When the gunshots started, I closed my eyes and prepared to die. I don’t know if it was the immense pain, or some kind of demon hangover, or what, but preparing to die felt boring this go around. I’d already accepted I was going to die a couple of dozen times by then, and I was just ready for it to end. After about thirty seconds I realized it was weird that I was still alive; the cops were still firing. Maybe they were just absolutely awful shots? I opened my eyes to see a transparent pink dome surrounding us. Initially, I was mildly annoyed Kaine was prolonging this, but I quickly realized we might actually survive. He was holding the hellblade in his left hand and looking at me.
“Ready?” he asked. I nodded in the affirmative; he put his right arm under back and lifted me up onto his shoulder. It. Fucking. Hurt. Without lowering his shield, he swung the dagger; it was… an interesting experience. We were in front of a destroyed church, and then suddenly we weren’t; my stomach lurched as gravity suddenly vanished and returned. For a brief moment, I looked up at the grey sky of the In Between; then, Kaine flicked his wrist, and we were back in the mortal plane. A group of EMTs were loading Neil into the back of an ambulance while Emma tried to argue with them.
“Jesus Christ, where did you guys come from!?” an EMT shouted at us. He was a short, overweight man in his forties and an unfortunate hairline. His face drained of all color when he saw my arm. “Oh my God, what happened? Was it the explosion?” He ran over to the back of the ambulance to pull out another stretcher. Without a word, Kaine pulled out a ring from another pouch around his leg and put it on his index finger. It was silver with a very complicated sigil on it; the EMT came running with the stretcher when Kaine reached out and the man on his shiny head. The symbol on the ring glowed bright red, and the man fell to the ground snoring loudly.
“Was that…” I started.
“No, and you didn’t see anything,” Kaine replied. He must have used mental magic, a forbidden school of magic according to the order. I understand why it’s illegal: going into someone’s head and making them kill their loved ones or become totally different people is fucking terrifying, but it is quite useful. In fact, it’s the same ring I used to compose this psychic diary. Kaine similarly knocked out the other paramedics. “Stand up Dante; your arm is hurt not your legs,” he commanded while dropping me on the ground. I managed to stand up only by holding onto him with my good arm; the world spun around me for several seconds, but I managed to get it together. I looked down at my arm for the first time, and it was bad. It was black and shrunken like a mummy’s arm; if I’d gone into the hospital, they would have amputated it without question. I tried to move my pinky finger, but nothing happened except a whole new level of pain nearly overwhelmed me. I thought I was going to throw up, and being the loving uncle he is, Kaine slapped me in the face. “Keep it together!” He outstretched his hand, and the familiar aurora style circle appeared glowing various colors with the scene of a dilapidated Victorian structure through it: a portal to The Krymmeno. Emma grabbed one side of Neil’s stretcher, I grabbed part of it with my good hand, and Kaine grabbed the other part with his nonspell casting hand. Together, we went through the portal.
From that point on, The Cloaks were after me; they showed up on innocuous missions I was a part of, tracked me down when I was at the store or the movies, and they even tricked me into doing some things I probably shouldn’t have done. It wasn’t supposed to matter anymore though; I watched all of them die. Only, I guess they didn’t. “No,” I whispered. The Cloaks’ portals closed around the lighthouse.
“JESSICA WHITE!” one of them roared. “YOU HAVE BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH BY THE ORDER OF THE CLOAKS! YOU HAVE ONE CHANCE TO SURRENDER YOURSELF!”
“Well, Dante, it seems like we have a common enemy judging by the look in your eyes,” Athena or Jessica said. I miss calling her Demonicunt. I wasn’t about to help this bitch do anything, but one thing was sure: I was going to kill every single last Cloak I could get my hands on. Unfortunately, I was half dead and withdrawing... but not for long.
the demon spoke softly this time. It had never used my name before. When I looked up, I wasn’t in the In Between anymore; I stood before the dam. A small amount of the red liquid was shooting out of a crack and drenching me.
I opened my eyes with a supernatural knowledge of the workings of the universe, and great black wings with red tips extending from my back. Athena looked at me in awe and something else. Envy? Perhaps. “What do you say? We’ll kill the Cloaks and get back to our business,” she said with a grin though her eyes betrayed her. She was worried. She should have been; without uttering a word, I lifted my hand and with a bit of necromancy, she fell to the ground face first, paralyzed. I looked up at the soulless bastards before me.
“The Cloaks are dead!” I shouted. “Who are you?”
One of them walked forward, “I was going to say the same to you. The spellsword possessed by one of the betrayers; I guess the Grand Master wasn’t the only to escape.” The color drained from my face; the Grand Master escaped? He was the leader of the Cloaks and the one who decided to attack the Krymmeno.
“I’m going to hunt every one of you mother fuckers down and especially him!” I shouted.
“You have served your purpose, demon and are of no more use; you will be the one to die this day,” the same Cloak said. Excluding the talker, the other cloaks all drew their blades. The talker was a skinny, dark skinned young man; he stood with his hands behind his back and his feet shoulder length a part. The other three Cloaks stepped forward, and one walked around to stand behind me. The Cloak to my left was a tall blonde woman with glowing green eyes; to my right was a Chinese man with broad shoulders and flickering flame eyes, and behind me was a medium-sized woman with purple hair, face tattoos of feathers around her eyes, and glowing grey eyes.
