Chapter Eleven: Ensnared
Her head was throbbing, pounding and pulsing as she awoke in agony in the bright sunlight. It washed over her body, filling her closed eyelids with its white heat and she felt parched, dehydrated. Her lips were dry and cracked, and she longed with a passion for a long drink of water from her flask, yet as she attempted to move her arms, she felt bound. A piercing clinking filled her ears, the clink of metal against metal, holding and weighting her down with the heavy steel of large metal chains. Sera became aware of chanting all around her, the frenzy of hundreds of people clamoring for blood, and as she opened her eyes, pupils contracting rapidly against the light that assailed her, she could see that she was not wrong at all.
She found herself bound to a large wooden pole erected at the head of a set of stone steps that lead into the inner sanctum of this town, which could be none other than Sallak, the Old Salt Lake City, New Zion. It's zealous people, who descended from the Mormon faith, had degenerated from a proud culture of light and epiphany into a leeching, seething mob, seeking fresh blood for the sacrifice that they thought necessary for the world to move on, and allow Christ to re-enter the world.
“Do you see them, Sera? Do you see how they crave your blood? How they thirst after it, wanting to watch it spill onto the ground? Seth's voice called out, just under the volume of the crowd that had so gathered around this wicked stage.
The Wanderer, Seth, the ravening dog.
“Don't do this to them. They're human for Christ's sake!” she cried out in despair.
He laughed, an insane laugh, full of his madness and the darkest depths of depravity. “They do this for him! They do this for him of their own free will. This is their own iniquity, as they thought themselves better than the Jews, for failing to hail Christ as their savior, their kind, so shall they fall for their failure to recognize you as theirs. It's a horrible thing, for a people to revile the one who was destined to redeem them.”
“I'm not here for their souls, I'm . . .” she struggled against the chains that held her against her will. “I came for Jack. Just let me go, and finish what I came to do,” she plead.
“I'm afraid that even if I wanted to set you free, which I don't, I seriously doubt that they would allow me to. You see, it's the nature of men to . . .”
“Shut the fuck up,” Sera said flatly.
“Why you insolent little bitch . . .” the anger at being interrupted was clearly visible on his face.
“I said shut the fuck up! I'm sick of your long, drawn out speeches that you enjoy so much. I'm sick and fucking tired of them, and you. Talk is pointless, meaningless chatter and I don't want to hear it anymore, so do what you have to do, and let me alone.”
“I should gag you, that'll hold your deviant little tongue.”
“Tell me what you did with Gabriel, and I'll let you live a little longer.”
“Hmm, I thought you wanted me to shut up? You can't have it both ways you . . .”
“Where is he?” she interrupted again.
“ . . . arrogant, sassy little slut. Instead of just telling you where he is, I'll show you. No, I'll tell you first, and then I'll show you,” he grinned at her, his violet eyes gleaming the same sickening glee as that toothy smile did. Her stomach felt queasy as he spoke, filling her with an uneasy dread that tightened her throat and made it difficult to breathe, as if she somehow understood what was happening.
“He works for me, girl. He is my loyal servant, following my commands to the letter without question. In short, your little tryst with him meant nothing at all, he was just doing as I told him.” He laughed again, that irritating depraved hooting howl of a laugh. She couldn't believe it, the shock of this revelation shook her iron will, as the unbelieving part of her was washed away.
“Gabriel, come here.”
Sera turned her head to watch in stunned, hurt silence as he walked through the doors behind her, letting the hard wooden doors slam together from his swing. With no hesitation in his step, no pause in his stride, he walked to where Seth, the snake in the grass, stood and stopped.
