So the Bone Machine says I’m not thinking clearly.
I tell them to go stuff themselves and charge the photon packs in my gauntlet guns.
They say charging off against this “unknown quantity” is bad mojo.
I remind them this “unknown quantity” killed Rades, nearly killed Chaz, and made me fight a perverted facsimile of the best friend I’ve ever had before forcing me to kill him again.
They say I should be reading up on the kind of magic this psychopath uses and preparing countermeasures against it before I charge off into battle.
I remind them I took out two of this Mad God’s proxies and that I’m going to take Him down for fucking with my life.
They say a lot of other things too, but I’m too busy teleporting myself into the lion’s den to care.
***
So quick question: Have you ever teleported into the middle of a volcano?
Of course you haven’t. I haven’t either. Only an idiot would teleport into the middle of a volcano.
But when I re-materialize and I feel the heat that surrounds me instantly - some palpable, thick, humid, noxious thing that’s infecting my lungs and burning against my eyes - I feel like I might be the kind of idiot that would teleport into the middle of a volcano.
I start panting like a dog, feeling beads of sweat trickle along my forehead. Squinting my eyes, I gaze around at the Surrealist painter’s nightmare of a landscape around me, trying very hard to convince myself I’m still sane.
The sky is the kind of color you’d get if you puked and sneezed and pissed into a bucket for an hour and mixed it together - all the worst shades of yellow and green and brown, swirling around each other like a sickening kaleidoscope. Blackened clouds hop around in epileptic stops and starts. Behind one of them is the outline of something I’m not too comfortable looking at. Some massive flying beast with a tail that catches the flashes of orange light coming from the clouds.
I hear a hiss and it vanishes behind the cloud so fast that I wonder if it was ever there.
Dumbfounded, I turn my eyes toward the horizon. The ground looks to be made of stone, littered with reddened, pulsing blemishes. In the distance, I see wavy outlines of mountains and it reminds me of the beautiful red landscape of the Arizona desert. Except, I’m seeing these mountains rising and falling rhythmically.
I watch the movement, and feel the same thing - although much more muted - happening below my own feet.
“This…this…what the fuck is this?” I ask Alejandro, the member of the Bone Machine that told me I’d find my Mad God here.
“You, Litany my dear, are gazing upon the awe-inspiring Breathing Landscape of the Foreversprawl of Twilight Madness.” He seemingly smiles triumphantly with his bleached skull and nods proud toward the twisted landscape.
“Awe-inspiring, my ass.” I growl, wiping beads of sweat from my face. “The only inspiration this place is giving me is the one to throw up.
I rock gently with the movement of the ground beneath me and something clicks in my head. “Wait…did you say Breathing Landscape?”
“Absolutely, in fact--”
“You’re saying the ground is shocking BREATHING?”
“Nothing gets past her.” Megan McShit-talker mumbles. I extend my middle finger out and slip it inside the hollowed eye of her floating skull.
“What did you just say?” I growl through gritted teeth.
“I said that Alejandro should perhaps speak slower and with shorter words so your mentally-challenged brain is able to keep up. Dear.”
Knives and spinning razorblades coalesce in the magic around my finger when Madame Girard butts in.
“Dears, now is not the time for this.” The Voodoo Priestess says calmly. “We have a mission to accomplish…”
Megan the Forever-Bitch laughs. “Oh yes, the mission that Litany has dragged us along for despite our protests. By all means, instead of desecrating my remains, shouldn’t you be busy charging off into battle with no plan and get us all buggered in the process?”
I pull her skull toward my angry face. “If it gets you buggered, I’m all for it.”
Alejandro interrupts our Mexican Stand-off with his boisterous voice. “Look now, lovely ladies! One of the Glittering Sharp Dragons is coming to say hello!”
“Huh?” Me and Megan whirl around to see a giant dragon made entirely out of shattered reflecting glass with something-like-a-thirty-foot-wingspan flying toward us. I see our slack-jawed expressions reflected back in its jagged face. Its eyes - the only things that aren’t made out of broken glass - give us all the same look that you’d give to a thick juicy steak.
It opens its massive mouth to swallow us whole and my heart stops dead. I dive maniacally out of the way, hearing the snapping crash of a thousand pane glass windows shattering behind me as it closes its jaws on the spot of ground I was standing on.
Unfortunately, I’ve dived off blindly into a valley.
“Shit shit shit shit!” I yell, falling down the stony uneven slope. I bounce and fall forever, trying to think up a shield before the stones really do some damage.
“Oh how exciting!” Alejandro yells excitedly. “Litany, doesn’t this make you feel so alive?”
“Ow shit ow ow ow!” I reply, trying to focus on the shield and not on kicking Alejandro in the face over and over for a straight month. With adamantium boots. Spiked adamantium boots. With automatic gun turrets on them.
It feels like a few centuries before the protective bubble seals itself around me and I finally roll to a stop inside a thick patch of tall grass - oddly enough.
“Fer Thor’s sake…” I mutter, watching the massive glass dragon fly away towards the open sky. Cursing lightly, I massage the bruises on my arms and thighs. Contrary to popular belief, falling against goddamn rocks is not nearly as fun as it sounds. “What…what the hell was that now?”
“That, my dear, was a Genuine Sharp Dragon! They are found everywhere in this dimension, spawned and sharpened from the blackened cirrus clouds above us. The lovely vixen-mage Tweexine Ra, introduced me to this place amidst our lover‘s tour of the Para-Cosmos. This was her birthplace, you see…”
“Alejandro. Quit the ego stroke-fest and tell me what I need to know. Today’s not the day to fuck with me.”
“Ahem. You see, Litany, with a simple incantation, our astral selves flew alongside the Sharp Dragons in their homes amongst the dark clouds. That was the only way to see them, you see, since the Sharp Dragons are typically borne and nourished by the radiant energies inside the clouds. They rarely ever dive down to the surface. You are very, very lucky to have seen one up-close like this. It’s very exciting indeed.”
“Bite off.” I sigh, standing up and massaging my right temple. “You’re making my head…”
For the first time, I take a close look at the grassy patch I’ve wound up in and am instantly terrified.
“…hurt.”
What I thought was just a thicket of tall grass is instead a thicket of three-foot-long hypodermic needles and syringes. Shining in the red haze, the rigid gray needles rock back and forth with the breeze. I look below me and see the tips of the needles pressing hard against the bottom of my shield, ready to skewer me at a moment’s notice. The pressure against the shield suddenly gives me a jolting headache.
Screaming, I manage to maneuver my protective bubble out of the needle patch and back onto the stony ground. My head pounding, I release the shield and suck in a lungful of hot air before losing it completely.
“What. The. Fucking hell, Alejandro?! What is going on here? Why is everything trying to kill me?”
“Litany, this is a Hell Dimension! What did you expect?”
“Not rocks that make earthquakes when they breathe. Not giant glass dragons trying to eat me. Not getting my ass stuck in giant grass patches made out of HYPODERMIC FUCKING NEEDLES! Jesus, I mean, how did this shit hole get like this? This…this place is impossible!”
