Cody and Justin rushed out of the
stadium, chasing Valthakar. As soon as
Cody left, he turned his head to the right and looked down the street where
Valthakar was running. He was already a
distance away. Cody dashed after him,
hand outstretched and firing a magical beam.
Sparky ran ahead of him, shooting flames at Valthakar, but he was too
far away. Cody had never seen Valthakar
at his top speed before. Perhaps even
this wasn’t his top speed, but in any case, Valthakar’s sprinting was swift
enough that he soon vanished over the horizon.
A few minutes later, Cody stopped
running, and told Justin to do the same. “It’s no use,” Cody said. “We can’t outrun him. We’re going to have to do something else.”
“What else?” Justin asked, his voice
shaking a bit.
Cody took his human form. “This’ll be a start,” he said as he got out
his bugged phone and spoke into it.
“Hello, Mr. Lambert? This is urgent. Things have gone south and--”
Agent Lambert called him. Cody answered. “I’m here,” Lambert said. “I just handed your parents off to another
agent. What is it?”
“We were able to take out Kgobauru
and Nglavingithu, but Valthakar’s phylactery was too strong for Sparky to get
rid of. He’s running out of the Northwest
District right now. If he gets to a
payphone, or kills someone and takes their cell, it’s over. Can you do anything?”
“Let me think. I could cut off cell phone coverage around
here, and engineer a black out to shut down pay phones and land lines. That’d force him to go out of town if he
wanted to make any calls, or find a phone powered by a backup generator. Did he manage to get his phylactery back?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll have until he gets out
of town to figure out how to destroy it.
I’ll give the order to shut down power and phone coverage right now.”
Cody nodded. “Understood.”
He hung up.
Cody turned to Justin.
“What did he say?” Justin asked.
“He’s going to shut down all of the
phones around here, and the power too.
That’ll give us until Valthakar finds a way out of town to figure out
what to do. Let’s go back to the stadium
for the books. We’ll ask them about
things there.”
Justin nodded. The two ran back to the stadium. Cody went straight for On the Underworld.
“What, if anything, that I could
access in the next few hours, can destroy Orichalcum?”
“Nothing.
Orichalcum emits an aura which protects all substances near it. The only thing on your planet which might
destroy it is magma, and even that would not do so quickly.”
Cody closed his eyes. He thought.
“Anything?” Justin asked.
“We can’t destroy the phylactery.”
Justin shed a tear. “So, that’s it then? We lose?”
“Maybe,” Cody said. Then something occurred to him. “Hand me On
Soulless Ones,” Cody said. “If we
can’t destroy his phylactery, maybe we can use it to release Valthakar from his
binding spell. We’ve said before that
he’d have good reason to side with us if it weren’t for Bavandersloth’s spell.”
“We can’t,” Justin said. “I’m a few hundred souls away, and you’re
even farther, and the version we’d cast would take too long either way.”
Cody clenched his fist. “Hand it here anyway,” he said.
Justin sighed. “Alright.”
He handed it over.
Cody opened the book and wrote.
“How many more souls would Justin need
to be able to free Valthakar quickly enough for us to complete the ritual
before Valthakar reached a phone, and with materials we can reasonably acquire?”
“For the version of the ritual lasting about seven
minutes, perhaps five if he hurries, Tkoral’kiarch will need 529 more
souls. Turn the page for a description
of the ritual.”
Cody did.
“To free a bound lich in the second way, a lich with
1002 souls must place the phylactery of the lich meant to be freed in seawater
with the remains of a lifeform killed by the caster. They must then recite the following chant
while shaking the container: ‘Soulless One, bound to service, may your bondage
end this day. Cast off all chains. I free you!
I free you! I free you!’ Once the chant has been recited 34 times, the
container will slip out of the caster’s hands regardless of any effort they make
to hold onto it. If it shatters when it
hits the ground, the ritual will succeed and the lich will be freed from
bondage. If it comes to a rest and is
still intact, the ritual will fail. The
one who attempted to cast it will have 37 seconds to declare a lich’s name, and
they will be bound to that lich. If they
declare no name, they will join the lich they tried to free in service to its
master.”
Cody looked up at Justin. “You’re five-hundred-twenty-nine souls away
from being able to cast the spell in seven minutes.”
“Right. That’s like a year.”
