Mordwell Verune, 250th Lassedite of the One, True, Resurrected Angelical Lasseditic Church had achieved enlightenment.
He was on a mission from God.
He’d never known purpose as clearly as he did now.
It had been barely a day had passed since his encounter with the Hallowed Beast (for, truly, what else could it have been?) yet, already, Verune felt transformed. His one regret was that he could not share his joy with Orrin, but the Lassedite comforted himself with the thought that they would meet again in Paradise, beneath the Light of the Angel’s glory.
For now, however—for as long as he walked the earth—Verune had his new, sacred obligations to fulfill.
Verune’s first step after getting a map of the city—it was burned into his memory, as if by magic—was to make his way to the Melted Palace.
It was a bittersweet reunion. The Second Empire had presided over an explosion of construction, powered by the miracles of industry: the Vasseter process for cheaply made steel; petrochemical distillation for oils and asphalt and everything in between; gorgeous ornamentation, mass-produced on factory floors. The Melted Palace was the crowning glory of the Second Empire’s constructions, built atop the dilapidation of its ancient predecessor. The Melted Palace was the grandest temple in all Lassedicy; to see its towering walls and sumptuous majesty was to know the Godhead’s power and glory.
To Verune, it had been little more than two days since he’d last seen the marvel he had come to call home. Yet seeing the Melted Palace with his own eyes, on the other side of two centuries of time brought tears to his eyes. The great temple had endured the secular age. It had been spared the iconoclasts’ hammers.
If only the institution within had weathered the centuries half as well.
Verune approached the temple from a distance, spying from around a street-corner. In an age of faith and virtue, with the darkness that now infected the world, the people would have gathered in the grand basilica in front of the Melted Palace, falling to their knees in repentance as they raised their prayers to the Sun and beg the Angel for forgiveness. The Church was to be a rock against the tides of crisis. It should have risen to the occasion, for what were the Last Days if not the greatest of all crises? The clergy ought to have been steadfast and unshakable. Their faith ought to light the world with its hope.
But all I see is fear.
As Verune watched from across the basilica, all he had seen was fear. The monstrous army of the Second Trenton Republic had encroached upon the Melted Palace like flies on spilled honey. There were no clergymen in sight. No penitents, begging God for forgiveness. The doors of the Melted Palace were sealed. The basilica’s only guests were the dead: corpses of birds and abandoned vehicles, scattered across the pavement.
Then and there, Verune resolved to return to Melted Palace.
I will gather the faithful, and together, we will march on the holy temple and claim it for the forces of Light.
He would raise an army of the faithful, and he would stand at its helm, and from the Melted Palace’s hallowed halls, they would make their stand against the forces of Hell in the battles of the Last Days.
Unfortunately, finding the faithful was easier said than done.
Verune spent the afternoon and early evening roving about the city, doing the work of the righteous, slaying the wicked where they stood. Robbers, looters, burglars—he killed them without hesitation, always stopping to leave a prayer for their damned souls. They stood no chance against one of the Blessèd.
Verune sundered their limbs with the powers of his prayers. He could crush their bodies like autumn leaves; such was the might of his faith. Not even the demons stood a chance against him.
And, O, there were demons in those streets. They were horrid creatures, half-man, half serpent. Verune plucked one of them from the sky with the Angel’s holy grasp, slamming the creature onto the pavement. As it struggled beneath the grip of the unseen light, the demon had tried to intone a curse with its inhuman, many-voiced screams. Verune had silenced the demon with the Prayer of the Whirlwind, twist-ripping its head off its shoulders like a dead twig. Verune prayed that whatever remained of its once-human soul might be returned to the divine Light from whence it came.
Verune suspected that the serpent-men were none-other than the Demon Norms themselves, attempting to manifest in the Godhead’s creation. Having been trapped in Hell by the Hallowed Beast at the beginning of time, the Norms could not return to the world so long as a trace of the Angel’s Light remained. Yet the Lords of Hell were wily, and had found a loophole. There was no need for them to emerge from Cranter Pit and the other deep hollows of the world. The Norms could simply remake the bodies of the Angel’s creations, twisting the human form to serve their evil ends.
