If I were to die right now, there would be nothing stopping this hell-vessel from barbequing God.
Huh, always thought the phrase “barbequing God” would hit me with a little more zest.
The Hell-vessel in question and I clash, and waves of air exhale from the point where my sword meets his fist.
He swings back his arm and brings his leg to my side, so fast that I don’t have time to respond. As his shin meets my torso, I cry from the blistering heat, and am then thrust rightwards, into the side of a red Mercedes.
The vehicle dents from the impact, and it takes a few moments for oxygen to return to my lungs as I bend backwards, hoping to ease some of the ringing in my spine. I barely have enough time to scramble to my feet when the Hell-vessel appears right in front of me. He wraps is flaming fingers around my throat.
“I asked you a question, kid.” He growls as he squeezes.
The veins in my right leg muscles bulge as I slam my foot against his stomach. He’s flung away from me, and God has to duck to avoid joining him on his journey. The hell-vessel’s body rips off the roof of my car, before he tumbles into a glossy-black Wraith.
Despite the fact that my throat has pinkened from the heat, and that I’m damn near coughing up my intestines, I smile. “You’re going to have to kill me first!”
“Oh no!” God gasps. She turns to the hell-vessel, “Her name is Teni!”
“Wh-? God!”
The dumbass turns to me before sending a wink and thumbs-up my way. “I’ll do anything to keep my children alive!” She proclaims.
“Teni, eh?” The man gets up and cracks his neck “I need a last name, so I can know who to address your corpse to.”
“I take it another “your mom” joke would be too much?”
The flames around his foot burn with more vigor and he begins to levitate. “At the very least, killing you would shut you up.” He says from about 5 meters off the ground.
“…I’m trying really hard to think of a way to insert another mom joke in here.”
With a growl, the flames at his back intensify and he tears through the air, headed straight for me.
Clenching my biceps, I wait until he’s in range before I swing my blade unto his midriff, launching him away like a pinball.
The hell-vessel crashes through a wooden help-desk and lands on the windshield of a Subaru, the glass melting away at his touch.
He groans in pain, but I don’t feel proud of myself, I’m more surprised that his torso and waist are still conjoined.
I turn to God to ask “how”, but she’s picking her nose and marveling at a butterfly in her hand, so I already know I’m on my own.
With a deep breath, I tighten my thighs and concentrate on the warmth permeating through my body from the sword. “Our father, who art in heaven,” I pray.
The hell-vessel gets his bearings, and flies towards me again.
“Grant me the flames of the severance line!” I release the tension in my legs and barrel forwards. The flames on my sword brighten, a gold so warm and rich the only thing I can compare them to would have to be God’s eyes.
As we meet, my sword travels along a horizontal arc, with the hell-vessel’s neck right at the crest. Despite how bright the flames are, and how much I trust them, I don’t close my eyes this time. I stare at Uriel’s blade as it moves along it’s path, and I know with every fiber of my soul, that if this doesn’t break the hell-vessel’s coat of fire, nothing will.
I watch as a line of flames, stretching from one side of the building to the tip of my blade’s arc, readies to continue on it’s path after I’ve severed my opponent’s head. I watch as my sword somehow manages to shine with even more radiance, and I watch as it’s warmth weakens the Hell-vessel’s flames.
I also watch as my sword meets his neck, and snaps like a twig.
With a cackle, the hell-vessel places his flaming palm on my cheek, squeezes my head like it’s some kind of fruit, and slams me, side-face first, unto the ground with enough force to crack the pavement. I hear something in my face shatter, and I can feel the skin on that side of my face breaking as blood gushes out like a damn faucet.
Not loosening his grip, he picks me up and tosses me like a rag doll, and my flailing body bashes unto the roof of a Corvette. Said roof dips under my weight, it’s windows shattering, but that does little to ease the agony, both from the relentless screaming of my back, and the throbbing of the right side of my face. Which is so unforgiving it resets my brain with each pang. The painful resistance to moving my neck also tells me there’s some damage there as well.
“Come on, Teni! You’re God’s guardian! It’s not supposed to be this easy!” He baits.
Ignoring the creaking of my bones, and the fact that there’s too much blood on one side of my face to see clearly, I clench my jaw so hard that some of my teeth hike into my gum, and my tongue tastes iron. With great effort, I crawl off the corvette and stumble onto my feet.
“Why are you even with God? We’ve looked into you, you know? You’re type ain’t exactly singing “Kumbaya” with hers. You lose literally nothing if you get up and walk out that door. Well, I mean, I’d still have to kill you because I’d have no real way of knowing if you were genuinely quitting or not, but in theory, you really could just quit. So why don’t you?”
“Because she loves me!” God bellows from behind him.
Both him and I turn to God, before shaking our heads.