Cody looked at Justin. He took a deep breath. “Justin, there’s a prison across town from
here. It has more than enough peop--”
Justin’s eyes widened. “You can’t mean--”
“Justin, the fate of the world is at
stake here. If Valthakar contacts
Larngulal, both of us are going to die. The
only way left after that to save the world would be for DIAPP to find Bavandersloth’s
phylactery by chance, with us knowing nothing of where it is but that it is
somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, or for them to flatten the area with bombs
powerful enough to kill way more than five-hundred-twenty-nine people. Are you willing to risk every last person,
including all of those prisoners, being ruled by Bavandersloth? Are you willing to risk Kandrinarkora coming
back?”
Justin looked at Cody. He hung his head down, and shed a tear. “I guess not.” He said.
Cody put his hand on Justin’s
shoulder. “It’s okay.” Justin wasn’t consoled. Cody kneeled down and looked him in the
eye. “Hey, listen. If you don’t, they’ll probably still be
eaten, but not by you. This way, at
least there’ll be something for them after you die.”
Justin took a deep breath. His tears didn’t stop flowing. Still, he looked up, and Cody stood. “Al…right,” Justin said. He took his true form. Cody did the same.
“It’s for the--” Cody began.
“Stop,” Justin said. “I said I’ll do it.”
Cody nodded. The two ran out of the stadium.
*****
Valthakar dashed out of the
Northwest District, frowning. He
wondered how long the boys had been working against his master. It couldn’t be that they were responsible for
the souls going blind. They weren’t
powerful enough. Not unless… unless they
had outside help. Was that it,
then? Who would it be? It’d have to be Gborin’gargoth, it seemed. Valthakar could think of no other
possibilities which stood up to scrutiny.
Yes.
Kandrinarkora was imprisoned on earth, and would be trying to get
free. Gborin’gargoth would want to stop
him.
It was clever, Valthakar had to
admit. Not on the boys’ part, but on
Gborin’gargoth’s. His readings of On the Underworld had already made it
clear to Val that Gborin’gargoth was working to suppress Kandrinarkora. If he did just a few things, large scale
feats, he’d be able to confound the community of liches with minimal
effort. The rest, he could have his weakling
avatars do, and no one would suspect them because the largest acts had been
beyond their ability.
It was so clever that the pleasure
of destroying it really did work toward making what Valthakar was going to do
worth it. It still wasn’t, of
course. That he would aid Bavandersloth
to victory pained him. That he would do so
again and again for as long as Bavandersloth reined pained him more so. Still, there was one fact that comforted him. No matter what happened, Bavandersloth’s rule
would end eventually, as would the earth, as would he. For others, that fact brought sadness, but
for him, it dulled it. No pain of his
would ever be eternal. However long the
next order lasted, it would not be forever, nor would the next, nor the next,
and one day, before he knew it, the order without him would arrive, and he
would never suffer again. Curse as he
did that blasted necklace’s magic, it could only imprison him for a finite time.
*****
Agent Lambert was on the phone with
one of his agents. “I’m almost there,”
the agent said. “Just one more push of a
button--” The call was dropped, which in
this case was a good thing. A few
seconds later, the lights went out.
Agent Lambert took a deep breath and turned off his phone. He wasn’t going to get any calls, so he may
as well save battery.
He sat back down in his chair and
took a deep breath. He didn’t know what
the boys were planning. Cody was clever,
but this situation did seem hopeless.
Soon, the building’s backup
generators took over, and Lambert pressed a button to speak to another
agent. “Get fifteen helicopters out
there scanning the city. Destroy
Valthakar’s body upon detection.”
Lambert took a deep breath.
“Disregard all collateral damage.
Killing him is to be your first priority.”
“Understood, sir,” an agent said in response. Lambert sat back. This base would still be able to communicate
with his own men through short range radio transceivers, and receive updates on
what they saw.
*****
Lester stood in line at the theater,
his parents in front of him. A trip to
the movies was a rare thing for Lester, but the new Starstreamer Chronicals movie was more than worth going to. His sister had also been delighted; not to
see the movie, but to have the house to herself for almost three hours.
Lester looked to either side to see
the posters around him. Of the four
films being advertised, two concerned Angels.
