was open. Through the gate was an entire city with various wooden homes and buildings; I couldn’t see it from where I was, but I knew from my last visit that on the edge of the wall on a large hill was the biggest castle I’d ever seen. Granted, it was the only castle I’d ever seen, but it was huge with multiple towers some of which were even higher than the walls.
As we walked through the city, the people moved out of our way, and some even hid. In addition to protecting the empire from external threats, the knights dealt with internal threats. I’m not sure what `that means exactly, but I suspect they operate like the Gestapo or the KGB, arresting and either banishing or killing dissenters. Aside from a few small tribes, New Byzantium was the only establishment for the dead in the In Between. Banishment was almost a certain death sentence; death wasn’t permanent for the souls here, but when they reformed, they were reduced to mindless goblins. My point is, this was not a great place to live, but due to the roaming bands of goblins and a huge variety of other creatures in this shithole, there weren’t many other good alternatives. The steps leading to the castle were covered in a huge red rug lined with gold. It was probably the most colorful thing in the In Between; we marched up the steps with Shen ahead of us and a squadron of knights closely behind us. At the top of the stairway were two large wooden doors that were closed. As we reached it, they opened outward revealing the inside of the castle. A large open room awaited us with a variety of doorways leading to different parts of the castle. We went straight ahead through an ornate doorway lined with gold; behind it was a smaller room about the size of a high school classroom comfortably sitting 50-60. At the back of the room was a golden chair with a red cushion and upon it sat a man in purple robes and a golden crown encrusted with precious stones. He looked young, maybe twenty-five (the apparent age of souls has little to do with their age of death but rather how they think of themselves) and easily 6’’3’ or so with broad shoulders; he had olive skin without a tint of grey to it. If his claims are true, he’s been dead for well over 500 years, and even if he’s lying, the Gnosilepides had been dealing with him for at least 200 years. The fact that he was still untainted by the power of the In Between was proof of his will, the only thing that matters here.
The knights had formed a semi-circle around us blocking our exit, and they all knelt. Cassie knelt as well, and after a sigh, I followed. My desire to live ever so slightly surpassed my pride; with a wave of his hand, all of us stood up. The emperor stood himself and walked up to me; he didn’t exactly tower over me, but he was three or four inches taller than me, so I had to look up to meet his gaze. He then glanced over at Cassie. “Leave us,” he said in Latin. No, I can’t speak Latin, but any language can be understood in the In Between.
“Thy highness!” Shen protested.
“Now!” Constantine shouted. “Take the girl with you.” I started to argue when he saw my face and added, “Begin treatment for the stain.” I shut up; they were probably the only people (souls? souples?) in existence that could help her.
“Dante Solace,” the emperor said with a not-so-subtle hint of disdain in his voice.
“Constantine,” I replied. I probably should have referred to him as Emperor Constantine, but I thought he was an asshole, a fact I wasn’t trying particularly hard to hide.
He scrunched his face up as he looked at me with contempt. “You have violated imperial borders; why shouldn’t I have you executed? Particularly because by your oath, you must serve me after death.”
“That wouldn’t be a very good start to a working relationship,” I suggested.
He smirked with half of his mouth as he began to walk around me in circles. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t. I know why you’ve come here.”
“Athena.”
He spun around to look at me with a scowl on his face; I thought he was going to backhand me, but he didn’t. “Her power pales in comparison to the goddess,” he snarled. He regained his composure quickly and began walking again. “Though that is what she calls herself. She is quite a powerful necromancer; we believe she retrieved the knowledge from the place of power your people,” he put emphasis on the word, “people.”
“My people,” I equally emphasized the word, “are dead.”
“And yet the organization lives on.” I couldn’t argue with him there, but the different Gnosilepides chapters rarely communicated. I had only met members from other chapters on a handful of occasions. After a pause, he continued, “When we detected she was using necromancy, we sent a contingent of knights after her; she killed them, so I sent another, and she forced them to obey her will.”
Oh. Shit. Athena had a personal guard of knights of New Byzantium? “They’re slaves? How many of them?” I asked urgently.
“I don’t know. A dozen knights went after her; it’s unlikely she enslaved them all, but none returned,” he said somberly.
“And I suppose you want me to kill her and your soldiers she managed to enslave alone?”
“What else would you have me do? Sending any more knights is obviously an unwise decision; I have contacted an existing chapter of the Gnosilepides, but the earliest they can send reinforcements is over a month,” he said as he walked away from me to stand next to a window. The first rays of the grey sun were hitting the window; it was made of stained glass of various muted colors depicting Constantine crowning himself in the company of knights. “It is what you came here to do, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I replied simply. He was right; I had to kill Athena, or she’d keep coming for me. The next time she attacked, it would be in greater numbers, and Cassie or Carlos could be killed.
Constantine had begun clenching and unclenching his fist repeatedly; as a megalomaniacal narcissist, it was eating him alive to ask someone else for help. “She is on the island at the center of the great lake; it is reachable from the dock by boat. Are you familiar with it?”
“Yeah, there’s where I thought she was,” I sighed. This was at least partially my fault; Kaine and I should have burned every center of power for the Gnosilepides to the fucking ground once the rest of them had died.
“It will take two days for your companion to recover from the stain,” he said turning to look at me once again. “You will depart on the morning of the third day; I will supply you with a ship as well as provisions.” This asshole; I had been looking forward to him asking me for help, but of course, instead he commanded me to help him. Just once, I wanted to see him prostrate himself before another, preferably me.
“Very well,” I said sourly.
He squinted his eyes at me; I don’t know if he was suspicious or if he was holding his need for help against me. “You may stay in one of the guest quarters in the far west tower; feel free to wander about the city, but cause no trouble. I might need you, but I will not tolerate insolence.”
Once I was free from his royal bastard, I went to see Cassie. A knight standing outside of the throne room told me the way; the castle was filled with long hallways and more doors and staircases than anywhere else I’d eve been. She was being held about 10 stories underground in a winding stairway. It seemed to be a tower that went down instead of up. I felt a faint hint of magic behind one of the many identical wooden doors; I threw open the door and saw Cassie. She was naked and unconscious, submerged in some sort of phosphorescent liquid; it was partially transparent but glowing with white light. I respected her modesty as best I could, but I needed to be sure Constantine wasn’t trying to create leverage to force me to do his bidding. There were four cloaked figures standing around her with their hands held high in the air with a silver sigil above each. I wasn’t sure what sort of magic was at play here, but she seemed very tranquil. Upon a closer look, a dark grey fluid was leaking out of her nose, mouth, eyes, and elsewhere. As soon as it touched the glowing liquid, it congealed and sank to the bottom.
“I assume that’s the ‘stain’ you people kept referring to?” I asked quietly.
The wizards stayed silent concentrating on their task, “That’s correct,” a voice said from behind me. It was in a tonal language.
“Hello, Shen,” I said without turning around.
“She will be fine,” he said as he gripped my shoulder. “The wizards have much experience removing the taint.”
“Does it work on your… people? Or only the living?” I asked curiously. It was my understanding that all spirits that fled from eternity eventually became goblins, but if they could remove the taint of the In Between, maybe they could exist perpetually.