Verune refused to let the demons have their way. The faithful had to be protected.
And, by the Angel’s grace, I have the power to protect them.
Verune tore a demon in half by the sheer force of his faith, saving a sickly family covering within their vehicle. He burst them and split them, unmoved by the fake pleas and entreaties the demons made with the bodies of their hosts. Any doubts the Lassedite had as to the rightness of his cause were swept away by the comforting whispers he heard within his mind—a subliminal hymn direct from the Angel Himself, speaking to him in truth without words.
In using the powers he had been gifted, Verune inevitably found himself growing hungry. Whenever this happened, Verune broke off a piece of the fungus of Hell from where it grew—and it grew everywhere. It grew in the cracks in the sidewalks, and from open windows, and gutters, and bins. The fungus cowered before his Blessèd touch, softening and crumbling when he grasped it, crawling up his skin, tickling him with pleasure. He ripped it out with only a slight tug. The fungus dissolved like a hard candy in his mouth, and tasted just as sweet.
Around the time the sun began to sink behind the massive silhouette of the city’s skyline, Verune found his lower back was getting sore and his legs were feeling weak, numb at the extremities. His garments had begun to chafe against his body. But he paid little heed to those sensations.
After all, vanity was a sin.
Verune stopped as he heard a now-familiar sound: the airy screech of an alarm. The future had devised a means of triggering alarms as soon as a door or window was broken open. A marvelous invention, to be sure.
Briskly darting around a corner, Verune ran toward the source of the alarm. He found himself on a narrow street, flanked by soaring buildings on either side, studded in plaster geometric ornamentation. The sinking, fog-cloaked Sun peered down the street. The buildings’ metal fire escapes glinted like harrow stones on Shrovestide in the dying daylight.
Oh my.
There was a shop built into the ground floor of the building to his right; a modern thing, more glass than wall. Tubes above the storefront glowed in a brilliant red, spelling out the word Gilman's. From the looks of things, it appeared to be a grocery.
Gilman? As in Peter Gilman?
Verune snorted. It seemed Mr. Gilman’s grocery enterprise had succeeded beyond its creator’s wildest dreams. On the off chance that Mr. Gilman had made his way to Paradise, Verune made a note to tell him of his business’ success. But that could wait. What could not wait were the glass shards that littered the stone street’s old, scalloped-shaped pavement, and the alarm blaring through the broken storefront.
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A break-in. Some godless hooligans, no doubt.
The whispers curled at the back of Verune’s thoughts like incense.
A day ago, he would have thought it beneath his station as Lassedite to deal with petty criminals. But that was then; this was now. Now, every moment counted. Wherever evil was, he would find it, suss it out, and bring to justice. News of his deeds would spread.
The righteous will come to me, as surely as Day follows Night.
Stepping over the shards, Verune entered through the wide opening in the glass. The Lassedite hardly noticed that he no longer needed to lift up the hummingbird robe to keep its hem from against the curb.
Verune was surprised by how recognizable the store was in its structure and the presentation of its wares, even if the goods themselves were strange to him. The grocer’s counter was but a stone’s throw from the entrance. It had one of the glowing screens mounted on a jointed metal arm, likely the descendant of the mechanical cash register. To Verune, the mechanical cash register was still a newfangled contraption. And yet, here he was, staring at its descendent.
How things changed!
The grocery’s shelves were laid out in long aisles, just as common sense would have it, though the make of the shelves allowed shoppers to see through to the aisles behind them. The shelves on the back wall were sealed behind glass, held in cabinets that were lit from within. They were some kind of machinery, for they hummed loudly, though not as loudly as the alarm.