One was a documentary which credited “Light-rook” as a producer. The other was an action movie starring an
Angel who apparently called himself “Shieldcraft.” That poster was on the far side of the room,
so he couldn’t see who was meant to make it, though he imagined Bavandersloth
had a role in it as well.
As Lester stood in line, the lights
went out. His eyes widened. He looked up and around. The building had gone dark. Had the power gone out? He hoped not.
After the lights remained out for a
few minutes, and given that the desk clerk didn’t seem to know what was going
on, Lester had to conclude that is what had indeed happened. Crap.
It wasn’t too long before a woman
came through the door to confirm what he already knew and send everyone
away. Lester grumbled, but left the
theater. When his parents tried to call
a cab, he discovered that they had no reception. With nothing else to do, the three walked to
the sidewalk near the highway and held out their arms to signal for one.
*****
Valthakar finally encountered a
payphone and took his human form so he could retrieve his wallet from his
pocket. A few of the humans around were startled
by his seeming to appear out of nowhere, his invisibility deactivating as soon
as he took on his human disguise, but time was of the essence here. Bavandersloth had said on several broadcasts
that no human should interfere with an apparent Angel’s business, so he was not
bothered by the humans. He reached into
his wallet and took out two quarters. He
deposited the first into the phone, and then the second, and then the area
around him became much darker.
Valthakar looked around. He could see no lights. Soon, he realized that there had been a
blackout. He smiled. It was possible that this was a coincidence,
though given the existence of DIAPP it seemed more likely that it was not. He looked around. He found a young man fussing with his cell
phone and approached him.
“Hello, excuse me; I left my
cellphone at home. Do you mind if I use
yours to call my daughter?”
The boy looked up at him. “Oh uh… sure.” The boy handed the phone over. Valthakar entered Larngulal’s number, but
then saw that there was no reception. He
tried to make the call anyway, but he couldn’t.
“It doesn’t seem to be working for
me. Could you help me?” Valthakar handed the phone back to the boy.
After a moment, the boy looked
up. “Crap,” the boy said. “Apparently, I don’t have any reception. Sorry dude.”
Valthakar sighed. “Oh, it’s quite alright. I’ll see if someone else can help.” He walked away. When the next such attempt played out
similarly, Valthakar realized DIAPP was almost certainly involved. If that was the case, they’d have extended
the blackout as far as they felt they could.
Valthakar thought. Running out
that far would be tiresome. It would be
much easier to find some place with a generator.
Valthakar grinned. He knew of only one facility in the area,
with a phone anyway, which he was certain had such a device. He turned around and ran to it.
*****
Justin headed toward the prison,
covered in a cloud, his feet smacking concrete with each step. As he did, the power went off around
him. He reflexively slowed down for a
moment, but sped right back up, his surprise short lived.
He tried to think of anything other
than what he was going to do, but his thoughts wouldn’t budge from that
subject. He turned to look at Cody and
whispered as he ran. “Which prison is it
we’re heading toward?”
“I don’t know the name. It’s not the one your brother is in, if you
were worried about that.”
Justin looked down. He tried to shed a tear. “Okay.”
Justin’s thoughts continued to torment him. Regardless of whether he would encounter his
brother, he’d encounter other people’s brothers. They’d be no less sad when they died than
he’d be about his own brother. If he was
willing to do that to them, shouldn’t he be willing to do that to himself? Why was his brother so special?
Justin looked up at Cody again, but
then looked back down. He tried to think
about something else.
“Look out!” Cody said.
Justin looked up, ahead of him.
His eyes widened as he just barely managed to stop before smacking into
a wall at top speed and dropping the glass of shredded grass and seawater he
planned to use for the ritual.
Justin looked over at Cody. “Thanks,” he said.
Cody smiled. “No problem.”
*****
Deerward took a deep breath as he
sat back. He pressed the intercom
button. “Agent Thomson, any progress?”
“Odelarch and Tkoralkiarch are
nearing Central Square. We have a
helicopter on their tail. We’ve seen no
indication of where…” Agent Thomson stopped speaking. “Sir, something is making the locks on the
main entrance to this facility decay.”
“Disable the generator,” Deerward
said, “and our phone lines as well.”
“Yes, sir.” The intercom clicked as it deactivated.
