Dream Drive Ch. 09

"You lost your armor against one of them?"

Ren bowed his hood. "My lord. She got past my men before I knew what was happening. She was like the Lady Ransfeld – a sword passed through her body, and she was unharmed."

For a moment, Hale was struck silent. Somehow, one of the People-Under-The-Mountain had gained powers similar to Rachel.

He stood at the top of the hill, surrounded by his men. The soldiers moved forward at a steady pace. In the distance, he could see the scattered tribes desperately trying to reform their defense.

Hale's surprise morphed into a rising sense of glee. Rachel maintained that her powers were granted to her in the strange place she'd come from. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to acquire them himself. But this – a confirmed native of his own world having the same abilities – was proof positive that the potential was there.

"Even I'd be taken aback at that," Hale said. "Bring a slave!"

In a few moments, the sound of clinking chains announced the fact that his command had been followed. Hale glanced down. An old man huddled below his horse, eyes on the ground, hands shivering in his manacles. Soldiers held him in place.

Hale withdrew one of his matrices from his robes. Along with his newest cube, capable of generating powerful lightning, he now had four Words inscribed to his soul. In terms of flexibility, he was second only to the Vuldstadt himself, and perhaps a handful of the high priests.

Hale placed his hand on the slave's balding head. The man quivered.

Hale concentrated. Runes appeared in front of him, willed into existence as he pictured them in his mind, one by one. Novice mages often drew their runes in the air using their fingers, but that was just a device to aid in memory. Hale was long past the need for that.

The matrix absorbed his completed spell, and the man's spirit was laid bare before him. Hale drew upon it, sucking it out as if he were draining a mana crystal. The man's thin skin turned grey, as if he were struck with disease. His hair dropped from his head in clumps; his face seemed to shrink, until his skin was wrapped tight around his skull.

Hale sucked every drop of life from his body. The spell didn't have to kill, but he was already past his prime. Hale pushed the essence into Ren's robe, recharging the protective runes that had stopped the girl's spear. It took more essence than he wanted to spare, but there were plenty more slaves. He could drain another before they entered battle.

The old man slumped in the arms of the guards, dead. "Leave him for the vultures," Hale said. "God knows we've seen enough of those in these barrens."

The soldiers dragged the body out of sight. Ren nodded. "Thank you, my lord."

"Don't underestimate them again," Hale said. "This is their cathedral, as it were. They'll defend it to the last, even if it means their lives."

"Understood."

"Now," Hale said, facing forward, "let's show them how magic is really –"

Hale stopped. His eyes widened.

Every collar he'd made was connected to his mind, linked to his spirit. It was a spell he'd created himself, a product of a matrix he'd found a long time ago. A trickle of essence was enough to maintain the link, along with a push here and there when he needed to bring pain to bear.

His link with Rachel was being pulled, hard, like a rubber band pushed to the point of snapping. Hale grabbed it in the back of his mind and brought it into focus. He shoved his essence into maintaining it.

Whoever was fighting against him didn't pull the punch. Essence surged forward, more than a person could push at once – it had to be coming from a gemstone. Hale swore. "Get me another slave! Now!"

He desperately fought the force that was trying to pull out the bond. The spell changed; it stopped pulling against him, and started trying to slice the bond in two. More runes were entering the equation, but without seeing them himself, he couldn't counter them directly. He was reduced to pouring raw essence into the collar's enchantment.

A slave was dragged up. The runes for the draining spell blossomed in front of Hale in an instant. He snatched the boy by the hair and pulled him close.

Hale saw the flash of a knife too late. The blade sliced across his hand. He flinched back, sparing himself a deep cut, but the pain cost him his concentration. His runes wavered, faded.

The bond with Rachel snapped. The sensation vanished from his mind.

Hale slammed his hands into his saddle. His eyes blazed at the boy, already on the ground, kicked into submission by the guards. He checked his frustration to a growl at the back of his throat.

"My lord!" Ren said, reaching for his wrist.

"I'll heal it myself!" Hale snapped. He quickly wove the runes and repaired his flesh before it bled too much. "Bring that little rat here."

The two soldiers, both of them pale and wide-eyed at Hale's tone, dragged the boy back over. Hale reached down and grabbed the boy's chin. "You little insignificant piece of garbage. You cost me my bond!"

They slave's eyes shined up at him, happy in defiance. A smirk was on his lips.

