The Creators Ch. 18

Angela was naked.

Angela was human.

Angela's eyes were black.

My heart dropped into my stomach, and my guts turned over. Justina screamed, Bianca roared and broke from the formation, and the other Ofanians rushed in with her. The Breytans drew their blades, the orcs dropped the palanquin, and Diamond drew a sword of water from the air. I just stood there stupidly, watching it all unfold like it was a play. Just as the two forces were about to clash, Angela jumped out in front of everyone, and screamed, "STOP!"

The Ofanians stopped in their tracks. The Breytans turned around and blinked dumbly at the Bound One who had appeared behind them.

"Everyone, everyone, chill," Angela said smoothly. "Nobody here needs to die."

Bianca launched a spear right for Diamond, and it exploded into confetti of splinters against the Water Dancer's flesh.

"I said, chill, Bianca!" Angela snapped.

Aiko turned her head from Angela to the disguised orc. "Bianca? Bianca Blackwing?" she drew her sword in a flash. "You dare make an unprovoked attempt on the life of a god?!"

"It was just a misunderstanding," Angela said quickly, stepping between Aiko and Bianca. "No harm, no foul. Isn't that right, Diamond?"

Diamond brushed the sawdust from her shoulders and offered Bianca an entertained smile before turning her black eyes on me. "Of course. Everything's just dandy."

"We're gonna lower the temperature a few degrees now," Angela gave a broad placating gesture. "Everyone just be cool. Be super cool." Angela lowered her hands slowly, then smiled when nothing happened. "Awesome-sauce. Now, let's all just hash things out like reasonable people."

"You can't reason with madness!" Justina squeaked.

Diamond's gaze never left mine, but her smile broadened. "Is that Justina? It's strange to hear you petitioning for violence. And I thought you liked me." She pouted her lips at me. "All my friends are trying to kill me. What did I ever do to deserve this?"

"Let her go," I hissed.

"She's not my prisoner; she's my ambassador," Diamond said slyly. "You're the one who wants war; I'm just trying to open a dialogue."

"I'm going to count to ten. You might not like my counter-offer."

Diamond giggled. "Please assess the situation, and reconsider."

"One-dead-bitch, two-dead-bitch, three-dead-bitch, four—"

"Shut the fuck up, Brandon!" Angela snapped and marched over to me. She marched right past Diamond, who didn't even raise a finger to stop her. She just watched her go, her black eyes twinkling with amusement. Angela stopped five feet away from me. "Can you please for once in your life not fuck something up?" she growled. "I'm trying to save everyone!"

"Angela, you're—"

"I know what's happened to me! I'm fully-fucking aware, believe me!" Angela said. "You know I always do what's best for us. Usually, that means I have to save you from yourself. This is one of those times."

"What did you tell her?" I hissed.

"Diamond isn't like Julia. She doesn't want to kill you or me just because we threaten her sense of self-importance. She's running this show now, so there's no reason for us to fight. We've already won."

"What did you tell her?!"

Angela attempted an apologetic smile, but there was no guilt in it at all. "Come on, Brandon."

"You didn't..."

She closed the distance between us and snaked her hands up my arms. "You risked sacrificing everybody to save one. Now I am saving everybody by sacrificing one." Her black eyes rested on my lips as she entwined her fingers about the nape of my neck. "She told us all herself that she deserves to die. If we had killed her months ago, none of this would've happened—those were her words. Now we have the chance to fix our mistake."

Tell me your bluffing right now, I pleaded into her mind.

Her gaze slowly rose to mine. I wish I could say the choice was hard for me, but it was the easiest I've ever made. After having to sit there for weeks and watch you exchange spit with that filthy street-skank, it was hardly a choice at all.

"This isn't you!"

"This is me, Brandon!" Angela hissed and touched our brows. Her breath filled my nostrils, and it smelled acrid and foul, just like Willowbud's used to. "Remember what you said to me when we left Towerhead?" she whispered urgently. "Do you? Fuck the world. All that matters is you and me." Black smoke slid from her nostrils and lips. "Just kiss me," she said so softly, "breathe it in, and fall with me. Fall all the way. I know what's at the bottom." She looked pleadingly into my eyes. "Freedom."

A tear rolled down my cheek. "Is that what we walked through to get here, Angela? Is that freedom?"

"We're not like them!"