“I asked Tweexine that very same question while gazing upon the lovely browned sunset on the Mountains of Pain and Regret outside her skin home, and she asked me how my own fantastic world got to be the way it was. Cause and effect? Evolution? On Earth, we know what these things are, but here they have no meaning.” He says, chuckling. “Well, that’s not totally right. By that, I mean that they mean something totally different here than in our world. Darting in and out of reality as I have over the years, you learn the laws of physics as we know them are more subjective than you realize.”
I shake my head incredulously, trying vainly to sort it all out. I droop my shoulders and let out a sigh of defeat. “I…I just…just give me a line on where this no-good shit-monger’s holed up.”
“Litany?”
“Look, the whole reason I’m here is to kill myself a Mad, Vindictive-Ass God, and if my head explodes from what you’re telling me before all that happens, I’m going to be very cross. So please, just tell me how to find him.”
He clues me in on the massive swirls of techno mantic energies emanating in waves a few miles away from here. Apparently, the shock is getting to me - I didn’t even think to run a trace spell.
I trudge across the landscape, as much to get a fix on his position as to try and calm myself down.
I gaze around at the insane things around me and wonder what kind of God would live here, in this shocked-to-shit Hell Dimension.
I get sick to my stomach when I think of the possibilities, and trudge right on.
***
After some of the shock has worn off, I can just feel the techno mantic pressure radiating across the dimension. It’s a perverse, sickening kind of vertigo feeling. The kind of feeling you get when you’ve been spinning in circles for an hour and a half and suddenly stop to look off the edge of a cliff.
The Bone Machine confirms that it’s the same type of energy left behind when Rades’ died, when Chaz was attacked, and when the person puppet posing as John came after me. The same type; times about a hundred billion.
The Mad God obviously has made no effort to disguise his energies. He wasn’t expecting company in this place.
Lucky. This one’s not all-knowing then; otherwise he’d have known I was coming a mile off.
I decide against teleporting to the source of the energies; instead using some hexes to suppress my magical energies as much as possible while I walk towards the source. It seems I still have the element of surprise on my side. No sense wasting it teleporting to God-knows-where with a big “Kill Here” sign strapped to my back.
I reach the source and immediately feel the urge to kill something.
I’m staring up at a pure gold citadel that’s shaped suspiciously like a Gothic chapel, towering as far above me as the eye can see. I look at the walls as I come upon the disgusting thing and see maces and knives form, dissolve and re-form along the glittering walls. The windows are lined with stained-glass that moves and shines hypnotically. The worst of the thing are the statues that line the entranceway: twin two-story reliefs of what I can only guess is one of the high priests - a pretentious, self-important prick with a just-for-show smile and an evangelical glint to his eye. The gold on his face gleams and ripples powerfully; half-solid, half-liquid, all-pretentious bullshit.
Every part of my body wants to shatter this entire structure around itself, starting with Pastor Egomaniac’s face.
But I don’t. I’m not after the small fry. I’m after the Big Cheese.
It takes some looking, but I find a less-obnoxious side door near the entrance and sneak inside the church. I wind my way through the winding corridors like a rat lost in a maze.
Eventually, I end up in what looks to be the main chamber and immediately roll my eyes in disgust.
Everything about this room screams “Overdone” at the top of its lungs. From the circuitry-laced altar with silver trim to the grand spiral staircases with ornamental handrails that extend all the way across the second-floor balcony and down again. I roll my eyes as the handrails glisten obnoxiously in the bright white light emanating from the crafted walls. These walls are moving just like the ones outside, geometric shapes etching themselves calmly around each other and fading back, only this time when they fade back into walls, they have stitch-weaved images of that same pastor smiling toward his flock, head surrounded by a white halo. I hold back a gag.
I look towards the center of the room, across the marble floor, towards the massive crystalline centerpiece - a massive floating cube that changes shape every second. Elaborately carved and beautifully-decorated, orbited continuously by mirrored thought-forms that shimmer with reflected light.
It’s easily the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Is this…is this…God…?
“Beautiful, is it not?” A voice booms behind me. I curse to myself. So much for the element of surprise.
My eyes light up with techno mantic fire as all the old equations spring to life around my aura. I turn around and see a man in his twenties with shrunken-in eyes with half a glint of madness etched in them. He’s dressed in a white smoker’s jacket that extends around his knees. A collared shirt the color of congealed blood is tucked tight behind his stark-white vest. The white vest, the white jacket, and the perfectly-tailored white pants catch the light bleeding from the walls and reflect it back in an odd gray sheen every few moments.
Cripes. “So you’re Pastor-Strokes-Himself, I imagine?” I ask with a sneer. Before he can say a word, I point my middle finger directly at the shape-shifting cube. “And this fucking THING is your God.”
“Close. It’s only His puzzle.” He says with an open gesture. “I’m the God.”
I laugh right in his face. “You? God? You’ve gotta be shitting me.”
“Well, I’m not God yet, but…” He trails off, pacing around the massive shape-shifting structure. “I will be. Once I solve this particular puzzle here, with your assistance of course.”
“…what the shock are you talking about?”
He gestures towards the glittering centerpiece. “This, love, is a seventh-dimensional God Puzzle placed in this dimension by God Himself.”
“And…?”
“And you are going to help me solve it.” He smiles and I get nervous when I notice the slight tick in the muscles of his left eye.
“There’s no shocking way I’m helping you with any of that noise.“ I trail off, putting two and two together. “Rades, Chaz, John…that…that was all you. That was you all along, wasn‘t it?”
He lets out a spastic laugh that convinces me that him and Sanity parted ways a while back. “Yes, yes my juicy little morsel. That was all me. Your soon-to-be-deity.”
“You monstrous little fuck.” I spit, letting the energies flow within me. “I’m going to gut you for screwing with my life. But before that happens, I want to know why. Why have you been fucking with me?”
“I work in mysterious ways. Ha. Haha. Hee hee hah ha ha.”
He giggles like a madman and I lunge for his throat. I don’t blink, but he somehow goes from madman’s psycho-giggle to slamming me against the wall with a hand at my throat. I raise my palm to his face, gearing up to fire a point-blank shot of techno mystic fury right into his goddamn eyeballs…
But nothing happens.
I try over and over again, but nothing continues to happen.
And then I notice that the Bone Machine’s chattering has stopped too. All the dead magician’s skulls are hanging limp off of my shoulders, completely powered down somehow.
Terror overwhelms me. My eyes open wide and I struggle hard against his vice grip.
He licks his lips and brings his face almost an inch away from mine. “Ludgates are a bitch, aren’t they?” He giggles as a trio of voluptuous women in expensive glittering dresses filter out from a side door, holding a hand-held Ludgate Device.
Ludgates - the man-made devices that dial a magician’s power down to zero.
His eyes flash crimson and his smile goes serial-killer-wide. “Pity they’re not working on me, huh?”
He pulls me off the wall and slams my head back into it. Hard.
The world swirls around me, and I’m gone.
