…
I’ve been shot…bad.
I think….I think I’m gonna die…
Can’t die, though. Can’t let myself die…
I got a fuckin’ God to kill before I die…
I cough. Mucous hot like lava against the back of my throat. Feel the goo leaking from my lips.
World’s spinning. Shifting. Swirling into shades of red and grey.
Can’t…can’t focus on anything.
Vincenzo’s got me chained up to this wall. Two of his sex slaves are guarding me. Glowing blue eyes watch me bleed out through a wet, blood-soaked T-shirt….
Couldn’t cast a spell to save my life. Literally. And even if I remembered something that could undo the chains, my existence is an acid-induced vertigo of pain and blinking light. Only hope, is to wriggle free from the chains somehow…
…moving my arms shifts my weight…moves muscles around my gut-shot stomach….
Stomach.
Pain.
Wound.
Pain.
Pain.
Unbearable pain…
Fire burning against my abdomen.
Throbbing wet, with brilliant, burning white light behind my eyes.
I fall into the white light, tumbling end over end, falling forever deep into the center of a brilliant star…
….and then all I can hear is…
…music…?
Inside the throbbing white void of my mind, I hear “Your Sex is my Rapture Fix” by the Suicide Angels, a band of perpetually half-naked girls in tight leather that sing songs of suicide and twisted sex. Chaz is obsessed with them because, y’know, it pisses me off. That and the extremely addictive digital pheromones that they lace into their song downloads to keep guys coming back don’t help matters either.
But I hate that band. With a passion.
So what kind of horrible death throes involve the Suicide Angels rattling around in my head…?
There‘s nothing but pain as I force my eyes open and see the girls turn away from me and disappear into the thick blurry haze toward the source of the music. I hear two thuds in the distance and eventually find myself looking at two different figures walking toward me. Two figures glowing bright green with the same look of shock and horror on their faces…
“Chazzz….” I slur out to the one on the left. “…why are there two of you…?”
“Litany, you stupid slag! I told you not to go after this freak by yourself!” Both Chazs whisper, un-tying my chains and carefully laying me down on the floor. I better just be seeing double, because one Chaz in my life is bad enough. “Now shut up and just stay with me, babe. I‘m gonna try and patch you up.”
“…god…I hurt so bad, Chaz. Hurts everywhere….”
“Stay with me, Litany. Stay awake!” I wince as he starts tying cloth around my wound to stop the bleeding. He adds through gritted teeth: “If you go toward the light, I’ll kill you.”
“Oh. Ha. Ha.” I slur out. “You’re a damn riot, you are…”
The world swirls and spins and nuclear fire coats my wounds, but I stay conscious while Chaz works on making sure I don’t bleed out. I want to lean up to kiss him, but luckily all those stupid, sappy thoughts roll out of my mind when he starts flapping his gums again.
“You’re so lucky I found, you damn psychopath. I told you that going after a God was insane.” He smirks at me, gently touching my face.
“He’s not a God, you brainless oaf. He’s a spineless little prick who stole the Bone Machine from me. He’s going to use it to…ooof!” Pain floods my stomach as I sit up. I run my hand along the blood-soaked cloth holding my insides together.
“So he took the Bone Machine? Well that’s good. You hated them anyway.”
“You idiot! That’s not the point!”
“You’re right.” He glances back at the entrance to the dungeon, where the two unconscious slaves are tied up against the door. “The point is we gotta get you out of here before our psycho God comes back to kill you. Or worse, kill me.” He throws me a wink and I stick my tongue out at him angrily. “Can you stand?”
“Are you on drugs, Chaz? I just got shot in the fucking stomach!”
“Dammit, Litany, this is no time for your PMS-crap!” He shoots me a look that’s all-serious, and all my protests drain away. “If we don’t get the hell out of here, soon, we are going to die.”
I see the look of panic in his eyes, and wonder if he’s done something like this before. He’s lucky I like him so much, or I might have to pop him one. Instead, I just smile and say something smart-assed to him for a change.
“Now who’s PMS-ing? Give me a hand, would ya?”
The look on his face is priceless.
***
I’m limping down the hallway with Chaz trying my best not to scream from the pain.
The scans I’ve done of my insides tell me my intestines have been skewered and I’m bleeding out internally. I don’t have long. Maybe an hour at the most.
Hospital’s not an option. If Vincenzo solves the God Puzzle and becomes God, he’ll be able to disappear me from the world in the blink of an eye. The only chance anyone will have of shutting the bastard down is right shocking now.
It took some doing, but Chaz eventually saw things my way.
After he got the bleeding under control, I did the only incantation I could remember to buy me some time before the big goodbye; it ends up being one of the slowest convalescence spells in my arsenal. The only good thing about it is that it’s easy to cast, which helps when you‘re still reeling from shock and bouts of extreme cold. The only other spell I can remember at the moment would heal me up nice and good at the cost of burning out most of my central nervous system and making me a vegetable for the rest of my life. And as much as I love sitting on my ass, it’s just is not an option.
The only other healing spells that’ll do anything useful are either too advanced for me, or require the Bone Machine as a conduit.
So right now, the Bone Machine’s my only hope.
I can’t believe I need to bond those crazy assholes to my nervous system again. They’ll fatally infect me with their endless bitchfests, I know they will…
But before we do any of that, I have a couple questions for Chaz, like: “How the shock did you find me?”
“I cast a trace spell on you.”
“You WHAT?”
“Yeah, just after the thing at my place with that crazy emo bitch. You got that look in your eyes that you get before you go off and do something retarded. So I cast the thing and I‘ve been following your aura ever since.”
I imagine driving a hovercar over his smart-ass face, backing up, and doing it again. And again. And then a couple million more times for good measure.
“You sneaky little bastard! You had no right…!”
“Dangerous place here…what with the grass being made of syringes and knives coming out of the walls. Thought you could use the back-up.”
“I can take care of myself, Chaz. I’m the Metalscream for shock’s sake.”
“Sure you can. How’s the bullet wound doing?”
“Shock you…”
“You’re welcome, by the way.”
“And why the shock was I hearing the Suicide Angels playing before? You had something to do with it, I know it.”
“Musical ventriloquism, baby.” He smirks, pointing back at the music deck hooked into his spine. “Made the girls think the song was coming from down the hall. Then I knocked them unconscious before they saw me.”
“Sneaky.” I chuckle.
“Yep. Told you I wouldn’t let you die, babe.” He smiles wide and I go all romantic for a second. “Like I said, I need you for my morning wood problem.”
My face lights up red and I elbow him in the ribs as hard as I can. But considering the shit-shape I’m in, ‘as-hard-as-I-can’ is a weak poke at best.
“When this is over, I’m going to kick your ass so hard…” I mutter.
“Is that before or after the wild, crazy sex?”
“OOoooo! Chaz, you little…!”
“Annnnd we’re here.” He says, placing his hand on a random door.
“We’re what…?” I ask before the door starts to dissolve into interconnecting square shapes that glow brilliantly before folding inward to let us through the doorway.
I’m still in awe at the complexity of this place as we walk through the threshold. I look back to see the door fall right back into place behind us in a reverse-capture version of the magnificent way it opened itself up to let us inside.
“What the shock is this place…?” I breathe out as I see piles and piles of techno mantic artifacts littered all over the floor. Scattered scriptures and old tablets. Strange, rusted machinery hanging from the ceiling. A golden ornamental shield. Dusty fist-sized globes mindlessly orbiting one another. Dozens of swords and staffs with ancient glyphs and patterns etched into their hilts in a hundred different languages.
“I found this place while I was trying to zero in on your aural trace. I think it‘s an armory of some kind.”
“Shock yea. Must be…” I say. Then a sickening, paranoid thought rolls its way through my head. “But how…I mean…doesn’t he even have anyone guarding the bloody thing? It‘s a friggin‘ ARMORY for Thor‘s sake!”
Chaz runs his finger down a double-bladed scythe covered in cobwebs with a dimly-glowing handle. “Well, I didn’t see any guards on my way up to your cell. Maybe he’s just that goddamned arrogant to think no one’ll get in here.”
I remember the ball-gag Vincenzo fitted me with as he tried to convince me to become one of his sex slaves. “Yep. Arrogant little bastard, that’s Vincenzo.”
Pain flares up again in my gut, reminding me of how little time I have left.
“We’ve got to hurry.” I say. “Help me look around, see if I recognize any of this crap from all those boring texts my oppressive masters forced me to read.”
“This is such a bad idea, Litany…” Chaz whispers to me softly. “We don’t even know how any of this shit works. We should just get the hell out of here. We’re going to get ourselves killed.”
“I already told you, we don‘t have time for a pit stop at a Docs in a Box. If Vincenzo becomes a God, he’ll have the power to kill us, bring us back to life, and kill us again, with probably a bunch of raping and torturing in-between. We don’t take him down now…we never will.”
Chaz looks at me, doubt and concern written all over his face. I lean in to kiss him, and pull back smiling.
“Besides, I miss the voices in my head.”
“You would.”
“Bite me.”
“Maybe later.”
We limp around the dimly-lit armory, gazing over all the ancient piles of junk that Vincenzo’s put here. Then I see exactly what I’m looking for. Two things, in fact.
“Those.” I say, pointing toward a pair of unassuming silk black gloves that stretch up to the elbow and a long-neglected bottle of blue liquid.
Chaz looks at me, then at all the armors and swords lying about that I‘m not pointing at, and raises his eyebrow at me. “Babe, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
***
I’m shaking, holding my gut as I trudge on. Loosing blood from the wound like crazy. It’s really getting to me now; I couldn’t tell you how I got here, what with the hallways spinning around me and everything.
I’m wearing the black silk gloves Chaz and I found in Vincenzo’s little armory. Elbow-length with small metal spikes stitched along the seams. Chaz said they make me look ridiculous. I’d never admit it, but he’s right about that one.
Chaz…
He’s nowhere to be seen.
It’s best that way.
I click off the safeties on my wrist-mounted photon guns. Vincenzo stole them when Vincenzo captured me, but the louse must have tossed them inside the Armory for storage.