I didn’t bother saying anything cool or making a joke; I just struck. I shot forward at full speed and summoned my sword simultaneously; in less than half of a second, I had impaled the blonde woman through her liver. I have to admit, she was a trooper; she didn’t react to the pain at all. She grabbed my face with both hands, her hands glowing green as she attempted to infect me with pestilence.
“Sorry, that doesn’t work on me,” I growled as I twisted the blade; in a scream of rage, the man lifted both hands and blasted me with a huge cone of hellfire. I wrapped myself in my wings making sure to cover my entire body. The flames harmlessly bounced off of my wings; when the fire subsided, I spread my wings revealing my lifted hand with a blue sigil before it. “Neither does that,” I said as I launched a torrent of lightning bolts. The Cloak raised his wrist covered in glowing sigils, and a dome of light surrounded around him. Unfortunately for him, it appeared a moment too late; although the shield blocked the majority of the lightning bolts, several of them were already inside the boundary of the dome when it materialized. The electric current flowed through him, and his shield faded as he fell on the ground. I couldn’t help but smile seeing one dead Cloak and another groveling on his hands and knees. I moved forward raising my sword to finish him, but the remaining Cloak grabbed my wrist. I checked to make sure the talker was staying out of it, and it certainly seemed he was. He was standing in exactly the same position, and as far as I could tell, he hadn’t moved a muscle. I could have pulled my arm free, but I didn’t bother; instead, I kicked the downed Cloak in the face hard enough to break his spine. I turned to look at the Cloak who was still holding my arm; I can only imagine the expression on my face, but I’m sure I looked like a fucking lunatic. I was covered in the blood of the people I just killed, and I loved doing it. The Cloak didn’t flinch an inch; I moved forward in an attempt to stab her, but I passed right through her.
Fuck. Her soul was in the seventh level of hell: abandonment. I turned to look at her, and the borders of her body were blurry, almost like she was composed of smoke or dissolving in water. I probably should have thought of a plan, but rage had overcome me. I flipped around and kicked the Cloak, but predictably, my leg went straight through her. In frustration, I raised my hand and sent a torrent of water, but that too passed through her. I readied another magic strike when she went on the offensive: she ran toward me with her sword behind her. I ran to meet her with my sword out front; as our bodies met and I began to phase through it, she whipped her sword straight through her body and toward my neck. It took a moment for my brain to catch up and realize what was happening; I bent my body backward to avoid the slash, but the tip of the sword sliced through my shirt and into my skin. I looked down at the six inch gash across the right side of my chest; it was already healing, but I was pissed. Apparently, she could make parts of her body solid while other parts were intangible. Maybe energy attacks would work? She was coming in for another attack when I raised my hand and blasted her with a series of lightning bolts… all of which passed straight through her. She was nearly to me, but the same trick wasn’t going to work twice. I lifted my sword to block hers, but it passed straight through my blade and through me. I realized a moment too late, that she had hidden a dagger in the glove of her other hand as it was headed straight toward my eye.
I moved my head back, but I was still going to be struck by the blade. Instead, I managed to grab her hand; in order to keep the weapon physical and not fall through her hand, it had to be physical as well. I flipped her around and threw her onto the rocky ground. She must have rematerialized, because she struck into it rather than falling through; I noticed something important in the last struggle. My blade passed through her more slowly than my body did. When my body moved through hers, it was like moving through the air; however, when my sword did it felt like it was moving through water. I looked down at my sword surrounded by the crackling red mist of the demon’s power. Demonic energy must be her weakness. I pumped more energy into the blade, and the red glow overtook the natural pink of arcane constructs. The Cloak seemed to sense what I was doing because she got even blurrier; I don’t know how else to describe it. Her black cloak was enveloped in an ominous black smoke; this time, I ran toward her. I didn’t know how she was planning to counterattack, and I didn’t care; I slashed my sword horizontally. The blade still phased through her, but this time it felt like the sword was moving through jelly, and the smoke surrounding her was pulled along with the blade. She grunted in discomfort and fell backward; I thought maybe I’d killed her, but all of the smoke flew to her like she was a magnet. Her body reformed, and she solidified again. I instantly raised my hand causing a huge rock to jut out from the earth right underneath her, but she managed to phase again in time. At least I knew my hypothesis was correct: demonic power could penetrate her phasing ability. I closed my eyes and felt the demon’s power throughout my soul and body and focused it into my eyes. When I opened them, I went full on Superman. I guess that’s kind of ambiguous, so I went full on Cyclops; red beams shot forth and destruction followed.
I don’t know how I knew to focus the energy into my eyes; maybe it was divine knowledge, or maybe I rewatched the Sasuke/Itachi fight too often. Either way, I had laser eyes now. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was one of the mountains on the edge of the island; the moment I looked upon it, the energy beams blasted through half of the rock causing a mini-avalanche. I looked away to stop gouging out a ravine in the land and saw the lighthouse. As the lasers struck it, sigils on it became visible and started glowing brighter and brighter until they faded, and I punched a hole in its side. I looked away again and saw what I was looking for: the Cloak. She tried to outrun my gaze, but it turns out moving your eyes a few degrees is much faster than running a few yards. The cloak was phased, but as the lasers crossed her, her body split in half. She screamed very briefly and went silent. I shut my eyes tight; I was afraid I’d blow my own eyelids off, but I didn’t. Instead, the pain set it.
