Fall From Grace, page 24
part #9 of the Preternatural Chronicles Series
A somewhat startled Ulric appeared in a puff of smoke at Samael’s side, and I knew what was about to happen.
“Tell him to remain as unmoving as a mountain.”
“Don’t…don’t move,” Lily instructed through a heart-wrenching sob that made my entire mind go numb.
“Cut off her head,” Samael casually instructed Ulric with barely a tilt of his chin in Lily’s direction.
“NO!” I bellowed, desperately trying to wrap my arms around the woman I loved. My limbs refused my commands, instead choosing to obey Lily’s.
Guilt exploded in my heart at choosing to not return her embrace when I had the chance.
Samael summoned a normal, angelic gladius instead of the gaudy staff that mirrored Michael’s. A part of my brain suggested this was important, but it was really hard to focus as Ulric took the sword coated in hellfire and stepped next to Lily.
Pulling back from me with her hands tightly clasping my shoulders, she looked at me with her gorgeous, loving eyes, and said, “I love y—” before a quick whoosh cut her off.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs, struggling to yank any of my limbs free so I could deliver an atomic bomb of rage that would consume all of Hell.
Lily’s head toppled to the ground, followed closely by her kneeling body, which just slumped to the side.
“I’LL KILL YOU!” I shouted at Ulric while fighting against the invisible bonds that held me. At that moment, a small portion of my subconscious suggested I would never be able to move again, as Lily wouldn’t be able to release me.
“Cut off your own head,” Samael instructed, making everything in me go still in an instant.
A pained expression of I knew this was coming crossed Ulric’s face as he inhaled deeply and then swung the flaming sword through his own neck. His aim hadn’t been exact, and the blade sliced through his lower jaw, but the end results were the same.
His body dropped in an instant as his head rolled out of the light and into the shadows surrounding Samael.
“And then, there was one,” Samael said with a smile of absolute victory.
Horns blared from somewhere all around, and I knew at that moment that Michael was blowing the instrument that signaled the end of everything.
A swirling din of demonic cries of battle deafened me as Samael’s face began to contort into his demonic form once more.
A single tear rolled down my cheek, and I didn’t know if it was because I lost or because of what I lost.
Shifting my eyes down toward the ground, I could barely make out Lily’s head. It was a torture that I couldn’t begin to describe to not be able to fully see her face. Only its blurry outline would be my companion until all of creation was destroyed.
Satan’s horrendous head leaned down, drawing my attention.
Lifting a finger to wipe away the tear I had shed, the monster uttered words that filled me with dread.
“Heaven…will fall…”
39
MAGNI
Waking with a start, Magni looked around with wild eyes to see he was in absolute darkness.
Summoning his wand, a ball of light gathered at the tip and illuminated what appeared to be a vast cavern of black stone.
“Foolish child,” the Ether’s creepy voice said, but it was no longer a whisper. Instead, it was the voice of an elderly man.
“Yeah! Thought you…you could get rid of me…didn’t you?!” Magni cried out with heaving breaths as he swished his wand from side to side, trying to get a visual on his enemy. “But I escaped your boss, and now, I’m gonna kick your ass!”
“My power grows as I feed off your pathetic soul, boy,” the Tall Man said as he entered into the light, his too-long limbs and gaunt face looking at home in a poster for a horror movie.
Though he knew it to be impossible for the Ether to have an actual body within Magni’s mind, he had to remind himself that his own body felt every bit as real.
Looking down at his hand to reinforce the idea, Magni let out a groan when he saw through his own metaphysical flesh.
“No…”
“That’s right, boy,” the Tall Man cooed with delight. “My master would have devoured you in an instant. But I…I will consume you bit by tasty bit, until your soul is no more.”
The Tall Man’s elderly face became a little clearer as he stepped closer into the light, smiling at Magni.
Ludvig came to mind, as did Taylor, as well as all the time he had spent training with the skilled warriors.
Heaving breaths of panic turned into anger as one last memory flooded his mind.
“Ghle,” Magni growled, purposefully allowing the memory of his beloved inside his head to let an atomic bomb of rage explode in his chest, filling his veins with powerful anger.
The Tall Man stopped smiling and tilted his long head to the side as Magni screamed incoherently, letting loose a blast of fury from the tip of his wand.
The Ether was rocketed back into the darkness as Magni charged forward, eyes filled with fire.
“You think you can feed on me?” Magni roared. “How about I…feed…on you?! I can use your power, too! My dad told me so!”
A portion of the floor lurched up, tripping the young man, who stumbled to his hands and knees, and making him lose the grip on his wand as he tried to catch his fall.
“No. No, no, no!” Magni squeaked as cut hands patted the ground all around him, desperate to find the weapon again.
One of his hands plopped onto something that felt like a dress shoe, giving Magni pause as his other hand reached out to grasp at the cloth of a pair of slacks.
“Feed on me?” the Tall Man asked with his eerie voice as a long hand reached through the darkness to wrap around the back of Magni’s neck, hoisting him off the ground with ease. “You haven’t an inkling of how to utilize my power, child. And now, you’ve wasted enough of my time. Your friends await their fate.”