“You see, he's well-trained, and does exactly as I tell him,” he paused a moment before continuing, as if waiting for her to interrupt, but Sera was too shocked, too hurt to do so. Seth lectured on, “Men are a thieving, murderous lot of deceitful, lying malcontents, seeking to destroy that which they don't understand, and control that which they do. I knowingly include myself in this grouping. I'm a lying, worthless piece of human excrement and I don't deserve to live.” He laughed at this, “We plot and we scheme, attempting to get ahead in whatever way we can, but it is never enough, and so we can't wait for an opportunity to present itself in which we can take full advantage. These people? These 'good' men and women and children? It's all I can do to keep them from throwing shoes right now. They want your life, Sera, they need it. They wanted it before I even suggested it. I simply took that desire to kill, to rape, to plunder, and directed it towards you. You cannot just blame me for what they do, you must blame them as well, and maybe even yourself.”
The agony ripping her soul and her heart to shreds was too much to bear, on top of the exhaustion from the beatings her body had withstood in the last twenty-four hours, let alone the last week, and she began to weep. The tears could not flow, though, there was not enough water to do so, but she sobbed regardless, miserable and alone.
“She has confessed! She has used her own mouth to declare that she is a witch, a sinner, a traitor to our kind, and in league with the devil himself!” The crowd roared its approval, crying out for her blood, to see her dead and lifeless, to be hanged on the wall on the outside for the vultures and scavengers to pick at. Her crying ended as a shadow passed overhead. A lone raven circling about, waiting for her death so it could feed, peck out the soft flesh of her eyes, and she didn't care if it did, not anymore. Too much, far too much for one person to bear. The burden was too great, she thought. As her eyes followed the raven's flight, high atop the stone sanctum, the former glorious Salt Lake City Temple, she watched as it lighted upon the shoulder of a golden cloak. Jack was watching, his hood up, hidden in the cloudless blue sky. Hiding in plain sight, the last place any would look for him. Anybody, that is, except her.
“Gabriel, kill her. Put her out of our collective misery and send her head first into whatever lies beyond this mortal realm,” Seth commanded, sure of himself as he was sure of Gabriel's shot, which fired straight and true through the air, and the blast rang out in the air, sending the raven from Jack's shoulder as it did so. The bullet slammed into her skull, into her right eye, blood oozing from the socket, and spraying out the back of her head with fragments of bone and gray matter.
She was dead! Oh, God, he though, she's dead! I've killed her! He was imprisoned in his own body, locked inside his skull, watching as his body moved, as if strings had been attached to each of his limbs. Motor function was no longer under his control, he was merely a puppet, a marionette, and while he watched, he had raised his arm and blown her fucking head off. She was limp in her chains, unable to move or breathe, or anything else ever again. It's my fault, he raged at himself, though his mouth did not move as he did so. It's all my fault and I've killed her! If he could have, Gabriel would have fallen to his knees and wept, cried a river of tears so wide that it filled the whole world. Seth was laughing on his right, laughing and howling in animal pleasure at the scene he had so carefully staged. It was him. Seth had done this, had somehow forced, coerced him into doing this cursed act! Seth, the wretched cur, Seth, the ravening dog. Seth, the Wanderer, would pay for his crime, pay with his life as soon as Gabriel could bring himself to aim the gun. A shot rang off, echoing through the air and on the stone.
Sera was aware of everything, the way the mud smelled in the breeze that carried various scents to her, the musky odor of sweat soaked leathers and burning metal, the way the sun glinted off the metal garden tools raised high in the air against her, aware of the deafening roar of the crowd's approval. She watched in horror as her lover, Gabriel turned his gun to her head and pulled the trigger, the way the bullet blocked the vision in her right eye as it penetrated, digging deep into her brains, the way the fragments of her skull shot off the back of her head, spraying the wooden post behind her, the very post she was bound to, with her blood and tiny slivers of her bone.
She was aware of all these things and more, yet felt distant from them, somehow apart from them. It isn't happening, she thought madly, I'm not dead. Blinking to clear her vision, she closed eyes, and when she opened them, the entire scene was gone from her sight. A familiar place had somehow surrounded her, cloaking her in black, silent warmth. There was nothing surrounding her, nothing as far as the eye could see, except for that seed which wasn't a seed, pulsing with life and beating the same staccato rhythm as her heart. It was white and pure, reaching out a single tendril as her hand neared it. The wanting to touch this seed, this source that somehow contained the secrets of the universe was far too great for her to bear, and so she gave in, touching the heart of the universe, far from the prying eyes of any who would watch her.