The very moment the energy beams stopped, I was overwhelmed with agony and fell to my knees. I reached up to feel my face, and it was covered in blood; in fact, it was actively pouring out of my eye sockets. I gently opened my eyes, and my fears came true. I couldn’t see anything, not blackness, just nothing. With shaking hands I tried to feel my eyes themselves, and they weren’t there. It turns out laser vision isn’t what X-men cartoons promised it would be: I’d disintegrated my own fucking eye balls. I wasn’t too worried; they’d grow back pretty quickly in god mode, but I was still a little annoyed. And then, someone kicked me in the face. I surrounded myself in my wings like a make-shift shield; as far as I knew, they were impenetrable.
“Do you know why we sell our souls, demon?” the last Cloak asked me.
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” I replied as the pain started to subside. My eyes were reforming.
“It’s to save the world from monsters like you.” He slashed at my wings with his blade but to no effect; the fact that he stood by and watched me kill the others probably meant he was their leader, and likely an order of magnitude or more stronger than the rest.
“Monsters like me? I’ve seen you fuckers ally with demons and serial killers; you don’t care how many innocent people you kill to accomplish your goals, and half of you have been tainted by hell! You even slaughtered the entire American Gnosilepides order!” I shouted from behind my wings. It was true; Cloaks were still connected to their souls in hell meaning they could feel empathy and generate pneuma which would be impossible without a soul, but there’s a downside. While dreaming, the Cloaks can get flashes of the torture their souls are enduring within hell; that could drive anyone mad, and it’s only a matter of time before each Cloak switches sides and works for demons. To prevent that, they ritualistically execute each other at any sign of insanity or after fifty years of service. Quinn believed the Grand Master, the leader of the Cloaks, who had been a Cloak for over a century had been corrupted by hell, and he was controlling everything the organization was doing. It shouldn’t have mattered though because I watched him die… or did I?
“By instituting the Grand Design, we will save all of humanity!” he cried with real conviction. Have you ever actually listened to one of those crazy street preachers? They’ll scream of the most deranged shit you’ll ever hear in your life at anyone who will listen, but what’s remarkable is they truly believe it. That’s how this Cloak sounded; he was a true believer. “It’s unfortunate, but sometimes people have to die to carry out our purpose.” Whether or not he was corrupted by hell, he’d do anything the order commanded him to. “But you’re not one of them. You are a vile demon; you may have been useful once, but that time is over. I will be the one to kill you.”
I dramatically spread my wings, standing and opening my newly regenerated eyes. “And how exactly do you plan to do that?!” I shouted.
He didn’t look intimidated or even worried… he looked smug. He gave me a wry smile, “The monster within you gives you immunity to many of the torments of hell; however, not all of them. The betrayers are locked in the first level of hell, War, and are susceptible to its power.” His irises began swirling with glowing red light with moving dark spots in them, and his whole body began crackling with what looked like red lightning. Fuck. The first level of hell is by far the worst, and the Cloaks with their souls there are the strongest. He drew his sword which was also glowing red and crackling, and moved with speed that matched mine, putting his sword before him in a stabbing motion. I moved my left wing to block the blow…. And his sword stabbed right through it.
The blade went straight through my wing and would have penetrated my chest, but I moved over, and it hit my shoulder instead stopping at bone. I grunted and leapt backward pulling the blade out of me; red blood was flowing from my shoulder, but black goo was pouring from my wing. I hadn’t known it could be injured, and what’s worse, neither wound was healing. I rolled my shoulder, and it was still fully functional, just leaking a bit. The Cloak’s smirk hadn’t disappeared; “I did warn you,” he said mockingly. Maybe I was susceptible to his attacks, but he was also susceptible to mine.
“I don’t know how you’re alive, and I don’t care. You won’t be for long!” I spat as I thrust my hand forward. A wall of fire taller than the lighthouse and just as wide shot forth at over twenty miles per hour; the fire was so hot even the bare rock below us was scorched. Through the fire, I saw a pink dome appear around the Cloak. That wasn’t too surprising; after all, they all have those enchanted shield bracers. However, this was different; he had his hand outstretched with a pink sigil glowing brightly, and the dome was covered in the same red lightning as his body. He was a practitioner; centuries ago when the Cloaks were first started, they were all practitioners. Some were spellswords and others were wizards, but they all had the ability to use magic which was enhanced by the powers of hell. That all changed a few decades ago when their numbers began growing exponentially; there just aren’t that many people that are trained to use magic, so they opened membership to the nonmagical. In fact it seemed they could control join. This guy was different though; he cast that spell without a focusing tool like a wand or staff. That probably meant he was a spellsword; he looked young, but without a soul, the body ages very slowly. In other words, it was impossible to determine if he lived through the massacre where I thought all of the Cloaks had died or if he was recruited afterword. The fire parted when it struck the Cloak’s shield, but he grimaced when it did, meaning I might have the juice to break it. The rest of the flame wall continued with some of it striking a mountain, part of it splashing against the lighthouse, and the rest of it continuing out and onto the lake.