“Look Teni, all I’m saying is that, God, the person you’re serving, is not the pillar of justice that you think she is. She’s a horrible person…he’s a horrible person. And whether or not you interfere, I’m going to kill her. Right now it’s only a question of if you want to die peacefully or if you want to drag this out. Whad’ya say, why don’t we make my job a lot easier?”
“Fuck you!” I growl as I dash to wards him. I reach back to unsheathe my sword, but by the time I realize it’s gone, he swings his arm across the broken half of my face, swatting me away like I’m a fly. I land on the ground in a heap a few meters from him.
My face. My face is fucking ringing. Blood fills my mouth, waterfalling out from my lips.
The hell-vessel sighs, and shakes his head like a dissapointed father, “I always ask, and they always reply the same way. You know, one of these days I’m just going to kill without doing the whole talkative villain schtick. Lord Asmodeus is starting to think I’m treading copy-cat waters anyway.”
God gasps.
As I once again struggle to my feet, my gaze dances around the area for where my broken sword is-
“I take it you’re looking for this?” He picks up Uriel’s blade from beside his foot and tosses it over his shoulder casually. “Don’t bring a knife to a fist fight, kid.”
“But then how would she get the upper hand?” God asks genuinely.
The hell-vessel pauses, before turning to the deity, then back to me. “…I’m sorry, are you positive that’s Yahweh?”
I nod.
“The source of the universe?”
I nod again.
“The ultimate miracle?”
Another nod.
“Well, what happened to her?”
I sigh, as God begins her explanation, not realizing she’s openly outpouring her weaknesses.
“Well, you see, my naughty child, my mortal enclosure cannot possibly handle the weight of my infinite knowledge and mental prowess, so my level of intelligence is a little bit inconsistent, not to mention…”
God keeps talking and I have to stop myself from marveling at the fact that she is actually being kind of useful to me. While she distracts the hell-vessel, I clench my my calves and leap into the air. Flipping forward, I land with a roll and pick up my broken sword in the process. Upon inspection, I can tell about a good 6 inches of the sword had been severed, leaving me with only roughly a foot of sharp metal with no pointed tip to kill this hell-vessel who has way more power than me.
Great odds I have here.
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“Oh wow. You got it back.” He says, “But you do realize even if by some miracle you manage to kill me, I won’t be the only one coming after you, right? I mean I only know one prayer and yet you’re still getting your ass kicked. There are hell-vessels out there with no inch of uncarved skin left. If they’re sent after you guys, you will die. No doubt about it. So how about you drop the sword, and be on your merry way. I know what I said before, but I won’t even touch you, scout’s honor. Matter of fact, I swear on Lord Asmodeus’s name.”
I wipe some of the blood off my face. “Cap.”
He shrugs, “Fair enough.” Without warning, the flames at his feet roar and he tears through the air towards me.
I barely manage to roll out of harm’s way in time before he skids to a stop in my former position. In his right hand are several locks of black hair and I don’t even have to check to know those were part of my weaves.
The bastard shrugs once more. “Oops. Was aiming for your neck.”
“Do you know how expensive that was?!” I holler.
He has the nerve to shrug again. “Do you know I much I don’t care?”
I reach back to my ponytail and weep internally when I realize it’s now less of a ponytail and more of a rabbit’s ass.
“You bastard,” I curse, despite the fact that my jaw burns with every word, “I’ll have your balls for that!”
He chuckles, “Whatever lights your candle, kid.”
My vision on the right side of my face blurs, but I spit out a clod of blood and pelt myself towards him. After I twist in the air, my foot lands on his face and pushes with combined might of Samson and I. Using him as a springboard, I flip backwards and land not-at-all-gracefully in what was intended to be a badass superhero crouch.
With a grunt, the hell-vessel’s back knocks the ground enough impact force to crack the pavement, and I can’t help but feel a little smug at the fact that he now knows how that feels.
“God?” I call, and she stops picking her nose and turns to me. “Got any prayers for me? Preferably one that cuts him instead of my sword?”
She places her index and pinkie fingers on her chin and ponders on my request, as though we weren’t in the middle of a high stakes, life or death situation. “Hmmm…” The dumbass thinks.
While she wastes my time, the hell-vessel charges at me, and once again I just barely manage to dodge the attack. He’s more prepared this time though, as he spins and kicks my side with what I’m sure is enough force to break a few of my ribs.
A shriek finds its way out my throat as I crash into the back of a red Ferrari. My clothes, now tattered and charred are borderline unrecognizable, and I imagine my body, especially my face, aren’t far off either.
“God!” I bellow, “A prayer?!” My shoulder and the side of my torso each feel like they’re on fire.