Hale bent his head up until the smirk erased itself. "I'm going to suck the life out of you," Hale said, "slowly. And I'm going to make it hurt. I remember your family. They're back at my tower, aren't they?" The boy's eyes widened. "I think I'll do the same to them when I get back. Wouldn't that be nice?"

The boy started to struggle, but this time, the guards duly held him in place. The strength left his body as Hale's spell went to work. Someone so young had more than enough essence to make up what he'd lost fighting for Rachel's bond, but Hale didn't care, even if some would burn away as waste. He took it all, until the light was gone from the slave's eyes and the body was nothing more than a skin-wrapped skeleton.

Hale shoved the corpse away from him. He met the eyes of the two guards, one at a time. "The next time you fail in the one, simple task for which you are responsible, I'll take your lives instead."

The guards dragged away the boy's body in record time. Hale straightened in his saddle. "Ren."

"My lord?" Ren said.

"Is the teleportation circle cemented to our fallback position?"

"Yes, my lord." Ren paused for a moment, then shifted in his saddle. "Do you think it was worth it?"

"Worth it? Every plan deserving of the name has an exit strategy."

"It cost us ten slaves."

"They can be replaced," Hale said. "There's plenty of them out there right now, running away without their tents. Aside from that..." Hale glanced up at the sky. It was a pale, hazy grey, a solid blanket that muffled the sunlight. He didn't like the look of it. " That slave's little rebellion was a high price to pay for a simple reminder. We need to be prepared for every eventuality."

"Yes, my lord."

"Take position at the line. It's time we put the fear of God into these mongrels."

Boonta watched it all from behind Hale's horse, the collar still around his neck. He couldn't understand their language, but he knew that what just happened was not supposed to happen. Hale was strong, but he wasn't invincible.

But he did nothing, and waited, walking obediently behind the man that chained him. If he was going to kill Hale, he had to be absolutely sure he was going to get away with it.

Jackson checked his status. 143 health, 56 essence. That was way too much used up in one fight. He'd been hoping the crystal would grant him some kind of power to defeat the hunter, but an escape route was good enough. He'd been able to hold it off with a few tricks, but he was less confident he could kill it on his own. Maybe if he tanked, and had Rachel strike it from behind – Chaki pinning it down with arrows, keeping it on the ground. Something like that.

He still had an essence crystal, as well as the three gemstones Chaki charged up. Together, they were worth almost 150 essence. Hopefully he wouldn't run into more hunters anytime soon.

He felt his weight press back on his legs and feet. His stomach settled. He blinked a few times. He still couldn't see anything.

Jackson looked down. He was standing on a very thin white disk no more than two feet across. The platform floated alone in a massive, endless void of black. Afraid of losing his balance, he dropped to one knee, keeping his spear close.

Finally.

The voice struck Jackson like a physical slap. Hearing it felt like inhaling ice. His lungs burned. His bones felt brittle. His hands felt numb and raw, as if he'd tried to make a snowball without any gloves on.

Something shifted in the darkness.

Jackson drew back, eyes wide, mouth falling open. It wasn't moving. The darkness was moving around it. It pulled away like the rotting stage curtain of a haunted theater.

The presence lingered there, silent. The aura around it was not the heat of energy, but the weight of cold steel pressed on the back of Jackson's neck. It didn't move, but sat upon its darkness, watching Jackson as if he was a tiny candle it was thinking about snuffing out.

"Too...much?" The voice came again. It made Jackson's eyes water and his hairs rise up, but it didn't feel like it was about to kill him.

"Uh...a little more, would be great."

The thing laughed, but its voice duly retreated a bit more; it seemed to draw the dark back partly over itself, shielding Jackson from the full force. "You are amusing. Entertaining. He thought you might be first, when I asked him. He was right. One of his odd sixteen."

"Him?" Jackson squinted. "Do you mean Emil Mohammed?"

"Yes," the thing said. "Do you know who I am?"

"Shakhan?" Jackson said.

"I have many names," it said. The void trembled as it spoke, as if there was a drum rolling underneath all its words. "Those that live on the plains you so recently traversed call me Shakhan, Guardian-Under-the-Mountain. I am Accuser and Deceiver, Apollyon and Abaddon, Leviathan and Lion."

Jackson's mouth dried up. He tried to lick his lips, get some feeling back on his tongue, but it was like rubbing a tissue over sandpaper. "I don't..." He tried to get the knot out of his throat. "What do you mean?"