Couldn’t find my Alphaglock in there, though. He must still have it on him. He was treating the thing like a fucking Collector‘s Item after he shot me with it. When I get it back, I’m going to enchant it into sending a nice wave of hellfire up his holier-than-thou ass.
But for now, the gauntlet guns will do just fine.
The door in front of me pulses geometrically and shape shifts itself open for me, letting me out on the second floor overlooking the main chamber. Over the balcony, I can see Vincenzo and his women standing in front of the beautiful, crystalline cube of the ever-shifting God Puzzle.
Only this time, the God Puzzle looks different. Instead of constantly altering its shape in a predictable, graceful way, it is hovering in one shape while the thought forms surrounding it are pulsing audibly and glowing bright red.
Jesus, he’s trying to solve it. Right this second, he’s trying to solve the puzzle. Except, things don’t seem to be going well for him.
He seems to be deep in concentration, his aura lit with furious fire. The Bone Machine circles his head like it once did mine. Except he’s so busy screaming things at the floating skulls that neither he, nor his legion of sex slaves he calls his Entourage have noticed me slowly making my way down the stairs.
This is going to be tricky.
I make my way down the stairs, pretending that I‘m not pale as a ghost and sweating buckets from blood loss. I uncoil the gauntlet guns from the chambers mounted to my wrist, aiming them at Vincenzo’s unprotected head. I teleport myself to close the distance between us so I can fire point blank…
…except I don’t teleport. Great. The damn Ludgate Device is still in effect, killing any and all techno magic in the room. If only I knew where it was, I could…
Doesn’t matter. I still have a beauty of a shot at that pusbag’s ugly mug and no one has seen me yet. I can’t not take it.
I unleash a wave of photon fury at his head from the bottom of the stairs. The sound of the guns firing alerts Vincenzo, and he’s just fast enough to muster up a shield in the nick of time. I curse my rotten luck. If only I could have teleported behind him…
We stare each other down, and I see the muscle tick starting in Vincenzo’s eye. An over-wide murderer’s smile develops on his face. “Litany. Yes, yes, my precious, gorgeous, sexy, scrumptious little morsel. Didn’t I kill you a little bit ago?”
“Nah. Didn’t take.” I shrug, and then erupt into a coughing fit. When I pull my hand away from my mouth, it’s covered in blood.
“Oh, but I think it did.” He licks his lips. “You don’t have long. Ha haheeha ho ho. See what happens when you defy me, Bone Machine?”
Hah. He’s at odds with the Bone Machine. I knew they’d be fighting back against him.
“Ha! Looks like everyone’s pissed off at you.”
He spreads his arms wide and smiles. “All God’s Children come around eventually.”
“Yeah, shock that noise…I’m not gonna rest till you’re in a body bag, vermin.”
“And how, pray tell, were you planning on stopping me? With those worthless little silk gloves you found in my junk room?”
“I was thinking about it, yeah. Wait, junk room?”
“Yes, the room where you found those things. The room where I place all of the worthless baubles I’ve come across on my travels. None of the things I’ve placed in that room work. None of them have ever worked. Be they broken, drained of all mystic potential, or just plain too-bloody-old. God, Litany, you are too funny! Here you are, trying to fight a God with some useless antiques.”
“Bullshit. You’re full of bullshit.”
He flashes me a smile, and I just stare at him. “But really, that’s not the only thing I’ve got against you. Pamela, Jezibelle, Celine? If you would show our guest the futility of her efforts.”
The three girls step aside to reveal the Ludgate Device standing behind them, humming quietly to itself.
“I’m sure you remember the Ludgate Machine, my dear.” Vincenzo says. “I thought of the idea while I was watching your mentor get his brains shot out in the desert. After I saw that, I just knew I had to get one of these babies…“
A look of blind fury flashes over my face. The schmuck laps my pain up with a smile and continues his psychotic rant.
“Thing is, I reprogrammed this one to exclude my own aura’s signature from its magic-draining capabilities. So while the machine makes sure you have no reservoirs of mystic energy to tap into, it leaves me at full techno-mantic power. So you see darling, this little fighting-back thing you‘re doing now is just a waste of our time.”
He turns his attention back toward his Entourage. “Ladies, your God is thoroughly bored with His creation now. Dispose of it.”
The three girls walk away from the humming device as he turns his attention back toward the Puzzle. Holding ancient ceremonial scythes, their eyes glow bright blue as they close in for the kill.
“Wait!” I yell.
“Hmmm?” Vincenzo says, amused. “Is this the part where you beg your God for forgiveness for being such an awful, misbehaved little peon?”
I smile. “I…I just wanted to thank you…”
I raise my gauntlet guns up toward the revealed Ludgate Device.
“…for giving me such a clear shot…”
CHZZK-THOOM!
The blasts tear through the casing of the Ludgate Device and it explodes in a thick cloud of fire and electricity. I close my eyes and teleport away as the mind-controlled bitches bring their scythes down where my head used to be. With my newfound distance from the murderous women, I clench my hands into fists, reciting a chant in an ancient European dialect. I smack my forearms together, and the black silk gloves start expanding to encase my entire body in a form-fitting black bodysuit. With the final words, the suit hardens and expands outwards to become a massive suit of black armor with glowing orange inscriptions along its blackened outer skin. Protective spikes stab out from the shoulder pads, and a very badass-looking helmet clamps itself into place atop my head.
I can’t help but smile as Vincenzo proceeds to freak out. “No, no, I deny this! This is….impossible! They were junk! No one could get those working!”
“Wrong. You couldn’t get these working.” I say, my voice filtered through the armor’s speakers. “The armor’s from the dark ages, welded and enchanted inside a forgotten monastery deep inside Europe. The monks that guarded the sacred place forged the armor from the darkest parts of their souls to ward off evil spirits as well as would-be maniacal conquerors. Because it was borne of darkness, the monks created a counterbalance to hold the armor in check. Piloting of the armor requires a stable, rational mind to function, according to a certain Zen Master I know.”
“The Zen Master?” He growls at the Bone Machine, enraged. “You knew of this??”
My laughter sounds otherworldly filtered through the helmet speakers, rising as I see his eyes fill with dread.
“Not that I’m the most rational, stable person, let me tell you.” I smile behind the heavy helmet, “You, however, are just batshit nuts. There‘s no way a maniac like you could ever get this Greater Darkened Armor to work.”
“HOW DARE YOU TALK TO YOUR CREATOR THAT WAY!” The psycho shrieks before unleashing a torrential fireball into my chest at mach speed. I slam back against the wall as he orders his scythe-wielding killstompers after me.
The redhead hits me first, bringing down her blade against me as I block with my armored forearm. The armor - powerful beyond belief - is the only reason I’m surviving at the moment. I pull my other arm back in a fist and I hesitate, looking into her glowing blue eyes. She’s being mind-controlled. She doesn’t deserve to get the snot kicked out of her for this. Somehow, I’ve got to take them down without hurting them…
Shouting a command in ancient Egyptian, her scythe glows red and encases my whole forearm in fire. Screaming, I grab her scythe and elbow her in the temple as her friend slams me in the side with another blade. Each hit shakes me to my core and I feel my stomach wound throbbing painfully beneath my bandages.
This Darkened Armor is an amazing techno mantic achievement. However, it is only as powerful as the will of its bearer.
And right now, its bearer is slowly bleeding to death.
God help me, I’m so cold…
***
It takes all my concentration to rip their scythes away from them and knock them unconscious. Every movement, every gesture takes its toll. I’m so slow now, the third girl has all the time in the world to bury her scythe in my back. I feel the stabbing fire shoot all throughout my body.
Desperately, I grab and claw at my back, but her murderous chants send more psychic fire through the scythe and into my already badly-weakened body.
Red spots explode along my vision and I fall to my knees. Despite the fact that my entire body feels like it’s inside a pressure cooker, I’m shivering cold. Icy sweat lines my face as the heat boils up inside my helmet. Needing air more than anything else in the world, I will my helmet to fold itself into the nape of my armor‘s neck, allowing me to take shallow, panicked gulps of fresh air.
The girl finally rips the scythe out from my back and I scream. Feeling the wound as if the scythe had penetrated my real spine instead of my armor’s, I crumple into a broken heap on the floor. My heart pounds as I look up at Vincenzo looking down at me and laughing cruelly.
“All fall down.” He chatters his teeth together excitedly before letting loose one of his serial killer laughs. “It’s such a pity. You are really quite scrumptious. You would have made an excellent maiden of my Entourage.”
I grit my teeth and spit blood at him.
“If it makes you feel any better, the Bone Machine is being highly resistant in giving me the answers I need. It really has something of an affinity for you, I‘m afraid…”
“...good.” I mutter.
“So when my darling Celine cuts off your miserable head, the only way you can come back will be for me to resurrect you once become a God, correct?”
Oh shit. Please tell me the Bone Machine’s smart enough not to fall for that nonsense.
“…don’t do it, guys…” I try to call out to the Bone Machine, but it comes out as a messy puking fit. Exhausted and light-headed, I manage to murmur: “…don’t…let him win…”
“Hee HEE ho ho ha. HAH ha. Oh, but I always win, my dear.” He pauses for a moment, looking at one of the glowing skulls floating around his head. “No, you Voodoo whore, I always do win and always will win. It is inevitable. Remind yourselves that when you keep important knowledge from me. Your former master’s life is in my hands. Now, and for always.”
The Bone Machine circles his head erratically and although my mental link with them is severed, I can feel their impotent rage.
He turns back to me, his face pure stone hatred at this point. “Litbit. By the by, I just want you to know that when I become God and I give you back your worthless life….I’m going to kill everyone and everything you ever cared about. And make you watch. Day after day after day. And they’ll be nothing you can do about it.“
I stare murder into his eyes as he stares back at me, licking his lips in total victory.
“Celine?” He says. “Let me claim my Godhood in peace.”
Celine brings her scythe up above my unprotected head, and I brace myself for the kill strike.
Suddenly she screams like a banshee, clawing furiously at her own head. I look around and watch as Vincenzo’s entire Entourage of women start freaking out in violent spasms and screaming fits.
The glowing blue fire in their eyes dies away, their eyes changing back to their normal colors.