***
“Litany, you sexy little minx. We’re going to need you awake for this part…”
“Wha--?” I mumble, and my eyes shoot open when I realize it’s not Chaz’s voice.
“Ah. There we go.”
I see the Mad God in front of me and don’t suppress the urge to grab his rotten little throat to squeeze the life out of it. Except for the not-so-minor problem of me being chained to the damn wall. Typical goddamn super villain bullshit.
“I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you, you goddamn psychopath! Let me go!” I shout, my rage finally boiling over.
“I sense a lack of trust.” He feigns a look of hurt, walking around the dimly-lit room. “I know! I’ll start off by introducing myself. That ought to make things less stressful for you. I am the Great Vincenzo Deus. Scourge of the Seven Sands. Paralord of the Foreverspawl. And best of all, soon-to-be Newborn God.”
I spit a nice, thick loogie onto his proud face.
“Hmm…looks like one of my flock has thrown something up. Perhaps a bib will solve the problem.” His eyes light up and a ball gag materializes in my mouth and clamps itself shut behind my head.
My face lights up red and I shake with rage.
Vincenzo’s dead.
He is going to die.
Horribly, viciously murdered to death, the fucker doesn‘t even know.
“Mmmm. Much better. I do like that look on you Litany.” He says, wiping the snot off his face with a handkerchief.
I glare at him. I’m hoping my eyes somehow turn into daggers and stab through his face.
“So anyway,” He continues on, gesturing grandiose like your typical egomaniac would. I hear loud banging and sliding noises in the darkness around us. “While things are being set up, I want to tell you a story. Stop me if you‘ve heard this one before.”
Cripes, this madman’s on a power trip. I wriggle in vain against the chains.
“So we have our hero, this fantastically brilliant collector of magical trinkets and treasures. The Great…um…Vincent Dodds. And what Vincent does is traverse across countless dimensions, seeing what kinds of magical artifacts he can find. He’s fascinated by this stuff, see? Can’t get enough of it. So he happens upon this ancient, badly worn book. Or rather, a collection of missing chapters ripped from one better-known book. What he happens upon, is a collection of pages from the Bible itself.
“Before these ridiculous pop-religions like Thorism or the Church of the Identified Flying Object, there was one religion in particular that endured for far longer than any of these made-up feel-good monstrosities around today. Something that endured for untold centuries: Christianity. And the Christians had their Bible with the Old Testament and the New Testament and everything was all well and good.
“But as with every book publication, there needs to be some…editorial choices. Some things that, if discovered, may be too…inflammatory in the public domain, if you know what I mean. I mean, do you ever wonder why God is so high-and-mighty and deadly serious in the Old Testament and suddenly changes to the all-knowing, all-loving, all-forgiving sap in the New Testament?”
I give him a look that says I could care less. He smiles, licks his lips and continues right along.
“In the chapters between the Old Testament and the New Testament, God bet the Devil that no mere human could be as smart or as capable as He. So He created a techno-mantic little something called the God Puzzle. It is said that if a human is able to fully solve this puzzle, he shall be imbued with the powers of the Almighty and dethrone the Lord God himself. So the Fallen One and the Creator had their bet, and challenged five hundred men living on the planet at that time to solve the God Puzzle. The missing chapter says that in trying to solve the puzzle, four hundred and ninety-nine men were skewered to death by its mystical energies…
“Litbit.” He emphasizes that word to get me good and pissed and leans in for full dramatic effect. “The reason why there are two different versions of God in the two Testaments is because there are TWO DIFFERENT GODS. A lowly human being solved the God Puzzle and became a God Himself!”
Vincenzo smiles wide and starts pacing back and forth excitedly again. “Naturally, once Vincent found this out, he began his search for the actual God Puzzle. And by God, he found it, cast away and shape-shifting quietly to itself in some forgotten hell dimension. But his journey wasn’t over. Now was the time to actually solve the puzzle.”
“Crrrgh, yugh luuuugg tgg heegg yuggshugg tugg, dunggk yugh?” I mutter.
“I’m sorry. Didn’t catch that.” The ball gag dissipates and I can talk again. “Once more?”
“I said, ‘Christ, you love to hear yourself talk, don’t you?’”
“Why yes I do.” He says, putting the gag back in and smirking lightly. “So stop interrupting, would you?”
“Fugg yugg!”
“Maybe if you’re good. Now, as I was saying Vincent had to solve the puzzle. Any screw ups in the solving of the puzzle and he was doing the techno mantic equivalent of throwing himself into a wood chipper. So he had to get the advice of the wisest, oldest sages he could find.”
My heart skips a beat as I realize what he’s saying. I stare down at the Bone Machine, hanging inert and helpless against my chest. He pauses, drinking up my terror in perverted, drunken gulps.
“He decides to grab himself the Nemesis Mind. Only we know what happened to the Nemesis Mind before that particular magician could grab it for himself, don‘t we Litany?”
A different kind of terror fills me then.
The Nemesis Mind.
It was a collection of murderously-angry dead magicians spanning untold millenia whose restless spirits tied themselves together with a dimensionless crystal lattice structure and a promise to get revenge for all their misfortunes in life. Like the Bone Machine, they would feed their host instructions about all the deadliest techno mantic powers. In return, the host would settle the old scores that the psychotic ghosts didn’t get to do before kicking the bucket.
The Painqueen - given unbelievable power by the Nemesis Mind - came after John and I with her own axe to grind. John managed to kick her ass and disassemble the Nemesis Mind but at a cost. During the battle, he never saw SHIELD setting up the bombs and the Ludgate Rods that killed him and nearly cost me my life.
The day John died was the same day we destroyed the Nemesis Mind.
Goddammit.
“Yes, you do know what happened.” Vincenzo turns deadly serious. “So I’ve been keeping tabs on you since then, Litany. Without your help, the Metalscream would never have been able to defeat the Painqueen. Without your help, the Nemesis Mind would have been intact after that battle. I would have been able to use their knowledge to help me solve the God Puzzle and they would have been too busy with their insane delusions to ask me why.”
I wince as he slides his finger down my shoulder and works his way towards one of the dead skulls hanging limply off my body. “Which leads me to this interesting little bauble here.”
I can’t stop a tear from falling down my face. The Bone Machine. So he does want that after all. He’s after the fucking Bone Machine and there’s nothing in the world I can do to stop him now.
“It’s not my first choice. The dead magicians in the Bone Machine are much smarter than those foaming-at-the-mouth psychopaths in the Nemesis Mind. It will take me a great deal longer to convince them to see things from my perspective. Still, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers…”
“Yugg igsangg.”
“Please, love, I am no less sane than you are.” He strokes my face and I rip away from his hand in disgust. I see that muscle tick in his eyes and brace myself for an physical attack, but it never comes. Instead, his eyes shimmer menacingly. His pupils shrink to tiny burning blue dots as the rest of his eyes cloud over with a blackness as dark as his soul. I shudder. “Do you know what these are, Litany?” He asks.
I shake my head.
“As I told you, I am a collector of magical trinkets. These are the Eyes of Odin. I cut these from his dead corpse in the true land of Valhalla…”
He laughs as I gag with the ball gag still in my mouth.