Shen hesitated; I suspect he was reluctant to reveal the empire’s secrets, but after a few second he relented. “The magics function on thy people as well as mine; however, with each application, it becomes less effective.” He didn’t have to say anymore; I understood. These treatments could delay the transformation but not stop it. It wouldn’t matter for Cassie though; presumably, she’d never had the stain removed from her soul, so it should be maximally effective.
We stood there watching the darkness leave her body for almost an hour in silence before Shen convinced me to leave. He offered to show me the city and buy breakfast. Typically, it’s not a great idea to consume anything from the In Between, but I needed my strength to have any hope of stopping Athena… plus I was really hungry.
As we walked out of the castle doors, the first thing I did was light a cigarette with a small orange sigil above my thumb. I took a deep drag and felt the familiar head rush usually accompanied by a morning smoke. Now that the sun was up, there were many more people out in the streets; there were people of all ages and ethnicities. The only thing they all had in common was a greyish tint to their skin; in some cases, people looked almost like dark elves minus the ears, and in others it was more subtle. The city was vast and surprisingly similar to other medieval cities. Ok, granted, I’ve never been to a medieval city, but it looked like a city from Skyrim or the Witcher; there were shops of any variety you can think of: blacksmiths, tailors, cobblers, inns, restaurants, and many, many street vendors. They were selling everything from fresh fruits and vegetables (which looked similar though not identical to their earth counterparts) to cloth and leather. Some of them were even selling cooked food of every variety, Chinese food, Mexican food, burgers, gyros, pizzas, etc. I’m not sure what animals the meat, cheese, or wool was coming from, but clearly the empire contained many acres of land devoted to livestock and fields of produce. There were also people riding/being pulled by numerous beasts; some of the creatures were similar to horses though their sizes varied widely but also giant lizards, amphibian lions, winged unicorns, giant bugs, and other things that looked nothing like anything on earth. I had been here before, but under the cover of night and went straight to the castle, so I was amazed and bewildered. “If you can create any matter you think of, why are there shops?”
Shen chuckled, “Perhaps, thou can create anything thy wishes, but that is a closely guarded secret. Anyone that accomplishes the task by accident is recruited into the order of the knights of New Byzantium.”
“Why would you keep that from them? You could at least devote a few knights to making the desires of the people!” I objected.
Shen hesitated. “The… citizens of the empire require professions, things to occupy their time.”
My nostrils flared in anger and realization. “I see; you invite everyone here to live out a meaningless existence and find the strong among them to fight for you!” I raised my voice, and people began to look at me.
Shen forcefully pulled me into an alleyway between two… apartment complexes? I don’t know what the medieval equivalent is, but large buildings with many people living in them. I had a mind to resist, but I calmed myself with another large drag from the nearly spent cigarette and allowed myself to be herded into a less populated area. “Thou think it unfair?” he whisper-yelled at me. “Very few of them would last two days outside of these walls, but here they can live happy, safe lives, and the…” he paused searching for the right word, “talented among them are able to help protect their friends and family!”
I couldn’t argue with that; 90% of these people would be goblins by now if Constantine hadn’t invited them in. So what if he required work from them, even work that was largely pointless? They were alive and had their minds. I looked Shen in the eyes as I extinguished the butt smoke on my shoe and nodded slowly. He smiled at me, “Now, let’s get some food. I’ll show you my favorite place to eat!”
I expected to go to some fancy restaurant or maybe an inn, but instead we walked to a stand in front of a large housing complex. The stand was of simple construction made of wooden planks nailed together along with a metal tray with multiple indentions filled with different types of food. Apparently, the kitchens of many of the dwellings were used to cook the food which was then rushed to the stand. It was a Mediterranean place set up like Subway where one could choose any number of the options to place onto a plate. It might sound weird to have a food stand in what was essentially a medieval city set up like an American fast food chain, but many, probably most, of the people living in the city lived in the modern(ish) world. The menu was nailed to the front of the stand, and it was in Arabic; luckily, I could still read it thanks to In Between shenanigans. I took Shen’s advice and ordered pita bread; shawarma; from an unlisted animal I was hoping was very similar to a cow, lamb, or chicken; hummus; tzatziki; and various vegetables that were similar to lettuce and tomato, and we made little sandwiches by rolling the pita up. They were served on glass plates which we were expected to return later; the stand was in front of a large park filled with grey trees and plants as well as sidewalks and even benches. We went and sat on one of the benches and ate lunch.
The shawarma sandwich or shwarmwich was surprisingly good; maybe I was just hungry, but it had a delightfully odd tangy flavor. As we ate, I watched a group of children play some version of tag mixed with hide and seek. Maybe this place wasn’t so bad. “They rarely mature into adulthood,” Shen said when he noticed me watching the kids. “For as long as they perceive themselves as children, they shall stay as children. Within the walls, that can be decades, even centuries.” We sat in silence until we finished lunch; after several more minutes, we went to take our plates back to the vendor.
“Any idea what my odds are?” I asked him quietly.
“I witnessed a portion of thy conflict with the skinwalker. I suspect thou has a chance; the emperor would not otherwise bother with thou,” Shen said with a reassuring smile.
“Maybe you’re right,” I returned his smile.
“I certainly wish it to be so,” he said more somberly, a grim expression etched across his face. “If not all of New Byzantium is in jeopardy.”
I spent the rest of the two days exploring the city, visiting Cassie, and reading. The castle had an extensive library; some of the books were attempted recreations of books on earth while others were original to the In Between. The best written one was about a little boy who watched his entire family die before running into the wilderness and starving to death; cheery right? After he died, he became a warrior in the In Between and eventually a distinguished knight of the empire. Almost all of the originals had similar stories: die, survive alone in the In Between, and find comfort in New Byzantium. I don’t know if everyone really loved it here that much, or if Constantine had created some kind of propaganda division. With the emperor’s permission, I was able to enter the second library, the wizard’s library. It was full of a variety of books on magic, both my kind of magic, and the magics of the In Between. I searched the entire room, carefully opening every single book; I was looking for something very specific, the only thing that might make it possible to defeat the knights and Athena. Finally, I found what I needed: tucked inside of a book on hydromancy was a very thin work, more novella than War and Peace. It had thin, cheap pages, and it was handbound in leather with no title. I opened it to the first page on which was written “An Introduction to the Forbidden Art.” It was a book on necromancy; illegal magic is treated harshly by the Gnosilepides, but it’s nothing compared to how the punishments of the empire. Necromancy is an existential threat to all Constantine had accomplished; a single necromancer could conceivably enslave the entire population of New Byzantium. Anyone caught practicing it is tortured to the point of goblinhood and then thrown into Styx; furthermore, any books containing even a mention of the “forbidden art” were to be burned and those in possession of such books were similarly punished. Whoever had hidden this book here had risked great personal harm, and possibly saved the country. The book didn’t have anything advanced in it, but I spent hours redrawing the basic symbol repeatedly until I could easily picture every detail of it.
On the morning of the third day, I woke up to the grey sun peeking through the castle window. I took a drop of my opiate potion; over the past few days, I had taken half of it. Once we got back to earth, I’d have some hard decisions to make, but it was enough to finish the mission. I went to check on Cassie, and she had finally woken up. Aside from being ravenously hungry, she seemed to be perfectly fine. We had pizza with a weird grey sauce, and I told her everything. “So, it’s me and you versus an army of shapeshifting knights controlled by a necromancer that’s probably turbo charged by human souls?” she asked between mouthfuls.