I cringe when I look up at my would-be executioner, and see nothing but pure burning hatred in her eyes.
“GODDAMN YOU!” She screams, swinging her blade past my head and charging headfirst at Vincenzo.
“What…?” Vincenzo yells, shielding himself from her deadly strike. “NO! Goddamn you, no no NO! Get the hell away---!”
All the women once under Vincenzo’s control strike as one, quickly overwhelming the delusional mad god with sheer numbers. Knocking Vincenzo away from the God Puzzle, the dozen slaves attack with the undiluted fury of a dozen women scorned; kicking, punching, biting, clawing, and choking the life out of the miserable tyrant. I watch with delight as they batter against his hastily-made shields. For the moment, they’re giving him the fight of his life.
Laughter comes out of nowhere as I see a figure starting to solidify out from the orange-tinged air around us. A shadow at first, but slowly gaining substance and girth until it resembles the shape of a man I know all too well.
“Hey sexy. Looks like this cloaking fluid of yours finally ran out.” Chaz says, holding the now-empty bottle we got from Vincenzo’s little armory. It was once filled with a blue invisibility-potion that was commonly sold to regular magicians out of the Grand Old Apothecary House in Britain in the 1730‘s. Megan Forrester of the Bone Machine clued me into that little detail. Megan, though, was the only one who could ever make that potion work for technomancers.
That is, until she taught me how to do it two weeks ago during one of my techno mantic study sessions with the Bone Machine.
See? I do pay attention to them sometimes.
I chuckle. “…yeah…guess it did…”
Chaz helps me get back on my feet and we watch Vincenzo struggling against the mass of women that have dog-piled onto him.
“We need to get you out of here. Now.” Chaz says, beginning to initiate a teleport spell before I whisper a counter spell to stop him.
“No.” I say, huffing and puffing. “…hospital could never save me in time…distracting him while you…teleported the Coruzacqua Insects out of the girls’ minds was only the first part of the plan. Part Two’s the one…..where I get the goddamn Bone Machine back…”
“But…”
“You want to help…” I say with not nearly as much authority as I’d like. “…you just pump his ears full of that awful Suicide Angels music…”
"...who knows...?" I sigh weakly as I unfold the helmet out of the armor and clamp it shut back across my face. "...maybe we'll get lucky and he’ll kill himself before I bleed to death trying to stop him.”
“Ha. You’re a riot, Litany.” Chaz says sarcastically, firing up his music deck.
“Yeah, well I….Chaz, look out!!”
ZZRRRTTT!!
A stray blast comes out of nowhere and hits Chaz in the head before I can do anything about it. He drops like a stone and my heart leaps up into my throat.
“CHAZ!!!”
***
Somehow, I shake off the shock and run over toward him. Holding him in my arms, I run my fingers against the large burn mark on his forehead. Please, don’t let him be…
“…uuuhhhnn….” He groans, and I start crying with joy. Thank God…
“Chaz! Chaz, are you okay?” I ask, over and over, panic setting in my voice.
“uuuhhr….unnnhhhr….” He becomes completely silent.
My heart races as I run some techno mantic scans and hope for the best.
Please….
Please…
My heart skips a beat when the scans say he’s still alive.
He’s just unconscious.
Thank God.
I look over to the source of the blast and see Vincenzo thrashing around inside the pile of girls above him. Underneath their anger and rage, he’s firing blind, shooting in an attempt to hit something, anything.
Two more blasts skim past my aura, but I’m not caring about them at the moment.
My world is red with fury.
Vincenzo.
You’re going to die for this.
I pick up a discarded scythe and stumble over towards the dog pile.
My rage grows as Vincenzo fires a furious corrosive blast that eats through two of the girls. A bat of his hand and two more women fly off of him, rolling to obviously-painful stops on the floor. When he emerges from the dog pile, I can tell he’s lost it completely.
“MINE! YOU’RE ALL MINE! My property. MY playthings. You bend to MY will! Not hers, never hers. I’m better than you. I’m better than all of you!”
He’s shooting techno mantic blasts in all directions.
Equations assemble in my fingers on instinct.
I shoot a swirling string of fire at him, smacking into his twisted face with algebraic precision. I shoot again and again, knocking him off-balance, letting the girls get more kicks in on him.
Holding the ceremonial mind-fire staff in my hands, I move as fast as my torn-up stomach’ll let me move in order to save the girls from his deadly strikes. Luckily, for some reason, his blasts aren’t doing the damage they should.
And then I realize what’s happening.
He’s holding his head, writhing in agony as the Bone Machine circles him, crackling bright with renewed purpose.
“NO! No, you ancient twits! Shut up! JUST SHUT THE SHOCK UP AND LET ME CONCENTRATE!!”
Do or die time.
“Die, you evil piece of shit!!” I scream, taking the ceremonial staff and shoving it directly into his chest and lighting him aflame with psychic fire.
He thrashes, screaming maniacally. He shoots a couple of nasty electric blasts at me and misses.
I hit him again. And again.
And again, just for the hell of it.
I remember seeing Rades cut open.
Hit him again.
I remember the person puppet he made look like John.
And again.
Holding me prisoner. The ball gag.
And again.
Shooting me in the stomach. Stealing the Bone Machine.
And again.
Hurting Chaz…
The last hit takes some skin with it, and half of his face is a pulpy, bleeding mess. The world’s starting to blur and I’m suddenly feeling very light. My anger keeps me focused as I wind up for another strike and feel a concussive force slam against my chest and force me onto the ground.
Too hard this time.
The copper taste erupts in my mouth as I hit the ground and stay down.
My strength totally gone, the Darkened Armor slips off of me and reverts back to the ridiculous-looking elbow-length silk gloves.
I watch Vincenzo drag himself up. He stares down at me with a rage I can almost feel coming off of him. His face a mess of pulp and muscle spasms and his body‘s shaking with fury.
I’ve failed.
Dammit, I’ve failed.
“You insignificant little gnat! How dare you do this to me? HOW DARE---!”
“Just…shut the fuck up and get it over with.” I growl, coughing painfully.
He points his hands at me, and I watch the equations boil and bubble along his fingers. “You’re going to scream for me, Litany.”
“Dream on…” I sigh, watching as he releases the fire in his hands directly at my face…
…and it curves off to the left.
What the hell?
“No. I couldn’t have missed, I just couldn’t have. Die, you stupid bitch. JUST DIE!”
He shoots at me again and again, and each time the blasts curve and spiral out of control.
I start laughing as he finally gets the joke.
“No! Damn you, stop screwing with me! STOP IT!” He screams at the Bone Machine, punching and screaming at the skulls as they dodge and weave out of his way. “Fine, if that’s how you want to play it…”
With sudden speed, he grabs at the Bone Machine and growls a familiar enchantment. His aura burns bright and he screams from the shock as he forcibly tears the Machine out of his own nervous system and tosses it aside next to me.
He stumbles, his body still smoking from the magical discharge. He shakes the shock from his mind and narrows his eyes at the both of us, narrowing his eyes at the both of us. The Bone Machine lies dead and lifeless next to me.
I’m seeing a good nine Vincenzos at this point, and the red darkness is lapping against the sides of my vision, pulsing in tune with my shallow heartbeat.
So light…I feel so light…
Is this the end…?
“God needs neither of you charlatans!” The madman screams before releasing his fiery blast upon the both of us.
My last words are swallowed up in the flames as my world becomes a wash of bright light.
***
“LITANY.” A voice calls out.
“What…?” I whisper.
“LITANY. …IT IS TIME…”
The world is bright white, and I can’t see anything. The voice fades in and out, echoing softly. It is a powerful, commanding voice that drifts out of the ether and reaches deep into my soul, compelling me to listen.
“Time…?” I moan, “Time for what? Who….who are you…?”
“YOU KNOW WHO I AM, KIRKPATRICK.”
Disembodied voice talking to me. Last thing I remember is being blasted by a fireball that I couldn’t’ve survived and now I’m swimming in a world of white light, weightless and insubstantial.
Oh shit.
“….God….?” I whisper.
“GOD?“ The voice laughs. “THIS IS KENNETH MONTGOMERY, YOU SHOCKING NUTCASE!”
Kenneth Montgomery. The football coach. Annoying floating skull sitting inside the Bone Machine. I blink hard and the blinding light fades and resolves back into the room I was just in. The white glow fades to yellow and I see the bleached skulls of the Bone Machine swirling excitedly around me.
It worked.
It actually worked!
Somehow, I managed to cast the spell to bond myself back to the Bone Machine and shield myself from his blast before his blast hit me!
My stomach aches and the world’s still all Salvador Dali madness around me, but I can feel the Bone Machine’s life supporting energies mingling with mine; sustaining me, nurturing me. I can feel my magic powers returning to me - like a dead battery being jumpstarted with new life.
Ha! In your face, Vincenzo!
“IT’S TIME TO MOVE, KIRKPATRICK!”
“Now listen here, you…oh.”
I think about giving the old loon a piece of my mind for talking to me like that when I sense the fiery blast headed toward me. I manage to roll out of the way as the fireball explodes into the tile floor, a volcanic heat wafting over me as I see the floor melt into a fiery crater.
“No No NO! I will not have this! I will NOT!” Vincenzo goes berserk, firing cremation blasts at me like a madman. It’s all I can do to roll away and think up weak shields to keep them at bay.
Teleporting a few feet behind him, I slowly crawl to my feet. Vincenzo turns around and for a moment, we stare each other down, our rage given substance by our auras.
Except mine is ebbing, and even with the Bone Machine’s help, there’s no way I’m surviving an all-out showdown with this psycho.
I cough red mucus out of my cracked and bleeding lips and fall down on one knee, clutching my insides. I’m just too weak to stand any longer.
I see that glint in his eyes. I’m dead. Seriously, dead.
Thankfully, a massive earthquake sends us both toppling to the ground like bowling pins.