In touching this seed, in feeling the heart and soul of the universe, she became aware of two distinct and separate realities. Two streams of time that flowed nearly identical through the universe and that gave the feeling of a multiplicity of still more, unseen, unimagined, untouched, and perhaps untouchable, but these others did not concern her. Only the two that were clear in her mind, with consequences that percussed and beat in time with her own heart. She was dead already in one of these streams that coursed blue with both heat and cold and the death of the human race, its demise, was imminent. In the other, she had not died yet, but her species was still doomed, having been unable to tread any path in history save their destruction. The heart of the universe was knowledge, all matter and energy compressed into a simple glowing sphere that pulsed with life and anticipation of life. Was it her life that it thrummed with? Was it the heart of her universe or the other? Maybe there was no difference.
That strange feeling of timelessness poured through her, rippling with its effects on her mind, depleting her, draining her, yet it was exuberance she felt, not exhaustion, and she released her hold on the seed that was not a seed. Was it somehow possible for her to change history? No, she thought not, but perhaps, if she could backtrack, she could redirect its flow into that other universe, the one where she did not die at the hands of her lover, one where Gabriel did not die shortly after, where the salvation of mankind was still possible, however unlikely. The choice that was not a choice at all, she had to try to change history, her world's course through the cosmos. It ripple around her in maddening waves increasing with each pulse of the heart's beat, crescendoing in a manner similar to battle, its din the clash of swords and the flash of gunfire, it was bursting in her brain. Time was flowing downhill, spiraling and spilling through the rocks like an hourglass losing its sand, and it was a critical point, where the fate of humanity lay in the balance. It was a turning point where, as everything descended to insanity around her, she had to keep her path turning against the spiral just to maintain a straight course. Sometimes the twists and turns she was forced to make led her one way or the other, but with each step she took, she kept just out of reach of the hungry maw waiting below in the whirlpool, waiting to consume her and the rest of humanity with her. One hungry ma-fa, she thought crazily, one hungry son of a bitch. Time was streaming backwards now, and she felt the ripples continue to grow around her, a pebble in a pond, except that she was on a tiny lifeboat, about to be capsized by the waves she herself had created, flying up and down the height of the waves, caught in the storm of reality around her, buffeting her about with abandon, light, energy, tiny streams of particles that she could not see but could feel flowing around her and through her, dragging her from her hold and pulling her towards the heart once more, the heart that was beating open and closed as she neared it, hungry, and waiting to consume her. It loomed largely before her, larger than it had been before, or maybe she was shrinking. Either way, she was swallowed by the warm black oblivion that wrapped itself around her and gave the feeling that she was falling from such a great height, it seemed, that she must fall forever. She blacked out.
Her head was pounding, throbbing and pulsing as she awoke in agony in the bright sunlight. It poured through her brain and her eyelids, filling her vision with red and orange heat that burned her mind with its intensity. Water, she thought dimly, I need water. Her lips were chapped and cracked, and as she became aware of her surroundings, the knowledge of what she had seen and done came back to her.
“Do you see them, Sera? Do you see how they crave your blood? How they thirst after it, wanting to watch it spill upon the ground?” Seth, the Wanderer, the ravening dog.
“Where is Gabriel, you arrogant prick? Bring him to me or I'll not stay my hand when the time comes for you to die. I'll bring your death swiftly, with more mercy than you deserve.” Her emerald eyes flashed passionately and powerfully, watching distress bloom in those dangerous violet eyes.
You cannot change the course of history, Sera. If fate means for you to die, then you must. Jack's voice, traveling along a tiny thread, becoming gold as it neared her. She sent her own thought back along the same strand. And you know everything that fate, our destinies might hold? Are you then Fate incarnate, the universe's bitch? Don't meddle in my affairs. She turned her head upwards to Jack's perch, where he should have been sitting, watching, his golden cougar-fur cloak whipping in the wind, but he wasn't there.