"I am Father of Lies," it said. "I am the Defiler. I am Satan, the Tempter of Eve! I am Lucifer, the Morning Star, the Son of the Dawn! Most beautiful and terrible of all the Fallen! DO YOU STILL NOT KNOW ME?!"

Jackson covered himself and shivered as the power rolled over him again. It felt like a tremendous glacier threatening to grind him down into the void.

The force faded. Jackson raised his head. The presence lingered again, swathed in darkness.

Jackson brought himself back up, getting his knee under him. If he was going to die, he might as well go down swinging. "Yeah, uh, I get it. Which one do I use?"

Another long, rattling chuckle. "Good for you, Jackson, yes. Be brave. Do you feel His light upon you, here, in this place? You reek of Him. Why do you smell like Him? There shouldn't be anything like that, no, but there's something you..."

"I don't get it," Jackson said. "I smell like someone?"

"HIM!" Jackson cringed at the shuddering word, screamed and moaned and growled as if emitted from a chorus of tortured heads. "HE SITS ON YOU LIKE THE STENCH OF A PROMISE, THE FILTHY ODOR OF MYRRH IN A RUSTING VESSEL!" After a moment, the thing settled back. "You will call me what you will. I who lost my name now have more names than many, if only to spite Him."

"Who?" Jackson asked.

"I cannot speak His name," the voice said. "I can never speak it again. Never curse it. Never praise it. No songs, no light in this place. Never. Never again..."

It trailed off.

The darkness began to swirl. The decayed curtain of dark rolled around it, an old battle flag drawn straight by a cold wind. "But I don't need His light. I don't need HIM. I only need this. Darkness. This is mine!"

It stopped.

Silence.

Jackson glanced at his left hand, at the pentagram scrawled into his skin, and then he looked back at the Devil. I am so fucked. "What do you want me for?" he said.

"I don't," Lucifer said. "Mohammed does. Earth is in peril."

Jackson considered quite a few responses. He decided on the safest and simplest one. "How can I help?"

"The demons have almost completed the Tower of Babel," Lucifer said. "Once they have anointed its peak in blood, the way to the Gate of Heaven shall open, and they will march upon it in full force."

"Wait..." Jackson tried to process. "What?"

"The demons are close to reaching Earth, Jackson Vedalt. And if they make it there, they will sacrifice it in darkest fire to burn open a path to the City of Heaven."

"So...that's a bad thing, from your perspective?"

"Does it seem," Lucifer said, "that I am participating in this would-be, glorious retribution?"

"Um..." Jackson gaze shifted around the void. "No."

"How perfectly intelligent of you," Lucifer said. "You, a human, the dirty half-breed between angel and beast. I am indeed tempter and defiler, but this occurs on my terms, not the terms of those beneath me. My second, Beelzebub...he rebelled against me, as I once rebelled against Him.

"There is a twisted balance in my existence," Lucifer said. "Our existence. Me and mine destroy what we can. We take what we can reach. What He allows us to reach. Our potential is diseased, sickened and weakened by His whims, and it is all we have. But in those brief moments when we SUCK the heart of a human into darkness, we have a little revenge, bit by bit, fleshy piece by piece, reclaiming souls from His disgusting, VILE light. Chipping away pieces of Him, cutting them from His so-called love. LOVE, what a word - I spit it back on this world He made like the poison it is!"

Jackson was beginning to get the feeling that Lucifer wasn't very stable. But then, if he'd been chained in oblivion for a few thousand years, he'd probably have a few screws loose. "So, the demons didn't like the corruption gig?" Jackson asked.

"They wanted more," Lucifer said. "I knew it was a false quest. I felt the Thunder – the Thunder - as it struck me, burned me. Marred me. They did not. They were only knocked asunder. No...we cannot challenge Him, not directly. But we can forever remind Him that with us, in us, He failed - that we rejected Him. His professed and eternal love does not touch us. That is the true revenge."

"I can see why some of them wanted to go that extra mile," Jackson said. "Doesn't sound very satisfying to hunker down and spit at Him."

"No," Lucifer said. "But it is the fate we chose for ourselves, Jackson Vedalt, rather than the one He assigned to us - to laze about in Heaven and constantly sing praise He does not deserve. And that is enough. That is to say, it was enough. No longer."

"So, where do me and the rest come in?" Jackson said.

"If the demons complete their plan, and construct the tower, they will be able to access Heaven," Lucifer said. "He has left Earth to the governance of man. He is not present – at least not in the sense that He shall interfere. This had been wrongly perceived as an opportunity. What shall occur if our existences break the Gates and greet His light once more? Even I do not know. I do not even know if the Gates can be broken. But it cannot be allowed."