Vincenzo recovers first, his eyes alight with corrosive fire. “The God Puzzle…”
I turn to look and see the massive structure shaking and quaking in spurts and fits as if it can‘t hold its shape anymore. The thought forms are circling deadly fast around it now, orange and red blurs orbiting furiously around a glowing cube-form that starts shimmering more rapidly with each second. Arcs of energy bleed out from the Puzzle and slam into the ground, pulverizing tile and concrete into puffs of dust and smoke.
“What the shock is going on…?” I ask.
Vincenzo, on the other hand, is too busy being batshit nuts to answer at the moment.
“You need me to finish solving you now, is that it?” Vincenzo asks the God Puzzle, letting all his elemental fire wash away. “Hee HA ho ho. Ah, you’re an impatient little thing, yes you are, threatening to blow us all up if I don’t solve you right now. Naughty little Puzzle. Very naughty.”
I ask the Machine if what he’s saying is true. The scans it runs confirms it.
It seems the God Puzzle must be solved in a single sitting. And Vincenzo already started to solve the Puzzle with Bone Machine before the girls knocked him out of it.
Still, no matter what, I can’t let him back into that Puzzle. I mean, if he does somehow manage to actually solve the thing…
Vincenzo begins to drool, staggering towards the God Puzzle like a zombie. “I will solve you now. I don’t need the bitch or her fancy toys to solve you. I’m a God. I’m the King of all I survey. I can do anything.”
“NO!” I scream, stumbling toward the madman as fast as my broken body will allow. Holding my bloodied gut with one hand, I start firing like crazy at him. Technomantic blasts, chants and incantations - all of it bounces harmlessly off his aura as he steps inside the spinning rings of the Puzzle.
“Get out of there, you monster!” I yell, reaching in to pull Vincenzo out of the God Puzzle when one of the spinning thought forms slams against my hand and breaks it.
I screech and howl and fall to my knees.
Damn it. Damn it all.
Helpless, I watch as energy beams whirl and shoot out of the Puzzle with abandon. Vincenzo starts moving switches and adjusting levers, concentration etched into his bloodied features. The God Puzzle changes shape around him and begins to glow with an unearthly red light. The entire Puzzle begins to shake violently, sending shockwaves out in all directions.
Raw power radiates from the Puzzle, sending cracks along the ceiling and tile floors. Pieces of debris rain down as I teleport away next to Chaz. I watch as a massive eight-foot chandelier dislodges from the ceiling and falls straight down atop Vincenzo and the God Puzzle - and shatters harmlessly into a beautiful display of glass and dust.
Raw terror washes over me suddenly.
I wipe tears from my eyes as I listen to Vincenzo’s words.
“MOO HOO HAH HA, HEE hee HA HA hee HO! YOU HEAR ME, YOU TEMPESTUOUS LITTLE TART? I DON’T NEED ANYONE TO SOLVE THE GOD PUZZLE! NOT THE BONE MACHINE! NOT THE NEMESIS MIND! NOT ANYONE!”
I start shaking as I hear his voice start to boom and crackle; deep and ominous like the sound of a thousand thunderstorms. He stares at me with those inhuman eyes - the eyes stolen from a long-dead All-Father, Odin - and they light aflame with impossible rage. The thunderclaps storm out of his mouth again, and I try like mad to hold back the tears…
“WHEN I BECOME GOD, I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU SUFFER A THOUSAND HELLS FOR MEDDLING WITH MY PLANS!! NOTHING CAN STOP ME FROM CLAIMING MY RIGHTFUL PLACE ON THE THRONE, DO YOU HEAR ME?? NOTH---!”
I hear a horrific scream.
His body starts to convulse and twist all on its own. His arms and legs twist and bend in all the wrong ways, and I almost lose my lunch as his bones erupt out from his skin in jagged pieces. As if that wasn’t enough, his skin just up and flays right off his body and starts swirling around the rest of him like a tornado. His throat, whatever’s left of it, goes raw from the screams, and I can’t help but smile as his body rips apart in a violent bloody mess - skewered alive by the tornado made out of his own skin.
It can only mean one thing: He solved it wrong.
Good.
Couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer guy.
The God Puzzle continues to radiate furious power as the entire second floor balcony breaks apart and collapses onto the debris-strewn floor. A massive piece of rock falls from the ground and lands on one of the unconscious girls, skewering her. Cursing at the quake in vain, I suddenly become aware of one of Vincenzo’s ego-strokery statues beginning to collapse on top of Chaz and me.
“Shit!” I grab him in my arms and teleport him outside the collapsing citadel.
We materialize outside the building, and I lay him down on the relative safety of the oozing, blemished ground outside. My hand is throbbing from the glancing blow, but I look on at the dying structure and realize my work’s not done yet.
Exhausted beyond exhausted, I somehow manage to teleport in and out of the collapsing mess and dodge the falling debris and the stray blasts radiating out from the disintegrating God Puzzle. I teleport the surviving slaves out one by one, letting my adrenaline fight against the pain of my broken hand and wounded stomach.
I’ve got the last one in my arms when a massive shockwave from the God Puzzle slams us both into the ground. Lying face-up, I look up to see the ceiling falling at us way too fast. The once-bright piece of concrete shape-shifts violently into a mass of spikes and sharp edges, the living wall terrified of its own destruction.
I grab her arm with my good hand and disappear the world from my view.
We reappear with Chaz and the other girls when, with a final shudder, Vincenzo’s citadel finally collapses in on itself in a massive plume of dust and soot that rises thick and heavy into the infernal winds. Silently, we watch in awe as the wreckage starts to shift and implode upon itself, disappearing violently in a wave of un-creation.
I collapse on my back then, burying my face in both my palms and start laughing like an idiot.
Tears fall down my eyes as I point both middle fingers at the space where Vincenzo‘s citadel once stood. “Ha. Take that, you sick bastard.”
The infernal winds kick up across the Foreversprawl of Twilight Madness. But not even the winds of hell can drown out my laughter.
***
A day later, I’m laying with Chaz on his bed about to commit me some murder.
“I’m not laughing, Chaz! Make your stupid living bong stop spitting out pot smoke right shocking now or I‘m going to filet your ass!” I yell.
“Rather not.” Chaz smiles, laying back in bed and petting that disgusting gargoyle-shaped living bong above us. “Henry likes the smoke. Says it gives the room an ‘ambiance.’”
“He’s trying to get me addicted to your bloody pot shit again! Stop it.”
“No, it’s cool. It means he likes you. Don’t you, Henry?”
He pets the gargoyle again, and it starts puffing its wares on me even harder.
“Aarrrgh!!!” I run out of bed and stomp towards the window, pushing it open with my good arm. My blood boils as Chaz just laughs.
“I will kill you for this, you evil little man.” I say to Chaz as I stare out his window, looking at the stars shining bright along the black night sky.
“You know, you’re sexy when you’re angry.” He gives me that look, and I consider throwing him out the window into traffic. It calms me down, somewhat. “So when are we having that ’I-just-prevented-the-end-of-the-world’ bang you promised me?”
I send out a small magic flare that lightly smacks the bed just shy of his crotch. Crossing my arms, my eyes light up with fire and I let him have it.
“There’s no way I’m doing that with these stupid headcases strapped to my nervous system!” I point at the Bone Machine, which is absent-mindedly orbiting around my aura at the moment.
“It’s cool. I don’t mind if they watch.”
“Rrrrrr! I hate you I hate you I hate you!” I lie, scrunching my hands into fists in a mad pout.
Chaz just laughs, and lays back in bed. “I still cannot believe you and I up and defeated a fucking God. A Mad God that was ready to kill the both of us, and we killed him dead.”
“If that twit was a God, then I’m the Queen of Latveria.”
“Uh, Latveria doesn’t exist anymore, babe. Got melted by that tyrant dude that took over the U.S. a couple months back.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”
“Tsss. So you got all the girls home safe and all that?” Chaz asks.
“Yeah.” I mutter. “Some of them had been missing for years thanks to that evil fuck.”
The awkward silence slaps us both in the face, slumping quiet and heavy like an elephant in the room. Chaz finally asks a question that I know‘s been on his mind since the whole thing with Vincenzo. “He’s definitely dead though, right?”
“Yep.” I grin, stretching my arms and turning back toward him. “The God Puzzle ripped his body to shreds when he solved the thing wrong.”
“Heh. Nice.” He says. “Wish I’d been awake to see it.”
“The only problem is that he took my goddamn Alphaglock with him into that machine. I wanted that gun back.”
Chaz smiles. “Well, at least you got those doofy-looking gloves out of the deal.”
“Yeah, good trade.” I mutter sarcastically. “I’d take the gun over those fashion disasters any day.”
“The magician would rather have the gun that the magic stuff. Imagine that.”
“Shut up, you bright-headed moron.” I grumble, pointing at him, noting the changing colors of his glowing hair. He just runs his fingers through it, cocky-as-hell.
I look up into the night sky and for a moment, I wonder how we managed to win.
Vincenzo was a pro - he’d been practicing the techno mantic arts for years. And as looney-tunes as he was, he was a master strategist; He studied me for months, learning how to block out my ability to sense his techno mantic aura. He did his homework on the Nemesis Mind, the Bone Machine and the God Puzzle. He played me like a flute and knew just who to go after in order to make me storm off into the Foreversprawl after him.
All of it just proves that even after all these months, I’m still glowing bright green around the gills.
I mean, keeping tabs on me with the Eyes of Odin. Sending the girl to kill Rades and Chaz. Siccing that person puppet dressed like John after me to dial my rage up to a billion. Turning my powers off with the Ludgates. Using that magic centrifuge to separate me from the Bone Machine.
He’d been toying with me from the start. He had his sick agenda all planned out from the get-go.
He should have won.
We should be dead.
There’s just no reason in the world that Chaz and I should still be alive. If Vincenzo hadn’t fucked up in solving that Puzzle, he would have become a God and skewered us both on the spot.
…right?
I glance at the stars in the sky and for just a moment, I swear I can see Vincenzo’s face outlined in the constellations.
I blink, and the face is gone.
Baldur’s sake, was it ever there?
Chaz is still talking to me, but I can barely hear him. I kiss him so hard, it seems like I might rip his face off.
Without a sound, I hold onto him as tight as I can and don’t let go.
***
THE END.
LIKE, FOR NOW.
