“The other gods don’t understand, don’t need to find out, and certainly don’t need to approve,” Oldros whispered, and all heaven and hell broke loose.
31
EO
Oldros wasn’t alone. Despite his shadowy comments about secrecy, he’d come with a retinue of slick-armored, closed-helmeted guards that looked like a combination of medieval knights and modern day Earth para-operators. They pressed into the contained balcony, threatening the space ahead of them with a mixture of firearms and melee weapons that crackled with otherworldly energy.
They didn’t hesitate to begin the violence. A loud, buoyant snap of Oldros’ invisible energy surrounded them, containing the noise and chaos about to happen, and those attackers with firearms let fly a lethal hail of god-forged bullets.
Timtar crouched down, lifting his leather duster over his face as if it were impenetrable armor. Derrick stood, frozen stiff from the unthinkable, murderous treachery. Arridon reacted, fueled by fear of his own death and anger over the entire fucked-up situation.
He slapped his hand defensively at the rushing attackers in the split second that they shot, and as he bellowed his rage, his magic erupted in a lightning-fast wall of translucent energy. The barrier caught the storm of tiny metal hornets that would’ve killed all three of them and continued on, smashing into their plate and plastic armor. Arridon’s invisible force hit them like a crashing ocean wave, stirred up by a deep and angry storm.
The black-clad enemies were smashed into the walls, and into Oldros’ massive frame as if they were no more than driftwood on that wave. Their screams caught in their throats as their bodies gave way before the walls, and they were crushed. Bones broke, tendons and ligaments snapped, skulls collapsed under the strain of Arridon’s eruption.
“Parlor tricks!” Oldros screamed at him. The giant god’s fists came up, each mitt the size of a person’s whole head, and all three of the ambush victims felt a pulsating wave of scorching heat emanating in their direction.
“Jump!” Tim screamed at them as he grabbed Derrick’s arm. “Over the ledge!”
Arridon turned and watched as the slight half-demon covered with crazy gadgets muscled his friend with a shove to the edge that overlooked the sea of massive, connected city-clusters floating over the bottomless stars. Where Arridon was from, going over the edge was the worst possible fate; you went into the Void, where the demons lived. A leap into literal Hell.
But now, after it all, after all the fear and strife, when he finally went over the edge to whatever Hell he deserved, he would at least have a demon on his side. Arridon ran from Oldros’ magical fury, clasping his friend Derrick’s hand as the unconventional trio went up and over the glass wall of the balcony.
Graceful, they were not.
End over end they plummeted down the length of the tower, away from the balcony and straight down towards the flatter levels at the base of the gear-shaped city cluster. Skyscrapers of indeterminable size rose up from the fast-approaching city’s base as their world-view spun round and round.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!” Arridon and Derrick both screamed at full volume as the end of their life rushed up to meet them.
At their sides, as their deadfall continued, Timtar patiently fastened the buttons shut on his duster. He assessed their position relative to the floating citadel’s bottom, and then twisted a few dials on the brass plates mounted in his garb. As they blew down through a hurricane of wind, he tapped gently on a black screen, illuminating a full book’s worth of scrolling text. He looked to the ground, looked to the plummeting humans, then tapped the screen. Tim reached out and grabbed both their arms, pulling them close as the horizon of the city’s edge grew wider against the backdrop of the perpetual starry night.
“Hold me tight,” Tim yelled at them, pulling them to his chest. “Tighter!”
They did. So tight the half-demon struggled to breathe. As soon as he felt like they were holding well enough, he set off the machinery in his jacket with a telepathic trigger.
Two vertical splits formed in the leather, running down his back from shoulder to kidneys. Out of the slits, blade after blade of gleaming golden metal erupted, each linked along its long edge to form a graceful, strong wing. The twin wings expanded outwards and upwards until he had sprouted enough lift area to halt their spinning tumble and slow their descent at a rate that wouldn’t rip the two humans from his body and send them to a bone-liquefying death below.
Bursts of white-hot light seared the air near them as Oldros rained down constant, hatred-filled blasts of sun-bright magical fury. Timtar deftly adjusted his mechanical wings, setting free the sounds of gears and mechanics whining to keep up with the strain. They dodged, left, right, up and even down again as beam after beam rained down at them. This display of might surely proved the merit of calling them gods. After descending another few thousand feet, they were in amongst the top floors of the dark glass, and dark stone buildings that made up the lowest, largest level of this section of Eo. The frequency of the blasts diminished, but when they passed, they destroyed windows, stone, and steel with equal ease. Debris rained down out of sight.
“I thought this was just a flat ship hull,” Derrick hollered over the sound of rushing wind. “This place is massive.”
“Over a billion souls call Eo home, gods and monsters alike. It has forests, deserts and oceans. It’s still not big enough to hide from Oldros and his wrath, however. Not now, not ever.”
“Won’t others protect us? Gods that oppose Oldros and what he’s done?” Derrick asked.
Timtar laughed. “Ancient beings that live for millennia and are hard to kill are loathe to make enemies with the likes of Oldros. I said gods and monsters are here, right? Well, now, we’re closer to monsters than gods.”
“What do we do?” Derrick asked as they screamed down and