“They are how I’ve kept tabs on you all this time. I’ve watched and studied you and this Bone Machine of yours until I learned all I needed to know.”
He opens his arms wide, smiling his sick smile. “I used the Vallencenzus Device to loan out my techno mantic powers to one of my prized escorts - you met the lovely Lucille. Your gun smith friend? That was to get your attention. The attack on your stupid boyfriend? A test of the Bone Machine’s skills. But when I imprinted my powers onto the Metalscream puppet…that was a knowledge test.
He taps his fingers amusedly along the bleached skulls of each of the dead magicians. “One. Of. These. Little. Skulls. Knows. All. About this obscure little Hell Dimension we find ourselves in. He’s the one I’m going to want to talk to about my God Puzzle back there. Thank you very much for bringing them all to me. Hee hee. Haaaaa ha ho hee ha.”
“Yugg sugg ub ug bisssh!” I try to hold back the tears as I stare uselessly at the grinning bastard. “Fuggkigg sugg ub ug bisssh…”
I hear the sounds of heavy machinery behind the madman. The wall behind me begins to glow orange.
“Oh, I do believe that means we’re ready.” He takes some steps back and I see myself facing a giant octagonal slab with thousands of techno mantic equations scrawled backwards across the brickwork. I realize that I’m chained up to its twin as the orange equations glow excitedly behind me too.
“See, the problem with the Bone Machine is that it is attached to your nervous system. When it powers down, unless you detach it yourself, it’s bonded to you. And I highly doubt an ornery little bitch like you would tell little old me how to detach it?”
I let out a deep low growl and stare murder at him.
“Litany, have you ever heard of a centrifuge?”
The equations on both slabs explode and electricity shrieks throughout my entire body. My back arcs and tears explode electric from my eyes.
For minutes, my world is nothing but pain and light - burning, endless, merciless light that shines bright inside my eyes.
And then…
…relief…
…the light finally dies down and I slump into an exhausted heap, my chains the only things holding me up. Dimly, I’m aware of the Bone Machine falling to the ground in front of me. I blink the world back into focus as Vincenzo picks it up. With a whispered word from him, the techno mantic gag disappears from my mouth.
Unfortunately, I’m in too much pain to say much.
I gasp and pant, smoke still rising from both the slab and from my body. He puts his hand beneath my chin and holds the Bone Machine up for me to see.
“Still with us, dear girl? Good, good. Ladies!”
Suddenly, the three women that used the Ludgate Device on me step into the light along with about a dozen other women in a dozen other costumes and get-ups - all extremely revealing. A blonde bimbo wearing a French Maid get-up grabs the Bone Machine from her master. When she steps back amongst the other women, a brunette with red skin hands Vincenzo two things that I can’t make out with my vision as badly blurred as it is.
Vincenzo turns back to me, sighing happily. “These, my dear Litany, are my Entourage. They are my pleasure women. I’ve collected them mostly from Earth, but there are some like Alicia here…”
He gestures over to the red-skinned one, who smiles and does a curtsy in her mini-dress and leather bikini top.
“…that I’ve collected from other dimensions. Unfortunately, with the loss of Lucille, there is an slot open. As a pleasure woman of an up-and-coming Deity, you would be entitled to many holy gifts, including this.”
He opens his right hand and shows me a disgusting hard-shelled slug that’s glowing bright blue.
“What…what the hell is that…?” I say, my voice hoarse with exhaustion and pain.
“It is a Coruzacqua Insect. It allows you to…develop a closer relationship to God.”
“You mean it’s a device you use to mind control innocent girls into killing for you…”
“Develop. A closer relationship. To God.” He growls the words out like a mantra, glaring at me. “And by God, I of course mean me. Right ladies?”
They all nod and cheer excitedly, their blue eyes lighting up for every word.
“You’re not a God. You’re just a spoiled little shit with delusions of grandeur. A little kid with a magnifying glass that gets a hard-on when other people suffer.” I growl. I smile and add, “Probably not a very big hard-on either…”
“Litany. You will not talk to your God that way.”
“Fuck you. I’ll say whatever the hell I want.”
“Listen, you little harlot, I’m extending a divine holy offer to be one with the Almighty. You will accept my offer and be one with the Almighty.”
“Fer Thor‘s sake, get the hell over yourself, you shocking psychopath!” I let the shit-head have it. “I mean, what is it? Are you pissy because I’m not telling you what you want to hear? Too. Fucking. Bad. You have fucked with my life over and over and now that you got me where you want me, you just expect me to bow down to you and do whatever the shock you want. Well fuck that!”
“Please don’t blaspheme the Creator…” One of the girls says.
“The Creator loves us.” Another girl says. “You don’t wish to incur his wrath.”
“Don’t turn down the Paradise He wishes to bring to us…” The third zombie says.
“Screw off!” I scream murderously at the mind-controlled sex slaves. “And you…“ I turn to Vincenzo and growl furiously, “even if you put that goddamned slug into my head and make me say everything you want me to say and do everything you want me to do, I will never - NOT EVER - stop fighting. I will find a way to beat that fucking mind-controlling slug and I will kill you, do you hear me? I will cut you to ribbons and toast your severed head in an oven for doing this to me and to all of these innocent girls.
“And if - and this is a massive super-sized IF - you do manage to solve that shocking puzzle and become a fucking God of all things, I will find a way to stop you. I will make it my mission in life to stop you. And I will stop you. No matter what. Do you hear me?! I will get you, you twisted little shit! I’ll never stop fighting…”
He raises his eyebrow. “Never?”
I stare defiantly into his eyes. “Never.”
“I told you not to defy me, you sad little bitch.”
BLAM!
My eyes glaze over as unbelievable pain swells up from my stomach. I grind my teeth and clench my eyes down hard from the unbearable awfulness rising up from the wound. I cough up blood.
I’m gut shot. Bad.
I go light-headed as he holds up the gun - still smoking from the discharge. My vision starts to blur, but I recognize it instantly.
Alphaglock. Model Twelve.
My Alphaglock.
I cough up another round of red mucous. That little shit. That unbelievable little shit. I’d cave that twisted little smirk into the back of his skull if I could.
It sounds far away when he starts talking.
“Lucille grabbed it for me when she was done with your friend Rades. Like I said, Litany, I’m a collector. Bethany? Florentine? She doesn‘t have long. See that she doesn‘t die alone, would you?”
Two of the girls stay behind, watching me as the rest of them fade away into the darkness.
“You were warned.” One of them says to me in a sing-song melodious voice.
And then everything just falls away from me…
fading away…
….into…
….the dark…
…
***
THE END!
OH WAIT, THERE’S ANOTHER CHAPTER LEFT?
BUT WHY? LITANY’S DEAD. HOW CAN YOU HAVE A BOOK WHEN THE MAIN CHARACTER’S DEAD?
OH YEAH, OKAY. THAT’S RIGHT.
NEXT ISSUE: VINCENZO DEUS: NEW METALSCREAM AND GOD-IN-TRAINING!
