—†— CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT —⸸—
The Language of the Creator
Marcus rested on the ugly green couch while Sarah and I sat at the small table by the window. I had seen some fucked up things in my life, both the old one and the new, but watching Remiel shove that blade into Marcus still made me wince. It still turned my stomach. If the Remiel of the past hadn’t been snooping around my office and setting off the ward trying to come inside, we wouldn’t have even known he was out there. My own stamina was still creeping back, Remiel’s primordial form having drained my stats when he had saved Marcus.
“Jay, I don’t think we can wait any longer. We’re going to have to ward that church.”
“She’s right, Mud,” Azazel said as he sat on the edge of the table, his little legs dangling while he looked over at the priest.
Remiel was standing on the other side of the table, looking out the window again. He had been quiet up to this point, and when he finally spoke, he still sounded exhausted. “I wasn’t sent here alone, Marcus. The sister’s right. When the other angel returns and can’t find me, he’s going to put his full attention on that cathedral. I’m afraid he won’t have a whole lot of restraint.”
Remiel’s gaze moved to Marcus. “Do you see it too, Azazel?”
“Yeah, I do. And another time, I would have been racing to turn the padre into a meat puppet.”
“What the hell are you guys talking about?” I asked.
“It’s his aura, Mud. Pretty sure you took some of the sister’s essence when you were healing him and shoved it right into the priest, along with some of your own.”
“What are you trying to say? He’s like me now?”
“No, Jay,” Remiel said as he walked over and stood beside Azazel at the table. “He’s not. But I think we may have found an unexpected side effect of over-healing a human.”
“Are you suggesting we might be able to pull him into the system?” Sarah asked, her voice soft, as though saying it too loud might somehow make it untrue.
“I don’t know yet,” Remiel said. “But if we can, it does open up some new options.”
“Feathers, you can’t seriously be thinking about going back. Even with the hell hounds gone, that place is a shit show.”
“I am. If we can ward the church and claim the relic, we can take Father Marcus and Sarah with us back into Purgatory. If I found Marcus once, others will too. Yet it never happened, Azazel.”
“Shit.” The little demon glared back over his shoulder at Remiel. “This time-travel causality bullshit has given me an itch.”
Marcus sat up on the couch, clearly not as asleep as we had thought. “You want me to follow you into Purgatory?”
“Yes, Father. In fact, I’m pretty sure you already have. And Azazel isn’t wrong. That realm is dangerous. But I have no intention of staying for long. If Jay can see the apertures that have been hidden from my kind there, we can use them to escape back to this world, albeit in a different time and place.”
Azazel fell quiet, thinking, and when he suddenly looked back up at me, his eyes were wide. “I think I might have an idea about the purpose of the Echoes in Purgatory. What if all of those hidden apertures lead to places like St. Mary’s? There could be other relics. Other points of interest.”
“I had the same thought,” Remiel said.
“Well, none of that matters,” Sarah said, “if we can’t secure the relic from St. Mary’s. I will not run away and let that spirit destroy this town.”
Marcus took a deep breath. “What do I have to do?”
Sarah pulled the codex up, and the window projected out in front of us. “Can you see this, Marcus?”
“See what?” he said, looking around the room.
Sarah’s shoulders sank. “I shouldn’t have expected it to be that easy.”
Remiel stared at the codex as the projection began to shift. Pages flipped rapidly before coming to a stop on a simple illumination ward.
Sarah studied it for a moment, then grabbed Marcus’s hand and led him back downstairs. I followed with Remiel and Azazel.
She grabbed a few sheets of paper from my desk and tore them into small squares. Pulling the projection back in front of her, she studied the ward again before carefully copying it onto one of the pieces.
“Marcus, I want you to practice drawing this until you can make it exactly like this. When you think you’re close, stop and let us know, okay?”
The priest sat in my office chair and leaned forward, beginning to practice the ward.
“Jay, while he’s doing that, we need to start moving our supplies into our inventory for the cathedral,” Sarah said. “I hate to say it, but I don’t think we’re going to be coming back here.”
“We can do that,” I said, sliding the suspenders off my shoulders. “We can also make at least a couple of magazines’ worth of the warded .45 ACP, and enough of the .38 to fill the revolver. That shouldn’t be too much of a drain on either of us.”
“Right,” she said. “Let’s put the rest of our attention into making those salt rounds.”
We grabbed what we needed and headed back upstairs, leaving Marcus at the desk downstairs. We pulled a pair of chairs to the small table by the window and got to work.
We worked like that for four or five hours, breaking only once for a quick cup of coffee. Azazel and Remiel took turns munching on sugar cubes while Sarah and I focused on the work.
The quiet didn’t last.
We were both startled by the sound of Marcus shouting downstairs, sharp with excitement. Sarah and I moved at the same time, hurrying down into the office.
Marcus was hunched over a piece of paper on the desk. The ward he had drawn shimmered faintly, the lines catching the light like they were alive.
“I think I did it,” he said.
Remiel stepped forward to the desk, his attention fixed on the ward. He studied the room for a moment, then lifted his gaze to Marcus. The faint glow of his eyes was buried deep in the shadow of his cowl.
“Hold out your hand, priest.”
Marcus hesitated, just for a second, then extended his hand.
Remiel drew his blade and slid the edge lightly across Marcus’s palm. A thin line of red welled up almost immediately.
“Marcus, place your hand on the ward.”
Marcus glanced toward Sarah, and she gave him a small, steady smile.
He did as instructed, pressing his bleeding palm over the rune.