“Right! Repeat after me!” She perks, before clapping her hands in prayer. I momentarily contemplate telling her she doesn’t need to join her hands since she isn’t the one doing the prayer, but I’m in too much pain to waste my saliva on her stupidity. “Our father, who art in heaven,”
“Our father, who art in heaven.” I groan, as I clutch the left side of my stomach and somehow manage to stand on both feet.
“Grant me the flames of the Helix!” God prays.
Clenching my Jaw, I rush towards the hell-vessel, “Grant me the flames of the helix!” I echo.
Upon sensing my prayer, My sword blazes to life and…nothing happens. The hell-vessel’s white-toothed smile could be seen from a mile away as he once again swats me away.
I skid on the floor, and stab my blade into the ground to grind to a halt. A gnash on the floor from where it tore through the pavement trails me. “Uh…God? Wasn’t something cool and shiny supposed to happen?” I ask over the soundtrack of the hell-vessel’s laughter.
The deity sighs, “It’s as I suspected, you don’t have enough faith.”
“Faith? Since when was that a prerequisite?”
“You need it to access divinity, the sword and the prayer hands, they’re all just mediums. Your faith in me and the glory I’ve bestowed upon you is what matters.” She says this last part pointedly, like she’s sad I didn’t drop everything to start smoking hand-rolled bible pages the second she vomited a buck naked warrior and sent him running into my stomach.
The hell-vessel continues cackling obnoxiously, “You see that?” He says, in between laughs, “That’s the problem with saints! You need to believe in some God who won’t even let you get your dick wet before marriage-”
“-actually, that’s a common misconception-”
“-In order to have power!” The flames around the left side of his midriff fade until we can see the somehow unharmed clothes underneath. He lifts his tank top and I see a deep, dark red carving is engraved into his body.
“All I have to do is get a knife, dip it into Lord Asmodeus’s blood and carve the Hebrew glyphs of any prayer I want unto my skin.” He drops his shirt and scarlet flames once again cover up that part of his body. “My blood! After that, all I need is my own godforsaken blood! Not a bible, not anointing oil, not a damn church service, me! The only thing I need to kill my enemies is me! And that, Teni…that, is power. The kind you and your bible thumping virgins will never know, the kind that-”
“ENOUGH!” A voice says. It comes from God but sounds nothing like her high-pitched, warm, ear-cancer. This voice belongs to on old man, to a king of many generations. It’s deep, gravelly, and its resonance shakes the entire building to it’s core.
God’s eyes glow, so bright that it looks like two suns rest in her sockets. Her hair rises like she’s being electrocuted, and I can feel the wounds on my body slowly healing by just being about a meter or two away from her.
“DON’T PRETEND FOR A SECOND, LIKE YOU HAVEN’T HAD TO SACRIFICE ANYTHING!” She (or I guess He?) growls, shaking both me and the hell-vessel to our bones. The hell-vessel-in-question’s flames dim, and swiftly he leaps away from God, his fist trembling ever so slightly.
“HOW MUCH PAIN HAVE YOU ENDURED? HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU OVERUSED YOUR DIVINIFIED BLOOD AND HAD TO CRAWL AWAY LEST YOU BLEED OUT YOUR PURE INSIDES? HOW MANY COMERADES HAVE YOU LOST LIKE THAT? HOW MANY?”
The ground begins to quake, and dust from the building losing stability falls from the ceiling. “DON’T COMPARE YOUR VILE, EVIL POWER TO MINE! MY CHILDREN FIGHT FOR ME AND LOSE NOTHING. NOTHING! IF I WASN’T LIMITED TO THIS HUMAN FORM, I’D SMITE YOU IN AN INSTANT! HUMANS LIKE YOU BELONG IN THE VERY PITS OF HELL, HUMANS LIKE YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN-”
I’m not sure why she stops when I place my hand on her shoulder, but the building and the ground stills. Her eyes and hair return back to normal, my remaining wounds stop healing, and the shiver travelling up my spine calms.
“You okay, God?” I ask, eyebrow raised, “You kinda went off the rails there for a sec.”
She blinks.
“…Ah, my child.” God places her hand on mine, “I apologize, I must have let my emotions get the best of me-”
Presumably getting over his shock, the hell-vessel’s flames flare up more than they ever had, so much so that I can feel the heat pierce my skin, even through Samson’s toughness, from several meters away.
“Lord Asmodeus was right! You are a monster!” He roars. The blood falling from his midriff and pooling on the floor makes me believe God was probably spot-on about the whole divinified blood thing.
“No!” God argues, “I’m not a monster…I’ve changed!”
“Bullshit!” He spits, before flying towards her. I kick God out of the way, and the hell-vessel’s head slams into mine instead. The expression “seeing stars” has never made so much sense up until now.
“If you want to die first, that’s fine by me!”