A few seconds later, the lights went
out. It had occurred to Deerward that
Valthakar might try to use this facility’s power to make his phone call, and he
had had a contingency plan prepared in case of such an attempt. Deerward took a deep breath. Now it was simply a matter of the generators
not being re-enabled.
Deerward reached into his drawer for
a brightly colored pill. It was striped
yellow, lime green and sky blue. He
placed it on his desk, just in case he needed it. He didn’t expect to, though. The generator was in the basement. It would be quite the detour for Valthakar to
come all the way up to his office.
*****
As Lester’s cab inched down the
street, he saw a light out of the corner of his eye. Was the city’s power back on? No, he realized. It was Central Square’s Big Digital
Projector. The thing was connected to a
backup generator, he reasoned. It must
have been, as the streetlights in the square were still out. It being the only structure around with power
explained the crowd in the square, as Violet Fox was on the screen, talking
about the blackout.
Lester turned to his parents. “Hey, is it okay if I roll down the
window? I’d like to hear what’s going on
from the BDP while we’re near it.”
“Go ahead,” Lester’s father said
before resuming his conversation with his wife.
As Lester turned down the window, he
noticed a noxious smell. Immediately, he
turned the window back up. He looked
around, before noticing two dark spheres running to his left, toward the
square. Cody and Justin? Why?
As his father gasped upon noticing the same thing, Lester tracked the
clouds of darkness with his eyes. Was
this blackout something to do with them?
Were they out hunting early, now that Cody’s parents were gone? Were they hoping to prevent crime during the
blackout?
Soon after he saw the liches, Lester
heard the helicopter following them.
That had to be DIAPP, he supposed.
He watched them, thinking that he’d ask them about this later.
*****
As soon as John finished putting on
his suit, he dashed into the stairwell. An
alarm blazed, and sprinklers full of purple ink fell from the ceilings. He kept his head down to keep any of the ink
from getting on his visor and interfering with his vision.
He emerged from the stairwell in the
basement. He ran down the hall and
barged into the generator room, his right arm extended to shoot a blast of
flame at anything inside. The generator
was scorched and blackened, but not deformed.
A devourer-shaped figure of ink in the room was on fire. It turned to face him. John fired some liquid nitrogen from his left
arm at Valthakar’s feet, but not before he was able to move out of the
way. Valthakar dashed straight toward
John and extended his ink-covered scythe.
*****
With the exterminator swallowed,
Valthakar turned back to the generator.
He pressed a button on it and turned it on. Light flooded the basement. A few seconds later, another exterminator
entered the room. Valthakar turned
toward her and fired a magical blast, which, despite her managing to drench him
with the flamethrower once again, did succeed in killing her. Valthakar put up a shield and then dropped
and rolled to get the fire out. He
couldn’t run straight to the phone. Last
his souls had known, there were perhaps twenty exterminators in this
building. He needed all of them to run
at him before he could leave the generator alone, as otherwise, they would
simply turn it back off, or perhaps even destroy it with their grenade
launchers.
As he thought that, Valthakar got an
idea. He walked over to one of the
hallways leading into the generator room, the one on the right, and made the
floors decay away into spikes, as Bavandersloth had once. He did the same with the hallway across from
it. He left through the third and final
hallway. An exterminator immediately saw
him and launched a spray of liquid nitrogen, but Valthakar dove out of the
way. He dashed at full speed at the
exterminator, and crossed the distance to her before she could react. He ate her soul. Next, he spiked the floor of the hall leading
up to the generator room. After firing magical
beams down both halls, eliciting the scream of another exterminator, Valthakar
spiked both of the halls on one side of him, ran to the stairwell, and then
spiked the other side. He ran up the stairs,
eating another exterminator on the way up, and, once he was on the ground floor,
he made the stairs decay away. This was
only one of several stairwells in the building, he didn’t doubt, but its
absence would at least hinder them.
Valthakar ran out into the ground floor lobby, looking around for cubicles
in which he might find a phone.
*****
Deerward stood up as the lights came
back on in the facility, his eyes wide.
He activated the intercom.
“Where’s Valthakar?”
“On the second floor.”
“Can you turn the generator back
off?”
“We tried, sir. Valthakar must have done something down there
to stop it from working remotely, and the exterminators report the area to be
inaccessible. We were able to shut off
most of the phones, but about an eighth of them are still intact.”