A blinding light filled the room.
All of us turned away, raising hands to shield our eyes. It only lasted a moment.
When the light faded, Marcus had fallen back into the chair, breathless, staring straight ahead at something none of us could see.
At the window that had just appeared in his vision.
“My God!” Marcus breathed.
“Never in your life father, have those words been so close to the truth,” Remiel said reverently.
☿ ARCANE SYSTEM: SYSTEM INITIALIZATION
Initializing… Mortal soul detected.
Analyzing… Celestial essence detected.
Welcome, Nephilim, to the Arcane System.
The System recognizes dormant celestial essence within your mortal soul. This essence has been given freely, placed within you, and awakened. You are now Nephilim. Through the activation of Arcane energy by your own hand, you have triggered the manifestation of this altered state. The infrastructure of creation now opens itself to you. This interface has been made available to guide your path forward.
“This is—” the priest struggled to get his words out. “This is divine? The Word of God?”
“This is not the direct word of God,” Az said, “but the closest that you’ve ever been and probably ever will be. I like to think of it more like it’s the language of the Creator.” Azazel waved his hand and changed the projection in front of Marcus.
☿ ARCANE SYSTEM:
Father Marcus Brennan, Level 1 Nephilim
Experience Points: 0 out of 500 for Level 2
☩ Health: 50 out of 50 – ☿ Stamina: 13 out of 13
♅ Mana: 30 out of 30 – Current State: Awakened
Ascension 0 —◊— Damnation 0
† Grace: 19 out of 19 – ⸸ Fury: 16 out of 16
BASE ATTRIBUTES:
Strength: 3
Dexterity: 3
Fortitude: 5
Mind: 6
Instinct: 4
Dominance: 7
RACIAL SKILLS:
Eternal Mend: The fusion of mortal flesh with Arcane essence allows your body to repair injury with unnatural speed.
Ward Memory: Your mind has been touched by the Arcane. Wards you successfully cast are etched into your memory permanently. Once learned, you may recreate a ward either by drawing it manually or by casting it directly, drawing from your Fury or Grace pools depending on the ward’s nature. You may retain a number of wards equal to your Mind attribute.
Illuminate: A light ward cast onto a target or inscribed manually. The ward can be scaled based on the size of the intended target. When cast directly onto a target, the ward floods them with radiant energy, disorienting and exposing hidden or obscured entities. When inscribed manually onto an object, the ward requires blood to activate. Light intensity and duration scale with available Mana and the amount of Health invested. Exceeding safe Mana limits causes additional Health to be drawn as fuel.
Marcus stared at his own stats. And I have to say it was kind of amusing to watch the wonder and shock on his face as he studied every word. Tears were rolling down his cheek.
“How do I make it go away?” he said, as he tried to move his hand through the shimmering projection.
“All you have to do is will it, Marcus,” Sarah said softly. That’s when I noticed tears were rolling down her face as well.
“I was listening to your earlier conversation,” Marcus said, “and I may have some insight.” He walked us through everything. The Spirit had told him about its past, the importance of the relic, and the other relics waiting out there.
“Marcus, I don’t know what these revelations mean yet,” Remiel said. “But I bet we find those other relics waiting on the other side of those apertures. They must connect to Purgatory somehow.”
We worked through the rest of the evening and into the early morning, preparing supplies and walking Marcus through his inventory. I had given him the double-barreled shotgun and the other celestial blade. I had also given the remaining shotgun to Sarah after briefly working with her to make sure she understood how to use it. It was remarkable how fast she was catching on and adapting to our new circumstances.
In the morning, we would carefully make our way back to the cathedral, where I would ward the building and we would figure out what we needed to do to get Sarah through the Spirit’s trials. I couldn’t help but feel like fate was dragging me along, and the path it was pulling me down was leading toward something inevitable. I knew at some point we were going to have to come to terms with what happened to me in that house that night. And I hadn’t given it much thought until we started talking about jumping in and out of apertures. Those portals led to different places at different times. I thought I had all the time in the world before I would have to face those consequences. I pulled the projection up for the Trinity Blade and read it over again.
☿ ARCANE SYSTEM:
Trinity Blade: What you hold was forged before the Sundering. In the time before time, when Heaven and Hell were still one kingdom, this blade was shaped by hands that knew neither sin nor virtue. It bears no mark of angel’s forge or demon’s anvil, because it was wrought in the fires that burned before the first rebellion divided all of creation.
It appears as an ornate dagger in your mortal hands, but this is a weapon of bound evolution. Greater forms lie sleeping within it.
This is a soul-binding artifact. Three souls now dwell as one in eternal covenant. The first bond is your soul, sealed unto eternity and never to be severed. The second bond holds the Archangel Remiel’s essence, torn from grace and bound in flesh. The third bond contains the fallen Azazel’s essence, ripped from shadow and chained in light.
The laws written upon its edge are absolute. No hand but yours can grasp its hilt. No will but yours can command its path. If you cast it out, it will return to your hand. When this blade tastes the flesh of Heaven’s host or Hell’s legion, it drinks deeper than mortal steel. Each wound opens both body and spirit, loosening the threads that bind soul to flesh.
Be warned. Heaven seeks what was stolen from before its founding. Hell covets what was hidden from its grasp. The blade cannot remain veiled for long. They will come for what was never theirs. As the bearer, you now stand revealed.
‘No hand but yours can grasp its hilt.’ I read that line again. How did the man Azoroth killed in that kitchen have this blade?
