Nineteen
“... couldn’t believe it! Unless they received direct orders to interfere, my brethren were truly willing to just leave you mortals to perish beneath the thumb of the Heralds of Darkness. So I did what I thought was right. I readied my weapons and stole into the armory, where I took a radiant crown for myself so that I could navigate the cosmos. But before I could take flight, I was attacked by one of my sisters, Michelle. I leapt from Paradise and she tackled me from behind. That bitch tried to steal my crown and have me detained. Whilst I am proud to say that I retained custody of my crown, I am sorry to say that in our struggle, I lost focus for a moment. Michelle disarmed me, dislodged my crown, and nearly clawed my eyes out. I bested her, but in the effort, crashed directly into your motor-chariot, landing us here,” Gabby, the super hot amazonian angel with abs of steel (and tits I wouldn’t mind suffocating under) concluded.
“Huh. That was quite a story,” Selene admitted.
She was right, Gabby’s tale had been compelling and full of twists I did not see coming. The angel had served as the right hand to the gods for thousands of years without question, until one day she peeked behind the curtain and discovered the halls of Paradise were built upon the bones of countless mortals and the corpses of entities older than the gods themselves.
She, along with all the rest of her fellow angels, were some of the earliest prototypes for what mortal souls would eventually become. They were engineered to be flawless and obedient, which ultimately made them pretty boring to the gods so they were replaced by the more deeply flawed mortals such as myself, but did make them pretty useful foot soldiers for the gods to use in their constant inter-pantheon wars. To use more modern terminology they were like androids, crafted from starlight rather than silicon. How that worked I had no idea, I don’t call the shots here and I sure as shit don’t understand magic, I just fuck pretty girls and shoot monsters. That’s it. That’s what Ryan Stryker is all about and that’s how I want it to stay.
Whether or not I’d get a say in any of that remained to be seen. Since, if current trends persisted, there were bound to be more world-ending plots lurking just around the corner even after we dealt with Gertrude and Kevin.
“These Heralds of Darkness guys don’t sound too good,” Euna said quietly as we walked along the highway towards Camp Ferris.
The sun was slowly dipping closer to the horizon. At this rate we would arrive just a little while before twilight, which was when Hannah warned that the evil phantoms led by Gertrude would be convening.
“Oh, no,” Gabby reassured her, “they are not. You will never find a more wretched group in all the cosmos than the Heralds. Even demons have limits. Even monsters have lines they won’t cross. Heralds have no such inhibitions, and each possess massive amounts of power that no single being, not even a god, could overtake alone. Which is why they were all locked away so long ago and scattered across different worlds. The Herald imprisoned on this world is near, and its bonds are weak. When the time comes I shall require the aid of all the strongest mortals that can be found if it is to be subdued once more. I shall need to recover my weapon and my crown if at all possible. But above all else, I must find the mortal champion. Without their assistance, my quest is doomed to failure.”
My ears perked up at that. The very first monster I had ever fought had referred to me as the ‘mortal champion,’ right before he tried to murder me in the Hilltop gas station.
My eyes flicked over to Hannah, who had been ghosting along beside Selene right up until Gabby’s last sentence slipped out. She had stopped in her tracks the moment those two words were uttered. My phantom girlfriend turned towards me slowly, as if she were hoping to see me still walking along cheerfully, oblivious. When our eyes met, she winced.
What aren’t you telling me, Hannah?
I-I’m not at liberty to say, Hannah said regretfully.
Not at liberty? What, is that information classified or something?
Yes, actually. As an Oracle I am only authorized to say so much about the possible futures I have witnessed. If I say something out of turn, it might influence you and thereby rob you of your free will. Doing that would get me fired.
Meaning what, exactly?
A wave of fear washed through our connection. Meaning I would be confined to the afterworld for all time, unable to come visit you anymore.
With a sigh, I started walking again.
Tabitha suddenly stopped right in front of me and turned back down the highway towards Eastport. Her wolf-ears perked up and her tail swished back and forth curiously. “Someone’s coming. A car. Something big, too. Like,” she sniffed the air, “a bus.”
We all turned back just in time to see a pair of headlights emerge out of the fog. Sure enough, they belonged to a school bus. A black school bus with ram’s horns painted down the side and the sigil for the Eastport University Rams emblazoned on the front.
Kevin.
I pulled a handgun out of my holster but Derek threw up his hands and shouted, “Wait!” As his hands contorted in odd gestures, a geometric spellform blossomed all around us and enveloped Blue Team. “Don’t shoot! Nobody move, they can’t see us in here,” Derek explained mere seconds before the college bus thundered past and sped onward down the highway.
I had a sinking feeling they were headed to Camp Ferris.