“Your ability to summarize shitty situations is unparalleled,” I said with a grin. With a more serious tone, I started, “Maybe you should,”
“If you say a word about trying to protect me or getting me to stay here, I’ll shoot you,” she announced resolutely without a hint of fear in her voice.
“Fair enough.”
True to his word, Constantine gave us a boat; Shen walked us to the same dock we entered the city from; there were six or seven ships tied up there as well as the navy further out. I wondered which of these badass pirate ships we were going to get. We walked past the first, the second, and we kept walking past all of them. At the very end of the dock, was a small boat barely bigger than a canoe; it had two oars on board as well as a tiny post with a sail tied up upon it. “This is our boat? Why is it so shitty? And where’s our crew?”
“Obviously, thou cannot take more potential slaves to the necromancer!” Shen exclaimed like it was obvious. I guess it was obvious, but I had no fucking clue how to pull the sail down much less turn or slow down.
“How are we supposed to drive this goddamn thing?” I asked belligerently.
“I can sail,” Cassie supplied.
“Good,” he replied. “The vessel is small enough it can be rowed if necessary.” Cassie and I got into the boat, and Shen untied it from the dock. I began rowing it away from shore as he began walking back toward the city.
“Is there anything you can’t do?” I asked Cassie in admiration. “Now, how make boat go?” I said imitating a caveman.
She looked at me nervously, “I might have exaggerated my abilities; I went sailing with my dad once… when I was 5.”
“I see. Maybe we’re more alike than I thought,” I said grinning. “Well, let’s figure it out; surely, we untie something. I knew there was a reason I should have watched One Piece.” Cassie tried untying one of the ropes wrapped around the sail preventing it from opening. Unfortunately, the knot was a professional one. I tried to help, but I couldn’t get it either; after two or three minutes, I summoned my sword and cut the damn thing. The rope snapped the moment the sword touched it and whipped around barely missing Cassie and me as the sail unfolded and opened, catching the wind.
“Oops,” I shrugged. “At least it worked.” A combination of the wind and the current propelled us fast enough that we didn’t have to row. To get to the great lake, we needed get out of this offshoot river and back onto Styx. From there, a few miles south (toward the gates of hell) where another offshoot fed into the lake. At the center of that lake was a lighthouse formerly controlled by the Gnosilepides now owned by Athena.
The boat had two seats: one at the front where Cassie sat and one at the back where I sat; next to me was a lever which shifted the direction the sails were pointing giving us some ability to control the direction of travel. We easily navigated the smaller river, but things became more complicated once we reached Styx; it was filled with thousands and thousands of ships ferrying the souls of the dead. Luckily, we were going downstream, but the ferrymen were forced to navigate around us. I tried to avoid them, but the boat turned slowly in comparison to the ferries. What we were doing felt wrong somehow; like we were interfering with the natural order of the universe. That was a little worrying as the In Between was equipped with processes to prevent that sort of thing from happening. I looked away from the river and saw Cassie staring into the surface of the water. “Anything good to see?” I asked conversationally.
She didn’t answer immediately and rather stayed quiet for several minutes before replying, “I can see them.”
“The drowned?” I asked.
“Yes. They’re… calling to me. I can hear them inside my head; it must be peaceful down there,” she whispered barely audibly.
Apparently, the “stain” from the swamp had not been completely removed from her soul. “Cassie!” I screamed. It took her a few seconds, but she ultimately did look up at me. “You’re alive! You don’t belong with them; you belong here with me. You have a life, friends, people that care about you; I’m getting you back to earth no matter what else happens.” She nodded weakly, and then everything went to shit. With my focus on Cassie, I didn’t notice the ship was headed directly for one of the ferries; I tore my eyes away from her in time to see our boats narrowly miss striking one another directly, but they still scraped against one another nearly capsizing both ships. At this distance, I got a good look at the ferryman; he looked basically human with similar though slightly distorted proportions. Standing at 8 feet tall or so, he had grey skin, grey pupilless eyes, and a three-foot-long beard that was, you guessed it, grey. He wore a grey robe that covered all of his body save for his head and hands, and he was carrying a ten-foot paddle that allowed him to row the boat while standing in one hand and a lantern in the other. If I didn’t know better, I would have guessed he was one of the drowned, and for all I knew, he was. The mortal passenger was a tall and lanky dark skinned boy somewhere between 12 and 15. He was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a shirt with a logo I didn’t recognize. When the ships collided, ours tittered by about 40 degrees, but both Cassie and I held on and didn’t touch the water. The ferry was not so lucky: it rocked at almost 90 degrees. The ferryman dropped his lantern and fell into the water. The boy nearly had the same fate, but Cassie managed to grab him and pull him onto our boat. The ferry rocked back and forth several times but ultimately stabilized. The ferryman reached out of the water and pulled himself back onto the boat with his oar still in one hand and the lit lantern in the other. He reached over and yanked the boy back onto his boat and began rowing toward the gate of heaven again. Once he was a few yards away from us, he lifted his head up into the air, opened his jaw impossibly wide and screamed. It was the most fucking annoying sound I had ever heard in my life; it sounded like a slowed down ice cream machine fucked nails on a chalkboard while microphone feedback watched in the corner. I was very tempted to melt the thing’s face, but I didn’t want to interfere with the kid getting into heaven, so I started rowing. We didn’t move fast enough, and grey hands began reaching out of the water on all sides of the ship.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I cursed. The asshole had awakened the drowned. Cassie was staring at the hands and began to reach out to grab one; it looked like she wanted to shake the hand. “Cassie!” I screamed; she jerked her head to look at me. “I know you’re going through some shit, but I need you right now. Fight whatever influence they have on you,” I said sternly. Here, I threw her the oars. “Row.”
She shook her head back and forth like she was trying to reset her brain, and said, “Right.” I held my left hand aloft creating a gust of air to push us forward while I summoned my sword with my right. The instant, the sword formed, a grey hand grasped the edge of the boat. As the head appeared over the side, I decapitated the monster and kicked the head thirty feet away. When I turned back toward our path, I saw we had almost hit another ferry, and that ferryman began screaming as well. Before I knew it, dozens, maybe hundreds of them were emitting the same ear-piercing screech. Hands began to reach up not just around us but everywhere as far as I could see. BANG! I heard Cassie’s shotgun fire; the drowned had begun pulling themselves onto the boat from all sides. I couldn’t make giant waves or whirlpools without condemning more souls to the same fate, so instead, I dropped the wind spell, a light blue sigil replacing a white one, and froze the water around the boat on all sides. About twenty of the creatures were frozen in place, no longer threats.
“You know it’s pretty hard to row the boat when there’s three feet of ice on all sides,” Cassie said sounding like her old self again.
I shot her a wry grin, “It’s even harder when monsters are drowning you.”
“Fair enough,” she smiled weakly. The drowned began pulling themselves up onto the ice, so I let my sword fade, and created the most powerful gust of wind I could using both hands. The boat began flying through the water incredibly quickly; the creatures couldn’t hold on. The turn for the smaller river was only a few hundred yards away; the ferrymen wouldn’t leave Styx. If we could just make it there, we could get away from the screams which hopefully meant we could get away from the drowned. We were shooting through the river now picking up speed, and the ferries were giving us a wide berth. I really thought we were going to make it – a cardinal sin. Never hope for anything, or life will be sure to give you the exact opposite. Suddenly, a 50 foot long, three foot thick grey-green tentacle broke the surface of the water and came down right on top of us.