Deerward thought. Was there anything to do? If he were lucky, he had fifteen minutes
before Valthakar called Larngulal and got all of them killed. With the entire community of liches acting
against them unconcerned about keeping their actions covert, their defeat was
all but certain. “Have the helicopter
after Odelarch send him a message. I
don’t care if a civilian hears it. Tell
them that they have about fifteen minutes to do whatever it is they need to do
to stop this. At the same time, keep
throwing exterminators at Valthakar however you can. Slow him down.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lambert’s eyes found themselves
looking toward that pill. If
Bavandersloth won…
*****
“He’s in the base,” Cody heard. “You’ll be out of time within fifteen
minutes.” Cody stopped in his
tracks. The people around him backed
away from his odor, but most of them were so unthreatened by his presence that
they didn’t leave the Square.
Justin turned to him. “Is… is fifteen minutes enough--”
“Nowhere close. There’s no way we’re getting to the prison in
time.”
Justin’s head hung down. “Is… is that it then?”
Cody thought. If Valthakar’s call made it through,
Larngulal would send whoever and whatever was necessary to kill Justin and him
for defying the community. The world’s principle
hope would be gone. DIAPP might still
stop the community, but was that worth the risk? They hadn’t been able to stop them in future
Cody saw. Cody bowed his head. “Look into the future the same way you showed
it to me. If I let Valthakar make that
call, does Bavandersloth win?”
Gborin took a moment to
respond. “Yes,” he said. “The community deduces that I have assisted
you. They descend on Goldfalls in the
guise of devourers to destroy you.
Because you cannot allow yourself to be destroyed peacefully for the
same reason you cannot smash your phylactery, their efforts involve a
large-scale assault on the city. With
the help of a weather controlling lich under Larngulal’s command, all attempts
to hold them back fail. The resulting
fear and panic from their destruction of this city, by devourers as far as
anyone can tell, gives them the worldwide audience they need to make the
broadcast as soon as Bavandersloth returns.”
Cody clenched his fist. Bavandersloth had told him a while back that they’d
not been willing to attempt such a large-scale attack to get the attention they
needed because it risked backfiring if even a few people suspected it was the
community. It seemed that such a risk would
have paid off after all. Cody looked
around. The helicopter message hadn’t
driven anyone away. He closed his eyes.
“Cody?” Justin said. “Have you thought of a way to get to the
prison in time?”
Cody turned around. “I’ve not.”
“So… that… that’s really it then?”
Cody shook his head. “The prison isn’t the only place with souls,
Justin.”
Justin’s eyes widened. He took a step backward. “You can’t… you can’t mean…”
Cody gulped. He felt like a vice grip was keeping him
still. He had to fight just so he could
nod.
“No…”
“You have to.”
Justin’s eyes were wide. “I can’t,” he shouted.
“Shhhhhh. Don’t let the people around here hear you.”
“I…”
Justin looked down. “There’s no
other way? Is that what Gborin just--”
“Yes.” Against his will, Cody’s eyes focused on the
people behind Justin. He closed
them. “I’ll start paralyzing the people
around here. You… you know what I need
you to do.”
Justin sobbed, though his form
prevented any tear from escaping him. He
fell to his knees, drawing a few looks due to the sudden motion of his
cloud. “I…”
“Stand up, Justin.”
Justin sobbed a few more times. He stood up and raised his scythe. Both liches mutated their shadows into a
humanoid form so the community could pass this off as a devourer attack. He was still pretending to work for them. Cody rushed to the edge of the hole his scent
had made in the crowd, lay his hand a person in the crowd, and knocked them
out. He did the same thing with his
other hand. He moved his first hand to a
new person and did the same thing to them.
*****
Justin’s scythe scooped out the soul
of an old woman first. She tasted sweet
and fruity. The old man next to her was
similar. As people started to collapse,
the other people near them noticed and screamed. As Justin chewed another soul, the crowd
dispersed and people started running away.
Justin pounced a young woman, and took her soul, still letting out his
dry sobs. He dashed over to a man about
his brother’s age and ate him. As the
crowd ran away from him, he saw someone push someone else down to get them out
of his way. The pusher’s eyes were wide
as he looked back. Justin ran toward
him, causing him to speed up. Still, the
human had no hope of outrunning Justin, who could taste that final push on the
man’s soul as he gulped it down. Justin
ran back over to the girl who’d been pushed.