Stepping closer, Verune realized the humming cabinets were ice-boxes. They were filled with perishables: fish and iced-cream and vegetables and a thousand other delights. Like a refrigerated meat car on the rail-road, only without any need for ice.
What a marvel…
The store was in disarray. Goods were scattered everywhere; ripped from their places on the shelves, wastefully thrown to the floor. The Lassedite spent a stunned moment gawking at the ridiculous surplussage of cold milk breakfast cereals.
So many colors. So many varieties. It was madness; horse feed marketed for human consumption!
Have the people of this era lost all sense of human dignity?
A woman’s scream shot through the shrieking alarm. It was coming from one of the back aisles.
Verune rushed toward the sound—toward a wall with shelves bearing liquor and spirits, many of which were broken or missing. The fluid ran down the wall and onto the floor, filling the sickly sweet air with the pungent scent of alcohol.
Amidst the screams, the hooligan howled.
Verune turned down the aisle, and what he saw made his dead blood freeze in his unliving veins.
There were five human beings at the corner of the shop at the far end of the aisle, where the shelves of broken bottles met the humming refrigerators. Two of the five were dead, and of the three that still lived, two—the hooligans—were unworthy of the name of man.
The two dead souls belonged to children; a boy and girl, by the looks of their clothes—assuming women still wore skirts in this day and age. The children’s heads had been beaten to a pulp by a blunt object. Spatters of blood and corrupting ooze littered the checkered floor, along with fragments of skull still covered in scalp and hair.
The two hooligans were both male; perhaps in their third decade, Verune supposed. One was a negro, the other, a man of Trenton stock. With his blond hair and his face’s noble construction, Verune would have thought him an aristocrat’s scion, though his actions debased his lineage, casting shame on all his ancestors.
This world is full of brutes.
Hell had corrupted both men. The negro’s eyes were bloodshot by darkness. Black lightning spidered its way up the Trenton-man’s neck.
For the record, I am not okay with Verune’s language, but… I am strongly opposed to censorship, so… yeah.
The negro was greedily scooping up iced cream from a carton he gripped in the crook of his arm. He used his fingers, indifferent to the ulcer opening in his arm.
But the white man…
Verune’s breath caught in his throat, but then he freed it and yelled: “Angel’s mercy!”
The white man was forcing himself on a fair-skinned woman, stripped of nearly all her clothes. He pinned her against the liquor shelves, rutting into her like a wild beast. Glasses of alcohol clinked as he jostled and thrusted.
One of the bottles toppled over and shattered on the floor. Shards of glass embedded in the dead children. Doubtless, the poor woman was their mother. She was even more fungus-infested than her rapist. The plague ran beneath her ivory skin like a net of worms.
The negro alternated between coughing and swallowing, and guffawing at the woman’s suffering. “Shut up!” he yelled, flicking dessert off his fingers. Then, taking notice of Verune, he looked to the side, and said, “Who the hell are you?”
“Stop it, you bitch!” the rapist yelled. In orgiastic rage, he bashed his elbow into the woman’s head, which drooped to the side as her struggles ceased. Black ooze trickled from the wound.
These men are evil incarnate.
Verune called upon the power of a prayer without even needing to press his hands together or recite the words.
Break the egg…
The rapist’s head collapsed in on itself with a sickening crunch, like an egg crushed in hand. He didn’t even have time to scream. Shards of skull and bits of brain splattered all around as he toppled to the floor, dragging his victim down with him.
Verune made the Bond-sign as he looked over the dead children. “Righteous is His Justice.”
May you rest in Paradise.
“What the fuck!?” the negro shouted, dropping the half-empty carton.
The negro pulled out a pistol and fired wildly at Verune. Bullets pelted the Lassedite’s chest, blowing holes through the hummingbird robe. Pain blossomed up and down Verune’s core. The Lassedite clasped his wounds in panic, only to gasp when he pulled his fingers away and realized:
—I am not bleeding…
The negro fired twice more. Neither shot hit Verune’s head.