“ . . . arrogant, sassy little slut. You haven't been listening while I spoke on the finer points of my little scheme, have you? No matter. While I am a bit hurt,” he tapped his chest with a fist, “hurt right here, I won't let that stop me from moving right along. Gabriel?”
Gabriel let the doors of the temple slam shut behind him as he strolled to Seth's side, obedient as ever. Had he felt nothing for her at all? It certainly seemed as if he had at the time, even though now he stood stone-faced and ready to kill her on command.
“ . . . a sinner and a traitor to mankind . . .” his shouting speech was lost in the roar of the crowd's thunder. Sera ignored it, using the time to channel her love and deep caring for the boy back along his golden thread and hoped that his own would return to her, shake him from this path that lead to her death.
Seth was finishing his speech, and giving the command to once again kill her, and Gabriel did so, drawing the pistol from its holster at the small of his back, pointing at her head and pulling the trigger.
Gabriel was finally able to move his hand, and though Sera, the girl he loved, was dead, killed by his own hand, he would avenge her death, kill the treacherous Seth. That ravening dog would pay with his life, even if it meant that he would die as well. What other purpose did he have to live for now? Sera was dead. He might as well join her, and what better way than to do it in vengeance.
His blood ran cold as he aimed the gun carefully at the man who had betrayed them, had used him as the weapon of her destruction. Seth was laughing, unable to see this blow coming, and had loosened his control over Gabriel. He pulled the trigger of his weapon again, catching Seth in the cheek and spraying his brains out onto the wall of the temple. The granite ran crimson from the blood, bone fragments dripping down the wall and pooling on the stone steps upon which he stood. Even as Seth's body fell to the ground, he could feel his own blood pouring out his chest, penetrated deeply by some spear. As he looked own, he could see the end of it, barbed on four points, bits of his muscle clinging to it, blood gushing from the gaping hole in his torso. He clutched at the spearhead vainly, as he fell to the floor, the stone steps doing nothing to cushion him. He was descending, spiraling downward to the black, embraced by the cold fingers of his own death, and caring little for what destiny lay in store for humanity.
Sera was back in the darkest depths of the universe, the heart of it beating out its black rhythm in time with her pulse and embracing her with the warmth contained within that tiny seed. It was reaching out to her, and she to it, light coursing all around and through her, filling her with an exhilarating sense of both hope and dread. What if she couldn't change history at all? Could she just wait here forever, with the cosmos streaming around her and beckoning her to stay? She wasn't dead, though she had died twice now, had felt the cold of it crushing her body and absorbing it back into the earth, no, she was alive, and could still save men, for whatever destiny or fate that the future might hold for them, as hopeless as that future might seem. She might still be able to alter inexorably their paths and move them one step closer to becoming free of the cycle to which she had been born, the cycle they had somehow created, somehow wrought to determine their history. Cruel nature of the beast, she though, that the people I seek to save are the same who would see me dead. Not that she cared. Time and reality bent, curved around her, rippling and beating her backwards, back to that pivotal moment in human history, and she let it flow over and around her, let it course backwards so that she might once and for all be free of this timeless place, free of the machinations of Seth and of the universe. That her people would once again be free.
Whatever that freedom might yield.
The blackness surrounding her gave way for the heat and light of the sun, beaming down at her and causing her agony as her head beat and pulsed with her heart's steady thrum. The thrum of a coin-operated washing machine, one that echoed back from the heart and soul of the universe, that echoed in the heart of her lover from behind the closed temple doors and from Jack, high atop his stone aerie, lost in the reverie she was attuned to. Her heart beat onward as the crowd around her roared for her blood, and sought her life, and as Seth, the smiling Wanderer, the ravening dog strode arrogantly towards her.
No, she though, you won't get the pleasure of seeing me dead again. Could she do this once more? She didn't think so.
“Do you see them, Sera? Do you see how they crave your blood? How they thirst after it, wanting to watch it spill on the ground?” Seth, she though, you sly snake.