The tentacle was covered in huge suction cups like an octopus; only the single appendage was out of the water. I couldn’t see the creature it was attached to; I kept the wind up with one hand and with my other, I created a stream of fire as hot as I could. The flesh began to bubble where the flame struck it, and the tentacle pulled back in pain.
Cassie’s mouth hung open in shock; “Is that the…” she started.
“Yep,” I replied. “The fucking kraken.” The drowned began disappearing under the water; even they were afraid of the beast.
“I was hoping to save this, but I guess it can’t be helped. Shen gave me a one-use weapon,” she said determined.
“He gave you a weapon?” I asked indigently.
“Why wouldn’t he give it to me? You’re a walking weapon, and I’m just,”
“Just a seer with more knowledge of magic than a wizard and a bag full of guns and who knows what else?” I suggested. She just smiled in retort and removed a small flute from the bag with every square inch of surface area covered in glowing sigils. Another tentacle came rushing out of the water, but this time, it was right below us. The boat was lifted ten feet in the air, the ice around it crunching and breaking into pieces. As the boat fell, I used wind to orient it with the bottom pointing down and slow our descent; when we struck the surface of the river, the boat sank down nearly to the point of taking on water before shooting back up.
“Whatever that thing is, you better use it before we’re driftwood!” I shouted. The second the words left my mouth, another tentacle came from the depths… and wrapped around me pulling me off of the boat. Luckily, it grabbed me with my arms at my side; it was only my resistance that prevented me from being crushed. I was lifted about thirty feet above the water upside down as my phone, my wallet, and a small glass vial fell out of my pockets and sinking below the depths. I absent mindedly hoped the drowned wouldn’t make unauthorized charges on my card when I realized what had happened. My potion was gone… the only thing holding me together after years of rewiring my brain was out of reach, and I hadn’t taken any in hours. I was fucked in more ways that one; when you’re a drug addict, you think of drugs the same way a regular person thinks of food or water. Imagine being trapped in the desert with only a single jug of water; that jug is your lifeline, the only thing keeping you alive. I had just lost my water, and I was freaking out. With adrenaline pumping through my veins and a great deal of pneuma in my muscles, I loosened the grip of the tentacle and kicked off away from it. With a gust of wind, I managed to land back on the ship, causing it to rock back and forth dangerously.
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“CASSIE!” She was clearly flustered from my near death, but she composed herself. The tentacle that had grabbed me came down on the ship as two more sprung out to do the same. Second before the tentacles introduced us to the dark sea, Cassie bent down over the side of the ship, stuck one end of the flute into the water and blew into the other. The runes of the instrument glowed so brightly, I had to look away; where the flute made contact, waves emanated out on the surface causing the water to be choppy. The tentacles all froze midair, and the ferrymen’s screams stopped. As Cassie kept playing, the waves got bigger and bigger. After a few seconds, the boat was dangerously shaking around; I grabbed her to prevent her from falling in. The kraken’s limbs began vibrating at the same rhythm as the water when Cassie stopped playing to take a breath. The water went instantly still as the tentacles retreated into the water; as I held her in place, I looked into the river and saw multiple glowing grey eyes a few yards under the surface; they were huge, at least as large as beach balls. “I don’t think it’s done playing with us yet,” I warned.
Cassie didn’t bother replying; she inhaled as much as she possibly could and began to play once more. The symbols on the flute glowed even brighter this time, and the disturbances increased exponentially. I couldn’t make out the shape of the creature through the turbulence, but I could still see the glow of its eyes, and they were getting dimmer. The sound was driving it deeper into the water; once Cassie had finished her breath, I couldn’t see it at all. She took another deep breath to continue as the flute disintegrated into ash. The water calmed; we were mostly just moving along with the current now as if flute governed even the wind. We glanced around cautiously, but we saw nothing save for the constant flow of ferries toward both heaven and hell.
“What are you waiting for?” Cassie asked. “Get us out of here.”
“Right,” I said nodding. I recreated the gust of wind to catch the sail and get us out of there. I looked up at the walls of hell; they were so tall they could be seen from anywhere in the In Between. They were jet black, one of the few things in this realm without muted color; save for the gate itself, they were also featureless. Looking at them was almost like staring into oblivion; it’s weird looking at your future. Regardless of how I live my life, the demon will pull me to hell once I die. A bead of sweat fell down my forehead and got into my eye; I rubbed it with the back of my arm as it stung. That’s weird as it’s always a comfortable temperature in the In Between; the withdrawals were starting. I didn’t have to wait until I died to go to hell; I’d be there in a few hours. The most I could hope for is that I’d be back home in my bed by then.
We turned onto the smaller river with some difficulty; I guess I didn’t turn the rutter (or whatever it’s called) soon enough. Nonetheless, we successfully transferred without beaching the boat. This river was much, much narrower; in some places, it was barely wide enough to support the boat. As we continued, the terrain around us changed from a desolate beach to a jungle with low hanging branches and vines. The canopy became so thick, it nearly completely blotted out the sun. I had to summon a light to see anything. After about the twelfth time the sail got tangled in the foliage, I summoned my sword and struck the post. My sword cut a few inches into the wood and stopped; in frustration, I hacked at it again and again, and after the fifth or sixth swing, the post broke free still hung in the air by foliage.
Cassie eyed me wearily, “Are you ok?”
I met her eyes. “I might be a little tense,” I said as I sat down to start rowing again.
She got the hint and changed the subject. “How much farther?”
“If I remember correctly, we should be about an hour from the lake and then another hour to the island,” I said through clinched teeth; I had begun to shake slightly, and I was having a hard time containing my irritation.
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
“The island has rocky mountains surrounding its shore except for one spot; that’s where we’ll land. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get in without detection, and you can hide on one of the mountains and post up with your gun. Do you have a long range gun?”
She rolled her eyes and pulled some kind of rifle with a scope out of her bag. “Like this?”
“Looks good to me; is there anything you don’t have in that bag?” I asked with the only hint of my sense of humor that survived withdrawals.
With a hint of a smile, she said, “I would have brought extra clothes if I’d known we’d be here for so long.”
As we continued down the river, Cassie and I took turns rowing. I know what you’re thinking; how could I let a woman row in my place? Well, I’m a feminist… and my arms were tired. After about half an hour of traveling, the jungle thinned out considerably and was replaced with the bare, desolate, grey mud that makes up the bulk of the In Between. The river itself had widened slightly, but it was still narrow enough that we couldn’t turn around without hitting shore. Right when it was my turn to begin rowing again, I saw a small grey lizard drinking from the water. It would stick its tongue in the river, run back several feet, and then repeat the process. The third time it did went to drink, a small, grey tentacle shot out of the water and grabbed it pulling the creature below the surface. I was starting to feel a lot like the lizard.
It was midday by the time we reached the lake; the grey sun was directly above us. The lake suddenly opened up into a great body of water that was miles across. As we got closer and closer to the center where the island was, a fog appeared that continually grew thicker with every foot. Once we were about halfway to our destination, the fog was so thick, I couldn’t see anything more than six inches in front of my face. Even Cassie had become a vague outline.
“Is this natural?” she asked warily.
“I don’t know; the In Between has a variety of odd weather, but it does seem quite convenient.” The fog was so thick it even stifled sound, and we had to scream to hear each other.