***
I’ve been shot…bad.
I think….I think I’m gonna die…
Can’t die, though. Can’t let myself die…
I got a fuckin’ God to kill before I die…
I cough. Mucous hot like lava against the back of my throat. Feel the goo leaking from my lips.
World’s spinning. Shifting. Swirling into shades of red and grey.
Can’t…can’t focus on anything.
Vincenzo’s got me chained up to this wall. Two of his sex slaves are guarding me. Glowing blue eyes watch me bleed out through a wet, blood-soaked T-shirt….
Couldn’t cast a spell to save my life. Literally. And even if I remembered something that could undo the chains, my existence is an acid-induced vertigo of pain and blinking light. Only hope, is to wriggle free from the chains somehow…
…moving my arms shifts my weight…moves muscles around my gut-shot stomach….
Stomach.
Pain.
Wound.
Pain.
Pain.
Unbearable pain…
Fire burning against my abdomen.
Throbbing wet, with brilliant, burning white light behind my eyes.
I fall into the white light, tumbling end over end, falling forever deep into the center of a brilliant star…
….and then all I can hear is…
…music…?
Inside the throbbing white void of my mind, I hear “Your Sex is my Rapture Fix” by the Suicide Angels, a band of perpetually half-naked girls in tight leather that sing songs of suicide and twisted sex. Chaz is obsessed with them because, y’know, it pisses me off. That and the extremely addictive digital pheromones that they lace into their song downloads to keep guys coming back don’t help matters either.
But I hate that band. With a passion.
So what kind of horrible death throes involve the Suicide Angels rattling around in my head…?
There‘s nothing but pain as I force my eyes open and see the girls turn away from me and disappear into the thick blurry haze toward the source of the music. I hear two thuds in the distance and eventually find myself looking at two different figures walking toward me. Two figures glowing bright green with the same look of shock and horror on their faces…
“Chazzz….” I slur out to the one on the left. “…why are there two of you…?”
“Litany, you stupid slag! I told you not to go after this freak by yourself!” Both Chazs whisper, un-tying my chains and carefully laying me down on the floor. I better just be seeing double, because one Chaz in my life is bad enough. “Now shut up and just stay with me, babe. I‘m gonna try and patch you up.”
“…god…I hurt so bad, Chaz. Hurts everywhere….”
“Stay with me, Litany. Stay awake!” I wince as he starts tying cloth around my wound to stop the bleeding. He adds through gritted teeth: “If you go toward the light, I’ll kill you.”
“Oh. Ha. Ha.” I slur out. “You’re a damn riot, you are…”
The world swirls and spins and nuclear fire coats my wounds, but I stay conscious while Chaz works on making sure I don’t bleed out. I want to lean up to kiss him, but luckily all those stupid, sappy thoughts roll out of my mind when he starts flapping his gums again.
“You’re so lucky I found, you damn psychopath. I told you that going after a God was insane.” He smirks at me, gently touching my face.
“He’s not a God, you brainless oaf. He’s a spineless little prick who stole the Bone Machine from me. He’s going to use it to…ooof!” Pain floods my stomach as I sit up. I run my hand along the blood-soaked cloth holding my insides together.
“So he took the Bone Machine? Well that’s good. You hated them anyway.”
“You idiot! That’s not the point!”
“You’re right.” He glances back at the entrance to the dungeon, where the two unconscious slaves are tied up against the door. “The point is we gotta get you out of here before our psycho God comes back to kill you. Or worse, kill me.” He throws me a wink and I stick my tongue out at him angrily. “Can you stand?”
“Are you on drugs, Chaz? I just got shot in the fucking stomach!”
“Dammit, Litany, this is no time for your PMS-crap!” He shoots me a look that’s all-serious, and all my protests drain away. “If we don’t get the hell out of here, soon, we are going to die.”
I see the look of panic in his eyes, and wonder if he’s done something like this before. He’s lucky I like him so much, or I might have to pop him one. Instead, I just smile and say something smart-assed to him for a change.
“Now who’s PMS-ing? Give me a hand, would ya?”
The look on his face is priceless.
***
I’m limping down the hallway with Chaz trying my best not to scream from the pain.
The scans I’ve done of my insides tell me my intestines have been skewered and I’m bleeding out internally. I don’t have long. Maybe an hour at the most.
Hospital’s not an option. If Vincenzo solves the God Puzzle and becomes God, he’ll be able to disappear me from the world in the blink of an eye. The only chance anyone will have of shutting the bastard down is right shocking now.
It took some doing, but Chaz eventually saw things my way.
After he got the bleeding under control, I did the only incantation I could remember to buy me some time before the big goodbye; it ends up being one of the slowest convalescence spells in my arsenal. The only good thing about it is that it’s easy to cast, which helps when you‘re still reeling from shock and bouts of extreme cold. The only other spell I can remember at the moment would heal me up nice and good at the cost of burning out most of my central nervous system and making me a vegetable for the rest of my life. And as much as I love sitting on my ass, it’s just is not an option.
The only other healing spells that’ll do anything useful are either too advanced for me, or require the Bone Machine as a conduit.
So right now, the Bone Machine’s my only hope.
I can’t believe I need to bond those crazy assholes to my nervous system again. They’ll fatally infect me with their endless bitchfests, I know they will…
But before we do any of that, I have a couple questions for Chaz, like: “How the shock did you find me?”
“I cast a trace spell on you.”
“You WHAT?”
“Yeah, just after the thing at my place with that crazy emo bitch. You got that look in your eyes that you get before you go off and do something retarded. So I cast the thing and I‘ve been following your aura ever since.”
I imagine driving a hovercar over his smart-ass face, backing up, and doing it again. And again. And then a couple million more times for good measure.
“You sneaky little bastard! You had no right…!”
“Dangerous place here…what with the grass being made of syringes and knives coming out of the walls. Thought you could use the back-up.”
“I can take care of myself, Chaz. I’m the Metalscream for shock’s sake.”
“Sure you can. How’s the bullet wound doing?”
“Shock you…”
“You’re welcome, by the way.”
“And why the shock was I hearing the Suicide Angels playing before? You had something to do with it, I know it.”
“Musical ventriloquism, baby.” He smirks, pointing back at the music deck hooked into his spine. “Made the girls think the song was coming from down the hall. Then I knocked them unconscious before they saw me.”
“Sneaky.” I chuckle.
“Yep. Told you I wouldn’t let you die, babe.” He smiles wide and I go all romantic for a second. “Like I said, I need you for my morning wood problem.”
My face lights up red and I elbow him in the ribs as hard as I can. But considering the shit-shape I’m in, ‘as-hard-as-I-can’ is a weak poke at best.
“When this is over, I’m going to kick your ass so hard…” I mutter.
“Is that before or after the wild, crazy sex?”
“OOoooo! Chaz, you little…!”
“Annnnd we’re here.” He says, placing his hand on a random door.
“We’re what…?” I ask before the door starts to dissolve into interconnecting square shapes that glow brilliantly before folding inward to let us through the doorway.
I’m still in awe at the complexity of this place as we walk through the threshold. I look back to see the door fall right back into place behind us in a reverse-capture version of the magnificent way it opened itself up to let us inside.
“What the shock is this place…?” I breathe out as I see piles and piles of techno mantic artifacts littered all over the floor. Scattered scriptures and old tablets. Strange, rusted machinery hanging from the ceiling. A golden ornamental shield. Dusty fist-sized globes mindlessly orbiting one another. Dozens of swords and staffs with ancient glyphs and patterns etched into their hilts in a hundred different languages.
“I found this place while I was trying to zero in on your aural trace. I think it‘s an armory of some kind.”
“Shock yea. Must be…” I say. Then a sickening, paranoid thought rolls its way through my head. “But how…I mean…doesn’t he even have anyone guarding the bloody thing? It‘s a friggin‘ ARMORY for Thor‘s sake!”
Chaz runs his finger down a double-bladed scythe covered in cobwebs with a dimly-glowing handle. “Well, I didn’t see any guards on my way up to your cell. Maybe he’s just that goddamned arrogant to think no one’ll get in here.”
I remember the ball-gag Vincenzo fitted me with as he tried to convince me to become one of his sex slaves. “Yep. Arrogant little bastard, that’s Vincenzo.”
Pain flares up again in my gut, reminding me of how little time I have left.
“We’ve got to hurry.” I say. “Help me look around, see if I recognize any of this crap from all those boring texts my oppressive masters forced me to read.”
“This is such a bad idea, Litany…” Chaz whispers to me softly. “We don’t even know how any of this shit works. We should just get the hell out of here. We’re going to get ourselves killed.”
“I already told you, we don‘t have time for a pit stop at a Docs in a Box. If Vincenzo becomes a God, he’ll have the power to kill us, bring us back to life, and kill us again, with probably a bunch of raping and torturing in-between. We don’t take him down now…we never will.”
Chaz looks at me, doubt and concern written all over his face. I lean in to kiss him, and pull back smiling.
“Besides, I miss the voices in my head.”
“You would.”
“Bite me.”
“Maybe later.”
We limp around the dimly-lit armory, gazing over all the ancient piles of junk that Vincenzo’s put here. Then I see exactly what I’m looking for. Two things, in fact.
“Those.” I say, pointing toward a pair of unassuming silk black gloves that stretch up to the elbow and a long-neglected bottle of blue liquid.
Chaz looks at me, then at all the armors and swords lying about that I‘m not pointing at, and raises his eyebrow at me. “Babe, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
***
I’m shaking, holding my gut as I trudge on. Loosing blood from the wound like crazy. It’s really getting to me now; I couldn’t tell you how I got here, what with the hallways spinning around me and everything.
I’m wearing the black silk gloves Chaz and I found in Vincenzo’s little armory. Elbow-length with small metal spikes stitched along the seams. Chaz said they make me look ridiculous. I’d never admit it, but he’s right about that one.
Chaz…
He’s nowhere to be seen.
It’s best that way.
I click off the safeties on my wrist-mounted photon guns. Vincenzo stole them when Vincenzo captured me, but the louse must have tossed them inside the Armory for storage.