His feet left the ground, lifted aloft by the sheer intensity of her will, held prisoner in the air by a tiny golden thread, helpless and flailing about, hoping to move somehow away from her power. “You sassy little slut! I'll see you dead! The witch! The devil's whore! Kill her where she stands!”
The crowd around her angered, seethed with unholy life, as a shadow covered their eyes. What are you doing, Sera? You cannot change your fate. Jack's voice. And her reply, I do whatever I have to do. Six men rushed for her, armed with sharpened hoes and pitchforks, attempting to pierce her, to finish her where she sat, bound by the heavy steel chains to the wooden pole.
“Gabriel!” she cried, hoping that somehow the bonds of control that Seth had put him under were broken. “Gabriel! I need you!”
The temple doors could not hold him back. He was freed from Seth's mind, able to act and move of his own volition, and he was furious. “Back! All of you! Or I'll blow your prophet's fucking head off! Get the fuck back!” His gun was drawn, and he leveled it straight at Seth's face, and in all seriousness he would have done just that had any of those righteous six made any further moves towards his girl. Sera, the girl he loved, would not die if he could stop it. His anger was boiling inside of him, and if Seth so much as tried to wiggle a toe without her permission, he would blast him into the underworld, down to the hell that he deserved.
“The keys?” she asked.
“Where are the fucking keys, Seth?” Gabriel raged!
“I don't know what you . . .”
Gabriel fired just to the right of Seth's head, tearing a tiny chunk from his ear. “Where are the fucking keys? I'll not ask you again!”
“Christ! My fucking ear! No don't,” he cried as the bobbed angrily in Gabriel's hand. “Don't! They're in my pocket!” Gabriel reached up and pulled a large keyring with a leather strap from the Wanderer's helpless pocket. The key was obvious to his eyes, the only one of its kind on the ring. Masterlock, its inscription read on the nickel-plated steel. The key turned easily in the steel lock, yet even as the chains fell from her arms, and she stood, the six men rushed at her once more, thrusting with lethal intent at both her and Gabriel. Seth, now freed from his hold by this distraction, ran to the doors of the temple as a shot from Gabriel's gun slammed into his shoulder. Sera grabbed at the nearest pitchfork made trident and turned it aside, ripping it from the hands of her attacker and using it to deflect the other blows. It became a whirling weapon, dealing death quickly to the first two to meet it. It's tines tore at the flesh of her foes and put holes in their guts, pulling and wrenching intestines from their abdomens. She cracked one of them across the jaw with the fork's handle, spinning him around and knocking him to the steps, head and hands clutching at his face. Gabriel pulled the trigger twice, catching one in the knee and another in the hand. Both of them dropped their weapons and clutched at their bleeding wounds, crying their pain and misery and attempting without success to staunch the bleeding.
“Leave,” she told the remaining man. “Leave or I'll be forced to kill you as well.” He turned to join the crowd, and she continued speaking to the rest of the people gathered. “That goes for all of you too. Leave, and hind my companion and I no longer. If you follow us, or try in any way to stop us, I will kill you.”
The mob began murmuring to itself. Murderers. They've killed our good God-fearing men. They serve the Devil himself. Lucifer, Satan is their master. Nonetheless, the crowd dispersed, but only slightly, gathering in tiny circles, huddling together and asking each other what they might do against the spawn of Satan.
“Good enough,” she mumbled. “Let's finish this bastard's scheming once and for all,” she said, and Gabriel acquiesced readily. The doors of the great temple, the ornately carved wooden gates to the unknown and infinite, clicked gently shut behind them. The entryway was silent as death, and the stones oozed with their own life, giving the entire temple a feel that was like a tomb. Death was in the air, and the building itself lent a fearful and unhallowed silence, a gloom over the rich carpeting and hanging portraits. The frames of these portraits were dark with age and polish, gilt in some cases with gold and precious metals, giving an air of importance, yet a majority of the portraits were of proclaimed prophets and presidents, dead men all of them, save one, one face that seemed strangely familiar and out of place . . .