She was around Cody’s age. She
stared upward as Justin approached her.
She screamed, and franticly tried to get up, but one of the others in
the crowd must have trampled over her ankle or something, because she
couldn’t. Justin dipped his scythe down
when he reached her and ate her soul.
As he looked up from her body, he
set his sights on another passing man.
He held out his hand and knocked him down with a magical beam to the
ankle. The man fell to the ground,
scraping his knee. As Justin ran toward
him, another man carelessly stomped on him, making an audible crack and
eliciting a scream. Justin turned his
head toward that person and ran after them at full speed. He scooped out their soul and ate it, noticing
it tasting vaguely of chocolate milk.
Justin tackled and ate a few more humans, including a couple who
reminded him of his parents, before making his way back to the man he’d
disabled. There was a bloody spot on his
upper leg from another person stomping on him, and a woman had tripped over him
and fallen. He tried to take her soul
first, but she had apparently already been trampled to death. Justin sobbed and then turned to finally take
the first man’s soul.
*****
Cody looked up from his work as he
heard a helicopter arrive. It bore a
camera on its front and a Channel 4 News logo. He looked back down. He had to knock these people out
strategically. If they were trampled,
they’d be wasted. He turned toward
another woman. Her face looked kind of
like Cherie’s, though her hair was bright red.
He knocked her out and then threw her onto his low pile of mortals. Over the screaming, he could sort of hear
Violet Fox reporting on what he was doing over the news.
The crowd thinned faster than Cody had
imagined it would. There had been
something like a thousand people in the square.
All but a few hundred had already been caught or had escaped. Cody tackled a woman to the ground. This one looked like his mother. He knocked her out, and then leapt straight
to another person, an older man who reminded him of his grandfather, and did
the same to him. He heard a yell. He looked up and saw someone running toward
him, preparing to punch him. Cody just
stood there and magically knocked the man out as he touched him, making the man
fall to the ground with his fist still in a ball.
*****
As Lambert sat in his office, he got
a radio message. He pressed a
button. “What is it?” he asked.
“Our helicopter watching the boys
says something’s happened with them.
They’ve started slaughtering the crowd.
One of them is eating them while the other is incapacitating and
gathering them into a pile. They can’t
tell if the civilians in the pile are dead or unconscious. They’re asking for permission to fire on the
devourers.”
Lambert’s eyes were wide. He thought.
Why would… wait…
“Sir?”
“Hold on a moment.”
Lambert opened up his desk and got a
copy of On Soulless Ones out of a
drawer. He opened it and asked it a
question.
“Are the boys gathering souls they need to cast a spell that
will stop Valthakar?”
“Yes.”
Lambert thought. That must be how they’d reacted to his alert. Could he allow this? Knowing Cody, if he was working with
Gborin’gargoth, he’d not do this unless he thought there was no other option,
and the fact that they did this meant they were planning something
specific. Whatever they were doing, it
was probably the only way to save the world…
Lambert pressed the button. “Tell them to hold their fire. Sit back and observe.”
“What?”
“You heard me. They are not to fire on Odelarch or
Tkoralkiarch.”
“Sir, letting them attack a crowd of
civilians would be a violation of--”
“I am ordering them not to
fire. I am your superior officer. Is that understood?”
The agent took a moment to speak. “Understood, sir.”
Lambert sat back. He turned the intercom off and buried his
face in his palms. He was putting a lot
of faith in Cody, but Valthakar was minutes away from success. This was humanity’s last chance.
*****
Justin stood up from another kill to
see someone running for the space between two cars. He dashed over to them and ate them. He heard an unusual scream and turned his
head. Cody ran through his peripheral
vision, but Justin ignored him. He saw a
boy about his age looking around for his parents. He sobbed.
He didn’t even think about killing that boy. Instead, he turned to look at the people
running away from the cars. He saw a man
in a taxi driver’s uniform. He ran after
him and ate him. A woman near him turned
around. When she saw that he was so
close, she screamed and sped up, that seemed to be everyone’s reaction to
Justin at the moment, but Justin ate her, and then the man she was running
with.
There was another boy, about Cody’s
age, who looked familiar to Justin. Still,
he couldn’t place his face, and, despite his sob, he supposed it didn’t
matter. He tackled the boy to the
ground. After this one, he thought, he’d
go back to eat the ones Cody had knocked out.