Couldn’t find my Alphaglock in there, though. He must still have it on him. He was treating the thing like a fucking Collector‘s Item after he shot me with it. When I get it back, I’m going to enchant it into sending a nice wave of hellfire up his holier-than-thou ass.
But for now, the gauntlet guns will do just fine.
The door in front of me pulses geometrically and shape shifts itself open for me, letting me out on the second floor overlooking the main chamber. Over the balcony, I can see Vincenzo and his women standing in front of the beautiful, crystalline cube of the ever-shifting God Puzzle.
Only this time, the God Puzzle looks different. Instead of constantly altering its shape in a predictable, graceful way, it is hovering in one shape while the thought forms surrounding it are pulsing audibly and glowing bright red.
Jesus, he’s trying to solve it. Right this second, he’s trying to solve the puzzle. Except, things don’t seem to be going well for him.
He seems to be deep in concentration, his aura lit with furious fire. The Bone Machine circles his head like it once did mine. Except he’s so busy screaming things at the floating skulls that neither he, nor his legion of sex slaves he calls his Entourage have noticed me slowly making my way down the stairs.
This is going to be tricky.
I make my way down the stairs, pretending that I‘m not pale as a ghost and sweating buckets from blood loss. I uncoil the gauntlet guns from the chambers mounted to my wrist, aiming them at Vincenzo’s unprotected head. I teleport myself to close the distance between us so I can fire point blank…
…except I don’t teleport. Great. The damn Ludgate Device is still in effect, killing any and all techno magic in the room. If only I knew where it was, I could…
Doesn’t matter. I still have a beauty of a shot at that pusbag’s ugly mug and no one has seen me yet. I can’t not take it.
I unleash a wave of photon fury at his head from the bottom of the stairs. The sound of the guns firing alerts Vincenzo, and he’s just fast enough to muster up a shield in the nick of time. I curse my rotten luck. If only I could have teleported behind him…
We stare each other down, and I see the muscle tick starting in Vincenzo’s eye. An over-wide murderer’s smile develops on his face. “Litany. Yes, yes, my precious, gorgeous, sexy, scrumptious little morsel. Didn’t I kill you a little bit ago?”
“Nah. Didn’t take.” I shrug, and then erupt into a coughing fit. When I pull my hand away from my mouth, it’s covered in blood.
“Oh, but I think it did.” He licks his lips. “You don’t have long. Ha haheeha ho ho. See what happens when you defy me, Bone Machine?”
Hah. He’s at odds with the Bone Machine. I knew they’d be fighting back against him.
“Ha! Looks like everyone’s pissed off at you.”
He spreads his arms wide and smiles. “All God’s Children come around eventually.”
“Yeah, shock that noise…I’m not gonna rest till you’re in a body bag, vermin.”
“And how, pray tell, were you planning on stopping me? With those worthless little silk gloves you found in my junk room?”
“I was thinking about it, yeah. Wait, junk room?”
“Yes, the room where you found those things. The room where I place all of the worthless baubles I’ve come across on my travels. None of the things I’ve placed in that room work. None of them have ever worked. Be they broken, drained of all mystic potential, or just plain too-bloody-old. God, Litany, you are too funny! Here you are, trying to fight a God with some useless antiques.”
“Bullshit. You’re full of bullshit.”
He flashes me a smile, and I just stare at him. “But really, that’s not the only thing I’ve got against you. Pamela, Jezibelle, Celine? If you would show our guest the futility of her efforts.”
The three girls step aside to reveal the Ludgate Device standing behind them, humming quietly to itself.
“I’m sure you remember the Ludgate Machine, my dear.” Vincenzo says. “I thought of the idea while I was watching your mentor get his brains shot out in the desert. After I saw that, I just knew I had to get one of these babies…“
A look of blind fury flashes over my face. The schmuck laps my pain up with a smile and continues his psychotic rant.
“Thing is, I reprogrammed this one to exclude my own aura’s signature from its magic-draining capabilities. So while the machine makes sure you have no reservoirs of mystic energy to tap into, it leaves me at full techno-mantic power. So you see darling, this little fighting-back thing you‘re doing now is just a waste of our time.”
He turns his attention back toward his Entourage. “Ladies, your God is thoroughly bored with His creation now. Dispose of it.”
The three girls walk away from the humming device as he turns his attention back toward the Puzzle. Holding ancient ceremonial scythes, their eyes glow bright blue as they close in for the kill.
“Wait!” I yell.
“Hmmm?” Vincenzo says, amused. “Is this the part where you beg your God for forgiveness for being such an awful, misbehaved little peon?”
I smile. “I…I just wanted to thank you…”
I raise my gauntlet guns up toward the revealed Ludgate Device.
“…for giving me such a clear shot…”
CHZZK-THOOM!
The blasts tear through the casing of the Ludgate Device and it explodes in a thick cloud of fire and electricity. I close my eyes and teleport away as the mind-controlled bitches bring their scythes down where my head used to be. With my newfound distance from the murderous women, I clench my hands into fists, reciting a chant in an ancient European dialect. I smack my forearms together, and the black silk gloves start expanding to encase my entire body in a form-fitting black bodysuit. With the final words, the suit hardens and expands outwards to become a massive suit of black armor with glowing orange inscriptions along its blackened outer skin. Protective spikes stab out from the shoulder pads, and a very badass-looking helmet clamps itself into place atop my head.
I can’t help but smile as Vincenzo proceeds to freak out. “No, no, I deny this! This is….impossible! They were junk! No one could get those working!”
“Wrong. You couldn’t get these working.” I say, my voice filtered through the armor’s speakers. “The armor’s from the dark ages, welded and enchanted inside a forgotten monastery deep inside Europe. The monks that guarded the sacred place forged the armor from the darkest parts of their souls to ward off evil spirits as well as would-be maniacal conquerors. Because it was borne of darkness, the monks created a counterbalance to hold the armor in check. Piloting of the armor requires a stable, rational mind to function, according to a certain Zen Master I know.”
“The Zen Master?” He growls at the Bone Machine, enraged. “You knew of this??”
My laughter sounds otherworldly filtered through the helmet speakers, rising as I see his eyes fill with dread.
“Not that I’m the most rational, stable person, let me tell you.” I smile behind the heavy helmet, “You, however, are just batshit nuts. There‘s no way a maniac like you could ever get this Greater Darkened Armor to work.”
“HOW DARE YOU TALK TO YOUR CREATOR THAT WAY!” The psycho shrieks before unleashing a torrential fireball into my chest at mach speed. I slam back against the wall as he orders his scythe-wielding killstompers after me.
The redhead hits me first, bringing down her blade against me as I block with my armored forearm. The armor - powerful beyond belief - is the only reason I’m surviving at the moment. I pull my other arm back in a fist and I hesitate, looking into her glowing blue eyes. She’s being mind-controlled. She doesn’t deserve to get the snot kicked out of her for this. Somehow, I’ve got to take them down without hurting them…
Shouting a command in ancient Egyptian, her scythe glows red and encases my whole forearm in fire. Screaming, I grab her scythe and elbow her in the temple as her friend slams me in the side with another blade. Each hit shakes me to my core and I feel my stomach wound throbbing painfully beneath my bandages.
This Darkened Armor is an amazing techno mantic achievement. However, it is only as powerful as the will of its bearer.
And right now, its bearer is slowly bleeding to death.
God help me, I’m so cold…
***
It takes all my concentration to rip their scythes away from them and knock them unconscious. Every movement, every gesture takes its toll. I’m so slow now, the third girl has all the time in the world to bury her scythe in my back. I feel the stabbing fire shoot all throughout my body.
Desperately, I grab and claw at my back, but her murderous chants send more psychic fire through the scythe and into my already badly-weakened body.
Red spots explode along my vision and I fall to my knees. Despite the fact that my entire body feels like it’s inside a pressure cooker, I’m shivering cold. Icy sweat lines my face as the heat boils up inside my helmet. Needing air more than anything else in the world, I will my helmet to fold itself into the nape of my armor‘s neck, allowing me to take shallow, panicked gulps of fresh air.
The girl finally rips the scythe out from my back and I scream. Feeling the wound as if the scythe had penetrated my real spine instead of my armor’s, I crumple into a broken heap on the floor. My heart pounds as I look up at Vincenzo looking down at me and laughing cruelly.
“All fall down.” He chatters his teeth together excitedly before letting loose one of his serial killer laughs. “It’s such a pity. You are really quite scrumptious. You would have made an excellent maiden of my Entourage.”
I grit my teeth and spit blood at him.
“If it makes you feel any better, the Bone Machine is being highly resistant in giving me the answers I need. It really has something of an affinity for you, I‘m afraid…”
“...good.” I mutter.
“So when my darling Celine cuts off your miserable head, the only way you can come back will be for me to resurrect you once become a God, correct?”
Oh shit. Please tell me the Bone Machine’s smart enough not to fall for that nonsense.
“…don’t do it, guys…” I try to call out to the Bone Machine, but it comes out as a messy puking fit. Exhausted and light-headed, I manage to murmur: “…don’t…let him win…”
“Hee HEE ho ho ha. HAH ha. Oh, but I always win, my dear.” He pauses for a moment, looking at one of the glowing skulls floating around his head. “No, you Voodoo whore, I always do win and always will win. It is inevitable. Remind yourselves that when you keep important knowledge from me. Your former master’s life is in my hands. Now, and for always.”
The Bone Machine circles his head erratically and although my mental link with them is severed, I can feel their impotent rage.
He turns back to me, his face pure stone hatred at this point. “Litbit. By the by, I just want you to know that when I become God and I give you back your worthless life….I’m going to kill everyone and everything you ever cared about. And make you watch. Day after day after day. And they’ll be nothing you can do about it.“
I stare murder into his eyes as he stares back at me, licking his lips in total victory.
“Celine?” He says. “Let me claim my Godhood in peace.”
Celine brings her scythe up above my unprotected head, and I brace myself for the kill strike.
Suddenly she screams like a banshee, clawing furiously at her own head. I look around and watch as Vincenzo’s entire Entourage of women start freaking out in violent spasms and screaming fits.
The glowing blue fire in their eyes dies away, their eyes changing back to their normal colors.