"Madness is all the same," I hissed, grabbed her by the face, and forced her into the sand. NOW! I roared from my mind, sending my telepathic message to Bianca, to Nona, to the Ofanians, and the Ionans. There was a pregnant pause where the world was still, and I just looked at Diamond from across the circle as I pushed my sister's face into the sand. In that pause, Diamond's black eyes flashed with just a second of fear. Then everything went to shit. Dragons exploded from the ranks of orcs, massive trolls suddenly appeared, even a great sand-serpent emerged from the dunes and flattened one hundred yards of orcs. Great gouts of fire burnt swaths into the mania, giants of differing breeds slammed their behemoth feet into the fray, balrogs charged through fields of bodies like demonic bulls. Bianca transformed into a minotaur and rushed Aiko. Aiko dove out of the way just in time to smash into Alecia, who had taken on the form of an enormous spider. Aiko was sent hurling backward, and Alecia followed doggedly after her, heedless of the Breytans closing in around her. One of the samurai dared to leap upon Alecia's carapace back and drive her useless weapon down into the flesh I'd made impenetrable. The black blade drove right through. Alecia's mandibles opened, and a very human shriek sounded from them. Her arachnid body collapsed, and the Breytans carved her to pieces in a second. Only when her last blood-curdling screech sounded, did she return to her valkyrie form; now just a torso with its limbs butchered away.

Watch those black swords! Bianca screamed.

"I fucking told you we should've let Willowbud make us weapons!" Angela cackled as I pushed her head into the sand.

"Shut up, you!" I snapped and tossed her behind me. "Get the fuck out of here!"

"I'm not leaving—"

"I said get the fuck—" and I barely put up my arms in time before Diamond's jet of water disintegrated me. My forearms became the bark of an oak, and the ligneous shield took the attack, the wood splintering away as I was driven back, my heels digging into the sand.

"GO!" I screamed at Angela, and she mercifully turned into an eagle and flapped away as I absorbed Diamond's attack. My forearms took the punishment until I side-stepped the stream, and hurled a redwood tree at the Water Dancer. She cut it in half and stepped through the bisected trunk.

"Hey, dumb-dumb!" Diamond hollered. "I'm trying to fricken talk to you!"

Willowbud, I sent telepathically, the attack has started! Angela's Corrupted and you're cover's blown! I've got Diamond by herself right now! Help!

There was no reply.

Astrid, find out where Julia is! Willowbud, if we double-up on Diamond, we can take them out one at a— Diamond sent a torpedo of water at me, interrupting my train of thought.

I rolled out of the way, turned myself into a dung beetle, then launched ten great whales at the Water Dancer. The absurdity of what I'd just done was so great that Diamond actually uttered a 'what the frick,' before she turned each of my fifty-ton living projectiles into empty husks of blubber. She collected the immense volume of blood she'd extracted, formed it into a crimson tornado, and fired it in my general direction. I burrowed into the sand and transformed myself into the largest terrestrial animal on earth. As a nine-hundred-yard sand wyrm, I charged from beneath the dune, burst through the sandy medium, and sent everyone high into the sky.

Valkyries, trolls, balrogs, dragons, and orcs were all launched above me as I emerged, my entire grey body blowing a fifty-foot-diameter hole in the earth. When my tail emerged from the tunnel, I transformed into a butterfly and gently floated above the chaos. For a second, my victims were suspended between my force and the force of gravity, then the latter took hold, and they plummeted. The valkyries quickly took to the wind, and my allies fell harmlessly with their unbreakable bodies, but the orcs who had carried Diamond's palanquin flailed and screamed until they thudded to the ground, some of them splattering like water balloons. I had done it. I was a killer. As for Diamond herself, she was standing on the air as though it was a floor. She gaped down at the hole I'd made, then whispered, 'jeepers-creepers, I'm in trouble.'

I turned myself into a mosquito and buzzed carefully toward the god. She didn't even notice me as I landed on the nape of her neck, and drove my proboscis down. A shock of pain shot into my head, and I reared back to see my proboscis bent nearly in half. I buzzed off Diamond just as her hand came down to swat me, then I transformed into a red dragon, and emptied my lungs of flame onto her. My fire was clean and red when it shot from my great maw, but when it hit the Water Dancer, it became a black billow of smoke. I could see her profile in it, and I reared back my studded tail and sent a homerun shot right to her. She absorbed the blow well, but not perfectly. Her body was sent careening through the air, and it was only after she'd traveled a few hundred yards that she regained herself.