“Can you get rid of it?” she shouted.
“Maybe, but it will definitely tip them off.” Athena must have known we were coming eventually, but she didn’t know when.
“Not necessarily. You wouldn’t have to get rid of it, just thin it out enough to see; we’ll never find the opening in the mountains in this,” she said as I watched her outline gesture around us.
“How?! I could create flame hot enough to vaporize it or wind to blow it away, but I don’t know how to thin it!” I screamed angrily.
She threw the oars back to me a little more forcefully than necessary, but I deserved it. None of this was her fault; I was soaked half in sweat, half in condensation from the fog and felt… uncomfortable. That’s the best way I could describe it, like I was a puzzle piece being jammed into the wrong puzzle. I rubbed my eyes for several seconds before sighing and starting to row. “I’m sorry, Cassie. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Look!” she shouted. I looked all around, but all I could see was the fucking fog; I guess it was a humorous sight because she giggled lightly. “Look at the book,” she said placing it in my lap. It was the spellbook I’d used earlier. It was turned to a page on a water spell that generated fog.
“There’s a spell that makes fog? And here I’ve been shooting water with fire,” I joked.
“That’s steam Dante,” she barked with heavy exasperation in her voice. “Can you do this backward or something and get lighten the fog?”
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly, “But I can try.” I threw the oars down inside the boat; we couldn’t see where we were going anyway. I placed a finger on the sigil displayed in the book, and naively introduced pneuma into it. I felt the water in the lake below us evaporate, forming into fog making it even more difficult to see. So, the spell worked as intended; now, it was time to see if the magic could work differently. I touched the symbol again, this time only using the tiniest amount of pneuma and extended my senses. With the power of the spell, I could feel the water dispersed in the air… I don’t know how to put it into words, but I knew where the fog was more or less dense, how it formed around the boat, even how it was condensing on my face. I forced my senses even farther; I lost some of the fine-tuned information, but now I could feel the fog all over the lake. I clenched my fist introducing energy to the fog itself; the dispersed water began to condense into droplets. All over the area, the fog started to clear, and the droplets made it feel like it was raining. I held the spell for about thirty seconds before letting it go. I inhaled sharply and realized I had been holding my breath the whole time.
“I knew you could do it,” Cassie said smiling. I could see her again; in fact, I could see five or six hundred feet in any direction. That might not sound like good visibility, but comparatively, it was like turning the lights on in a dark room. I couldn’t make out the island, but there was a dark shape ahead of us that I assumed was it. She grabbed the oars and began paddling as I caught my breath.
“I appreciate your confidence in m..” Before I could finish, a great white light appeared in the sky. “Shit!” The spell hadn’t gone unnoticed; they lit the lighthouse. The lighthouse was a repository of information for the Gnosilepides; it’s lit with the same moon oil Cassie used in her lantern along with enchanted mirrors to focus the light. Its purpose was to repel any unwanted visitors; the light was supposed to be lit 24/7, but with everyone dead, I guess it fell to the wayside. There must have been a limited amount of oil left, and Athena reignited it to find us. The light cut through the fog like it wasn’t there; someone was moving it, using it like a search light. Luckily, the light missed us by several yards and started moving away.
“Is the lighthouse that big? It’s a hundred feet in the air,” Cassie said amazed.
“Yeah, it had to be taller than the mountains.” I keep saying mountains, but they’re more like jagged, rocky hills. “We’re on a timer now, we need to get there fast.” Each of us took an oar, and we paddled as fast as we could. After less than half an hour, we were close enough to see the island; unfortunately, we were not on the side with the clear shore. We turned and began going around the island, and we eventually found an appropriate landing site. We rowed back and forth avoiding the light and observing the area; it was a dark sandy beach in between two mountains; the one on the left was about thirty feet above the beach while the one on the right was around forty feet. Once we were sure no one was watching, I used the spell once more to slightly thicken the fog and headed for shore.
Twenty feet from the beach, the fog instantly vanished, and a large hawk with grey and brown feathers took off from the higher cliff and dive bombed the ship. “Fuck!” I screamed in surprise; once the bird was twenty feet above the boat, it shifted, growing as the feathers retreated into it. Its beak elongated and widened, and the wings became cylindrical; in maybe a second, the hawk had become the biggest hippo I’d ever seen in my life. If that thing hit the boat, all three of us would plunge into the waters below; I raised both of my hands, dark blue sigils appearing above both from which dozens of lightning bolts shot out blindingly fast striking the hippo. With a cry of pain, it shifted once more, this time into the figure of a naked human male with grey tinted skin. He was one of the knights of New Byzantium, his will sapped by necromancy. I wanted to save him more than anything, but I didn’t see how that was possible, not without getting Cassie or myself killed. Something was wrong though; that was a full power blast of lightning. It should have burnt him to a crisp. My condition was affecting my power, and this was a very, very bad time to be underpowered.
The knight was incapacitated, but a human body falling at damn near terminal velocity would be more than enough to destroy the ship, and we were still too far away from shore to reach it without getting in the water. To avoid that fate, I waited until the soul was seven feet from the boat, jumped into the air flipping backward, and kicked him as hard as I could, pneuma enhancing my strength. He was pushed forward and down missing the ship completely hitting the water with a large splash. He belonged to the In Between now, unreachable even by powerful necromancy. A combination of my jump, the wave, and my landing destabilized the ship; it rocked nearly 50 degrees before Cassie threw herself at the other side preventing it from capsizing. Before I regained my balance, she was already rowing toward the beach. The second we stepped onto dry land, a fucking triceratops rushed toward us at full speed from behind the shorter mountain. I jumped one way while Cassie jumped the other; the dinosaur narrowly missed her and hit the other mountain with such force, the ground shook. Before I turned around, she’d already retrieved the shotgun from her bag; the triceratops dislodged itself from the indention it made in the rock turning toward me when BANG! The shotgun fired, blasting a huge hole in the creature’s face launching blood and bits of dinosaur in all directions. After a half-hearted roar, it began to change. The dinosaur began to shrink with its tale retreating into its body as its front legs lifted off the ground becoming arms. Once the transformation was complete, an injured naked woman stood before us. The shotgun wound persisted; she had only one eye and was missing pretty much all of the back of her skull. With black hair and dark grey skin, she looked dazed and confused, staring off into eternity… and then she began to heal. The empty hole in her head began to fill with brain matter as her skin regrew covering the hole; I couldn’t let her finish. I raised my hand, a dark light from a black sigil creating ominous shadows, and I practiced necromancy for the first time.
The knight fell to her knees, shaking slightly; I pushed more power into the spell, and she fell all the way to the ground writhing like she was seizing. Not only did she stop healing, bits of her skin began to flake away disintegrating into grey dust. It felt… wrong; like I was a conduit for pure evil. I don’t know how to explain it, but it gave me a sinking guilty feeling deep in my chest like when you steal a car or kill someone in a dream, and you feel like you’ve ruined your life forever just before you wake up. Is that just me? It’s probably just me. My point is, I didn’t like using necromancy. I didn’t have much of a choice though, the knights are formidable opponents. Not only was the knight’s skin vanishing, her wound began to widen as her brain turned into sand. If I knew more necromancy, I might have been able to overwrite the control over her, but this was all I was capable of. For the first time, I noticed her eyes, err, eye; it was grey like everyone’s eyes who lives in this purgatory, but there were black bubbles moving around her iris. I say bubbles because they were circles interrupting the gray that would pop occasionally as new ones form.