BE THERE, WON’T YOU?
***
I tell them to go stuff themselves and charge the photon packs in my gauntlet guns.
They say charging off against this “unknown quantity” is bad mojo.
I remind them this “unknown quantity” killed Rades, nearly killed Chaz, and made me fight a perverted facsimile of the best friend I’ve ever had before forcing me to kill him again.
They say I should be reading up on the kind of magic this psychopath uses and preparing countermeasures against it before I charge off into battle.
I remind them I took out two of this Mad God’s proxies and that I’m going to take Him down for fucking with my life.
They say a lot of other things too, but I’m too busy teleporting myself into the lion’s den to care.
***
So quick question: Have you ever teleported into the middle of a volcano?
Of course you haven’t. I haven’t either. Only an idiot would teleport into the middle of a volcano.
But when I re-materialize and I feel the heat that surrounds me instantly - some palpable, thick, humid, noxious thing that’s infecting my lungs and burning against my eyes - I feel like I might be the kind of idiot that would teleport into the middle of a volcano.
I start panting like a dog, feeling beads of sweat trickle along my forehead. Squinting my eyes, I gaze around at the Surrealist painter’s nightmare of a landscape around me, trying very hard to convince myself I’m still sane.
The sky is the kind of color you’d get if you puked and sneezed and pissed into a bucket for an hour and mixed it together - all the worst shades of yellow and green and brown, swirling around each other like a sickening kaleidoscope. Blackened clouds hop around in epileptic stops and starts. Behind one of them is the outline of something I’m not too comfortable looking at. Some massive flying beast with a tail that catches the flashes of orange light coming from the clouds.
I hear a hiss and it vanishes behind the cloud so fast that I wonder if it was ever there.
Dumbfounded, I turn my eyes toward the horizon. The ground looks to be made of stone, littered with reddened, pulsing blemishes. In the distance, I see wavy outlines of mountains and it reminds me of the beautiful red landscape of the Arizona desert. Except, I’m seeing these mountains rising and falling rhythmically.
I watch the movement, and feel the same thing - although much more muted - happening below my own feet.
“This…this…what the fuck is this?” I ask Alejandro, the member of the Bone Machine that told me I’d find my Mad God here.
“You, Litany my dear, are gazing upon the awe-inspiring Breathing Landscape of the Foreversprawl of Twilight Madness.” He seemingly smiles triumphantly with his bleached skull and nods proud toward the twisted landscape.
“Awe-inspiring, my ass.” I growl, wiping beads of sweat from my face. “The only inspiration this place is giving me is the one to throw up.
I rock gently with the movement of the ground beneath me and something clicks in my head. “Wait…did you say Breathing Landscape?”
“Absolutely, in fact--”
“You’re saying the ground is shocking BREATHING?”
“Nothing gets past her.” Megan McShit-talker mumbles. I extend my middle finger out and slip it inside the hollowed eye of her floating skull.
“What did you just say?” I growl through gritted teeth.
“I said that Alejandro should perhaps speak slower and with shorter words so your mentally-challenged brain is able to keep up. Dear.”
Knives and spinning razorblades coalesce in the magic around my finger when Madame Girard butts in.
“Dears, now is not the time for this.” The Voodoo Priestess says calmly. “We have a mission to accomplish…”
Megan the Forever-Bitch laughs. “Oh yes, the mission that Litany has dragged us along for despite our protests. By all means, instead of desecrating my remains, shouldn’t you be busy charging off into battle with no plan and get us all buggered in the process?”
I pull her skull toward my angry face. “If it gets you buggered, I’m all for it.”
Alejandro interrupts our Mexican Stand-off with his boisterous voice. “Look now, lovely ladies! One of the Glittering Sharp Dragons is coming to say hello!”
“Huh?” Me and Megan whirl around to see a giant dragon made entirely out of shattered reflecting glass with something-like-a-thirty-foot-wingspan flying toward us. I see our slack-jawed expressions reflected back in its jagged face. Its eyes - the only things that aren’t made out of broken glass - give us all the same look that you’d give to a thick juicy steak.
It opens its massive mouth to swallow us whole and my heart stops dead. I dive maniacally out of the way, hearing the snapping crash of a thousand pane glass windows shattering behind me as it closes its jaws on the spot of ground I was standing on.
Unfortunately, I’ve dived off blindly into a valley.
“Shit shit shit shit!” I yell, falling down the stony uneven slope. I bounce and fall forever, trying to think up a shield before the stones really do some damage.
“Oh how exciting!” Alejandro yells excitedly. “Litany, doesn’t this make you feel so alive?”
“Ow shit ow ow ow!” I reply, trying to focus on the shield and not on kicking Alejandro in the face over and over for a straight month. With adamantium boots. Spiked adamantium boots. With automatic gun turrets on them.
It feels like a few centuries before the protective bubble seals itself around me and I finally roll to a stop inside a thick patch of tall grass - oddly enough.
“Fer Thor’s sake…” I mutter, watching the massive glass dragon fly away towards the open sky. Cursing lightly, I massage the bruises on my arms and thighs. Contrary to popular belief, falling against goddamn rocks is not nearly as fun as it sounds. “What…what the hell was that now?”
“That, my dear, was a Genuine Sharp Dragon! They are found everywhere in this dimension, spawned and sharpened from the blackened cirrus clouds above us. The lovely vixen-mage Tweexine Ra, introduced me to this place amidst our lover‘s tour of the Para-Cosmos. This was her birthplace, you see…”
“Alejandro. Quit the ego stroke-fest and tell me what I need to know. Today’s not the day to fuck with me.”
“Ahem. You see, Litany, with a simple incantation, our astral selves flew alongside the Sharp Dragons in their homes amongst the dark clouds. That was the only way to see them, you see, since the Sharp Dragons are typically borne and nourished by the radiant energies inside the clouds. They rarely ever dive down to the surface. You are very, very lucky to have seen one up-close like this. It’s very exciting indeed.”
“Bite off.” I sigh, standing up and massaging my right temple. “You’re making my head…”
For the first time, I take a close look at the grassy patch I’ve wound up in and am instantly terrified.
“…hurt.”
What I thought was just a thicket of tall grass is instead a thicket of three-foot-long hypodermic needles and syringes. Shining in the red haze, the rigid gray needles rock back and forth with the breeze. I look below me and see the tips of the needles pressing hard against the bottom of my shield, ready to skewer me at a moment’s notice. The pressure against the shield suddenly gives me a jolting headache.
Screaming, I manage to maneuver my protective bubble out of the needle patch and back onto the stony ground. My head pounding, I release the shield and suck in a lungful of hot air before losing it completely.
“What. The. Fucking hell, Alejandro?! What is going on here? Why is everything trying to kill me?”
“Litany, this is a Hell Dimension! What did you expect?”
“Not rocks that make earthquakes when they breathe. Not giant glass dragons trying to eat me. Not getting my ass stuck in giant grass patches made out of HYPODERMIC FUCKING NEEDLES! Jesus, I mean, how did this shit hole get like this? This…this place is impossible!”
