The Gathering Continues

Deano sweeps down and grabs the light-form of the computer and places it into his coat pocket. He then launches himself from the 15-foot high hole in the house. The wall follows with him as the building implodes from the lost of a supporting pillar. His dive carries a couple of twirls as he demonstrates his prowess to all those viewing the showdown. He lands feet first and turns to face the juicer, as the man does not hesitate in his attack and strikes forth with a shoulder tackle. Deano calculates that the opponent will judge size as a factor as he will rely on brute strength to smother him. Ah! The impetuousness of youth he thinks as he drops from the blast. The boy is strong, yet stupid. As the smaller man worms around, he hooks him in a toehold and pulls him to the ground. Deano moves into a mock push up position and pushes hard to put himself back on his feet, defying gravity and physics. The juicer barrel rolls to his back and then throws himself to his feet, kicking dirt in the air with the process. As response to the display of raw strength a shockwave of devastating proportions cracks by him with beings that stood and watched dematerializing along with an entire house. The wave ripples through the ground at the speed of sound, blindly snapping up the juicer and tossing him head over heals for its length. He settles some ninety feet away from his origin, to look at the world with a new ‘human’ perspective. For, not always is all the strength relevant in a place where beings control forces beyond his understanding. The landscape now sports a different image as vacant lots where homes stood now rest in crumbled crevices like desert fissures. Numbness lapses over his hands and feet for now his digits are absent and blood pools form where the stumps rest. The dry earth drinks the fluid hungrily, yearning for more of the salt that brings life. Yet this one’s sour and cold and un-fulfilling as the planet drinks and senses the impending doom, to the coming of an alien force of destruction - her savior and rapist for he has fed from her for longer than she can remember.

He stops over the body, over the fear of a crippled man with single-minded determination. Not vengeance, pleasure -- will be his, not hers as his scorn lives in his breathing body, not in her cold dead husk. The man pushes backwards along the ground, his bloody face, hands and feet shivering from the onslaught in anticipation of future pain. Deano can see the fear in the lidless eyes of his opponent as they question: ‘Why me?’ in silence. He simply smiles and kicks dirt from the crippled ground into the face, unprotected eyes of the crippled man. The juicer tears out in pain as the salts from the soil burn his eyes. Suddenly his teeth shatter from the blunt kick from the roof of the Black Demon’s foot as true power hits him solidly, squarely in the lower jaw. His head coils back and presses against the indentation from the absence of ground, left from the de-materialization. He delivers a second, then third kick to the head rattling the mushy matter within, beyond the point of migraine pain. Then nothing, he hears only silence through ringing ears. It is a true silence, to the exception of the wind blowing throughout the trees, the crackle from the pyres and rotten wood of the houses and dense breathing to his side. The world is cast under a watery haze as tears wash away the sand particles in his eyes. Suddenly, he feels a shrieking pain, a driving thrill that reaches up the spine and pulls at the back of the throat. Something digs in, through his abdomen as he looks into the corrupted image of black, void eyes and sees alien teeth. He screams through shattered teeth, as his mouth fills with a thick, bloody mass, which he thinks are his intestines.

His death lingers as he slowly bleeds and heals from his wounds. He watches, survives and tastes four major organs as his killer devours him, paralyzed from the hip down.

Fourteen

He stood outside the boarding hall, a transient room that allowed dimensional phased deities to enter within this body of the Empress of the Dark. The heightened moods of the ship’s passengers quickly change as they distance from the Super Nexus and steer into the black unknown of the water world. He patiently waits and watches as the deficit of movement lulls him into impatience. Not one of his virtues, however he has a plan and the need outweighed his impulses. He simply did not know whom he was looking for, only a feeling, a recognition from the presence through the urging of ‘You’ll know when you see him’ phenomenon. He put little stock in the psychic or magical, to the exception of rare, powerful magic like Rune Magic or Temporal Magic. However, he has no gift at either other than manipulating those who can. Fear, now that is true power. What good is all that fancy stuff when your arms are being disjointed by someone as imposing as him? Besides, not always do those things work for many people have immunities to specific types of magic or energy. God knows that he has his, including the ones he has yet to experience. The gift, curse carries far more power than it would tell him and every day is an experiment, experience. He is in no hurry to end this -- only change it to his liking.