"Listen, idiot!" she yelled. "If we keep this up, my mom's gonna come out, and she's gonna be really mad!"

"You don't have that much longer."

"You can't hurt me, you weenie! Haven't you figured that out yet?"

"No."

JUSTINA

I was a worm. I squirmed beneath the abrasive sand as hell rained above me. Great footsteps thudded, screams and shrieks sounded, and I just borrowed deeper into the darkness, looking for some moisture to wet my slimy skin. I didn't know why the fuck I thought I could do this. I needed to find the deepest, darkest hole to hide in and cower until this all blew over. Yeah, that was a great idea. I squirmed deeper into the sand, moving slowly as though not to attract the attention of a predator. When I got deep enough that I could no longer feel the vibrations of battle above me, I took a moment to rest.

The image of Alecia being cut to pieces was burned in my mind. She didn't even have a chance. They swarmed her like a nest of wasps and tore her limb from limb. That could happen to me—that would happen to me if I went up there. Undoubtedly one of the Ofanians would try to rescue me before the inevitable, and she'd die too. It was best if I just stayed down here and didn't get in the way. Really, it was the noble thing to do. What a hero I was.

On your left! Arya screamed.

I'm surrounded! Deja cried.

Watch it, some of the orcs have the swords too! Bianca yelled.

Where is Willowbud?! Nona demanded.

Hold that line! Helga shouted.

Has anyone seen the Bound One? Someone get eyes on Angela!

I need help!

I've lost half my squad! I need reinforcements!

We're being overrun!

The wounds won't heal!

I've lost contact with my squad!

Don't come for me! I'll hold them off for as long as I can!

A worm cannot sigh in self-loathing, but I did. Most of me wanted to do nothing more than to stay snug and secure beneath the cold damp sands of Gratora, but there was one part of me—a damnable stupid part of me—that would not allow me to be comfortable. As I heard the thoughts of dying women play through my skull, that stupid part of me grew louder and louder until it was deafening.

Goddamn it! I growled to myself, and surged from beneath the sands in the form of a mighty griffin, ready to shed blood and guts with my teeth and claws, willing to die for my—I jolted to a sudden stop. There was an orc right in front of me holding a black sword. He blinked. I blinked. He roared and charged me. I screamed and ran away. I momentarily forgot I had four legs, tripped on my front paws, faceplanted into the sand, and slid twenty feet before I came to a defeated stop.

"I'm gonna get you, bitch!" the orc cackled as he closed in on me. "I'm gonna cut off your wings one by one, deep fry them in your belly fat, then feed it to my—" A massive ogre foot squished the orc into a black little puddle.

"Get up!" Deja growled, grabbed me by the scruff of my back, and hauled me to my feet. I scrambled up just in time to see hundreds of black-eyed orcs charging at us from all directions, their obsidian blades glinting in the sun. Deja transformed into a red dragon and laid waste to the attackers from the north, but those from the south were still barreling down toward her exposed rear, barely thirty yards away. I changed into a mouse, then a ferret, then a deer, then a giraffe. Panic had suffused my mind, and the only rational thought in my head was the urge to become larger. I became an elephant, then a woolly mammoth, then realized my error, and changed into a predator. I became a dachshund. The orcs were ten yards away. I yipped in terror, then exploded into a forest wyrm. My paws became claws, my fur became scales, and my already-elongated abdomen ballooned until I was a hundred feet long. Quite by accident, my growth propelled me forward in such a way that I crushed the first line of orcs, and my first reaction to murdering someone was to squeak, "sorry!" Then I felt a sharp pain through my palm, and I looked down to see a tiny little eight-foot-tall orc driving his obsidian-tipped spear into my hand. Reflexively, I swatted him away like a mosquito, and he went sailing over the eastern dunes, his shattered limbs separating in the air.

"Whoa," I whispered, and the force of my voice blew back the next line of orcs.

"Behind you!" Deja yelled.