A rushing sensation made Magni’s stomach lurch before he was slammed into something hard that began wrapping around him. He knew, then, that it was the stone prison that had suffocated him, come again to claim its prize.
It squeezed tightly, crushing Magni’s ribs until there was nothing left in his lungs, and the young man fell unconscious from the sheer pain, doomed to have his soul consumed and fade into oblivion.
40
My eyes snapped open, immediately locking on the anus in the sky, and I tried to scream from the horrors birthed from my subconscious. But I couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. My jaw didn’t even move; only the faintest hiss of air filled in for the soul-wrenching scream that begged to be freed from the prison of my throat.
The dream had felt unbelievably real, and my mind fought desperately to both hold on to the memory and to dismiss it as nothing more than a vivid construct brought forth by my subconscious mind.
Alarms blared in the control room of my mind, and I pulled back from my eyes to do a quick systems’ check. The report came back that my body was not only severely depleted of energy—both celestial and preternatural—but that I had been crushed by Ymir’s fall.
Because the universe didn’t completely hate me, there was a bit of luck in that the damp, supple ground had given way and formed a perfect cookie-cutter mold of your favorite abomination. The armor had also done a miraculous job in preventing my torso and cranium from doing their best impression of a tube of toothpaste under a monster truck’s tire.
I directed my body to heal but was instantly met with a message that read Error 69420: Insufficient Power.
Well, at least it didn’t come back with an Error 404: Body Not Found, I thought to myself. And what’s with the 69420 number? How childish can you get?
“Heh, sixty-nine,” I mumbled as I returned to the driver’s seat and stared at a sky comprised of rock.
A thought whispered in my mind, like hearing your own name while in public though no one had said it.
Focusing on the notion, I let my eyes—which were the only thing that could move at the moment—glide over the clouds of stone. The Ether really didn’t want me to use any more of my elemental lightning against him, which meant I absolutely needed to do just that.
Sucking in a deep breath, I attempted to pull my arms free from their snug mold, and briefly wondered what had happened to Ymir’s body.
“John!” Locke’s easily identifiable voice called out from somewhere far above.
Shifting my focus to where I thought the sound was coming from, I saw my wizard friend leap off the castle wall and dive toward me. He looked like an ant from how far away we were from one another, and I had to ponder how he was going to survive a fall from that height. I knew he didn’t have a parachute because I would have totally made fun of him every chance I got if he did.
My body felt like it was made of Jell-O as I watched Locke grow in my vision. It looked like he was heading straight for me, and at that moment, I was glad I couldn’t feel anything below my beanie because this was gonna hurt.
When Locke was within a hundred feet, he shot his arms and feet out in a big X to slow his fall, but I was willing to bet it wouldn’t do much to mitigate the kinetic energy that was about to slam into me.
With his wand glowing white in his hand, Locke thrust the tip toward me, sending out a torrent of air that kicked dirt into my eyes and pulled the exposed skin of my face back like I was trying to fellate a leaf blower.
After a few seconds, the deafening wind ceased, and the sound of hurried footsteps approaching both confused my mind as well as gave me hope.
Blinking the debris from my eyes, I looked up to see Locke standing over me, his gaze flying over my crushed body, pausing at various points with an increasing cringe marring his face.
Welp, that can’t be good, I mentally said to myself.
“Can you heal?” Locke asked, returning his gaze to my half-opened eyes, searching for an answer without waiting for my words.
“Uhn,” I managed to respond. My voice sounded alien to me, and I knew I was fubared. Sleep beckoned me like a cartoon finger with the promise of a delicious pie, and I was damn tempted to shut my eyes even if it meant for the last time.
My eyelids fluttered as my vision began to blacken. For a reason I couldn’t explain, the mold around my body, which I had created on impact, was just so damn comfortable. Either that or I still had no feeling below the beanie, which meant a broken spine.
Warmth trickled over my lips before sliding into my mouth, and a small glimmer of life dropped into my massive, completely devoid of energy well. It was like dropping a lit flare into the yawning pits of a massive cavern that had never seen the light before.
But the flare grew in brightness, filling more and more of the empty space with brilliant, glowing light.
My eyes cracked open once more, and I saw an open hand hovering in front of my face, flowing with crimson life from a gash in its palm.
Sensation came back as my body immediately began using the powerful wizard’s blood to heal my copious injuries.
I tried reaching up to grasp the hand feeding me precious life energy, but my body was still on strike and refused to move.
“Come on, John. We need you,” Locke’s disembodied voice seemed to tensely whisper. I knew, then, that my brain had been impacted hard enough to distort my senses at the very least, as his moving mouth and the sound of the words didn’t sync up.
Rerouting the incredible energy Locke was providing away from my body, I sent an emergency decree to fully repair my brain before anything else.
Within seconds, my senses came back online, and the dull haze within my mind cleared like a fog evaporating in the morning sun.
From there, I was able to clearly dictate what injuries needed to be mended, and in what order. It was important that I didn’t sap too much of Locke’s strength while Magni was still under the control of the Ether.
