The horizontal divider bars aren't workin' quite right for some reason. We are going to briefly see Valtiel a few more times and get hints of him, but for now you're going to have to content yourself with the newest member of the cast to get your monsterousness. Though he's a bit harder to understand, and much less cute! No one can beat Valtiel in the cute department.
When the sky began to grow dark at four fifteen that cold December evening, Heather idly began to wonder why Toluca Lake had not begun to freeze yet that year. As she and Kaufmann watched, the men obstructing her path from the lighthouse began to shift about nervously. The Mason girl could already feel the night stirring through the fog. Now and then an unnatural whistle, a creaking building, a distant murmur hinted at what was coming.
By four thirty most of the cultists had packed up and departed, and the night air was an all-together different scene. There could be no doubt that something grossly unnatural was afoot. The occasional lying figure or straying gray child was acceptable during the day, but the hoots and shrieks and rumbles working their way up from the depths of hell made the hair stand up on the back of a man's neck and his skin prickle with the absolute certainty that he needed to flee. Then the Air Sirens began to blare. That was the signal to get out.
By four thirty seven, the last car was speeding away from the lighthouse. The ambiance had grown to a tremendous level and writhing forms were starting to appear in the darkness.
Heather nodded. "Time to go."
Kaufmann shook his head. "I don't understand what you're doing, Heather. It's clear this night cycle is designed to restrict your motion. It's not meant to be fought, its meant to be avoided. Like a rolling boulder or rising flood waters."
She glanced at him. "Is it?" she asked. "I suppose I'm about to find out." Her response was deft, even flippant, as she went to shoulder her new backpack and pin a flashlight under her arm. She made sure it was held carefully in place. Kaufmann made to speak again but then paused as the young woman turned towards him. Her face seemed aged by trauma and yet calm, wise, and certain. Her eyes held a fire, a sureness.
"Why should I be scared of Silent Hill?" she asked him. "She's a cruel and vicious bitch who will kick the shit out of us and try to break us any way she can. But whenever we come through, she's very fair. She's even let us kill 'God' for good behavior."
Kaufmann frowned. "You're trusting the town. You think it- she- wants you out there. So there has to be a way around Edwin's blockade."
"I'm counting on it," she decided. "If I persevere, she won't just let me around him. She'll expose a way to kill him."
Michael was quiet a moment. It seemed he understood, but his face took on a sad expression. "You were originally trapped here with noble intent," he noted, "but it seems Silent Hill won't let you pursue any quest but vengeance."
Heather grimaced and headed for the door. She heard the grind of a heavy metal helmet over the floor and made a settle-down gesture as she departed.
.
.
There had been a small mishap on the return from the unhallowed grounds at Toluca Lighthouse; but it was hard to truly lament the loss of one life in service to the Goddess when so many had perished that very morning. As he looked around the Temple of the Crucible, Edwin once again counted the still forms wrapped in red cloth and laid to rest in concentric semi-circles around the temple's heart.
"She has been contained for the evening," one of the faithful was telling him.
"Thank you," the religious patron murmured, placing a hand gently on his servant's shoulder and blessing him. "Go in peace."
When they were again alone, Edwin turned back to face the other sect leaders. They were seven in total, eight if one counted their guest from Utah, and represented the sum of the Order's faithful across Maine, eastern Quebec, southern New Brunswick, the majority of New Hampshire, and northern Vermont. Most could not devote their lives so utterly to the faith at did Edwin, as their respective businesses helped to keep the church alive and growing on the mortal plane.
Patricia, the homely, plain, weasel-faced woman to Edwin's left was the undisputed leader of the entire Holy Mother Sect. Though her sect enjoyed only a moderately sized membership, it was the single largest sect which maintained complete unification under a single head. As such, Patricia could command considerable human resources. The Sect of the Holy Mother was known for its quiet patience and its studious archiving, translation, and memorization of the Word. It was slow to act, patient, careful, quiet, and never impulsive- though Edwin knew these traits were learned habits as opposed to natural inclinations. Beneath Patricia's bitter, derisive, and calculating exterior was buried an impulsive ruthlessness.
On Edwin's right, the newly ascended Sergei now donned his sect's crimson hood. Directly opposite to the Sect of the Holy Mother, the Sect of Valtiel enjoyed no central leadership. It's members spanned six continents and boasted members hailing from each and every country in North and South America. However, as they devoted themselves to Valtiel and not directly to God, it was the Sect's nature to act as public servants for the good of the other faithful. Unlike his predecessor, Sergei had greater ties to Patricia than to Edwin. And that might possibly pose a problem, because Patricia was hungry for blood.