“This day just got more complicated,” Selene griped.
Derek dropped the camouflage spell and voiced his agreement with her sentiment, as did Euna and Tabitha. I stayed silent.
Gabby, on the other hand, scoffed. “Were you referring to the necrotic aura shrouding that motor-wagon? Think nothing of it! Help me retrieve my weapon and crown, and I will make short work of those accursed undead and these wayward specters. Come, puny mortals, I can hear the ringing of my weapon over this way!” She strode off deeper into the woods, away from the road, without waiting for us to agree to help her. I almost admired the sight of her retreating backside swaying, but I caught myself and looked away.
“I do not like being called ‘puny,’” Tabitha growled.
“Me neither,” Euna agreed, perhaps subconsciously trading a bit of her biomass so she could swell a size or two upwards and be closer in height with me and Gabby.
I ignored their comments and the retreating angel completely, instead walking towards Camp Ferris. My showdown with Kevin awaited. I bet Red Ryan would be sorry he missed it. Poor guy was probably still up to his neck in zombies. The urge to reach out and check on him cropped up, but I resisted. The mental barrier I had erected between us remained solidly in place.
“Uh, Ryan?” Derel interrupted. “What are you doing, man?”
“Finishing the mission,” I replied coolly.
“But what about Gabby?” Tabitha asked, her eyes on the angel’s perfect form.
That didn’t take long, I teased silently. Aloud I replied, “What about her? The phantoms are this way, and twilight is approaching. We need to get there ASAP and in case you didn’t notice, she cost us our ‘motor-chariot’ so we’re on foot. If we suffer any more delays we might miss the meeting entirely!”
Hannah was the one who took hold of Selene’s body and cut in, surprisingly. “No, they’re right, Ryan. That angel would be an incredible help to us. With my powers I can influence phantoms and even command a few of them, but Gertrude has the ear of hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I can’t handle an army on my own. But with Gabby’s help, we can. Derek knows what I mean, ask him to explain. Selene and I will keep going to Ferris and gather intel. The four of you, watch after each other until then.”
She started to walk away, but I gently caught her by the arm and pulled her into a kiss. Selene and Hannah both melted in my arms, and when we pulled away, I could see both of their faces smiling wistfully.
“Euna,” I said over my shoulder, “escort Selene.”
Euna was all too happy to help out. She hadn’t said anything yet, but I was getting better at reading my ladies’ emotions lately and I knew she was feeling kinda bad ever since her copy got turned during our first fight with the zombies. I took the opportunity to knock out two birds with one stone, keeping Selene safe and handing Euna the perfect chance to ‘redeem’ herself (not that I felt she needed it, but for her own sake).
I wished both girls luck and then led Tabitha and Derek off in search of Gabby.
-
“So,” Derek said after a few minutes of silence. “Is this sort of like old times? I wouldn’t really know thanks to the whole being-bewitched thing. But like, did the three of us ever go on a mission together?”
Tabitha and I both shifted uncomfortably.
“You and Bianca accompanied us to an apartment complex with multiple feral monsters inside. Well, actually it was a warlock and a manticore. You and Bianca got into a magical duel with the warlock while Ryan and I tackled the manticore,” Tabby said, speaking very clinically.
“Oh, a team up? That sounds fun.”
Tabitha shook her head. “It wasn’t. The manticore in question was a nineteen year old girl driven mad by the insidious Signal. It turned her into a mindless beast and she killed her abusive parents. Then she turned on us. We defended ourselves and Ryan nearly got through to her and broke the spell on her mind, but then Boris arrived and gunned her down without warning.”
“He said some pretty fucked up things about how he felt about monsters, implied that he wanted to hunt Tabby for sport, and then fucked off,” I added.
“Oh,” Derek said, less enthusiastically. “And where was I during all of that?”
“If memory serves correctly, Bianca was so overcome with joy from killing the warlock with you that she jumped your bones. Or she was using her sex magic to heal you. One of the two. Either way, you were fucking like rabbits in one of the damaged apartments. Pretty sure that was the last time we saw you until you showed up and tried to kill us.”
“Oh.”
Derek stopped asking questions.
It wasn’t long afterwards that we spotted a burst of color in the sky, like a rainbow-hued aurora that sprang up out of nowhere.
“Anomaly!” Tabitha reported calmly, raising her rifle to her shoulder. Almost before she could finish the word however, the sudden flash of color evaporated. “Eyes up. We have no clue what could’ve just come through that thing.”
I drew my sword into my right hand and pulled a pistol into my left.
Derek’s hands sparked as he prepared to cast magic.
In the distance, Gabby cried out in pain.
And we started running.