“I asked Tweexine that very same question while gazing upon the lovely browned sunset on the Mountains of Pain and Regret outside her skin home, and she asked me how my own fantastic world got to be the way it was. Cause and effect? Evolution? On Earth, we know what these things are, but here they have no meaning.” He says, chuckling. “Well, that’s not totally right. By that, I mean that they mean something totally different here than in our world. Darting in and out of reality as I have over the years, you learn the laws of physics as we know them are more subjective than you realize.”
I shake my head incredulously, trying vainly to sort it all out. I droop my shoulders and let out a sigh of defeat. “I…I just…just give me a line on where this no-good shit-monger’s holed up.”
“Litany?”
“Look, the whole reason I’m here is to kill myself a Mad, Vindictive-Ass God, and if my head explodes from what you’re telling me before all that happens, I’m going to be very cross. So please, just tell me how to find him.”
He clues me in on the massive swirls of techno mantic energies emanating in waves a few miles away from here. Apparently, the shock is getting to me - I didn’t even think to run a trace spell.
I trudge across the landscape, as much to get a fix on his position as to try and calm myself down.
I gaze around at the insane things around me and wonder what kind of God would live here, in this shocked-to-shit Hell Dimension.
I get sick to my stomach when I think of the possibilities, and trudge right on.
***
After some of the shock has worn off, I can just feel the techno mantic pressure radiating across the dimension. It’s a perverse, sickening kind of vertigo feeling. The kind of feeling you get when you’ve been spinning in circles for an hour and a half and suddenly stop to look off the edge of a cliff.
The Bone Machine confirms that it’s the same type of energy left behind when Rades’ died, when Chaz was attacked, and when the person puppet posing as John came after me. The same type; times about a hundred billion.
The Mad God obviously has made no effort to disguise his energies. He wasn’t expecting company in this place.
Lucky. This one’s not all-knowing then; otherwise he’d have known I was coming a mile off.
I decide against teleporting to the source of the energies; instead using some hexes to suppress my magical energies as much as possible while I walk towards the source. It seems I still have the element of surprise on my side. No sense wasting it teleporting to God-knows-where with a big “Kill Here” sign strapped to my back.
I reach the source and immediately feel the urge to kill something.
I’m staring up at a pure gold citadel that’s shaped suspiciously like a Gothic chapel, towering as far above me as the eye can see. I look at the walls as I come upon the disgusting thing and see maces and knives form, dissolve and re-form along the glittering walls. The windows are lined with stained-glass that moves and shines hypnotically. The worst of the thing are the statues that line the entranceway: twin two-story reliefs of what I can only guess is one of the high priests - a pretentious, self-important prick with a just-for-show smile and an evangelical glint to his eye. The gold on his face gleams and ripples powerfully; half-solid, half-liquid, all-pretentious bullshit.
Every part of my body wants to shatter this entire structure around itself, starting with Pastor Egomaniac’s face.
But I don’t. I’m not after the small fry. I’m after the Big Cheese.
It takes some looking, but I find a less-obnoxious side door near the entrance and sneak inside the church. I wind my way through the winding corridors like a rat lost in a maze.
Eventually, I end up in what looks to be the main chamber and immediately roll my eyes in disgust.
Everything about this room screams “Overdone” at the top of its lungs. From the circuitry-laced altar with silver trim to the grand spiral staircases with ornamental handrails that extend all the way across the second-floor balcony and down again. I roll my eyes as the handrails glisten obnoxiously in the bright white light emanating from the crafted walls. These walls are moving just like the ones outside, geometric shapes etching themselves calmly around each other and fading back, only this time when they fade back into walls, they have stitch-weaved images of that same pastor smiling toward his flock, head surrounded by a white halo. I hold back a gag.
I look towards the center of the room, across the marble floor, towards the massive crystalline centerpiece - a massive floating cube that changes shape every second. Elaborately carved and beautifully-decorated, orbited continuously by mirrored thought-forms that shimmer with reflected light.
It’s easily the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Is this…is this…God…?
“Beautiful, is it not?” A voice booms behind me. I curse to myself. So much for the element of surprise.
My eyes light up with techno mantic fire as all the old equations spring to life around my aura. I turn around and see a man in his twenties with shrunken-in eyes with half a glint of madness etched in them. He’s dressed in a white smoker’s jacket that extends around his knees. A collared shirt the color of congealed blood is tucked tight behind his stark-white vest. The white vest, the white jacket, and the perfectly-tailored white pants catch the light bleeding from the walls and reflect it back in an odd gray sheen every few moments.
Cripes. “So you’re Pastor-Strokes-Himself, I imagine?” I ask with a sneer. Before he can say a word, I point my middle finger directly at the shape-shifting cube. “And this fucking THING is your God.”
“Close. It’s only His puzzle.” He says with an open gesture. “I’m the God.”
I laugh right in his face. “You? God? You’ve gotta be shitting me.”
“Well, I’m not God yet, but…” He trails off, pacing around the massive shape-shifting structure. “I will be. Once I solve this particular puzzle here, with your assistance of course.”
“…what the shock are you talking about?”
He gestures towards the glittering centerpiece. “This, love, is a seventh-dimensional God Puzzle placed in this dimension by God Himself.”
“And…?”
“And you are going to help me solve it.” He smiles and I get nervous when I notice the slight tick in the muscles of his left eye.
“There’s no shocking way I’m helping you with any of that noise.“ I trail off, putting two and two together. “Rades, Chaz, John…that…that was all you. That was you all along, wasn‘t it?”
He lets out a spastic laugh that convinces me that him and Sanity parted ways a while back. “Yes, yes my juicy little morsel. That was all me. Your soon-to-be-deity.”
“You monstrous little fuck.” I spit, letting the energies flow within me. “I’m going to gut you for screwing with my life. But before that happens, I want to know why. Why have you been fucking with me?”
“I work in mysterious ways. Ha. Haha. Hee hee hah ha ha.”
He giggles like a madman and I lunge for his throat. I don’t blink, but he somehow goes from madman’s psycho-giggle to slamming me against the wall with a hand at my throat. I raise my palm to his face, gearing up to fire a point-blank shot of techno mystic fury right into his goddamn eyeballs…
But nothing happens.
I try over and over again, but nothing continues to happen.
And then I notice that the Bone Machine’s chattering has stopped too. All the dead magician’s skulls are hanging limp off of my shoulders, completely powered down somehow.
Terror overwhelms me. My eyes open wide and I struggle hard against his vice grip.
He licks his lips and brings his face almost an inch away from mine. “Ludgates are a bitch, aren’t they?” He giggles as a trio of voluptuous women in expensive glittering dresses filter out from a side door, holding a hand-held Ludgate Device.
Ludgates - the man-made devices that dial a magician’s power down to zero.
His eyes flash crimson and his smile goes serial-killer-wide. “Pity they’re not working on me, huh?”
He pulls me off the wall and slams my head back into it. Hard.
The world swirls around me, and I’m gone.
***
“Litany, you sexy little minx. We’re going to need you awake for this part…”
“Wha--?” I mumble, and my eyes shoot open when I realize it’s not Chaz’s voice.