“DANTE!” Cassie screamed.
I whipped around to see a monster; it had a thin, long black body with grey protrusions all over. Its legs were little and stubby, but its arms were so long they’d drag the ground were they by its sides, and they ended in foot long grey claws. The monster’s face was basically all mouth with the exception of two beady, glowing grey eyes, with the same black bubbles popping and reforming within them, and it was running straight for me, its arms and claws outstretched. I jumped out of the way dodging the attack, but I had to drop the necromantic spell to do it. The downed knight began reforming once more; the black sigil reappeared in front of my hand as I readied the spell again when the creature charged me again. I couldn’t maintain the spell and keep the monster from killing me, so it was a good thing Cassie was with me. Another deafening shot went off, the sound echoing as it bounced off of the mountains around us, and what was left of the woman’s head exploded sending blood and guts everywhere in a ten foot radius. It was much grosser this time though because it was human brain, skull, eyeball… yuck. I thought she would start healing her head back, but instead a black beam shot from above and struck her; her body and all of the… pieces, every drop of blood and chunk of brain began moving of their own accord converging onto the body. Suddenly, the whole mass of body parts vaporized into a grey light which was sucked along the beam to its origin: the top of the lighthouse. It looked like someone recalled a Pokemon. As I stared in amazement, the monster slashed at me, and I didn’t have enough time to dodge it completely. I jumped backward as the three grey claws sliced through my shirt and skin like they were paper. The pain was agonizing; I almost fell over but managed to stay on my feet. I looked down and my white shirt was soaked in blood. I heal quickly, but my body was having a rough time; I needed to end this very quickly, or I might just pass out from blood loss.
I raised my hand at the monster and grunted with pain as the skin around my cuts shifted; I cleared my mind in an attempt to ignore the pain and shot a fireball the size of a baseball right at the thing’s face. It shifted into a large cat with orange fur and grey spots and sank its claws into the rock behind it and began climbing. The fireball struck the base of the mountain where the creature had been half a second earlier and exploded, fire shooting in all directions as the ground shook. The monster was halfway up the mountain when it jumped toward me; that was a mistake. You can’t dodge mid-air; I sent another fireball at the creature with a smirk, knowing I’d won… when it shifted again this time into a crow. With its wings, it was able to easily dodge the flame and headed directly toward me. I changed tactics, my sigil changing colors to a pale white, and I created a gust of wind so strong it blew the crow off course and over the lake. I changed the direction of the wind to force the wind below the surface of the water as a flash of something moving too fast to make out flashed across the water right by the crow and continued on disappearing behind a mountain. The crow split into two, and before the pieces could hit the water another ray of black light sucked it away. A human garbed in plate mail and holding a sword walked out from behind the mountain; he removed his helmet lowering his head to where all I could see was his scalp. He had grey hair like most of the knights with a bowl cut and deep grey skin. He let go of his helmet, and it vanished like it never was; with a pained breath, he lifted his head. It was Luca.
“Luca?!” I shouted. “I saw you die!” I could see his eyes now; they were grey with now familiar black bubbles moving within his irises.
He gave me a cocky grin, “It takes more than a disintegration to kill a knight of New Byzantium.” He looked worse than when I last saw him; his skin was even more grey. Even without the necromancy, he was nearing his inevitable change into a goblin. His smile vanished, and he gave me a serious, grim look. “I can’t stop it Dante; she has complete control over me. Promise me you’ll free me. Throw me into the water, burn me to a crisp, chop me into a million pieces, anything,” he begged desperately. “Promise me!”
“I promise, Luca. I promise.” I whispered. He gasped in pain convulsing for a few seconds but without falling over. When he looked at me again, all emotion on his face was gone, and the black bubbles in his eyes had begun to pop and reform at triple, maybe quadruple the rate. He raised his sword into an attack position as I summoned mine. He charged with the same blinding speed he had before; he struck with blow after blow after blow. He must have attacked a dozen times in a little over a second; it took every bit of my speed to block his attacks. Even with pneuma racing through my nervous and muscular systems, I was far too slow to do anything but defend. Another bead of sweat rolled down my face. My body and mind felt sluggish; I was better than this. No, I was a fool, a coward; I thought I could run from this life and from the thing inside me. I wanted peace so bad, I allowed myself to get addicted to drugs.
the demon’s voice boomed.
{I don’t need your help to do my job!} I spat… err thought. It was time I learned to do things on my own; fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cassie had switched to her rifle. I angled my blocks so that Luca was between me and her. It’s generally not a good idea to shoot anything if there’s something you don’t want hurt behind it, but Cassie was a good shot apparently. Or maybe she secretly wanted to kill me, but I’m pretty sure it was the first thing. BANG! The rifle went off; without missing a beat, Luca angled the left part of his body and a metal shield appeared gripped in his left hand. The bullet left a small dent in the shield but had no other effect. However, the momentary distraction was all I needed. I took the opportunity to strike, to decapitate him before me. With his eyes still on Cassie, he lifted his sword deflecting my blow, so with my left hand, I launched the same lightning attack I had used on his comrade minutes before. Unfortunately, I lacked precision; most of the bolts struck his armor and as they did, sigils began glowing on it protecting him from the electric current. Four or five were right on target and hit him right in the face. With a grunt of pain, he stumbled backward just a single step, but he kept his sword pressed against my preventing a strike. Instead, I kicked him, hard; he went flying backward striking the mountain behind him about ten feet from Cassie. The rock chipped and cracked where he struck it. Without missing a beat, she aimed her weapon and fired. A helmet materialized around Luca’s head the instant before the bullet would have struck him and instead ricocheted narrowly avoiding Cassie.
“Go!” I shouted at her; she nodded and began running around the mountain. Presumably, she was going to find a sniping post; Luca jumped to his feet and charged me. Instead of blocking his blows with my sword, I took a different approach: I dropped my sword which disappeared once it left contact with my skin, raised both hands, and summoned my shield. A transparent pink dome surrounded me on all sides; the knight struck it again and again but couldn’t dent it much less destroy it. He backed up several feet to gain momentum and ran with his sword held behind his back. Once he was close enough to me, he jumped and swung his sword down; with a combination of his momentum and the force of gravity, it might have been enough to break or at least crack my shield, but we’ll never know. I dropped my shield, jumped backward several feet, and brought forth a dozen sharpened spikes made of rock from the ground. It took a lot of pneuma, but I made sure each stalagmite (stalactite? I still don’t know) was so sharp, the end of the blade was only a few atoms thick. While in the air, Luca lifted his metal shield and attempted to hide his entire body behind it; as the shield struck the rocks, they shattered upon it. However, the sharpened stones pierced straight through his armor like it wasn’t there. When he struck the ground, he had stone spears run completely through his right shoulder, right leg, and liver. He turned and broke the structures off from the ground, coughed up a bit of blood, and slowly began to stand.
Cassie’s gun went off again from somewhere above us, and Luca’s head tilted forward ten degrees. The bullet had harmlessly bounced off of his helmet once again. I switched tactics yet again and blasted him with a freezing cold wind; his armor creaked and moaned as he was encased in a block of ice. The sigil before my hand vanished as I tried to catch my breath. “Is he… beaten?” Cassie called out from above.
