Chapter 33

Tracy first felt the tiniest movement and when she opened her eyes, leaving Mykella and the future Vince to debate their paths, she looked down and saw that her son was trying to wake from a deep sleep. She knew that he would not have died here because then he wouldn’t be in the future, but she felt a huge weight lift off her chest nonetheless. She thanked the Lord and smiled when she saw his eyes flicker open.

And then she heard the terrible sound of a horn blowing its low deathlike war cry. It sounded like the apocalypse had begun somewhere near the meadow.

“Dear God,” whispered Chris as she leaned closer to Karl with horror in her eyes as she scanned the empty meadow. “Did you hear that?”

Karl didn’t have to confirm that fact – she knew he heard it, everyone did. He looked around the open area and saw that the trees lining the meadow were too far off. “There would have been no way to sneak up on them. We’re sitting ducks out here.” And then the horror overcame him and he was about to ask what she thought if they ordered a retreat.

Right hand clutching her sword, she took his arm with her left and squeezed. “We fight to our death,” she said, not really liking the words coming from her mouth any more than he did.

Karl closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He exhaled and then opened them and felt somewhat more relaxed. He raised his sword, ready to fight off the first Dreamkiller that came into view.

* * *

Orion laughed at himself as he watched the prelude to the war. It almost felt like watching his minions battling the Grendel army all over again. He could almost smell the blood of his enemy as it saturated the fields. If he closed his eyes he could see each Grendel as they fell to their death. Once that war had ended, the Great War as so many scholars had called it, he had personally gone out to the battlefield and killed the last Grendel man with his own two hands – he had taken the man’s head in his hands and spun it around until he heard it snap.

Orion smiled and thought how nice it would be to come back to the battlefield and end the pitiful soul’s life, whoever it may be to have survived.

He sighed and rubbed his stomach and realized that he had eaten too many apples. He was beginning to feel sick, yet the knowledge running through his mind gave him what he needed to bypass that sickened feeling.

And then he thought of the thousands of rebellious Dreamkillers, his Dreamkillers, which stand waiting to force their way into his stronghold. Then he remembered Beth. That bitch led these damned-to-nature beasts to his front door! Now he wished that he hadn't killed her so soon and so easily. Perhaps he will keep going back in time to kill her in different ways each trip. Right now he could think of a dozen better ways to spill her blood.

Orion thought about standing up and heading back to his kingdom, but a peculiar smell stopped him before standing. The smell was not unpleasant, but it was neither animal nor human. It was not gaseous nor was it herbal. It had a strange ethereal smell that he could not put his finger on. And at the same time, he thought he even remembered that scent. But he had smelt the strange odor so long ago, when he was a mere child, that he thought now that it must all have been some kind of dream.

When the smell made its way to Orion’s nose, he closed his eyes and was taken back to when he was nine years old. He was kneeling in his garden. A man came to him; only, it wasn’t a man at all, no. The man was the most beautiful being Orion had ever seen in his life. And he bestowed upon Orion a gift.

“You will return to me that which I have lent you, Orion.”

He stood up and tried to face the direction he thought the voice came from, but the voice sounded too distant for him to judge an accurate direction.

“You shall never have that gift back, Ilias,” cried Orion.

The tall figure of Ilias appeared directly behind Orion and he wrapped his large hands around Orion’s biceps. “Is that so?”

There came a moment of panic mixed with fear so severe that Orion knew he had never felt this way before. He remembered looking into the demented eyes of Rick Hopman as he plunged that dagger repeatedly into his head. He was a little frightened then, but nowhere near what he felt right now, standing in Eden next to the Tree of Knowledge with a tainted angel standing behind him with his hands binding his arms.

And then there was that alien fear when he came to realize just who he really was. He thought for a long time that he was truly Allen Corgan, but it was Vince Hopman that made him see that he had merely taken on the identity of Allen. In fact, he had been both Allen and Orion for so long then that he was beginning to get the two of them mixed up. And now the tainted angel stood behind him breathing down his neck.

Do angels really breathe?

“I made a mistake,” Ilias began, “by giving you my power.”

It was the single word power that gave Orion back his strength and he tore free of the angel’s hands. He turned around and shoved the tall being back several feet and glared at him. “That’s right,” said Orion. “You gave me your power. I didn’t ask for it. You gave it to me.”

Ilias dared to look into the eyes of Orion as he glared at him. The eyes of the Master Dreamkiller had begun to spiral and turn yellow-orange.

“You will never get my power back!” Orion screamed. “How dare you even consider wanting them back?”

The two spiraling yellow-orange pupils became fire and Orion shot them out toward Ilias, who, a little frightened, jumped out of the way just as the flames ignited a near-by bush.

It only took him a fraction of a second to realize that he had no power of his own before Ilias hunched behind the blazing bush. He looked at Orion behind regret and sorrow. He had given that beast those powers. He crouched and ran over to the nearest tree.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Orion laughed and sent a blaze toward the tree. “You should not have come back,” he called as he shook his head.

Ilias closed his eyes and prayed. He prayed to the only God he knew and loved – the one he had abandoned. “Please, my Lord, Forgive me. It was wrong what I had done, I see that now. I am trying to make amends.” Before he could open his eyes, he felt something different, and it wasn’t the burning from the tree.

Orion closed his own eyes for a moment. A blinding light shot out from behind the tree he had just ignited, causing him to close his eyes. When he opened them, an odd miracle had taken place before him. And he wasn’t too sure if it was a good thing or a bad one.

The flaming tree had become uprooted and began ascending skyward. Orion trained his vision harder and saw that Ilias was flying in the air, carrying the flaming weapon in one hand. Orion was aghast when he saw that Ilias had regained his wings, and they had a very large wingspan – larger than he could ever imagine.