“Ah. There we go.”
I see the Mad God in front of me and don’t suppress the urge to grab his rotten little throat to squeeze the life out of it. Except for the not-so-minor problem of me being chained to the damn wall. Typical goddamn super villain bullshit.
“I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you, you goddamn psychopath! Let me go!” I shout, my rage finally boiling over.
“I sense a lack of trust.” He feigns a look of hurt, walking around the dimly-lit room. “I know! I’ll start off by introducing myself. That ought to make things less stressful for you. I am the Great Vincenzo Deus. Scourge of the Seven Sands. Paralord of the Foreverspawl. And best of all, soon-to-be Newborn God.”
I spit a nice, thick loogie onto his proud face.
“Hmm…looks like one of my flock has thrown something up. Perhaps a bib will solve the problem.” His eyes light up and a ball gag materializes in my mouth and clamps itself shut behind my head.
My face lights up red and I shake with rage.
Vincenzo’s dead.
He is going to die.
Horribly, viciously murdered to death, the fucker doesn‘t even know.
“Mmmm. Much better. I do like that look on you Litany.” He says, wiping the snot off his face with a handkerchief.
I glare at him. I’m hoping my eyes somehow turn into daggers and stab through his face.
“So anyway,” He continues on, gesturing grandiose like your typical egomaniac would. I hear loud banging and sliding noises in the darkness around us. “While things are being set up, I want to tell you a story. Stop me if you‘ve heard this one before.”
Cripes, this madman’s on a power trip. I wriggle in vain against the chains.
“So we have our hero, this fantastically brilliant collector of magical trinkets and treasures. The Great…um…Vincent Dodds. And what Vincent does is traverse across countless dimensions, seeing what kinds of magical artifacts he can find. He’s fascinated by this stuff, see? Can’t get enough of it. So he happens upon this ancient, badly worn book. Or rather, a collection of missing chapters ripped from one better-known book. What he happens upon, is a collection of pages from the Bible itself.
“Before these ridiculous pop-religions like Thorism or the Church of the Identified Flying Object, there was one religion in particular that endured for far longer than any of these made-up feel-good monstrosities around today. Something that endured for untold centuries: Christianity. And the Christians had their Bible with the Old Testament and the New Testament and everything was all well and good.
“But as with every book publication, there needs to be some…editorial choices. Some things that, if discovered, may be too…inflammatory in the public domain, if you know what I mean. I mean, do you ever wonder why God is so high-and-mighty and deadly serious in the Old Testament and suddenly changes to the all-knowing, all-loving, all-forgiving sap in the New Testament?”
I give him a look that says I could care less. He smiles, licks his lips and continues right along.
“In the chapters between the Old Testament and the New Testament, God bet the Devil that no mere human could be as smart or as capable as He. So He created a techno-mantic little something called the God Puzzle. It is said that if a human is able to fully solve this puzzle, he shall be imbued with the powers of the Almighty and dethrone the Lord God himself. So the Fallen One and the Creator had their bet, and challenged five hundred men living on the planet at that time to solve the God Puzzle. The missing chapter says that in trying to solve the puzzle, four hundred and ninety-nine men were skewered to death by its mystical energies…
“Litbit.” He emphasizes that word to get me good and pissed and leans in for full dramatic effect. “The reason why there are two different versions of God in the two Testaments is because there are TWO DIFFERENT GODS. A lowly human being solved the God Puzzle and became a God Himself!”
Vincenzo smiles wide and starts pacing back and forth excitedly again. “Naturally, once Vincent found this out, he began his search for the actual God Puzzle. And by God, he found it, cast away and shape-shifting quietly to itself in some forgotten hell dimension. But his journey wasn’t over. Now was the time to actually solve the puzzle.”
“Crrrgh, yugh luuuugg tgg heegg yuggshugg tugg, dunggk yugh?” I mutter.
“I’m sorry. Didn’t catch that.” The ball gag dissipates and I can talk again. “Once more?”
“I said, ‘Christ, you love to hear yourself talk, don’t you?’”
“Why yes I do.” He says, putting the gag back in and smirking lightly. “So stop interrupting, would you?”
“Fugg yugg!”
“Maybe if you’re good. Now, as I was saying Vincent had to solve the puzzle. Any screw ups in the solving of the puzzle and he was doing the techno mantic equivalent of throwing himself into a wood chipper. So he had to get the advice of the wisest, oldest sages he could find.”
My heart skips a beat as I realize what he’s saying. I stare down at the Bone Machine, hanging inert and helpless against my chest. He pauses, drinking up my terror in perverted, drunken gulps.
“He decides to grab himself the Nemesis Mind. Only we know what happened to the Nemesis Mind before that particular magician could grab it for himself, don‘t we Litany?”
A different kind of terror fills me then.
The Nemesis Mind.
It was a collection of murderously-angry dead magicians spanning untold millenia whose restless spirits tied themselves together with a dimensionless crystal lattice structure and a promise to get revenge for all their misfortunes in life. Like the Bone Machine, they would feed their host instructions about all the deadliest techno mantic powers. In return, the host would settle the old scores that the psychotic ghosts didn’t get to do before kicking the bucket.
The Painqueen - given unbelievable power by the Nemesis Mind - came after John and I with her own axe to grind. John managed to kick her ass and disassemble the Nemesis Mind but at a cost. During the battle, he never saw SHIELD setting up the bombs and the Ludgate Rods that killed him and nearly cost me my life.
The day John died was the same day we destroyed the Nemesis Mind.
Goddammit.
“Yes, you do know what happened.” Vincenzo turns deadly serious. “So I’ve been keeping tabs on you since then, Litany. Without your help, the Metalscream would never have been able to defeat the Painqueen. Without your help, the Nemesis Mind would have been intact after that battle. I would have been able to use their knowledge to help me solve the God Puzzle and they would have been too busy with their insane delusions to ask me why.”
I wince as he slides his finger down my shoulder and works his way towards one of the dead skulls hanging limply off my body. “Which leads me to this interesting little bauble here.”
I can’t stop a tear from falling down my face. The Bone Machine. So he does want that after all. He’s after the fucking Bone Machine and there’s nothing in the world I can do to stop him now.
“It’s not my first choice. The dead magicians in the Bone Machine are much smarter than those foaming-at-the-mouth psychopaths in the Nemesis Mind. It will take me a great deal longer to convince them to see things from my perspective. Still, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers…”
“Yugg igsangg.”
“Please, love, I am no less sane than you are.” He strokes my face and I rip away from his hand in disgust. I see that muscle tick in his eyes and brace myself for an physical attack, but it never comes. Instead, his eyes shimmer menacingly. His pupils shrink to tiny burning blue dots as the rest of his eyes cloud over with a blackness as dark as his soul. I shudder. “Do you know what these are, Litany?” He asks.
I shake my head.
“As I told you, I am a collector of magical trinkets. These are the Eyes of Odin. I cut these from his dead corpse in the true land of Valhalla…”
He laughs as I gag with the ball gag still in my mouth.