The first to exit is a massive ogreish looking creature, robed in a black, rune-infested cassock and tethers. It looks around with caution, scanning the faces then continues on. Shortly after, a massive Magic, Floating Thrown with an entourage of minions appears. Sitting on the thrown is a sphinx-like creature with alien features and non-catlike expressions. It had no fur, just thick gray flesh with olive spotted stigmas. A massive, gold collar rapped around its neck like a brace or shackle. However, it scones' one of the minions for its incompetence with a quiet purr and teeth bared. The ash remains simply fall and dusts the deck with charcoal. Then a little boy appears, naked and chained at the neck. The heavy chain stems tautly backward past the confines of the watertight door. The child is sullen and emaciated, and very young -- human. Now his master, a small inhuman, twice the height of the boy yet just as thin, appears holding the chain tightly in his left hand. He wore a dull, latex cassock over a thin chain mail like jersey and leather hoses. Strapped on his back is a massive Rune Staff with a fist sized azure amethyst crowning it.

Then nothing, no one else exits not even technicians or greeters. He stirs uncomfortably in his corner, watching the last two creatures walk away. His face turns to anger as he anticipates the emergence of another, his mark. As time passes, his impatience grows and he begins to wonder. Questions, ‘Did I miss him?’ and ‘How the fuck am I going to do this now?’ are among some of the impertinent ones, he repeats under his breath. His fists gently slap against the bulkhead wall behind him creating a dull drumming sound that carries through the hull. Then he appears, emerging from the watertight door, a tall, narrow creature -- who looks humanoid yet alien. He appears very European in a dimensional way. His tied back hair is in a horn like formation, just as solid and shiny. He models an elegant but rugged three-piece made of alien materials; it clashes in a protective manner. Under his right armpit, he carries a black, solid case with a silver trim. He looks around as though expecting to meet someone than continues on in familiarized order. The stalker smiles in recognition and follows. Even the best laid plan tastes of victory for success is in his grasp.

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Fifteen

She enters the incense-filled hall of the main perish, where Jesus remained crucified on his wire cross. As she looks upon the deity, she thinks to herself, such a dismal, archaic society -- to do such a thing to another human being. The place was clean despite the chaos around and the horror that had just ripped through a town where people appear, in retrospect, to be completely oblivious to its coming. The world has changed for them and they have done nothing to adapt, to rise above so that they can at least survive. Not just get by. There must be more to this she thought as she searches the room for the old, mad priest. “Father!” Her voice collides off the magnificent walls. “Father!” She exclaims again, to which nothing. “Father?” Immediate concern fills her as her call goes out un-responded. She makes her way to the main entrance, where the doors are shut but not locked. She exits to a slightly overcast day that spills into evening for five hours has past since she had entered this retched place. Her neck still stung from the attack, but it is the exaggerated stumble of her every step from her left ankle that concerns her. Her every step is a struggle as it sends twitches of agony through her. However, perseverance brings courage and she will not let her self be undone by a fossil creature such as the one she had just faced. Maintaining a face of bravery is hard while the stench of acrid musk soaks her with humility. Tears boil with her movements as she thinks of the old priest. ‘. . . you have finally come.’ He had said with a sheepish smile. ‘Free me from my tormentor . . .’ He asked, then ‘Walk down Sutherbey’s Lane and you will find their park. They held rituals there . . .’ The name, the street. She had camped not too far from such a place. Or did she?

Sutherbey’s Lane started and ended with the remains of low-cost Government Homes, built as attached cells to herd the misanthropic cattle of the world’s low life. These were the Burb’s, nothing like the one found outside the great city of Chi-Town, but older - much older. For the homes remain from after the cataclysm. Or at least rebuilt as facsimiles of the original buildings that at one time, stood here. Or what she believes once stood here, before the coming of the rifts. So much has changed in the aesthetics of the world that it barely carried the image of the world she had first entered. However, the people had stayed the same and in some way de-evolved from where they once stood, on top of an empire of glorious cultures. They have come so far away from their original image that they have past the line of similarities and entered a realm of the mediocre.