“I think so, but Athena’s still around,” I said resolutely looking up at the top of the lighthouse; in the two seconds I looked away, a cracking sound pervaded the island. I whipped my head around as I was showered in ice fragments; in Luca’s place was a large ape covered in black fur. He had small legs ending in weird hand-feet, but his arms were huge, and maybe more importantly, he had two sets of arms. I expected him to charge me or throw something at me, but instead he dropped to the ground shaking furiously. I seized the opportunity and kicked him in the face… or tried to. One of his four arms grabbed my leg and swung me like a bat. My back and head simultaneously crashed into the rock beyond me, and a lot of things happened all at once. My vision blurred, all of the air was forced out of my lungs, and I felt my ribs crack; Luca dropped me to the ground and rushed forward, pinning my arms with his lower set. He raised his top arms above his head and gripped his hands together preparing to bring them down on my chest likely destroying my heart and lungs.
“Luca!” I shouted. “Don’t let her make you do this.” The monster before me had the same grey eyes as Luca; well, I guess it was Luca, but the same eyes as his human form. The black bubbles were flowing throughout his iris, popping and reforming when their erratic movement slowed; they didn’t stop, but they slowed to a crawl. Luca was regaining some measure of control; he hesitated his arms still raised above his head as a shot rang out, and half of his face exploded. The gorilla tilted and fell to the ground as it shifted into a naked man with grey everything. I jumped to my feet… well, I tried. It turns out doing anything quickly is quite painful with cracked ribs just like walking, standing, talking, and breathing. Still, I managed to get to my feet, held my hand aloft and covered his body in a jet of fire as hot as I could make it. I had to take a step back as the heat blasted me in the face, but I was going to keep my promise; after thirty seconds I stopped. All that remained of my friend was a blackened skeleton burned to a crisp. He managed to come back from less than this last time, so I decided to gather every single scrap of ash to throw into the lake when a ray of black light shot down from the lighthouse and reclaimed him. I clenched my fists and shook with anger; every millimeter I moved sent pain shooting through my body, but I was so angry, I didn’t care.
I looked up to the lighthouse; its base was maybe a hundred feet away in almost exactly the center of the island. I took a deep, painful breath, and started walking toward it when a high pitched scream distracted me. I turned, looking up and toward the mountain; Cassie was completely covered in rock. Only her face was exposed. I raised my hand preparing an earth spell when I felt a light breeze; I turned to see a woman launching toward me from the top of the lighthouse. She was moving incredibly fast; I barely had time to summon my shield. She struck the semi-transparent dome of light fist first like a fucking superhero or something; upon making contact, cracks sprang forth from the point of contact and spread throughout the entire dome. I managed to keep the shield intact, but it taxed me drastically. I grunted and dropped to one knee, still in the limited protection of the partially shattered dome. She cackled maniacally; there was something familiar about that laugh. I looked up at her; she had long black hair and a tight grey dress/robe with sleeves that widened as they went down swallowing her hands. It was skin tight around her waist but similarly widened around her legs and was cut on each side exposing her bare thighs. She grinned at me with a toothy smile that somehow screamed malintent; my jaw fell open as my eyes widened uncontrollably. It was Demonicunt… the first person I ever killed. The same person whose soul was ripped to pieces in front of me. She was a little different though: her eyes were human with circular pupils and grey irises, and her skin was tinted grey.
“Yes, it’s me my dear Dante Solace,” she cooed. “I don’t believe we were properly introduced; I’m Athena.”
I started piecing things together. “And I see you managed to piece your wretched soul back together,” I said pausing dramatically. “After I killed you.”
Her smile vanished and was replaced with a grimace. “You didn’t kill me! That thing inside of you did.” She took a deep breath and began pacing back and forth before my cracked shield I could barely hold together. Upon regaining her composure, she started to continue, “You see,” I interrupted her.
“Is this the part where you villain monologue and tell me your whole evil plans?” I taunted. “Don’t bother; it’s obvious. You pulled yourself together and found the necromantic tomes in the lighthouse. You tried to resurrect yourself, but you were unable to. Even with using souls to supercharge your magic, you still weren’t strong enough.” She squinted her eyes at me but maintained the smile this time. “So you gave the fundamental forces of the universe to a bunch of murderous scoundrels to find someone that could bring you back.”
She genuinely laughed this time, “Look, the monkey has a brain after all. Here I am looking for a real practitioner; imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon you. Again! Fate keeps bringing us together, Dante. This time, I’m going to take what’s mine: divinity.” She was facing 90 degrees away from me, and without even turning to me, she strafed sideways striking my shield with her left hand shattering it completely. I fell directly on my ass, but she didn’t advance any farther; instead, she turned toward me grinning even more broadly and removed the pendants of five necklaces from underneath her dress. Four of the pendants were foggy while one of them was clear; the opaque crystals must have contained souls including Luca and the other knights. I didn’t know whose soul was in the fourth, but I’m sure they were innocent. “With this power,” she said indicating the necklaces, “Nothing can stop me! Speaking of power, I can’t help but notice you’re not using yours. You can’t control it can you?” I involuntarily recalled nearly killing Cassie a few days earlier and looked away. “I thought not,” she noted picking up on the gesture.
I was running very low on options; I could unleash the demon and risk collateral damage, I could take my chances and die, or I could use my trump card. I’ll let you guess which I decided on. While I was lost in thought, Athena suddenly turned toward me, extending her arm. It elongated, becoming a deeper grey as her fingers fused into one; the tentacle, not unlike a smaller version of the kraken’s, wrapped around my neck, squeezing and lifting me off my feet. I lifted both hands simultaneously and used the one thing that might get me out of this: necromancy. I only knew the basic necromancy sigil, so I doubted I could take control of her or disintegrate her, but I pumped as much pneuma as I could into the dual runes. With a startled scream, she dropped me as her arm reverted to its natural form. I maintained the spell and landed on my feet, my ribs seemingly on fire. Athena fell to her knees, and I carefully advanced.
“Nooo!” she screamed while launching a feeble attempt at a lightning spell. A half-formed dark blue rune appeared before her hand which emitted a few sparks before disappearing. My hands were shaking wildly under the strain of maintaining the spell at full power, but I cautiously advanced toward her. Once I was standing over her, I lifted my leg, and stomped directly onto her head. Unfortunately, when I transferred the pneuma into my leg to make the attack more powerful, I lost control of the spell, and the black sigils before my hands faded away. My foot came down on bare ground; Athena had rolled out of the way and jumped to her feet. She rushed forward, grabbed me by the throat and threw me at the lighthouse… a hundred feet away. Flying through the air is a strange experience; normally, no one is ever in the air for more than a second or two. If you stepped off of a building, after two seconds, you’d be falling at over sixty feet per second and still accelerating. My point is that nauseating weightless feeling you get as you fall never lasts very long under normal circumstances. When you’re thrown through the air, you get used to that feeling, and it’s replaced with pure fucking terror. If I summoned my shield the way I usually would, I’d just splatter against the edge of it and be just as dead as if I did nothing. That did not sound like a fun thing to do, so instead I took a page from the skinwalker’s book. I pictured the thickest, softest mattress I could and pumped pneuma into it trying to believe in my heart it was real.