Before I could formulate a plan, he attacked; thrusting his hand in my direction, a grey sigil appearing from nothing. It was an air sigil, but I didn’t recognize it; the symbols were ornate and complicated. Suddenly, the air a few inches in front of the sigil began to compress dramatically; I knew because I could actually see the air. Light bends through air differently depending on its density; that’s how you see mirages in the desert or the appearance of water above asphalt on a hot day. The Cloak had created a ball of air roughly the size of a dime that was so dense, I could see its outline. I stared at it in amazement for a second and a half before I realized what he was going to do next. I raised my shield the moment the air bullet shot toward me traveling at least the speed of sound. My shield was its usual semi-transparent pink, but it also glowed with the red mist of the demon’s power; unfortunately, that didn’t protect me very well. The air slammed into the dome, sending cracks throughout it; he must have reenforced the spell with the power of the first level of hell. I thought I was at least temporarily in the clear, but then another gaseous sphere struck the shield deepening the cracks, then another and another. My shield was taking a beating and wouldn’t survive much longer; I needed to counterattack. I don’t think I would have been capable of this normally, but I knew I could pull it off with the demon’s strength running through me. With my right hand, I kept the dome up, and with my left, I cast an earth spell. A hand made of rock jutted out of the ground underneath the Cloak gripping him tightly; I clenched my fist, and the stone fist did the same.
I soared with pride in my victory and looked for something else to kill in a homicidal rage, and then the rock split into pieces. The Cloak fell to his knees desperately trying to catch his breath, but he looked mostly fine. What would it take to kill this asshole? He stood up slightly shaky on his feet and vanished. He was fast, very very fast; he shot toward me with his sword reared back. I summoned my sword just in time to block his blow; his blade like the rest of him was crackling with red lightning. I was afraid it would slice straight through my sword, but it didn’t. The blade did, however, chip mine; we stood with our swords locked both pressing as hard as we could against the other. His speed might have matched mine, but I was physically stronger. I pushed his sword back, and inch by inch it got closer and closer to his throat. In a fight of sustained blows like this, I was going to win which is probably why he changed tactics. He withdrew his sword and flipped around striking from the other side; I blocked the blow, and he instantly pulled his blade back and swung from another angle which I also stopped. It went on like that for over a minute: he attacked again and again repeatedly, and I blocked every blow; unfortunately, each time our swords met, mine fragmented more and more. Finally, he struck with enough force to slice my weapon in two; his sword went straight through mine and right at my chest. With a flap of my wings, I shot backward and kicked him in the chest as a parting gift.
I got my feet back under me and slid a few feet on the rocky island as the Cloak struck the ground on his back and tumbled a few times before jumping to his feet. “It’s pointless to resist!” he shouted. “I’m the rock to your scissors, and even if I weren’t, you will not interfere in our plans again! The Grand Design is the only way we can ever be free! No hell below us, above us only sky! If you really cared about mortals, you’d let me kill you.”
I clenched my fists so hard, I felt my bones creak. “You don’t get it do you? The Grand Design is a fucking rouse! You’re working for hell, and you don’t even know it!”
“I will hear no blasphemies!” he shouted rushing toward me again, but I was ready. I lifted both hands and unleashed a torrent of frost magic: a blue beam shot forth from a large light blue sigil that appeared in front of me. As the beam moved forward, it was accompanied by a frigid wind that coated every surface in a thin layer of ice; the Cloak raised his shield about a tenth of a second before the beam struck him. It continued past him leaving a trail of ice that led to the water surrounding the island and freezing it too. The Cloak’s shield had frozen as well encasing him in a half sphere of ice; I tried to run forward, but the ice was slippery. Instead, I jumped into the air and brought my fist down onto the frozen dome, shattering it the moment I touched it. I expected to go straight through is body, but he wasn’t there. I looked around, but he was nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see through the ice like I could other objects; when I looked at it, all I could see was the demonic power all throughout. I probably should have thought about that before I used the spell, but to be fair I thought he’d be frozen solid. I looked down and noticed something: one small patch of ice was lacking demon energy… and beneath it was a tunnel into the ground. The moment I had that realization, the ice under me shattered, and a black figure with red lightning surrounding him launched upward with his sword extended. I dodged the first instant I could, but it wasn’t fast enough. The tip of the blade sliced about half an inch into my stomach and thinned as it went up to my chest.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Pain shot through me; I was usually immune to such trivial concerns in this state. I looked down at my stomach, and red lines in my skin fractally extended around the wound like the roots of a tree. “That’s right!” the Cloak said in an air of self-righteousness only the truly deluded can have. “My power is poisonous to you!” he laughed maniacally. He came in for another attack this time with his sword poised to stab; I wrapped myself in my already damaged wing. I guess he thought I was stupid because he didn’t find it suspicious I would choose to defend myself with a method previously shown ineffective. As the sword pierced my wing creating a hole right next to the other one, but rather than stab into me, I spread my wing, ripping the sword from his hand. Underneath the wing, I had my fist reared back and punched him in the face. If it had been anyone else, I would have shattered his skull and maybe broken his neck, but I guess the first level of hell increases your durability. He flew backward through the air, and before he hit the ground, I decided to go full scorched earth. I raised both hands in the air, and a large deep blue sigil appeared above them. Clouds formed from nothing above the island; it looked like a timelapse weather video. The clouds were so thick, they blocked any light from the now setting grey sun.