He was pretty sure there’d been enough.
The teenager squirmed. “Yo, man, please…” Justin raised his scythe. As he scooped out the teen’s soul and popped
it into his mouth, he heard the boy’s last words. “Cody, don--”
*****
Cody’s eyes widened as he heard
Lester’s cry. It couldn’t possibly be…
he, abandoned the human he’d been chasing and ran straight toward the
voice. Justin looked up at him, still
leaning over the dead body. Cody could
see his friend’s form from where he was.
He stared at Lester’s corpse, whose open eyes were still pointed up at
Justin, frozen in terror. Cody fell to
his knees and cried. It was a dry cry,
but every bit as much of a cry as it would have been in his other form, Cody
realized. He crawled over to Lester’s
body. He put his hand on it. He looked at Justin. “Go eat from the pile until you’ve had
enough,” he said. “Perform the ritual.”
Justin nodded and stood up. Cody looked down at his best friend. Memories flashed through his mind. Several were of times Lester had given Cody
advice. A few were some of his favorite
games he’d played with him. One was the
lunch they’d had together after a grueling test. The last was about a year ago, when he and
Lester had talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up. Cody had wanted to be a historian. Lester… Cody couldn’t remember what Lester
had wanted to be. It didn’t matter now,
he supposed.
Cody sobbed, his head against the
stomach of Lester’s corpse. After a few
minutes, he heard the crowd dissipate as everyone got away. Not too long after that, he heard Justin
shouting the chant the book had told him about.
“Soulless One, bound to service, may
your bondage end this day,” Justin said, his voice shaking. “Cast off all chains. I free you!
I free you! I free you!”
Cody was painfully aware of the news
helicopter above him, but he’d come up with some explanation later as to why
the devourer he was playing would take an interest in Lester’s corpse.
He looked back down at Lester’s
body. He would see his friend again, he
supposed. He would see his friend
again. It would be as one of Justin’s
souls, but still. As Cody thought, he
remembered the time he’d talked to Lester about Valthakar. He told Cody that if he had the choice, it
would be better to kill him than let him be eaten, by Cody or Valthakar. That was months ago, but Cody didn’t think
Lester had changed his mind. “You were
stubborn about that sort of thing,” Cody whispered to Lester’s body. His arms, which had been holding Cody up from
the ground, finally gave out, and he collapsed on Lester and uttered a mindless
sob, whispering his friend’s name repeatedly.
*****
Valthakar frowned as he finally
found a phone. He rushed over to it,
picked it up and dialed Larngulal’s number.
He stood, waiting for her to answer.
As he stood, he felt something
strange. It was mild at first, but
escalated. It rushed over him like a
cool breeze, making him feel lighter. A
weight lifted off of him, making him beam.
Had those two… had they really?
They had. They’d freed him. He could tell.
“Hello? What is it?” Larngulal said. Valthakar smiled and hung up. He laughed.
He laughed hysterically. He fell
on the floor and started rocking back and forth. “Ha Ha ha ha HA ha ha Ha ha Ha Ha HA HA HA
HA.” Free at last! He couldn’t remember the last time he was
this happy. He was going to have so much
fun exploding Bavandersloth’s carefully laid plans. This just might be the best time he’d ever
had in all his twelve-thousand years.
*****
Agent Lambert received another
message. He pressed a button and listened.
“Sir, Valthakar has been seen
leaving the facility. Whatever Odelarch
and Tkoralkiarch did, it seems to have worked.
He used one of the office phones to make one call, but he hung up
immediately afterward. He didn’t give
the recipient any information.”
Agent Lambert let out a massive sigh
of relief. “Acknowledged,” he said. He smiled and put his pill back in the
cabinet. He needed to get Cody’s friends
out of town, he realized, so he couldn’t rest just yet. However, he allowed himself a few minutes
with his eyes closed, his head back, and his mind relaxingly empty.
*****
Cody looked up from Lester’s corpse when
he heard Valthakar approaching. He
started to speak, but then Valthakar ran at him and punched him. “Away, cur!” he shouted, and punched Cody in
the stomach, sending him flying into a nearby car.
“What the heck?” Cody asked, but
then he realized what the answer probably was.