The mattress appeared behind me two feet before I hit the stone; instead, of being smushed (that’s a word right?) against hard rock, my deceleration was much gentler. However, once I became stationary, I recoiled off of the mattress and fell face first onto the ground further injuring my ribs. I let out an involuntary groan as Athena appeared above me; I could only see her out of the corner of my eye. In a flash, she had me by the throat and slammed me against the lighthouse. “That’s a neat trick,” she purred. “I see you met my master,” she spat the last word venomously.
“You submitted to the vile creature?” I taunted.
“I submitted to no one!” she growled. I had her now; all I had to do was keep her going, and there was a chance I could survive this ordeal.
“She told me about you,” I said grinning. “She said you were a disappointing student, and I offered to take me as a replacement.” Athena’s grey cheeks were flushing with spots of red as she clinched her teeth. She raised her left hand, the other still gripping my throat, and tightened her fist.
“You’ll regret saying that, BUG!” I summoned my sword in my right hand and swung straight for her neck right as she went in for the face-crushing punch. I used every bit of speed I could muster in the hopes of striking before she could; I failed. Her strike was diverted and instead of punching me, she grabbed my wrist and pinned it along with my neck. Now, both of her hands were occupied while my left hand was free. When I was 8 or 9, Kaine bought me my first knife; it was a shitty little pocket knife with a black hilt and a black blade excluding the edge which was silvered. I didn’t hunt or fish; I read comics and played video games, so I didn’t have much use for a pocket knife at the time. Instead, I played with it like it was a toy, constantly pulling the blade out and tucking it back into the hilt. At one point, it was my most prized possession; I memorized every detail of the little knife. I closed my eyes and imagined a that knife in my left hand; I brought my hand up, and stabbed Athena directly in the heart. I struck with enough strength to pierce directly through her sternum. I expected blood to begin pouring out, but there was only a trickle. I guess the blade was holding the blood vessels closed.
Athena began laughing maniacally. “Did you really think I could die from such a wound? I’m already dead!”
“No,” I said smiling. I ripped the knife out of her as blood began pouring out of the hole and slashed across her neck; I wasn’t aiming at her throat or even her carotid. I was aiming at her necklaces. The blade tore through the chains keeping the pendants around her neck. I let go of the knife and grabbed at the pendants as Athena released me backing away. I looked down, and in my hand were four necklaces; three of the pendants were cloudy, but one was clear. I had missed one of the necklaces… Fuuuuuck. I stuffed the necklaces into my pocket and looked back at Athena. Her wound had healed completely, but she still was still drenched in blood.
“I was wrong about you, Dante. You are more than the monster within; you have,” she paused as if looking for the right word, “gumption,” she said finally with a smile. “But, the fight is over. You took your best shot, and you failed.”
She wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. I took a step forward sending another surge of pain through my side. Her smile never wavered as she lifted her hand; I saw the flash of a deep blue rune and summoned my shield. Dozens, maybe hundreds of lightning bolts emanated forward completely obliterating my shield. Only two or maybe three of the bolts managed to strike me, but unbelievable pain shot through my entire nervous system. I closed my eyes blacking out momentarily; when I reopened them, Athena was standing over me, and I had burns all over my torso.
Athena knelt down before me. “I’m going to make you the offer of a lifetime, Dante. Surrender yourself to me, and I’ll let your little girlfriend live. I’ll even send her back to whatever shithole you two crawled out of.”
She had already won; the only reason she would make an offer like that is if she had something left to fear. I internally groaned with realization; she had seen divine power come out of me. She realized at any time I could let that power out, and the energy of the poor soul she was torturing in her necklace wouldn’t compare favorably to a god. “How do I know you’ll keep your end of the bargain?” I gasped barely audibly.
With a smile and a wave of her hand, a contract appeared before her. Using blood magic, a practitioner can make an agreement that cannot be broken under threat of death. If you break a blood contract, your heart stops beating, and no magic or technology can make it start up again. They only have one weakness: only the letter of the words matters; in other words, you can break the spirit of the contract with no repercussions; it’s the exact wording that’s important. Like all blood magic, they were banned by the Gnosilepides, but I hadn’t cared about those laws in a long time.
The contract was written on animal skin with the edges rolled up as if it had been a scroll; it looked like the constitution or some shit. By the way, it doesn’t matter what the blood contract is written on; it could be notebook paper, construction paper, or even a gum wrapper, so using this old wrinkly scroll was a choice because she thought it looked cool. The document fell to the ground waving from the air resistance, and I grabbed it. It took me two minutes to read the thing it was so fucking long, but I didn’t see any tricks in it. I surrendered my soul (and anything harbored within it) to Athena, and she would send Cassie to anywhere on earth. With the power of the demon, Athena would be able to resurrect herself and then open portals to the mortal realm. I couldn’t believe I was considering this, but I only had bad options left. I was seriously short on pneuma, and my body would have quit twenty minutes ago if it weren’t for sheer will. My hands were trembling as I held the paper; I had cracked ribs, a burnt chest and stomach, and my body was fiending for opiates.
“Ladies first,” I said weakly. She snatched the document out of my hands rudely, dipped her finger into the blood on her dress and wiped it onto the paper. The blood congealed and oozed into a symbol and glowed brightly as the liquid evaporated scarring a symbol into the contract. She thrust the document into my hand; I placed it on my lap and grabbed the knife I’d created a few minutes earlier. I took a deep breath to steady myself and pushed the blade against my left hand, slicing it open. I dipped my right index finger in the blood and moved it to touch the contract when I hesitated. I’ve been nearly killed a bunch of times, but this was the first time I’d submitted to it. I wondered what it would be like… If Athena ripped the demon out of my soul, I wouldn’t go to hell. Instead, my soul or at least its pieces would reform. If I was lucky, I could keep my deal with Constantine and become a court mage; if I wasn’t, I’d become a goblin, a mindless creature that knows only violence. Maybe that would be peaceful somehow… driven by pure instinct, no choices, no responsibilities, no… anything. I wonder what other people do in times like this? What would you do? I started a psychic diary set to autosend into the ether upon my death. That’s normal right? I resigned myself and moved my hand toward the paper.
the demonic voice said more quietly this time with a hint of something… desperation?
{I don’t care what you’d do or what you have to say! I failed, but at least Cassie will be safe,} I replied, but I still hadn’t put the blood on the contract. I don’t know what I was waiting for, but I still had a shred of hope that something could stop this, and then something did. Four portals opened in various places around the lighthouse. That shouldn’t have been possible, the whole island was enchanted. Had the sigils faded? Was it an extremely powerful wizard? Maybe they weren’t even using sigil magic. A figure appeared from each portal. They were all dressed the same way in black robes with a hooded cloak obscuring their faces.
No. No. No, no, no, no, no. It couldn’t be… the Cloaks were dead. I watched them die! Could a few have survived and created more? I felt a fiery hot rage pulse through my entire body. I was trembling even more now but not from pain; every ounce of pain that had been pervading every cell in my body vanished. All I could feel was anger. Maybe they weren’t Cloaks at all… Maybe they were just pretenders; I had to know for sure, so I broke my vow. I closed my eyes and opened them; I was before the dam in my mind. As I had done many times before, I slightly damaged the structure allowing a small leak of red water to escape, the demon’s power was flowing into me albeit slowly. I redirected all of that energy into my eyes; when I opened them in the real world, I could see. I looked at the hooded figures in black cloaks, and they had no souls.