Verune’s wounds tickled oddly. In seconds, the sensation overwrote any pain he felt, swiftly fading into a buzzing feeling that disappeared just as quickly.
Somehow, he could feel the bullets dissolving into his body.
The negro staggered back, his eyes white and wide. “What the fuck…?”
“Righteous is His Justice,” Verune said, louder than before.
The Lassedite strode forward. Providence was on his side.
The Negro turned and started to run. “Push the shelf!” he yelled.
Metal groaned at Verune’s side before he could muster his next prayer. He had just enough time to twist in surprise and see the rack of the aisle to his left topple onto him. Between the shelves, he saw the two hooligans’ accomplice pushing at the rack. Another man, a Maikokan—likely a mulatto.
Verune screamed as the metal rack crashed, crushing him against the floor, breaking his limbs. Bottles and boxes battered him as they spilled from the shelves.
“Holy shit!” the negro yelled. “Who the hell was that?!”
Verune was only somewhat surprised as his broken bones knit themselves back together and his bruises cleaned themselves away. He squirmed beneath the rack, hoping to push it off or pry himself free.
“He’s still moving!” the mulatto said. “How the fuck is he still moving!?”
But Verune ceased his struggles. The hummingbird robe was tearing, and the rack’s edges were slicing into his skin as he moved. Instead, he splayed his palms on the cold, slick floor and closed his eyes and began to pray.
“The weight of thy sins are the weight of the world.”
He summoned a miracle. The Angel’s wordless whispers grew louder in his ears as the miracle’s power flowed through him. The crushing weight on his chest was instantly lifted as the rack rose back the way it came, as if turning along a hinge.
“The Hallowed Beast clutcheth them in Its claws.”
He drew from the power once more, blasting it out through his limbs. The rack rasped against the floor as it pivoted over and slammed into the ground on the next aisle over. In the process, the rack smacked into the one beyond it, toppling one rack after another.
Crash. Crash. Crash.
Verune rolled onto his side and pushed up onto his feet while the mulatto screamed.
“Shoot, man! Shoot!” The hooligan’s eyes were wide with terror.
The negro raised his pistol and fired. His aim was abysmal. He shot four times and missed twice. The two shots that found their mark hit Verune squarely in Verune’s thigh.
“Wyrcanen sum wal wiþ se lyft, Halig Engel. Sendan se wal; wyrcanen hit fleogen.”
The Lassedite stuck out one of his palms as he intoned one of Enille’s battle-hymns, to make the air strike like water’s waves.
“Ic sceawian du sunneleoht.”
The Angel’s unseen Light flashed in Verune’s mind as it crashed into the negro like a runaway omnibus, sending him flying across the street. The hooligan’s body split smacked onto the lowermost fire escape. The impact split his body open like a cracked fruit.
Verune stuck out his other palm. He called on the Angel’s power while the mulatto was still turning around, looking back over his shoulder to see his companion’s fate.
The fleeing mulatto tripped and fell. His clothes brushed against the floor as the miracle grabbed his body and dragged it back.
“Befléon, likken hali bird.”
Verune lifted his hand, bidding the bird in his mind to rise in flight.
The hooligan’s body rose up from the floor.
“I bawd Þe, I bawd.”
Pressing his hands together, palm against palm, Verune lunged to the right and slammed the back of his hand onto the refrigerator’s transparent door while picturing the hooligan’s body doing the same.
The mulatto barely had time to scream as an unseen force slammed his body against the refrigerator.
“Fleoganin stan,” Verune prayed, as he lifted his hand off the glass, and bashed his palm back into it, again and again and again. The mulatto’s body moved with him, slamming into the cabinet, breaking and bludgeoning until there was nothing left but a crooked husk of broken bones, black ooze, and bloody pulp.
Eventually, he desisted, letting his arms go slack. The mulatto’s corpse hit the floor with a wet thud.
And then the Lassedite fell to his knees and wept, and the alarm cried with him.