I don’t have time to catch my bearings. Because the hell-vessel, driven mad with fear, anger, or perhaps both, grabs me by the neck and slams me unto the ground once, twice, thrice, over and over again, each time with enough venom to crack the pavement even further. There’s only so much pain you can go through before your brain momentarily clocks out. I imagine I’m not too far off from that, seeing as every corner of my body screams in different registries.
With another roar, he throws me across the entire building and my thrashing body lets go of Uriel’s blade, my brain falling deeper and deeper into mist as I tear through three different cars. I feel the mind-numbing burn of a different part of my skin ripping and a different bone in my body breaking upon each impact.
By the time my body stops tumbling, I drearily open my eyes to see the hell-vessel flying down towards me with a murderous glint in his red eyes. By now, I’m considering giving up. The throbbing of my body is so overbearing that I know instinctively that closing my eyes would grant me peace.
“Teniiiiiii!” God’s normal voice fully snaps me back to reality, and I look to my right to see Uriel’s blade spinning towards me.
I’m about to congratulate God for being useful, when I realize that there’s no way in heaven or hell I could time my hand well enough to catch this sword by the hilt, even if I didn’t have 50 different concussions.
I clench my jaw and outstretch my hand, and because clearly the heavens are on my side, my fingers clasp around the sharp edges of the blade, the metal digging dangerously deep into my flesh. I barely have time to ignore the complaining of my bones and roll backwards when the hell-vessel slams into the ground in an upthrust of crimson flames.
He climbs out of the mini crater he made and looks at me with eyes that makes my lips quiver slightly. “You’re going to regret that.” He growls.
He spits out blood, and runs towards me. I have zero time to react before he grabs both sides of my face with his two, broiling-hot, hands. He squeezes with all his might, and my skull shrieks so fucking loud I find spots in my vision.
Several of my teeth pop out like popcorns on a kernel, and I can feel my jaw cracking even further as he compresses my head like I’m a fucking balloon.
I squeeze harder on my sword, refusing to worry about slicing my fingers off, and the pain brings be back to my senses, at least for a moment. The weapon is engulfed in tongues of golden fire. Show time.
With a roar of my own, I raise my blade, “De onlee ding aill bee dhoing...” I stab the sword, my whole fist included, into his open mouth, where I know the flames don’t cover due to the full visibility of his teeth. He clamps down on my hand, but I grit my remaining teeth to block out the hurt and push further. His teeth peel my skin and dig into my flesh as they grind against my moving hand.
He screeches in pain, but doesn’t stop squeezing, and I know it’s only matter of time before I lose consciousness. There’s only so much Samson’s spirit can do. What I assume to be blood drips out of my eyes as my sockets are squished, and the world is fading when I feel dainty hands clamp around my arm and push the blade further down the hell-vessel’s throat.
A voice beside me growls and it sounds not like the God I know, but the one who nearly tore the building down in a tantrum.
“…IS YOUR MOM!” She and I roar, before she pushes my hand forward and we both knee the hell-vessel in the balls. Finally, he let’s go of my head, groans, and all three of us collapse in a heap of tattered clothes, bloody teeth, and smoldering limbs. Moments after the stress placed on my head is gone, my eyes roll backwards and I tumble into unconsciousness.
> …
I awaken to the sound of God panting, the feeling of both her hands pressed heavily against my chest. When I open my eyes, I can see her face contorted in deep focus about a foot from mine, and once she’s done, she lets out a breath and sits next to me. When I get my bearings back, I realize I’m resting on the side of a car. My whole body feels like it’s holding up elephants with nothing but strings wrapped around my joints.
“Oh, cheers, your awake.” God says, through deep, labored breaths. “I managed to heal most of your injuries. It wasn’t easy, but I’m God, so I never give up.”
She gives me a thumbs up, and I grin jadedly before giving her one back.
God rests her head on my shoulder, and works to calm her breathing when my gaze lands on the hell-vessel’s corpse. His body is no longer enveloped in flames, and he lays there, wide-eyed, with his mouth open and the hilt of my blade sticking out of it.
“I can’t believe we…I can’t believe I killed him.” I say.
“He was super mean.” God remarks, kissing my hand.
I rest my head on hers. “Yes, God. He was super mean.”
I point to a majestic black and gold Lamborghini a few meters away from us, the perfect combination of us two. “Hey, when we’re both at a 100%, whad’ya say we jack that car over there?”
God giggles wearily, “‘Jack’? You mean ‘steal’?”
“Yeah,” I say, patting her leg. “Let’s steal that car.”
“Okay, my child. Let’s steal that car.” Her breaths quieten as she slowly drifts to sleep.
I rub the tired deity’s leg as my gaze shifts from the sports car to the man I just murdered. So quiet, such that no one, not even Jesus in heaven could hear me, I whisper-“Thanks, God.”