I whipped around to look at the upending danger, but there was no one there. Well, there wasn't anyone there anymore. The force of my swinging tail had turned several dozen orcs into red paste. Hundreds more swarmed in to take their place, and Deja blew a great gout of red fire through their ranks, vaporizing them in a second. I swung back around to cover our rear, and faced down a swarm of enemies barreling over the far dune. They ran at us, heedless for their own lives, manic grins stretched across all of their faces. Their confidence terrified me. It was as if they knew something that I did not, that the gargantuan foe they faced was just a mirage. It was like they could see right into me. And while they were very correct about the nature of the beast they faced, it occurred to me that it didn't matter. Who runs at a mythical beast of immeasurable power under the assumption that it will just... freeze? Idiots. Every single one of these brave orcs was a complete moron, and there was nothing scary about tiny morons. I reared back my hammer of a tail and swung it. It smashed into the lines of orcs, turning them into mist and fragments of bone, sending their obsidian swords high into the air. I turned to my left and did the same. A great swath of charging beasts disappeared in a fine shower of red, leaving only a few fragments of sword to prick into my bone-studded tail like the quills of a porcupine. I whipped around, again and again, leveling orcs by the scores, painting the sands red with my mighty brush, and still, they kept coming, never changing tactics, never breaking stride, never even stalling to reconsider. It would have terrified me if I didn't have infinite stamina, but I did, and so in place of that terror, came a thrill. I looked over my shoulder and grinned at Deja.

"Holy shit, this is fun!"

Deja smiled wolfishly back, and Aiko flashed past her throat. Deja lurched forward, great volumes of blood flowing from her mouth. She scrambled as though to flee, but her arms and legs wouldn't function beneath her, and she fell violently to her side, thrashing at the oncoming swarm of orcs. I screamed and rushed to her aide, then reared back when Aiko flashed under my chin, the tip of her blade almost clipping my gullet. I lost my balance and toppled to my side. Deja was lying a few hundred yards away. She was staring at me with her great reptilian eye as the orcs swarmed her body, and began driving their blades into her. She was too weak to stop them. As her great maw gurgled her blood-choked screams, she watched me, enduring the countless blades moving deeper and deeper until she couldn't take it. With the last of her strength, she transformed into her valkyrie body and disappeared beneath the mass of thrusting blades.

WILLOWBUD

I didn't understand why Gloria had urged Astrid and me to the rock formation. It wasn't until I crested the ridge that I understood the significance. I was standing on the lip of an enormous bowl. The sandstone gave way to an immense crater of shattered obsidian that formed a near-perfect parabolic surface. My first thought was that I was standing at the rim of an ancient caldera, but when I touched the rock, it was still warm.

"Droktinar," I muttered.

"She destroyed it!" Astrid gasped. "Great Creators above! But... why?"

"I don't know," I said and turned around. The world was strangely quiet. There was not the roar of the horde, nor even the howl of the desert wind. Everything was deadened in this pit.

Brandon, can you hear me?

Nothing. I tried to discern his shape through the bedrock, but the desert sand made everything muddled, and there were far too many footfalls to pick his out anyway.

"Astrid, go check on them."

We're all good here, Brandon replied, his voice faded and strange. There's something wrong with our communication. I think there are too many of us using telepathy.

What's going on?

We're making our way to the front. Should be another half hour before we get there. Maintain silence until we're in position; the valkyries need to communicate.

"Did you get that?" I asked Astrid.

She nodded and scowled. "Let's get Gloria and get the fuck out of here."

I looked back toward the bottom of the crater. Gloria stood a mile below us. She was staring at something. I called for her, but she would not answer. She just kept staring at the small geometric shape in front of her. I stepped on a long flat rock and felt the area around me. We were the only things alive for miles, and the skies were devoid of witnesses. Astrid stepped behind me and took me by the hips. Using the rock like a surfboard, I shot us down the wide bowl in seconds and came to a stop upon the flat obsidian surface at the bottom.

"Gloria!" I yelled.

Gloria turned around. Though she wore the disguise of an orc, I could see how pale her face was. Behind her, was an iron door. It stood in the middle of the crater without a scratch upon it, its frame perfectly intact, its hinges not even bearing a mark of rust.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" I snarled, marching toward her.

She just stared through me. "Do you know what this is?" she asked softly.

"A fucking door, now come on!"

"A door to where, Willowbud?" Gloria replied.

"The astral plane," Astrid whispered.

I stopped in my tracks, and a chill ran down my spine.

Gloria nodded. She was shaking visibly, and her falsely-blackened eyes were brimming. "Do you know whose door this is?"

Astrid stepped forward. "Gloria, we need to leave this place."