"So what's stopping you?" Jackson asked. "Why did you have to drag all of us –"

"DO YOU THINK," Lucifer roared, "THAT I SIT HERE, SILENT AND IMPOTENT, BECAUSE I HAVE A CHOICE?!"

The darkness drew back, and then Jackson saw It for an instant – just an instant. He shrunk into himself, clinging to the platform as the image rattled in his mind.

"DO YOU THINK THAT I WOULD LAY HERE, CHAINED, IF THESE WERE CHAINS I COULD BREAK?!"

The power of it struck him like a frozen hurricane. He felt as if his flesh was cracking like ice, falling away in chunks with his hair and nails, his eyes sealed shut with frost, his bones shattering, unable to support his own weight.

And then, it ended.

Jackson tried to look up again. He was shaking. He couldn't stop shaking. It hurt.

"I once could move," Lucifer said. "My chains allow me to move. Even He was not that cruel when he struck me down. But the demons – Beelzebub – they locked me in place, immobile in totality.

"But I was not rendered completely powerless. No one can do that. Not even He could do that – no, He couldn't. If He could, wouldn't He have done so? Or perhaps He was weaker than I thought. Or perhaps, in His so-called compassion, He could not bring Himself to destroy me, to completely undo what He had made. He struck me down for arrogance, and there He sits, bathed in that very arrogance. Does His compassion extend to the humans I have tainted, that are locked in pits of fire? No, another reason why...something I missed...something..."

Lucifer's words began to ramble, turning upon themselves in circles of logic. Jackson was hardly listening. He felt like there was a sheen of cold acid sitting on him, smoldering into his muscles. He couldn't focus his vision.

"But it doesn't matter," Lucifer said eventually. "And so I whispered to Emil Mohammed, a man who found a place where the walls of mortality are thin and worn. I told him of what was to come. I provided him with the power he needed for humanity to forestall its destruction, defeat the demons, and in turn, release me from their seal. Mohammed looked for other answers, but he found none. He was wise not to trust me. But the final piece of the Tower of Babel is Earth itself, and if my brethren are not stopped, the blood that shall be shed will be enough to make the oceans run red. And so we had our pact. After all...better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Isn't that right?" Lucifer chuckled again.

"Why..." Jackson tried to pull himself together. He gripped the edges of the platform to stop his hands from quivering. "Why me? Us? The 5,000?"

"Because that was the limit of which he was capable," Lucifer said. "Even if it is my power, a human soul can only channel so much of it."

"But I'm just..." Jackson sucked in a breath through his teeth. "I'm just some random person. It doesn't –"

"I did not tell him in what manner he was to pick his warriors, only that they would be required," Lucifer said. "And so now, you have part of my power. It is enough even to slay the lords of Hell, should you nurture it with enough essence of the soul. And slay them you must, or they will visit an apocalypse upon you and everything you have ever known. And they will relish in it."

Jackson tried to swallow. His tongue clenched up uncomfortably, unable to complete the motion. "So...kill demons?"

"Or chain them, bind them, bring them to me," Lucifer said. "Remove them. I care not what method you choose."

"What do I have to do?"

"Within the City of Dis," Lucifer said, "through which you just walked, there is a portal to the next level of Babel. This is the next world upon which they set the seed of the Vine from Eden. You have acted as an outside catalyst to open this doorway, circumventing the seal that rests upon me. Once there, you must find the way forward, and open it, and so on, and thereby scale this tower of worlds. Your magic shall guide you, as it guided you here."

Jackson looked at his scar, then back at Lucifer – almost. He glanced off to the side a bit. He couldn't bring himself to look at it straight on again. "I found my way here on my own, without any magic," Jackson said.

Lucifer made another rumbling laugh. "Then perhaps you are all not fated to die at the hands of my brothers-in-arms. If you touch the tip of your scar, you will be able to set a path to your goal. Draw across its face to return to the City of Dis whenever you desire. I will say this of Mohammed – he is weak, but he channeled my power wisely. Your abilities are...comprehensive. Creative. Such a mind, his is. I was glad to take it from Him." Lucifer shifted in the dark. "But you cannot travel just yet. They expected me to reach out to humans, but not to grant them my own power. Kill the winged beast, once you are no longer an ant, and the city Dis will be open to you."