“They’re not going to find a fucking trace of you, monster!” I shouted as I simultaneously lowered both hands like I was throwing a spirit bomb. A lightning bolt – no, not a lightning bolt. The only way to describe this thing is as a death ray. An electric death ray the width of the island poured out of the clouds and shot toward us. I was going to erase this shithole off of the map even if I was reduced to ash myself. As the enormous blue lightning bolt came from the heavens, I paused for a moment. My consciousness bled through the rage for an instant, and I felt something was wrong. You know that feeling you get when you’re pretty sure you forgot about something, but you can’t remember what it is? What was it? Any thought that wasn’t about slaughtering someone felt far away or like I was trying to interpret the voice from underwater. Then an image flashed across my mind: Cassie’s face. Cassie was still trapped in stone atop one of the mountains; guilt surged through me. I had broken my vow and embraced the demon and nearly killed Cassie again, and maybe I still would. I leapt in the air spreading my wings and made it to the mountain in moments. Sure enough, Cassie was still encased in rock with her face exposed and only half conscious.
“Dante…” she muttered barely audibly. I didn’t have time to remove her from the rock without breaking her body too, and the electric death ray was about a meter above us. I did the only thing I could: I covered her with one wing, covered myself with the other and raised my shield. My shield survived the initial onslaught, but the mountain beneath us didn’t. It began to crumble beneath us as the surface we were standing became molten lava in the blindingly bright glow of the lightning. I managed to sustain the dome for about a third of a second. The doesn’t sound very long, but after using the majority of my pneuma on a destructo-beam and then defending against it, I lasted longer than I’d expected. Luckily, my wings survived the electric onrush; unfortunately, the wing that was protecting me had two holes in it. Blue light poured through the openings and straight into my torso; I guess I blacked out because when I opened my eyes again, it was all over. The burns on my body were healing, but I kept crackling with static electricity. My muscles and nerves had been affected, and my body was sluggish like there was a delay between my brain ordering commands and my muscles carrying them out. Even worse, the red lightning shaped poison around the place where the Cloak’s sword cut me had grown. I looked up; Cassie was still safe in her stone tomb; however, the mountain we were on was now a tenth of its original size, and it was the last one standing. The entire island had been flattened and reduced to quickly cooling molten rock; even the magically protected lighthouse had cracks running all throughout the building.
I got to my feet carefully on the maybe ten square feet left of the rock we were on; with a wave of my hand and the flash of a brown sigil, I shattered the stone surrounding Cassie and caught her before she could fall. She began breathing deeply; I guess the rock had kept her breaths shallow. She opened her eyes, but I don’t think she was really conscious.
“Cassie! Can you hear me?” I shouted at her. She opened and closed her eyes rapidly but didn’t respond. There wasn’t enough room to lay her down up here, and the rock was still hot on the ground level. With another wave of my hand, I summoned a frigid wind that blew over the island cooling the surface. With Cassie still in my arms, I jumped to the ground, felt the rock to ensure it was cool. It was, so I laid her down onto the ground. “Cassie?” I asked more softly.
“Dante?” she whispered; she finally had some awareness behind her eyes, and as they focused on me, I saw something in them. Something I never wanted to see again: fear. Her eyes focused on my face, and she smiled until she saw my glowing red eyes with cat-like slits. Her brow furrowed in confusion and her brown eyes grew large until they tracked up to the large black wings on either side of me. Then confusion became alarm which became horror; she backed away from me kicking her legs and supporting her weight on her elbows while still on the ground. My heart broke; she was the only person who’d ever seen my demonic side without being repulsed. Emma, Neil, and even Kaine reacted with disgust but not Cassie. Not even when I was restraining the urge to kill her, but now was different. She was petrified; after all, how couldn’t she be? I was a fucking monster, and not just because of the demon. I had done terrible, awful things over and over again; I couldn’t help it. I had just killed three people and delighted in it. I let the Cloaks use me as a pawn, and I couldn’t save anyone I cared about. I looked away from her in shame; I was going to be better from now on. I had to live up to who she thought I was… or used to think.
“My life isn’t worth becoming a monster!” I shouted out loud. Cassie stared at me with concern, and that everpresent fear. I dropped to my knees placing a hand on either side of my head and screamed, “Get back in your fucking box!” I imagined the dam repairing itself and containing the power of the demon; my eyes were closed tight which doesn’t matter with demonic vision, but I was suddenly plunged into darkness. Next, I felt my wings contract into my back with sickening popping sounds, and then I fell forward. All of the pain caught up with me: every muscle ached, my shoulder seared, and my stomach hurt. I pushed myself to my knees and looked at Cassie; she gave me a genuine smile.
“Hey, Dante,” she said weakly.