Magni…
Moving my eyes past Locke’s bleeding palm, I saw a lone figure floating in the sky, peering down at us with a face I couldn’t see from how far away he was. His posture suggested an indifference that made me nervous, like someone holding a can of bug spray as they looked down at the pesky bugs that were unaware of their imminent demise.
From somewhere just below the rock clouds, a beam of light shone through, crossing the distance to coat me in familiar warmth.
“What the Cheesy Tots is that?” I drunkenly asked with an open mouth while trying to ensure every last drop of blood was caught.
I could see Locke turning his attention away from me to follow the light up toward the clouds.
“Hmph,” Locke let out in a tone that almost seemed to suggest a feeling of figures, as if he wasn’t surprised by the random sunlight that was somehow filling my celestial batteries.
There was a crack of thunder, and the space where the light was shining through was struck with black lightning edged in a glowing white outline. Then the light was gone, but I had been able to mend the remainder of my injuries using the sunlight in conjunction with Locke’s blood.
Though it was near impossible to say due to how badly I wanted more, I told Locke, “That’s…that’s enough. I’m okay.”
Without hesitation, Locke pulled his hand up, placed the tip of his wand over the gash, and mumbled words of healing.
I took note that he had to actually say the words of a new spell or type of magic he was attempting to use.
With a groan of effort, I pulled my arms free from their precise molds and pushed myself up to a seated position.
Sensing that the Ether was giving us a moment to gather ourselves before the final blow, I looked around and asked, “Where’s the dickhead?”
“I don’t know,” Locke answered as he began searching the depressed landscape around us. Ymir had crushed a huge swath of the area, creating an indention that would no doubt form a new lake when the next rainfall came—if Faerie survived to have another rainfall, that is.
Something came to mind, and I played back the seconds before Ymir fell.
“I know where he is,” I flatly said as I lifted a hand to Locke. He took it and helped me to my feet.
Stretching freshly healed muscles and testing reconstructed joints, I patted the dirt off my coat and manifested my wings.
“Why is he just watching us?” Locke asked aloud for both he and me to hear. I knew it to be him asking himself as much as me for an answer.
Looking up at Magni, I frowned, seeing him remain unmoving.
Answering the question with silence, I pushed on one of Locke’s shoulders to turn him around. He was confused for a split second, but caught on quickly enough.
With his back to me, I wrapped my arms around his chest, and flapped my mostly healed wings hard enough to smoothly send us flying toward where I knew Ulric to be.
It took more than a handful of seconds to fly the distance between the shoulders and feet of Ymir’s newly created canyon. Near the base of the tree, I spotted what I was looking for.
“There,” I told Locke as we approached a different depression in the shape of a fist. Where Ymir’s body would surely form an enormous lake, this hole would be considered a deep pond.
Ymir had punched the ground hard enough that the dirt had swallowed his hand up to the wrist, judging by its depth.
At the very bottom of the indention and at the top of where one of the knuckles had impacted, was Ulric.
I flapped my flimsy wings a few times to slow our descent as to not break Locke’s legs, and gently set him down next to where a bloody, broken Ulric lay motionless.
“Heh, pathetic,” I whispered with no real hint of joy in the words. I knew we needed him, but it felt damn good to see him so fucked up.
Blood bubbled out of his crushed nostrils with every shallow breath Ulric was taking. One of his arms was outstretched a little too far to be normal, and I saw his arm had been torn off at the elbow. The distance between the flesh was only a few inches, but it was enough to separate the angelic armor he wore.
“What’s wrong with him?” Locke asked, searching the various serious wounds that made Ulric as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside.
Locke shot his eye to me, and I feigned confusion with a, “Ah-pfft-en,” as I mimicked words while shrugging my shoulders and lifting my palms up.
I wanted him to suffer.
Without his armor, the bastard was human while in Faerie, and it gave me sadistic pleasure to watch him suffer such exquisite agony.
“He’s in shock!” Locke called out, dropping to his knees and putting his wand to his palm once more.
Blood began to flow as he wordlessly commanded his flesh to tear, dropping the life energy into Ulric’s gaping, broken mouth.
His askew jaw was clearly detached and sat open like a snake.
The blood dropped into the human’s mouth, and I scowled as Ulric slipped further into his final sleep.
Lily…a voice from within my mind whispered, and I dropped to my knees in an instant, grabbing Ulric’s detached arm and slamming the flesh back together.
Ulric gasped as the power flowed through him once more, and the life returned to the bastard that deserved nothing more than death.
But his death meant Lily’s death, and as much as I hated him, I loved her more.
Locke noticed what had happened and shot a furious look toward me.
I stared back, unapologetic.
To his credit, Locke didn’t press the issue further, content to let the fury in his eye tell a novel’s worth of scolding and disappointment.
Ulric’s body began to pop as his injuries knitted themselves whole once more, his jaw being the most difficult to watch with how unnatural it looked. But I did watch, all the same. It looked extremely painful, and I couldn’t help but smile.
Something struck my jaw, surprising me, and I turned to see Locke pulling back his fist. The strike hadn’t hurt, but it hadn’t meant to. The insult that my friend had punched me in the face was harm enough.