“They are how I’ve kept tabs on you all this time. I’ve watched and studied you and this Bone Machine of yours until I learned all I needed to know.”
He opens his arms wide, smiling his sick smile. “I used the Vallencenzus Device to loan out my techno mantic powers to one of my prized escorts - you met the lovely Lucille. Your gun smith friend? That was to get your attention. The attack on your stupid boyfriend? A test of the Bone Machine’s skills. But when I imprinted my powers onto the Metalscream puppet…that was a knowledge test.
He taps his fingers amusedly along the bleached skulls of each of the dead magicians. “One. Of. These. Little. Skulls. Knows. All. About this obscure little Hell Dimension we find ourselves in. He’s the one I’m going to want to talk to about my God Puzzle back there. Thank you very much for bringing them all to me. Hee hee. Haaaaa ha ho hee ha.”
“Yugg sugg ub ug bisssh!” I try to hold back the tears as I stare uselessly at the grinning bastard. “Fuggkigg sugg ub ug bisssh…”
I hear the sounds of heavy machinery behind the madman. The wall behind me begins to glow orange.
“Oh, I do believe that means we’re ready.” He takes some steps back and I see myself facing a giant octagonal slab with thousands of techno mantic equations scrawled backwards across the brickwork. I realize that I’m chained up to its twin as the orange equations glow excitedly behind me too.
“See, the problem with the Bone Machine is that it is attached to your nervous system. When it powers down, unless you detach it yourself, it’s bonded to you. And I highly doubt an ornery little bitch like you would tell little old me how to detach it?”
I let out a deep low growl and stare murder at him.
“Litany, have you ever heard of a centrifuge?”
The equations on both slabs explode and electricity shrieks throughout my entire body. My back arcs and tears explode electric from my eyes.
For minutes, my world is nothing but pain and light - burning, endless, merciless light that shines bright inside my eyes.
And then…
…relief…
…the light finally dies down and I slump into an exhausted heap, my chains the only things holding me up. Dimly, I’m aware of the Bone Machine falling to the ground in front of me. I blink the world back into focus as Vincenzo picks it up. With a whispered word from him, the techno mantic gag disappears from my mouth.
Unfortunately, I’m in too much pain to say much.
I gasp and pant, smoke still rising from both the slab and from my body. He puts his hand beneath my chin and holds the Bone Machine up for me to see.
“Still with us, dear girl? Good, good. Ladies!”
Suddenly, the three women that used the Ludgate Device on me step into the light along with about a dozen other women in a dozen other costumes and get-ups - all extremely revealing. A blonde bimbo wearing a French Maid get-up grabs the Bone Machine from her master. When she steps back amongst the other women, a brunette with red skin hands Vincenzo two things that I can’t make out with my vision as badly blurred as it is.
Vincenzo turns back to me, sighing happily. “These, my dear Litany, are my Entourage. They are my pleasure women. I’ve collected them mostly from Earth, but there are some like Alicia here…”
He gestures over to the red-skinned one, who smiles and does a curtsy in her mini-dress and leather bikini top.
“…that I’ve collected from other dimensions. Unfortunately, with the loss of Lucille, there is an slot open. As a pleasure woman of an up-and-coming Deity, you would be entitled to many holy gifts, including this.”
He opens his right hand and shows me a disgusting hard-shelled slug that’s glowing bright blue.
“What…what the hell is that…?” I say, my voice hoarse with exhaustion and pain.
“It is a Coruzacqua Insect. It allows you to…develop a closer relationship to God.”
“You mean it’s a device you use to mind control innocent girls into killing for you…”
“Develop. A closer relationship. To God.” He growls the words out like a mantra, glaring at me. “And by God, I of course mean me. Right ladies?”
They all nod and cheer excitedly, their blue eyes lighting up for every word.
“You’re not a God. You’re just a spoiled little shit with delusions of grandeur. A little kid with a magnifying glass that gets a hard-on when other people suffer.” I growl. I smile and add, “Probably not a very big hard-on either…”
“Litany. You will not talk to your God that way.”
“Fuck you. I’ll say whatever the hell I want.”
“Listen, you little harlot, I’m extending a divine holy offer to be one with the Almighty. You will accept my offer and be one with the Almighty.”
“Fer Thor‘s sake, get the hell over yourself, you shocking psychopath!” I let the shit-head have it. “I mean, what is it? Are you pissy because I’m not telling you what you want to hear? Too. Fucking. Bad. You have fucked with my life over and over and now that you got me where you want me, you just expect me to bow down to you and do whatever the shock you want. Well fuck that!”
“Please don’t blaspheme the Creator…” One of the girls says.
“The Creator loves us.” Another girl says. “You don’t wish to incur his wrath.”
“Don’t turn down the Paradise He wishes to bring to us…” The third zombie says.
“Screw off!” I scream murderously at the mind-controlled sex slaves. “And you…“ I turn to Vincenzo and growl furiously, “even if you put that goddamned slug into my head and make me say everything you want me to say and do everything you want me to do, I will never - NOT EVER - stop fighting. I will find a way to beat that fucking mind-controlling slug and I will kill you, do you hear me? I will cut you to ribbons and toast your severed head in an oven for doing this to me and to all of these innocent girls.
“And if - and this is a massive super-sized IF - you do manage to solve that shocking puzzle and become a fucking God of all things, I will find a way to stop you. I will make it my mission in life to stop you. And I will stop you. No matter what. Do you hear me?! I will get you, you twisted little shit! I’ll never stop fighting…”
He raises his eyebrow. “Never?”
I stare defiantly into his eyes. “Never.”
“I told you not to defy me, you sad little bitch.”
BLAM!
My eyes glaze over as unbelievable pain swells up from my stomach. I grind my teeth and clench my eyes down hard from the unbearable awfulness rising up from the wound. I cough up blood.
I’m gut shot. Bad.
I go light-headed as he holds up the gun - still smoking from the discharge. My vision starts to blur, but I recognize it instantly.
Alphaglock. Model Twelve.
My Alphaglock.
I cough up another round of red mucous. That little shit. That unbelievable little shit. I’d cave that twisted little smirk into the back of his skull if I could.
It sounds far away when he starts talking.
“Lucille grabbed it for me when she was done with your friend Rades. Like I said, Litany, I’m a collector. Bethany? Florentine? She doesn‘t have long. See that she doesn‘t die alone, would you?”
Two of the girls stay behind, watching me as the rest of them fade away into the darkness.
“You were warned.” One of them says to me in a sing-song melodious voice.
And then everything just falls away from me…
fading away…
….into…
….the dark…
…
***
THE END!
OH WAIT, THERE’S ANOTHER CHAPTER LEFT?
BUT WHY? LITANY’S DEAD. HOW CAN YOU HAVE A BOOK WHEN THE MAIN CHARACTER’S DEAD?
OH YEAH, OKAY. THAT’S RIGHT.
NEXT ISSUE: VINCENZO DEUS: NEW METALSCREAM AND GOD-IN-TRAINING!
BE THERE, WON’T YOU?
***