“Hey, Cassie,” I replied flashing her a grin. Something was weird; I wasn’t in as bad of shape as I should have been. I looked down at my stomach, and there were no red lightning marks; I guess the poison only worked on demons. I got to my feet; I felt surprisingly good. I even had a bit of pneuma left, not a lot but enough to not be completely defenseless. There was something else; I wasn’t in withdrawal. Being addicted to opiates is a physical condition; your brain physically has fewer opioid receptors than a nonaddict. When I went full divine mode, my brain must have returned to normal; that was amazing news. I could be a normal person after this… Well, excluding the evil monster living in my soul that will probably never shut up now, but I had more important things to worry about now. I scanned the island; Athena’s soul had apparently been disintegrated by the lightning, but it was reforming. That was something that needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later, but the demon said the Cloak was still alive. Just then as if on cue, a hand appeared out of the rock below. He was a little worse for wear but still moving and covered in red lightning with red swirling eyes. His cloak had been mostly destroyed from the waist up revealing a slender but muscular body, and he had fresh third degree burns on his wrists. Ok, I don’t know the difference between different degrees of burns, but they looked bad. He must have survived by a combination of hiding in the earth and his enchanted shield bracers. I walked away from Cassie and stood ten feet in front of him.
“You’ve decided to die human; I can respect that,” he said with a grin.
“I’m not planning on dying,” I said with more confidence than I felt. My only hope was he was more injured than he appeared.
“Then you’re just a fool.” He drew his sword from his waist extending the crackling red energy to the blade and ran toward me. I summoned my shield, but he was already within it as the dome sprung into place. He slashed his sword to take my head off, but I managed to duck the attack. Unfortunately, he followed it up with a punch to my stomach; I had just enough time to focus pneuma into my stomach muscles which probably saved my life. When you’re punched in the stomach hard enough, the blow caves your belly in and strikes your organs. That happened to me and then some; I went flying through the air and bounced more than once as I hit the ground. The second I tried to stand back up, I vomited blood and fell face first into the liquid. It was really gross. I managed to get back to my feet narrowly avoiding the urge to dry heave. The Cloak laughed merrily like we were buddies three beers deep; I might not have had supernatural rage pumping through my veins anymore, but that did piss me off. I raised my hand and launched a basketball sized fireball straight at his face. The bastard didn’t even stop laughing; he stretched his hand out and created a gale of wind so strong the fireball stopped in mid air. A neat trick, but a stupid one; I lifted my other hand, levitated a small pebble, and launched it into the ball of flame. The minute the rock collided with the fire, it exploded pushing air in every direction and nearly knocking me down.
Once the light faded, I saw the Cloak standing calmly protected by his pink shield surrounded by red lightning. He was stronger, faster, and more durable than me, but maybe I could be smarter than him; it was my only hope to avoid a horrible death. My eyes widened in excitement as I thought of a way to beat him; I wasn’t sure it would work, but it was my only hope. “Do not fear, demon. Take comfort in the knowledge the mortal realm will be safer without you,” he said self-assuredly. One thing was for sure: this guy bought his own bullshit. He raised his hand with a pale white sigil filled with complicated symbols appeared. At first, I thought he was using the air bullet spell again, but I was wrong. The air began to condense, but instead of small spheres, he created three long javelins of super dense air. The first flew toward me even faster than the bullets did; I barely had time to raise my shield, but the air-spear pierced through it and exploded in a shockwave of high speed winds in all directions. The wind lifted me off my feet and tossed me twenty feet in the air; the moment before I hit the ground, the second javelin shot directly toward my heart. I used my own wind spell to blow myself out of the way; it worked… sort of. The gaseous blade struck the ground instead of me, but when it exploded, the wind blew me even harder; this time, it sent me straight for the Cloak. Luckily for me, he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He sent the final javelin at me when I was only a few feet away from him. With another gust of wind, I launched myself toward him to ensure the explosion of the air spear would shoot me toward him. I succeeded.
The air explosion threw both of us toward the lighthouse, but because I was closer to the javelin, I was blown a little farther. We collided in the air then both struck the side of the structure; he bore the brunt of the blow. As we fell to the ground, I pushed my thumb into my stomach wound covering it in blood and stuck it in the Cloak’s mouth. I know what you’re thinking; ewwww, and you would be right. Ewwww indeed. When regular humans consume the blood of the possessed, it corrupts their bodies and souls mutating them into orcs, but Cloaks have no souls – at least no souls inside of them. I wasn’t sure what effect my blood would have on him, but I was hoping, praying even, that without a soul to absorb some of the dark power, his body would soak it all up transforming him into a bestial demon, barely human. Actually, I was hoping he’d go blind, burst into flames, and his dick would fall off, but that didn’t seem very likely. I backed away from him and waited; he looked up at me alarmed and glanced down staring at his hands, but nothing happened. We stayed in that position, me standing him still on the ground with both of us staring at him… and still nothing happened. Finally, he chuckled, “It was a good idea, demon, but apparently, my kind is immune to such corruption.” With that he jumped up to his feet, grabbed me by the throat, and slammed me into the crumbling wall of the lighthouse. All of the air was driven from my lungs, and my vision was invaded by streaks of light changing colors rapidly. I tried to take a breath, but his hand was still around my throat closing off my windpipe; as the colors slowly faded replaced by tunneling vision, I wondered why I was still alive. Suddenly, I fell to the ground right on my ass; I desperately gasped for air. Why had he let me go? It didn’t make sense. I looked up at him and understood.