He was still disguised as a devourer.
Valthakar, made to look like an Angel, couldn’t be seen to contact him
except hostilely, or to allow him to slaughter civilians unmolested. Cody stood up, but Valthakar went at him
again, this time taking him out of the view of the news helicopter. Cody immediately took his human form. Valthakar did the same. They moved into a different alley before
Valthakar sat down. Cody looked at
him. “Do I have to worry about my
friends now that you’re free?” he asked.
Valthakar smirked. “Cody, you never had to worry about
them. Is that not what I told you? A lot of grief, including what you feel right
now if that body was who I thought it was, would be saved if you didn’t worry
about them.”
Cody shed a tear. “Shut up.”
“Ooh, so it was who I thought it
was.” Valthakar leaned back. “Typical do-gooder. You killed all of those people, who had best
friends, wives, children, parents, and cry as you might, you followed
through. As soon as it’s someone you know
however--”
Cody’s eyebrows curled and his face
reddened. “I told you to shut up!”
Valthakar looked at Cody. “You did, didn’t you?” He reached under a dumpster and pulled out a
rat. The thing squirmed and bit him as
he gripped it in his arms too tightly for it to escape and stroked it gently,
as one might a lap dog. “Well, I suppose
it’s unfortunate for you that I don’t take orders from you, or anyone. I thought you’d be happy about that. You just murdered one of the friends you used
to go to such lengths to try to protect from me to arrange that circumstance.”
Cody seethed. “When this is over, I’m going to kill you.”
Valthakar grinned. “Ah, there’s the Odelarch I like to see. I do hope I’ve not hurt your feelings too
badly, I really do want to work with you.
It’s just so hard not to say I told you so when, well, I did tell you so, over and over again,
for weeks.”
Cody seethed. “I’m going to kill you painfully.”
Valthakar chuckled. “Or else the reverse. Or else you’ll see my way of things.” He stroked the rat’s furry head as it
struggled. “Regardless, in the meantime,
I have every intention of cooperating with you, and I see no need to alienate
you, so your friends are safe. Well,
safe from me. Nothing is ever actually
safe.” Valthakar set the rat down and
stomped on its tail, causing to run away from his foot, and into traffic.
Cody sighed. “Alright then.” He tried to push Lester out of his mind and
do some planning with his new ally, but before he could, Valthakar resumed
talking.
“I don’t suppose I’m in any position
to mock you for being a do-gooder. The
paradise I bought my way into has a purgatory preceding it, so I don’t expect
to think any differently from you during my time there.” He lay back, resting his head on his hands. “Still, even that won’t last forever. Perhaps if Gborin’gargoth is usurped, it will
be by someone who will let me see the truth of things again as I do now.”
Cody clenched his fist. “Well, before that can happen, we need to stop
the community. As I reason it now, that
involves two crucial things. First, we
have to kill Bavandersloth. Second, we
have to make it impossible for a new lich similar to Bavandersloth to be created.” Cody put his head down. “Is there a way to stop any new liches from
being created on Earth?”
“Actually, there might be,” Gborin
said.
Cody’s eyes widened a bit. “Really?”
“Yes. You could cast a spell on the Earth to make
it hostile to lich creation for a time.
If Valthakar were to do it, he could make it last perhaps a year, with
an hour-long ritual. It’d require some
normally impossibly rare magical substances, but I could send them to you.”
Cody smiled.
“What did he say?” Valthakar asked.
“You’re powerful enough to cast a
spell that could temporarily prevent lich creation.”
Valthakar lay back. “I see.
Speaking of seeing, I don’t see the little one. Where is he?”
“I’m not sure.”
Valthakar sighed and then stood
up. “Well, we’d best find him and
regroup. With the mansion gone, it might
be best to base ourselves out of the Northwest District. There are some lovely houses there. As soon as we have one picked out, I’ll run
to the Rocky Mountains. I was the one
who put Bavandersloth’s phylactery there.
I don’t remember exactly where, but I think I’ll have the easiest time
finding it.”
“Sounds good.”
Valthakar stood up and took his true
form. Cody did the same, looking down,
and letting Lester enter his mind again.
He punched the dumpster as he walked by it, making a dent. Valthakar turned around and said something
sarcastic, but Cody didn’t listen this time.