I cringe when I look up at my would-be executioner, and see nothing but pure burning hatred in her eyes.
“GODDAMN YOU!” She screams, swinging her blade past my head and charging headfirst at Vincenzo.
“What…?” Vincenzo yells, shielding himself from her deadly strike. “NO! Goddamn you, no no NO! Get the hell away---!”
All the women once under Vincenzo’s control strike as one, quickly overwhelming the delusional mad god with sheer numbers. Knocking Vincenzo away from the God Puzzle, the dozen slaves attack with the undiluted fury of a dozen women scorned; kicking, punching, biting, clawing, and choking the life out of the miserable tyrant. I watch with delight as they batter against his hastily-made shields. For the moment, they’re giving him the fight of his life.
Laughter comes out of nowhere as I see a figure starting to solidify out from the orange-tinged air around us. A shadow at first, but slowly gaining substance and girth until it resembles the shape of a man I know all too well.
“Hey sexy. Looks like this cloaking fluid of yours finally ran out.” Chaz says, holding the now-empty bottle we got from Vincenzo’s little armory. It was once filled with a blue invisibility-potion that was commonly sold to regular magicians out of the Grand Old Apothecary House in Britain in the 1730‘s. Megan Forrester of the Bone Machine clued me into that little detail. Megan, though, was the only one who could ever make that potion work for technomancers.
That is, until she taught me how to do it two weeks ago during one of my techno mantic study sessions with the Bone Machine.
See? I do pay attention to them sometimes.
I chuckle. “…yeah…guess it did…”
Chaz helps me get back on my feet and we watch Vincenzo struggling against the mass of women that have dog-piled onto him.
“We need to get you out of here. Now.” Chaz says, beginning to initiate a teleport spell before I whisper a counter spell to stop him.
“No.” I say, huffing and puffing. “…hospital could never save me in time…distracting him while you…teleported the Coruzacqua Insects out of the girls’ minds was only the first part of the plan. Part Two’s the one…..where I get the goddamn Bone Machine back…”
“But…”
“You want to help…” I say with not nearly as much authority as I’d like. “…you just pump his ears full of that awful Suicide Angels music…”
"...who knows...?" I sigh weakly as I unfold the helmet out of the armor and clamp it shut back across my face. "...maybe we'll get lucky and he’ll kill himself before I bleed to death trying to stop him.”
“Ha. You’re a riot, Litany.” Chaz says sarcastically, firing up his music deck.
“Yeah, well I….Chaz, look out!!”
ZZRRRTTT!!
A stray blast comes out of nowhere and hits Chaz in the head before I can do anything about it. He drops like a stone and my heart leaps up into my throat.
“CHAZ!!!”
***
Somehow, I shake off the shock and run over toward him. Holding him in my arms, I run my fingers against the large burn mark on his forehead. Please, don’t let him be…
“…uuuhhhnn….” He groans, and I start crying with joy. Thank God…
“Chaz! Chaz, are you okay?” I ask, over and over, panic setting in my voice.
“uuuhhr….unnnhhhr….” He becomes completely silent.
My heart races as I run some techno mantic scans and hope for the best.
Please….
Please…
My heart skips a beat when the scans say he’s still alive.
He’s just unconscious.
Thank God.
I look over to the source of the blast and see Vincenzo thrashing around inside the pile of girls above him. Underneath their anger and rage, he’s firing blind, shooting in an attempt to hit something, anything.
Two more blasts skim past my aura, but I’m not caring about them at the moment.
My world is red with fury.
Vincenzo.
You’re going to die for this.
I pick up a discarded scythe and stumble over towards the dog pile.
My rage grows as Vincenzo fires a furious corrosive blast that eats through two of the girls. A bat of his hand and two more women fly off of him, rolling to obviously-painful stops on the floor. When he emerges from the dog pile, I can tell he’s lost it completely.
“MINE! YOU’RE ALL MINE! My property. MY playthings. You bend to MY will! Not hers, never hers. I’m better than you. I’m better than all of you!”
He’s shooting techno mantic blasts in all directions.
Equations assemble in my fingers on instinct.
I shoot a swirling string of fire at him, smacking into his twisted face with algebraic precision. I shoot again and again, knocking him off-balance, letting the girls get more kicks in on him.
Holding the ceremonial mind-fire staff in my hands, I move as fast as my torn-up stomach’ll let me move in order to save the girls from his deadly strikes. Luckily, for some reason, his blasts aren’t doing the damage they should.
And then I realize what’s happening.
He’s holding his head, writhing in agony as the Bone Machine circles him, crackling bright with renewed purpose.
“NO! No, you ancient twits! Shut up! JUST SHUT THE SHOCK UP AND LET ME CONCENTRATE!!”
Do or die time.
“Die, you evil piece of shit!!” I scream, taking the ceremonial staff and shoving it directly into his chest and lighting him aflame with psychic fire.
He thrashes, screaming maniacally. He shoots a couple of nasty electric blasts at me and misses.
I hit him again. And again.
And again, just for the hell of it.
I remember seeing Rades cut open.
Hit him again.
I remember the person puppet he made look like John.
And again.
Holding me prisoner. The ball gag.
And again.
Shooting me in the stomach. Stealing the Bone Machine.
And again.
Hurting Chaz…
The last hit takes some skin with it, and half of his face is a pulpy, bleeding mess. The world’s starting to blur and I’m suddenly feeling very light. My anger keeps me focused as I wind up for another strike and feel a concussive force slam against my chest and force me onto the ground.
Too hard this time.
The copper taste erupts in my mouth as I hit the ground and stay down.
My strength totally gone, the Darkened Armor slips off of me and reverts back to the ridiculous-looking elbow-length silk gloves.
I watch Vincenzo drag himself up. He stares down at me with a rage I can almost feel coming off of him. His face a mess of pulp and muscle spasms and his body‘s shaking with fury.
I’ve failed.
Dammit, I’ve failed.
“You insignificant little gnat! How dare you do this to me? HOW DARE---!”
“Just…shut the fuck up and get it over with.” I growl, coughing painfully.
He points his hands at me, and I watch the equations boil and bubble along his fingers. “You’re going to scream for me, Litany.”
“Dream on…” I sigh, watching as he releases the fire in his hands directly at my face…
…and it curves off to the left.
What the hell?
“No. I couldn’t have missed, I just couldn’t have. Die, you stupid bitch. JUST DIE!”
He shoots at me again and again, and each time the blasts curve and spiral out of control.
I start laughing as he finally gets the joke.
“No! Damn you, stop screwing with me! STOP IT!” He screams at the Bone Machine, punching and screaming at the skulls as they dodge and weave out of his way. “Fine, if that’s how you want to play it…”
With sudden speed, he grabs at the Bone Machine and growls a familiar enchantment. His aura burns bright and he screams from the shock as he forcibly tears the Machine out of his own nervous system and tosses it aside next to me.
He stumbles, his body still smoking from the magical discharge. He shakes the shock from his mind and narrows his eyes at the both of us, narrowing his eyes at the both of us. The Bone Machine lies dead and lifeless next to me.
I’m seeing a good nine Vincenzos at this point, and the red darkness is lapping against the sides of my vision, pulsing in tune with my shallow heartbeat.
So light…I feel so light…
Is this the end…?
“God needs neither of you charlatans!” The madman screams before releasing his fiery blast upon the both of us.
My last words are swallowed up in the flames as my world becomes a wash of bright light.
***
“LITANY.” A voice calls out.
“What…?” I whisper.
“LITANY. …IT IS TIME…”
The world is bright white, and I can’t see anything. The voice fades in and out, echoing softly. It is a powerful, commanding voice that drifts out of the ether and reaches deep into my soul, compelling me to listen.
“Time…?” I moan, “Time for what? Who….who are you…?”
“YOU KNOW WHO I AM, KIRKPATRICK.”
Disembodied voice talking to me. Last thing I remember is being blasted by a fireball that I couldn’t’ve survived and now I’m swimming in a world of white light, weightless and insubstantial.
Oh shit.
“….God….?” I whisper.
“GOD?“ The voice laughs. “THIS IS KENNETH MONTGOMERY, YOU SHOCKING NUTCASE!”
Kenneth Montgomery. The football coach. Annoying floating skull sitting inside the Bone Machine. I blink hard and the blinding light fades and resolves back into the room I was just in. The white glow fades to yellow and I see the bleached skulls of the Bone Machine swirling excitedly around me.
It worked.
It actually worked!
Somehow, I managed to cast the spell to bond myself back to the Bone Machine and shield myself from his blast before his blast hit me!
My stomach aches and the world’s still all Salvador Dali madness around me, but I can feel the Bone Machine’s life supporting energies mingling with mine; sustaining me, nurturing me. I can feel my magic powers returning to me - like a dead battery being jumpstarted with new life.
Ha! In your face, Vincenzo!
“IT’S TIME TO MOVE, KIRKPATRICK!”
“Now listen here, you…oh.”
I think about giving the old loon a piece of my mind for talking to me like that when I sense the fiery blast headed toward me. I manage to roll out of the way as the fireball explodes into the tile floor, a volcanic heat wafting over me as I see the floor melt into a fiery crater.
“No No NO! I will not have this! I will NOT!” Vincenzo goes berserk, firing cremation blasts at me like a madman. It’s all I can do to roll away and think up weak shields to keep them at bay.
Teleporting a few feet behind him, I slowly crawl to my feet. Vincenzo turns around and for a moment, we stare each other down, our rage given substance by our auras.
Except mine is ebbing, and even with the Bone Machine’s help, there’s no way I’m surviving an all-out showdown with this psycho.
I cough red mucus out of my cracked and bleeding lips and fall down on one knee, clutching my insides. I’m just too weak to stand any longer.
I see that glint in his eyes. I’m dead. Seriously, dead.
Thankfully, a massive earthquake sends us both toppling to the ground like bowling pins.