Doesn't matter, she told herself, get back to the business at hand.
They stalked silently, from hallway and stair and from room to room, not that they had to look, Seth surely would be waiting at the top of the building, in the broken remains of the uppermost altar room, yet it was a curiosity that made them look into each room. Most of the furnishings remained untouched, as relics from an age since past, and surely worshiped as much as the Mormons had once claimed to worship Christ. Even though they did, not a single copy of their holy book, the Book of Mormon, was seen, presumably burned at the behest of the last mad prophet, Esaius. Preferring instead his simple and shortened verses. Regardless of this strange finding, they continued onward and upward, through the hallways so untouched by time and filled with stagnant dusty air.
None of the doors on the next level were open, and hadn't been for many years, from the thick coating of grime on the knobs, and her told her they were locked even before she tried one. The doors didn't yield, although this could have been because of many things, the age of the locks, the hardness of the door and its jamb, or simply its age, and so she moved on, with Gabriel just a step behind her, gazing upward to the ceiling that was so painted with skilled hands the morals of ancient false histories that had once held in thrall millions upon millions of good Christians. The scenery flew by as they moved to the top of the building, with ancient wooden railings filling the spiraled staircases and tapestries depicting angels in the heavens. What nonsense, she thought absently. Running now, streaking past the paintings, the marble tiles of the floor, the tightly woven carpets that showed hardly any wear at all. They reached the final staircase, leading upward to the blue sky above and the altar, and to Seth, the Wanderer, wretched cur as he would be waiting, and ravening dog. Betrayer. He would fall, lifeless and bloodied before her hand, would pay for his sins, for his crimes against her and against Gabriel, sins that as of yet had not happened in this time stream. And will not, she thought, mounting the stairs, stepping up each stone with grace, collecting her thoughts and moving forward to meet him, He will not! As horrible as she felt for killing those nearly innocent men, for killing her own kind as she would a destrachan, or one who would become one of those stricken with the sickness of the shades, as horrible as it felt to betray her hunter's oath and strike down another human being, a man who surely had children, and a wife, a family to care for, as terrible as that felt, she could do nothing but continue, to do everything in her power to finish this task.
One for many? She had asked Jack, and he had responded that her idea was faulted, yet hadn't she done just that? Hadn't she murdered several men in order to save the remainder of humanity? How many would it take, how many would be enough? The answer to her own question bothered her more than anything else. It will never be enough. She had no choice but to finish the mission she was on, to destroy Seth, and then Jack, and any who stood between them, for she couldn't let any get in the way. Her life hung in the balance, hers and Gabriel's and everyone else's, and that was all that mattered, and if in the end, none was left standing, save for her and her lover? So be it, she thought, a shiver running down her spine. So be it.
The blue sky and bright white sunlight beamed warmly on the ruined level of the temple, tattered remains of rich cushions and flowered carpeting were strewn about with disdain, just as the masonry that still held the granite walls together was failing, and the stones looked as if they might be pushed from this nest at the top of the world. The plains of the ruined Salt Lake City valley lay all around them, every buried building and covered street was visible, nearly beautiful in the morning sun, and Sera thought she could hear birds singing sweetly from somewhere nearby. New Zion looked dull and lifeless compared to the great expanse of desert that stretched as far as the eye could see from the temple's great height. In the center of the floor, with the sky as its ceiling, the white marble altar sat, just as it had in her dream, and behind it, the Wanderer. Seth was no longer grinning, no longer laughing as he had. His hair was disheveled, and his face looked tired, wearied from the ascent, yet he had picked this place, knowing full well that he would die here.
“So, you've come at last, eh? Come to end the treacherous Seth, have you? This is what I wanted all along! I've been cursed to walk the earth by that bastard, Jack. He never really asked me . . . never told me what price I was to pay! He never . . .” he was almost bewildered, nearly beside himself in his madness.
“He told you the price and you knowingly accepted his gift. You are the only one to blame. Take responsibility for your own actions, and wallow no more in your self-pity and cowardice. Stand up straight, and receive your death as a man,” Sera said calmly, ignoring the blood rushing through her ears.