The unfriendly atmosphere she stirred up was by no means unfamiliar to Edwin. As a male high-priest in a female-dominated clergy, he knew what it meant to fight, kill, and manipulate in order to gain power and maintain order. He was- and he knew it- the strongest and most unifying force the Order had experienced in over two centuries. But that alone was hardly enough to maintain his position. Every day required a firm hand and a firmer voice.
Edwin presided over the largest, most volatile, most powerful, and most fragmented of all the sects; The Sect of the Holy Woman. His predecessors had been powerful conjurers, blessed by the Goddess with the power to bring about her paradise. But in almost every instance, the sect's faithful had inevitably turned against one another, with one enlightened individual disavowing the other's sanity. Edwin alone seemed to be able to hold the Sect together; he had unified its goals across thirty-two states and seven countries and was close to upending local leaders world-wide. It was his sect which believed in creating a mortal Mother of God; just as the Sect of the Holy Mother believed they needed to channel her into an object.
Edwin had been waiting for Patricia to strike for some time. In its struggles to restore God, his highly active Sect of the Holy Woman would inevitably stumble across complications. Of course he had been waiting patiently for the first such failure; Patricia was a predictable creature and there was no mistaking that she had been quietly waiting for a weak spot to prod at. Only now Edwin wasn't presenting her one.
"It's sweet to see how much they trust you," she said, in much the same voice as she would comment to an opposing grade school soccer-mom that it was, 'sweet how much your little boy tried.' Edwin smiled gently at her as she continued: "I guess they think the demon would have torn down the whole church without you and your 'angel.' How many did you lose this time, Edwin? Sixteen?" He imagined her saying, 'How many teeth did your little Jeremy lose again? Four? Well he played so hard.' "That's not so bad. I mean, not for you. How many did you lose in Utah during the coup, again?"
"There is another loss I would like to focus on," Edwin began, diverting the conversation with the ease of a well-honed political flourish, "and that is the loss experienced by the Wolf family seven years ago with the deaths of Leonard and Claudia Wolfe. Unfortunately neither Leonard nor his daughter left any account of their interaction with the Holy Mother, or information that might unveil what precisely happened here this very morning. Relatives have also been unable to uncover the truth through divination. We are eager to reach out to the other faithful. We also reach out to those who once knew and cherished Dahlia Gillespie, in the hopes that they may have insight into this dilemma."
"Well that's interesting," Patricia noted, "you're asking us for information on your Sect's most powerful clergy? Is the Sect of the Holy Woman still having communication problems? You should bring in a counselor."
"We must determine what happened here," Edwin explained gently. "This place should have been the safest of temples... and yet today we endured a slaughter. Before we can proceed, we must determine how the demon was summoned, and what role the Mother played in its appearance. Perhaps through Dhalia's, Leonard's, and Claudia's experiences with Alessa, we can unearth some answers."
"It was a blasphemy," Sergei said suddenly, surprising Patricia and Edwin both with his forthrightness.
She gave him an evil eye and asked in an absurd voice, "Excuse me?"
"The Witch. The Blessed Mother," Sergei explained, his voice low and contemplative but not nervous. "She remains Alessa. She remains a conjurer. Through blasphemy, through her dark gifts, she seized control of the Seal as we focused on other prayers. She compromised it, perverted it and inverted it's purpose. You both underestimated her."
"The Seal?" Patricia squawked and then scolded viciously, "The Seal of your Metatron? Your angel? And we are at fault? It seems to me that you-"
Seregei stood tall and narrowed his gaze to Patricia. "The Seal requires the hand of a powerful conjurer to direct it. It is volatile- you know this! This cannot be the first time the Witch has used it. It is you and your sect, madam, who archive the spells and writings of our religion. It is you who asked for the Seal to secure the temple. And yet you ignored the warnings as to its danger, and failed to retain your control over it through the ceremony. Did you presume, in your arrogance, that your mere presence would be enough to hold it steady? It is not our fault that your ill attention was no match for Alessa Gillespie."
Patricia stared dumbfounded. Edwin hesitated but then nodded in understanding. "I will repeat my divination," he explained. "This time, I know what to search for." As he was about to turn, he paused. "Thank you, Seregei." The red-hooded Executioner nodded to him. As Edwin left, the rest of the council regarded the remaining core cult leaders with hesitation. An evil eye seemed to pass between them both.
"Well, seems you've grown some balls," the woman said at last.
"I must go; there is much work to be done in cleaning up after you," Sergei responded, and then departed.
.
.
Heather was running.