The trees are beautiful, tall and green despite the coming of fall. The metal skeletons paraded their new coats as the fading sun dews them with a brilliant over glow. This was a wondrous location where one can lose their fears and ebb into the depth of dreams. Then the circle of dirt and the images -- Dark, arcane images of a past filled with horrors and the unbelievable. Fires tower into the heavens, licking the clouds with their destructive tongues, painting them under azure and creeps into crimson where they fall back to the earth as blood. The earth opens up at the core of where they stand, sucking in the light like a massive black hole hungry for the feast. Children stand around, holding hands, watching blindly as adults walk carelessly into the pit, screaming in resonance to their digestion. Then the nebula formation as it materialized with the void, forming from the flesh of the sacrificed appears with delight scrawled across its monstrous face. However, the inhalation of the light masks its face in obscurity, the image of massive, and flowing robes created from the victims' dances in the backdrop of her vision. Suddenly the priest, the mad old man from the church reaches out to praise the coming of his master as he is handed a golf ball-sized sphere, of heavenly aura and brilliance.

Malice overcomes her as she puts together the images as it implies the old priest. He is the mastermind behind all this. To what reason was her next quest? As she rushes back toward the church rapture fuels her as she discards the pain and moves beyond, through any and all obstacles in her path. Her hands coil up into fists as she bites down on her bottom jaw, to where her muscles arch out in acute definition. The church doors shatter as her shoulder surge past them raining splinters of wood and lacquer into the void space behind. She quickly scans the place and feels the emptiness, loneliness within such a great place. How could he defile such a house with his presence? She questions, as she searches the living quarters at the prefecture to the back of the church. Then the library, the second room that went unnotched as she entered the boiler room below. She had not questioned at the time, but now felt a suitable time in light of the evidence at hand. She needed a clue, an idea to why or what would propel such a person to do such hideous crimes. A leader to abuse his power and control over people to sacrifice them to a hidden god, demon who promised . . . what? Power? Eternal life? The ever-lasting control over the faithful lambs of the reckoning? He was not here, that was certain. He wanted something from below, but what? For she had seen nothing more than the tombs, halls, thirteen cherubs and the altar - The clay doll? The second box, she neglected to look within it after defeating the terror, the . . . Guardian. There was something hidden within that box and it was that, which he was looking for. The Library was ransacked, books and files liter the carpeted floor in a mosaic of leather. She then spots between the desk and the door a broken case laying on the floor, open to reveal the pages within. A black leather binding holds the two pieces together in a fleeting cusp of security, which fails with age. The pages are creased over by its weight as it remains with its cover to the air. This one carried no similarities to a bible typical to such a place. However, she is not an authority in such things and could not tell for sure. But the golden morning star emblazoned upon one side of the cover with the griffin and dragon caressing it was a dead give away. She reaches down for it and finds the pages old and worn from age and use. It is a book of rituals, arcane magic and lore -- All written in ancient Greek. How fortunate for her she feels. For her ancestry is relative, although distant, to the Atlantians where Latin was one of their original languages. She still spoke the language, rustic and colloquial in some circles. Yet she was not translating the contents for an audience, only for her blazing curiosity. Thirteen leather straps mark specific pages. Each page is single face printed and secured in groupings of five pages where few were loose and dislodged. In all, reading through the marked pages reveals no relevant evidence pertaining to her quest. However, the drawings of several artifacts concern her, one of which is a mythical Rune Artifact created before the Splugorths. It is a scepter that has untold power and in the wrong hands, who knows what could happen. But it had been lost for many millennia and she doubts its existence. She then turns to the next marked page, which contains the painted image of ‘Featheon’s Talon’ worn on an inhuman hand. The black ink drawing did little to complement its rugged beauty, despite its malevolence. She had studied this one for she knew of its owner, beholder. He, it, a diabolical being who fed from the damned souls of… Recollection and disdain as she begins to piece together the links. He lay trapped between dimensions, a prisoner of his own devices as his wickedness knows no bounds. To free him requires, required much energy and power, more than any human can possibly contain. Her mind dives into a whirlwind of pain and question as where, who and when toss around like a bowling ball in a canoe. Suddenly an image, a specter of an illusion as the dark waters swallows the night sky under rhapsody. Massive pontoons break through the monster high waves with impunity as a Splugorthian Slaver Ship swells under the crescent moon. The Empress rules over the oceanic world with the might of a god, then the laughter as the macabre dance within the walls as humans feed their fiendish appetite.

As she exits, she looks above the door to see the image of God’s son with his heart between his breasts, a small flame ablaze within it and a crown of thorns above it. Then the carving, the demonic emblem, a ward used to stay off unwanted guests . . . The Guardian. That is why it could not enter the church. The ward kept it at bay. However, he could not enter beyond for it would hunt him down to protect what was in the box. The Scepter -- She hoped not, for the world is not ready for the destruction it could bring in the wrong hands.