Vincenzo recovers first, his eyes alight with corrosive fire. “The God Puzzle…”
I turn to look and see the massive structure shaking and quaking in spurts and fits as if it can‘t hold its shape anymore. The thought forms are circling deadly fast around it now, orange and red blurs orbiting furiously around a glowing cube-form that starts shimmering more rapidly with each second. Arcs of energy bleed out from the Puzzle and slam into the ground, pulverizing tile and concrete into puffs of dust and smoke.
“What the shock is going on…?” I ask.
Vincenzo, on the other hand, is too busy being batshit nuts to answer at the moment.
“You need me to finish solving you now, is that it?” Vincenzo asks the God Puzzle, letting all his elemental fire wash away. “Hee HA ho ho. Ah, you’re an impatient little thing, yes you are, threatening to blow us all up if I don’t solve you right now. Naughty little Puzzle. Very naughty.”
I ask the Machine if what he’s saying is true. The scans it runs confirms it.
It seems the God Puzzle must be solved in a single sitting. And Vincenzo already started to solve the Puzzle with Bone Machine before the girls knocked him out of it.
Still, no matter what, I can’t let him back into that Puzzle. I mean, if he does somehow manage to actually solve the thing…
Vincenzo begins to drool, staggering towards the God Puzzle like a zombie. “I will solve you now. I don’t need the bitch or her fancy toys to solve you. I’m a God. I’m the King of all I survey. I can do anything.”
“NO!” I scream, stumbling toward the madman as fast as my broken body will allow. Holding my bloodied gut with one hand, I start firing like crazy at him. Technomantic blasts, chants and incantations - all of it bounces harmlessly off his aura as he steps inside the spinning rings of the Puzzle.
“Get out of there, you monster!” I yell, reaching in to pull Vincenzo out of the God Puzzle when one of the spinning thought forms slams against my hand and breaks it.
I screech and howl and fall to my knees.
Damn it. Damn it all.
Helpless, I watch as energy beams whirl and shoot out of the Puzzle with abandon. Vincenzo starts moving switches and adjusting levers, concentration etched into his bloodied features. The God Puzzle changes shape around him and begins to glow with an unearthly red light. The entire Puzzle begins to shake violently, sending shockwaves out in all directions.
Raw power radiates from the Puzzle, sending cracks along the ceiling and tile floors. Pieces of debris rain down as I teleport away next to Chaz. I watch as a massive eight-foot chandelier dislodges from the ceiling and falls straight down atop Vincenzo and the God Puzzle - and shatters harmlessly into a beautiful display of glass and dust.
Raw terror washes over me suddenly.
I wipe tears from my eyes as I listen to Vincenzo’s words.
“MOO HOO HAH HA, HEE hee HA HA hee HO! YOU HEAR ME, YOU TEMPESTUOUS LITTLE TART? I DON’T NEED ANYONE TO SOLVE THE GOD PUZZLE! NOT THE BONE MACHINE! NOT THE NEMESIS MIND! NOT ANYONE!”
I start shaking as I hear his voice start to boom and crackle; deep and ominous like the sound of a thousand thunderstorms. He stares at me with those inhuman eyes - the eyes stolen from a long-dead All-Father, Odin - and they light aflame with impossible rage. The thunderclaps storm out of his mouth again, and I try like mad to hold back the tears…
“WHEN I BECOME GOD, I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU SUFFER A THOUSAND HELLS FOR MEDDLING WITH MY PLANS!! NOTHING CAN STOP ME FROM CLAIMING MY RIGHTFUL PLACE ON THE THRONE, DO YOU HEAR ME?? NOTH---!”
I hear a horrific scream.
His body starts to convulse and twist all on its own. His arms and legs twist and bend in all the wrong ways, and I almost lose my lunch as his bones erupt out from his skin in jagged pieces. As if that wasn’t enough, his skin just up and flays right off his body and starts swirling around the rest of him like a tornado. His throat, whatever’s left of it, goes raw from the screams, and I can’t help but smile as his body rips apart in a violent bloody mess - skewered alive by the tornado made out of his own skin.
It can only mean one thing: He solved it wrong.
Good.
Couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer guy.
The God Puzzle continues to radiate furious power as the entire second floor balcony breaks apart and collapses onto the debris-strewn floor. A massive piece of rock falls from the ground and lands on one of the unconscious girls, skewering her. Cursing at the quake in vain, I suddenly become aware of one of Vincenzo’s ego-strokery statues beginning to collapse on top of Chaz and me.
“Shit!” I grab him in my arms and teleport him outside the collapsing citadel.
We materialize outside the building, and I lay him down on the relative safety of the oozing, blemished ground outside. My hand is throbbing from the glancing blow, but I look on at the dying structure and realize my work’s not done yet.
Exhausted beyond exhausted, I somehow manage to teleport in and out of the collapsing mess and dodge the falling debris and the stray blasts radiating out from the disintegrating God Puzzle. I teleport the surviving slaves out one by one, letting my adrenaline fight against the pain of my broken hand and wounded stomach.
I’ve got the last one in my arms when a massive shockwave from the God Puzzle slams us both into the ground. Lying face-up, I look up to see the ceiling falling at us way too fast. The once-bright piece of concrete shape-shifts violently into a mass of spikes and sharp edges, the living wall terrified of its own destruction.
I grab her arm with my good hand and disappear the world from my view.
We reappear with Chaz and the other girls when, with a final shudder, Vincenzo’s citadel finally collapses in on itself in a massive plume of dust and soot that rises thick and heavy into the infernal winds. Silently, we watch in awe as the wreckage starts to shift and implode upon itself, disappearing violently in a wave of un-creation.
I collapse on my back then, burying my face in both my palms and start laughing like an idiot.
Tears fall down my eyes as I point both middle fingers at the space where Vincenzo‘s citadel once stood. “Ha. Take that, you sick bastard.”
The infernal winds kick up across the Foreversprawl of Twilight Madness. But not even the winds of hell can drown out my laughter.
***
A day later, I’m laying with Chaz on his bed about to commit me some murder.
“I’m not laughing, Chaz! Make your stupid living bong stop spitting out pot smoke right shocking now or I‘m going to filet your ass!” I yell.
“Rather not.” Chaz smiles, laying back in bed and petting that disgusting gargoyle-shaped living bong above us. “Henry likes the smoke. Says it gives the room an ‘ambiance.’”
“He’s trying to get me addicted to your bloody pot shit again! Stop it.”
“No, it’s cool. It means he likes you. Don’t you, Henry?”
He pets the gargoyle again, and it starts puffing its wares on me even harder.
“Aarrrgh!!!” I run out of bed and stomp towards the window, pushing it open with my good arm. My blood boils as Chaz just laughs.
“I will kill you for this, you evil little man.” I say to Chaz as I stare out his window, looking at the stars shining bright along the black night sky.
“You know, you’re sexy when you’re angry.” He gives me that look, and I consider throwing him out the window into traffic. It calms me down, somewhat. “So when are we having that ’I-just-prevented-the-end-of-the-world’ bang you promised me?”
I send out a small magic flare that lightly smacks the bed just shy of his crotch. Crossing my arms, my eyes light up with fire and I let him have it.
“There’s no way I’m doing that with these stupid headcases strapped to my nervous system!” I point at the Bone Machine, which is absent-mindedly orbiting around my aura at the moment.
“It’s cool. I don’t mind if they watch.”
“Rrrrrr! I hate you I hate you I hate you!” I lie, scrunching my hands into fists in a mad pout.
Chaz just laughs, and lays back in bed. “I still cannot believe you and I up and defeated a fucking God. A Mad God that was ready to kill the both of us, and we killed him dead.”
“If that twit was a God, then I’m the Queen of Latveria.”
“Uh, Latveria doesn’t exist anymore, babe. Got melted by that tyrant dude that took over the U.S. a couple months back.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”
“Tsss. So you got all the girls home safe and all that?” Chaz asks.
“Yeah.” I mutter. “Some of them had been missing for years thanks to that evil fuck.”
The awkward silence slaps us both in the face, slumping quiet and heavy like an elephant in the room. Chaz finally asks a question that I know‘s been on his mind since the whole thing with Vincenzo. “He’s definitely dead though, right?”
“Yep.” I grin, stretching my arms and turning back toward him. “The God Puzzle ripped his body to shreds when he solved the thing wrong.”
“Heh. Nice.” He says. “Wish I’d been awake to see it.”
“The only problem is that he took my goddamn Alphaglock with him into that machine. I wanted that gun back.”
Chaz smiles. “Well, at least you got those doofy-looking gloves out of the deal.”
“Yeah, good trade.” I mutter sarcastically. “I’d take the gun over those fashion disasters any day.”
“The magician would rather have the gun that the magic stuff. Imagine that.”
“Shut up, you bright-headed moron.” I grumble, pointing at him, noting the changing colors of his glowing hair. He just runs his fingers through it, cocky-as-hell.
I look up into the night sky and for a moment, I wonder how we managed to win.
Vincenzo was a pro - he’d been practicing the techno mantic arts for years. And as looney-tunes as he was, he was a master strategist; He studied me for months, learning how to block out my ability to sense his techno mantic aura. He did his homework on the Nemesis Mind, the Bone Machine and the God Puzzle. He played me like a flute and knew just who to go after in order to make me storm off into the Foreversprawl after him.
All of it just proves that even after all these months, I’m still glowing bright green around the gills.
I mean, keeping tabs on me with the Eyes of Odin. Sending the girl to kill Rades and Chaz. Siccing that person puppet dressed like John after me to dial my rage up to a billion. Turning my powers off with the Ludgates. Using that magic centrifuge to separate me from the Bone Machine.
He’d been toying with me from the start. He had his sick agenda all planned out from the get-go.
He should have won.
We should be dead.
There’s just no reason in the world that Chaz and I should still be alive. If Vincenzo hadn’t fucked up in solving that Puzzle, he would have become a God and skewered us both on the spot.
…right?
I glance at the stars in the sky and for just a moment, I swear I can see Vincenzo’s face outlined in the constellations.
I blink, and the face is gone.
Baldur’s sake, was it ever there?
Chaz is still talking to me, but I can barely hear him. I kiss him so hard, it seems like I might rip his face off.
Without a sound, I hold onto him as tight as I can and don’t let go.
***
THE END.
LIKE, FOR NOW.
***