Ilias held the tree up above his head and threw it down toward Orion like a flaming spear. Orion moved out of the way. He was still shocked that Ilias had somehow redeemed himself.

And then came the swarm of flying insects. They came at Orion with a vengeance which was equaled by Orion’s own vengeance. He opened his mouth and inhaled, causing the swarm of locusts, flies, bees, mosquitoes, and everything else that Orion failed to notice to become sucked into him in one single inhale. Just for good measure, Orion grabbed the last locust before it flew into his waiting mouth and he looked up at Ilias with a grin on his face. “You’ll have to come up with something better,” he called up. “You’re beginning to bore me.” And then he bit off the head of the locust and laughed.

Orion became silent for a moment and let his mind run out. He found Ilias’ mind (although he was an angel, they do have minds) and connected to it. He closed his eyes and sighed as he shook his head. “You only wanted redemption? You didn’t want to stop me?”

Ilias flew down and landed inches from Orion with pity in his eyes. “My goal, Orion, was to regain my power from you. Then I would gain my redemption. I personally do not care if you live or die. The way I see it; without my power inside you, you would be dead within a day’s time.”

“You would leave me to die amongst my enemies? To have them tear open my flesh?”

“If that is what they wish. I will not stand in their way.”

Orion shook his head in sorrow. “You goddamn bastard.”

They stared at one another for a short eternity; the calmness emanating from Ilias was maddening to Orion as the fire began to boil in the latter. At last Orion looked up into Ilias’ eyes. “Well, then,” he started, “I’ll be happy to send you back to your God,” he said and then reached out and took hold of Ilias’ large forearms.

Ilias smiled as he looked into Orion’s eyes. It didn’t matter what Orion would do to him now; he was going back to heaven.

That smile enraged Orion even more, because he realized that no matter what he did to Ilias, it wouldn’t matter in the large scheme of things.

Flames came from Orion’s hands, which began burning Ilias’ ethereal flesh. But that was not all. Orion made sure that Ilias would catch fire – to make sure that flames danced off his damned head! And for good measure, Orion paid closer attention to Ilias’ wings – his newly redeemed wings – and sent them ablaze.

The smell had become intoxicating as he smelled the burning of down.

* * *

Tracy looked down at her son, the man she had watched for his entire life, yet not able to hold him. There was a satisfaction in the fact that she was holding him now. She waited her entire life – if that was what one could call a life – to hold her child in her arms. But now, as she looked down on him, she could see his eyes opening. She didn’t know what to say if he should look up into her face.

Vince murmured something incoherent and rolled over in her lap. It wasn’t until he felt a hand gently stroke his hair that he fully opened his eyes and snapped awake. He quickly rolled off her lap and spun around. And then he saw his mother, smiling at him as he looked almost frightened to see her.

“It’s me, Vincent,” she said and lifted her hand to show that she meant him no harm. “Something happened to me while you were unconscious,” she tried to explain.

Then he heard the word unconscious. “How long have I been out?” He prayed that it wasn’t all that long.

“A couple of hours maybe. Your friends have gone on without you.”

Vince sprang to his legs, ignoring the pins and needles going through them, and held out his hand to his mother. “Come on, we need to hurry,” he said and he helped her up as she took his hand. He looked around for a weapon and realized that his army had taken every single sword with them. But then his eyes fell upon a single bow lying on top of two bags of arrows.

He picked them up with a sigh and strapped them to his back. “I kinda was hoping for a sword or something else,” he said and Tracy smiled.

“If I’m not mistaken, Vincent, you were pretty good at archery in college,” she said and he returned his mother’s smile.

“Yeah, I guess I was.” He didn’t need to say that he ranked Number Two in the State competition. But still, he really was expecting to be fighting hand-to-hand combat. He almost wanted to feel the blood of the Dreamkillers splash in his face – at least then he would know that he was getting things done.

They smelled the foulness before they could even see the Dreamkillers emerge somewhat silently from the forest at the opposite end of the meadow. But when they finally did see the monsters coming toward them sluggishly, they all found a new definition of fear.

Chris inched her body as close to Karl’s as it could without actually climbing inside it and Karl couldn’t remove his eyes from the monsters screaming back at them in a language both alien and somehow vaguely familiar to him. It was almost like he was hearing some old childhood nursery song played by demons from a boyhood nightmare. But the nightmare was real. And he was staring it in its face – all four hundred evil faces.

“If we die,” moaned Chris in his ear. “It’ll be quick, right?”

Karl took one last deep breath and raised his sword high above his head.

Orion looked like a child again who was inspecting a dead insect in the grass. But what he was inspecting was no insect. He was wondering what it was that made God want to give Ilias back his wings. He stared down at the charred remains of the once-tainted angel and knelt down beside one of his wings and carefully ran a finger across it.

It was like nothing he had ever felt before.

And as soon as he touched the wing, feeling the “bones,” he suddenly understood what it was Ilias was doing. He wanted Orion to come to Eden because it would be a time of vulnerability. It was Ilias who had created the Dreamkillers who stood outside his castle, therefore creating that vulnerability. Ilias knew that if that were to happen, Orion would surely go back to Eden to eat from the tree.

Orion smiled and let the wing fall to the ground with a hard thud. It was a nice plan, thought Orion. Well conceived but poorly executed.

Now he must take care of the stupid creations of the Tainted Angel and then take care of Mykella Brown at last. The Crusades have come to an end, he realized. She had been through his own past and future, and what did she get out of it? Absolutely nothing! And that was what he had expected. He was trying to prove to her that she could change nothing; that he, Orion the God-King, was destined to rule the universe.