The air was clear and black around her, with distant objects fading into endless darkness. High above, low-lying fog glowed with reflected red light. The ground was made of rusted bars, and endless lakes of fire and rusted machinery churned endlessly beneath her. There was noise everywhere. Great metallic bangs and crunches, the sound of metal on flesh and tearing skin, hoots and hollering, roars, moans, screams, groans, and the writhing biological sounds of countless bags of flesh. All around, body-bag-like creatures dangled from ropes that stretched up above her into the infinite. They writhed occasionally, and oozed blood and other fluids, and they looked halfway between noosed men and butterfly chrysalis.
Lying figures, sack babies, gray children, and other similar bags of writhing flesh wiggled around excitedly. Most would dodge out of the way as she sprinted through, and then curiously follow her for a while. They were harriers and opportunists and would certainly dog-pile her if she stopped moving, but alone they weren't directly confrontational or pursuit predators.
Sprinting on all four limbs, something completely new, was just three meters behind her. At its base, it appeared something like an overlarge baby doll, and was perhaps a further development of the spiders she and Alex had fought on their trip to save Elle. The creature had a segmented body like a pose-able wooden mannequin, and a large cherubic head perched on an arched, long, slender neck. Its body was angled downward, and each limb ended in a long scythe-like blade wrapped in bone and tendon.
When Heather had stumbled upon it, it had been swallowing a dog whole, its lower jaw unhinged and grossly distended, its slender throat bulging. She had tried to sneak past it, but its flesh's flayed condition had suddenly given her pause. She realized that the monster was branded in a very regular square grid pattern of deep scars. A flash rippled through Heather's mind, of a similar and very precise vivisection
The monster had noticed her then. Its delighted coo had shaken Heather back out of her memories. She stared up at it in horror as thick, syrupy blood oozed from its wounds... and then ignited.
The monster chasing Heather Mason was on fire. It squealed delightedly behind her, hot fire crackling in a mane behind it as it bounded excitedly on all four legs. Unlike most of Silent Hill's monsters, it was fast. Heather had eluded it by dashing into alleyways much too small for it, only to have it bound around the entire block at a breakneck pace. It didn't seem able to climb vertically like a spider or balance well on poles or high walls, but it could leap three meters into the air. Defenseless aside from her one pistol, Heather couldn't afford slowing down to face it, and certainly couldn't afford to see how many shots it would take to bring it down.
"Shit!" she breathed as another locked door refused to permit her entry. The thing was heading for her at her, squealing happily, bouncing off walls and railings, crashing through pots and bicycles, and leaving behind splatters of flaming blood.
Heather rolled over the nearest porch railing just as the thing leaped at her. It went soaring over her head and crashed into an open dumpster filled with discarded corpses. Heather rolled to her feet, pointed her gun at the dumpster, aimed for the head, and fired. The baby-monster screamed, a large hole opening up in its head. It whirled towards her, mane flaming hotter, and lunged. Heather fired again, and again. The creature screamed, gurgled, and then face-planted into the ground, rolling and skidding to a halt. The flames went out almost instantly.
Heather took a deep breath, but she didn't have time to rest. The hell around her was a constant, writhing ocean of bodies. She could already see curious mannequins and other things wandering nearer to her. As she got ready to start running again and cursed the tiredness of her legs, Heather heard a curious gurgle. She turned around just in time to see the second of the baby-faced creatures ignite as it was leaning over her from atop the porch. Heather stumbled backwards, lifting her pistol with the knowledge that she did not have enough ammo loaded. It lunged.
There was a deep, rattling bellow near her, like the deep creak of metal far below the earth or the horn of a massive ship. Something silvery spun through the air like a curtain of steel, fast, sudden and graceful. The baby-faced monster did not make a sound. The force of the silvery hit sent the monster's torso upwards through the air, careening over Heather's head and falling to the ground behind with a grotesque slap. The lower half- a clean division- splattered into the ground before her.
For a moment, all was still and silent. Heather stared down at the sizzling flesh before her, numb. Then she lifted her head and looked to the side.
Standing just a few feet away was a Pyramid Thing. Her Pyramid Thing? As seemed to be typical of Heather's experience with Red God monsters, the first thing she registered was just how huge it was. It was holding its enormous knife upright, as if the ridiculously over-sized weapon were no more than an elegant falchion, thick muscles bulging like overstuffed pillows encased in jaundiced white leather.
Run.
As Heather stared, its tongue eased out from beneath its helmet and writhed curiously through the air. A moment later, the tongue retracted and the monster shifted its grip on the knife and let the tip sink to the ground with a dull 'tink.'
Silence. Stillness.
Heather's eyes roved over the monster, trying to place it. At first, it was hard to notice anything but the blood-encrusted red helm and the long butcher's smock. But then she observed fresh white scars in a spiderweb over its skin. She recognized some of the wounds, particularly a long and ugly gash in the right shoulder. Her eyes rounded and she took in a shuddering breath.