The Cloak was resting one hand against the lighthouse for balance; he was shaking violently. His eyes were glowing red with slit-like pupils; my plan had worked! What looked like a dark blue rash appeared on his stomach but quickly spread all over his body; his teeth and fingernails turned black and began to grow. I was quite proud of myself; I’d taken down the last Cloak and carried out my righteous vengeance, and then he started foaming at the mouth. My heart fell; I wasn’t out of the woods yet. The Cloak or whatever he was now growled like a fucking animal and lurched toward me when I heard a familiar bang, and I was showered in blood and human meat. At least half of his face was missing, and he fell forward face first onto the ground. My eyes widened in surprise; I looked around, and Cassie had pulled herself back to the top of the remaining mountain and retrieved her bag. She was holding a still smoking rifle.
I shot Cassie a big dumb grin; we were going to make it home after all. I got to my feet and wiped my face off with my shirt; it wasn’t very effective considering it was covered in various bodily fluids, but at least I got the chunks of brain out of my hair... mostly. I pulled my pack of cigarettes out of my front pocket; the pack was squished to shit and back, but the one remaining cigarette was mostly intact. I pulled it out, stuck it between my lips, and lit it with a flame that sprung from a sigil an inch above my thumb. I inhaled deeply and held the smoke in my lungs. It felt good; strike that. It felt great; finally, we could go home. I took another hit and watched as the last rays of grey sun set over the horizon. Cassie started climbing down to meet me while I leaned against the lighthouse. I should probably burn this place to the ground, so… Fuck. Athena’s soul was regenerating last time I saw her; I whipped my head around, but I didn’t see her anywhere, and then Cassie screamed. I clenched my fists tight and slowly turned my whole body. She was encased in rock again just like she had been before, and Athena stood behind her with a big smirk on her face with the chain of a necklace wrapped around her hand and a foggy crystal swinging back and forth suspended by the chain.
“Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?” she said with a squeal. “Oh right, you were going to sign this contract.” With a wave of her hand, the scroll appeared in her other hand; I was pretty sure it wasn’t the same one as before. Surely the lightning had destroyed that one, but she could make matter from nothing, so what did it matter?
“Same terms?” I asked.
“Of course,” she replied with a smile.
“Perhaps, we should make it official in this eyesore,” I said indicating the lighthouse. “Afterall, if I had destroyed it like I should have, none of this would have happened.”
“The physical embodiment of your failures. I like it,” she cackled.
I stepped through the hole I’d created in the structure; it was pitch black, so with a wave of my hand, I created a glowing white sphere. The building was a single room excluding the very top where the light was. The cylinder was wall to wall bookshelves with many of the books now scattered all over the ground and a staircase that wound around that led up to the top room. The bookshelves went all the way up to the top of the lighthouse as far as I could tell; there must have been thousands, maybe tens of thousands of books, and the ones I could see looked very old. There was one book set apart from the others and on a pedestal in the center of the room. It was huge, probably three or four inches thick, a foot long, and eight inches wide. The book was also opened to a page toward the back of the book; Athena walked in after me.
“You made quite a mess in here, but I do commend you on killing the Cloaks. Those self-righteous fuckers will get us all killed,” she said without losing her grin.
My nostrils flared completely of their own accord; I had a plan, but I was losing track of it. “So they’re really back? I thought they were all killed,” I muttered through clenched teeth.
“Their Grand Master,” she said the phrase as sarcastically as she could, “survived the attack and spent a few years rebuilding the order.” How could he be alive? I didn’t understand; I watched him die. “It doesn’t matter for you though, dear Dante. You won’t live long enough for it to matter.”
I’d walked deeper into the room, close enough to touch the pedestal; I looked at the page, but it was written in Latin. That was unfortunate; all I could do was hope it was opened to the right page. “I’m not so sure about that, Athena.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the necklace with the clear pendant and placed my other hand on the book. I poured pneuma into the sigil on the page; a black beam shot out of the symbol, and I directed it toward Athena. “What are you…” she started alarmed, but she didn’t get to finish her statement. When the black light touched her, her physical form began to fade away, and her essence was deposited into the crystal in my hand.
“I’m making the world a better place,” I whispered to the now empty room.
I freed Cassie from her earth tomb… again and shattered all of the pendants except for the one containing Athena setting the Knights of New Byzantium free. They were all a little messed up, but none of them had transformed into goblins. We gave them what was left of our ship; I’m sure Constantine would have preferred if I went back to the city, but there was a nonzero chance he’d try to trap me there, so it seemed easier to bounce. Before we left, I summoned the strongest flame I could and set the lighthouse ablaze from the inside. What was left of the sigils were primarily oriented to protect the outside, so the inside burned quite easily. I thought about taking the big evil necromancy book on the pedestal, but I decided against it and threw it into the fire. Cassie and I sat on the island and watched it burn; she even put her head on my shoulder.
We used Cassie’s scroll to teleport us back to the store. Strange Attractions was still standing; Carlos had kept the lights on… except when he had to close the store to go to school. I promised to tell him the whole story in return for working so many hours. I drove Cassie home and then went home myself; Numpy was enraged I’d left him outside for so long, but he forgave me after I fed him and curled up with me in bed. I slept for sixteen hours straight; I woke up, peed, and made breakfast (in other words, I drank a coke and ate a Poptart) before I realized what was wrong. I had no cravings, no compulsive yawning, no itchiness on the inside of my skin, nothing; I really wasn’t addicted to Vicodin anymore. Without that monkey on my back (what the fuck does that even mean?) maybe I could turn things around and do something with my life, help people, do what I was trained to do.