“And what if I don't? Will you stab me in the back?” He turned around, his cloak hiding his actions from her.
“Look out, Sera!” Gabriel shouted, catching a glimpse of a rifle's barrel beneath the tail of Seth's cloak. Seth spun around, rifle at the ready. It was Sera's rifle, her grandfather's rifle, and it angered her to see it in the hands of this creep.
“Seth! You mangy son of a bitch! You have no right to hold that!”
“Ah, but it is I who makes the rules now, eh? This rifle is mine! I wield it, and you have no choice but to submit to my will. Gabriel! Drop it, or I'll blow her pretty little head off.”
It infuriated him to do so, but he had no choice but to comply. He gently knelt to the ground, placing the pistol on its side.
Sera's mind was racing, think through the scenario before her, watching the scene play out in her head. Such a situation might end a dozen different ways, but only one was acceptable. How to reach it? She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, taking in as much oxygen as her lungs could hold, and then letting it out slowly.
“That's right, girl, accept your fate,” he said, taking aim at her head.
Sera was vaguely aware of Gabriel's cry, “Noooo!” but it was long and drawn out, and her ears were beyond his time. Reality was rippling all around her, distorting her vision like waves of heat coming off the packed desert sand. Everything was drained of its color, becoming grey and still and nearly silent as she was pulled from the normal stream of time. Every mechanical wave was visible in the chilled air, a chill that stuck with her even as she made her move. It crept up into her bones, pulling at her warmth and stealing it away into the grey world around her. She dove at the altar, not knowing exactly what she was going to do, except that she did know, and it only made sense that she would do it. Her fist smashed into the side of the altar, a strange uppercut with all her force behind it, but that wasn't all, her fist was the fist of a million men, a blow with all the force of the world behind her, and as it connected, she dug her feet into the stone floor, pushing with all her might. The altar cracked from the start, and began to split all the way through the solid stone as it went into the air, and the bubble surrounding her burst as it did. Time was once again allowed to be fluid, moving at its normal pace. Color blasted into everything, the sky a deeper shade of blue, and the stone itself was a more vibrant shade than it once had been, perhaps it was just the grey world, working on her mind, but whatever did it, she was glad of the brilliant color.
The crack of a gunshot, except it was wrong. Her gun had never sounded that way, metal was shredding as the powder caught fire, sending the chambering mechanism flying backwards into Seth's screaming face. A misfire. A trap, she thought, laughing at her knowledge of the blue powder. Was it chance that had stopped her from firing at Jack, or fate? Her last clip had been filled with those strange untested rounds, and she had been close to firing it . . .
No matter. She laughed, watching as Seth blindly stumbled backwards as the altar struck him in the face, forcing him off the edge of the building. He screamed as he fell, the altar's two halves following his flight downward.
Seth's mind was a blur of pain and anger as he fired the gun. He could hear the click of the firing pin as it connected with the primer, yet something was wrong. Blind and full of hatred and the agonizing, burning metal, the first half of the altar came at him, he could feel the cold of the stone as it smashed the bones of his skull, and felt himself tumble backwards, lose the ground beneath his feet. Was he screaming? Yes, he was, and he could only wonder at how this girl could have done such a thing. A dozen men would have a hard time moving such a stone as the altar, yet she had done it alone, and sent it flying through the air, split in two.
She would would cleave the mountain, he thought as he fell to his demise. I had no idea.
The words of the prophet fell upon his ears, “You would be forsaken, and he shall grant it.” Was it irony? No, it was justice.
Then Jack's voice, “I forsake you.” He could feel the steel points in his abdomen, could feel his spine snapping from the weight of his fall, yet he was laughing now, laughing and coughing up blood. The steel was warm as it ran him through and he laughed, until the second half of the altar tore the top half of his body free from the fence and crushed him, grinding him into the earth.
Seth, the wretched cur, the snake in the grass, the ravening dog, the Wanderer, was no more.
Copyright 2006