"You're mine," she realized, taking a hesitant step towards the creature. Then she recalled that it was holding a knife taller than she was, and that 'her' Pyramid thing had been utterly incapacitated only moments ago. She swallowed hard. "Pyramid Thing?" she asked it.
The creature didn't budge a muscle, still focused on the corpse. She hesitated.
"Red Pyramid? Monster?" Silence. Stillness. "...Samael?"
He stirred, turning his helmet towards her. Heather frowned, taking a hesitant step backwards, because suddenly her monster felt different. A dreamlike certainty overcame her; this monster was not protecting her. He was defining his territory, laying claim to his prey, but never did he protect. A fierce and violent thing watched her through that helm, something almost... intelligent. A darkness radiated out from him, a malevolence she hadn't detected whilst he was bleeding out helplessly on the floor of Alessa's Toluca Lighthouse.
But this was her monster, she was sure. And the more she thought about it, the more she remembered how he had tried to follow her around the Lighthouse, and the gentle feeling of his dry tongue as he lapped tears from her face. The predatory way he was currently watching her served as a warning, but she stepped forward and slowly lifted her hands to his freshly healed wounds. His skin was as fire; his heartbeat like thunder. She looked up at the wickedly pointed helmet and then gingerly touched its left facet. "Are you okay?" she asked him.
A low, deep, dangerous rumble answered her.
A moment of silence passed in which Heather watched the red-crested helmet. Then her shoulders sagged and she stepped forward, pressing herself into the monstrous part-god and flinging her arms tightly around his waist. "You're not a doll," she mumbled. "You're like Valtiel. I call you 'him,' not 'it.'" Then she smothered her face into its abdomen. "Thank you." She felt his fingers at her throat, and understood the thin line she was on. "They call you 'demon,'" she mumbled in acknowledgement of the touch. "I don't know why you saved me, and I realize that might be because I'm in even more trouble...but just... just... thank you."
Heather heard a soft jaguar growl.
She tore backwards from the Red Pyramid, looking around frantically. If she'd been thinking rationally, she'd've been pleased and impressed to note that the monster had not held onto her neck. Searching for the source of the growl, Heather scanned the buildings around her, the various windows and towers of rust... There was a skittering sound in the distance, but that could have been anything. A shudder passed through her, and her brows furrowed over her eyes.
"Valtiel..." she mumbled helplessly. It could have been him, or it could have just been her imagination playing tricks on her with all the sounds in the background. And what did it matter? Even if she did destroy Xipe, it wouldn't change the fact that Valtiel wasn't real, and that he could never be real in the sense Heather truly needed him to be. He- and the Red Pyramid behind her- were only two things: Heather's psychology made flesh; and cult religion. The former was fake, and the latter was lethal to her. She couldn't 'save' them. Maybe she could save something like Walter. Maybe. But Valtiel? A Pyramid monster? Never. And neither Harry nor Alex had the luxury of being a semi-immortal psychic.
Heather squeezed her eyes shut. She was starting to realize what Kaufmann had meant. No matter what happened now, Heather Mason had lost things that could not be replaced. Although killing Edwin would save her and her friends, it wasn't going to bring anyone back. No amount of fighting could save Alex Shepherd. Heather slumped, her face contorting with pain. The things she cared to save most were already lost to her. She was hit by a 'feeling' of sudden numbness, a lack of feeling. Trauma had caused her pain receptors to shut down. It almost made her incapable of feeling fear for her friends. How could she feel fear when her greatest fears had already happened? Almost. She thought of Travis Grady, James Sunderland, Henry Townshend.
"Fuck, Alex," she mumbled, "it's my fault. Silent Hill even warned me and I lead you right into that trap..."
Heather Mason had lost her Seal of the Metatron, and she had all but forgotten the violent, intelligent and supernaturally imbued executioner standing just beside her. So it was that her mind responded with fear when an arm as thick as her thigh suddenly draped itself in front of her, seized her opposite shoulder across the chest, and then hauled her backwards. He pressed her firmly back into a leather apron and a wall of abdominal muscles, and skin that blazed with heat. The tip of a crimson helmet dipped low in front of her, shielding out the world as the monster bent double over her; and there was a loud and hair-raising shriek as the heavy blade was heaved about and suddenly came to encircle her side and legs.
Heather Mason was very still and very quiet for a long moment. When she could move again, it was because a long dry tongue was wiping saline from her face. She wrapped her arms around the one that was holding her, pushed her face into the shoulder, and started to weep.
P-please don't leave me...
Please.
Please don't leave me. Please help me. Please.
Please help me find my Valtiel...