Later that day, Cassie called me and asked me to join her at a local restaurant for a “business meeting.” I don’t know what kind of impression you have of me, but I’m not the kind of guy that goes to business meetings, but I said yes anyway when she refused to give me any more information. I felt a little uncomfortable walking into a restaurant where everyone else was wearing khakis and button up shirts while I was wearing baggy jeans, an anime t-shirt, and reeking of cigarette smoke, but I got over it quickly. I arrived before Cassie and got sat at a two person table by a window. I thought about getting a cock-tail, but it was the kind of place that didn’t list their drink prices, so I stuck with coke.
“Hey, sorry I’m late!” Cassie said in a fancy form-fitting pale pink dress that looked very nice on her.
“Is there some reason we couldn’t meet at a McDonald’s or an Applebee’s or something?” I joked.
“That’s not where you talk about business!” she said reprovingly.
I openly laughed as she took her seat. “Business? I have no money, and my only skill is controlling the fundamental power of the universe. That sounds cool, but the only thing I can do with it is clap assholes.” The waitress shot me a dirty look as she took Cassie’s drink order; she ordered one of those fancy drinks that come with little umbrellas.
“Will you be serious?” she continued once the waitress left. “You’re a protector of humanity! And you happen to live in a country, no a continent, that has no one left that can do that.”
“Yeah, because I got the rest of them fucking killed!” I retorted.
She gave me a harsh look, and I stopped talking. “I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what happened, but I find that very hard to believe. Either way, you are all we have!” She was half shouting by the end of her sentence, and other customers began giving us side glances.
“Umm, you’re going to have to be quieter. We’ve gotten… complaints,” a woman that walked up to our table said. Her name tag said she was the hostess; what even is a hostess? Someone that shows you to your table and takes your order? That’s exactly the definition of a waiter.
“Sorry, Candy. We’ll keep it down,” Cassie replied genially with a smile.
“Her name was Candy?” I chuckled as she walked away. “Who names their kid Candy?”
“You can’t keep a train of thought for more than twelve seconds, can you?” Cassie replied exasperated.
“Not typically,” I agreed.
“I want to create the infrastructure necessary for us, for you,” she corrected herself quickly, “to be able to help people.”
I just stared at her in confusion. “Will you just tell me what you’re talking about, Cassie?”
“I want to run a paranormal investigation office out of Strange Attractions.” She said the words so quickly I didn’t understand them at first. After a few seconds a big dumb grin filled my face.
“You want to be paranormal investigators? Like the guys from the Discovery channel that film everything in green for some reason and inject stock sounds into the footage to make it seem like they found ghosts?”
“No, dumb ass.” I feel a sense of victory every time I get Cassie to curse; I don’t know why. “We would be real paranormal investigators; we could get requests from the internet, figure out which are real, and help people. I know you miss helping people somewhere deep in your heart no matter how much you try to hide it under a guise of apathy and nihilism.” She wasn’t wrong; I was so tired of feeling powerless in an unfixably broken world. The last few days was the first time I felt good in a very long time. I only had one objection.
“We?” I questioned.
“Yes, we!” she replied. “You would be dead about forty times over without me; like it or not, you need me!” She still wasn’t wrong.
I sighed deeply. “Fine but under two conditions.” Her eyes lit up, and she gave me one of those smiles that melted my heart.
“One: if I tell you to run, you run. I’m not going to let you get killed to solve strangers’ problems.”
“We’ll see,” she interrupted.
“No. We’re not going to go play Winchester unless I can be reasonably certain of your safety!” I interjected. People were looking at us again, but I didn’t care. She rolled her eyes and nodded. “And two: you have to wear this.” I pulled a necklace out of my pocket and handed it to her.
Her eyes grew wide with shock. “Is this…”
“It’s Athena.” I confirmed.
“I won’t be a part of the torture of a soul!” she shrieked earning us even more glances.
“This is literally the only way I know of containing her without turning her into one of the drowned; besides, you saw what she did. She deserves every fucking second in there,” I said calmly.
“Why do you want me to wear it?” she asked, still disgusted.
“You know sigils better than I do; with this, at least if shit hits the fan, you won’t be helpless.” I smirked, “Hell, you might even be stronger than me.” She still looked unsure, and my hand was getting tired holding the jewelry out toward her. “It’s this or no deal.”
“Fine,” she muttered taking the necklace and putting it around her neck. I smiled at her, and then we were kicked out of the restaurant.
I don’t really know how to wrap this up; I survived which should mean the psychic message the story is encoded in is still inside my head. I seriously considered deleting it, but I’m not out of the woods yet. Apparently, I’m fated to be killed by the gods or “fulfill the aptitude of man” whatever the fuck that means, so I’m fairly confident I’m not getting out of harm’s way anytime soon. I guess I’ll keep it, maybe even add to it. I might even be proud of who I am before someone or something does me in. You never know.