lking about?"
Striker felt woozy, as though something monumental had just happened, but couldn't for the life of him understand what it was. Like there had been a flicker in the middle of his word, and suddenly everything was off kilter. And when he looked at the angle of the sun, he had a spark of panic swell in him. It was just after noon, now. A moment ago it had been evening.
Did Alastor just send him back in time?
But the Radio Demon was finishing a set of stretches nearby, the static in the world dying away as he made a few contented noises with his throat, and then carefully straightened his bow tie. "Excellent," Alastor said. "Now I'm almostready for you."
"What?" Striker asked.
The beast that had once been named Samuel let out a fresh roar, then launched itself at Striker. Even as the imp felt the swelling heat of it, Alastor snapped his fingers, and the thing disappeared.
"What did you just do to him?" Striker asked.
"Sent him ahead, because you and I, little imp, have to have a moment's heart-to-heart," Alastor leaned down toward Striker. His grin was particularly malicious. "Under normal circumstances, make no mistake whatsoever, I would have left you to die by that thing's hands. I would have then simply retreated out to a safe distance, and watched the rest of his rampage both for the amusement value, and because I might discover how exactly my theories about Samuel were incorrect."
"So why are you helping me?" Striker asked.
"I did a bit of reading ahead," Alastor said with a wink. "And from the looks of things, I'm going to need you for my purposes in the future. You can't serve me if you're dead."
"What makes you think I'll work for you? I'm a Gun of Satan, not your lackey," Striker said.
"I didn't say you'd want to. I said that you would," Alastor clarified.
"And you still didn't explain what happened to… whoever that was!" Striker pointed toward where the flame beast had vanished.
"Oh that? I sent him about half of a page ahead. To give myself some breathing room, and so that you and I could have this very important little chat. Now, I wish to impress upon you how little I care about your general wellbeing. The only thing which matters to me is that you survive this. Not the condition you are in when you do. If you survive this as a nugget, that is peachy-keen by me."
"And less so for me," Striker finished. "Alright. Granted you want me alive, I'd rather have the Radio Demon on my side instead of ganging up with whatever the fuck that was to try to kill me."
"You may find my mercy perhaps less pleasant than my anger," Alastor promised. He plucked a pocket watch from his coat, and stared at it for a moment. "Well, we're almost down to where Samuel will be rejoining us."
"Why do you keep calling that thing Samuel?" Striker asked.
"Because it's rude to call Samuel 'that thing'," Alastor countered. Then, without another hint of warning, Alastor kicked Striker in the chest so hard that he flew back, hit the bench, and then flopped over the back of it. And even as he was flying backward, he saw the white flame beast lashing out at where he had been standing only a moment before. It swung its head toward Striker for a moment, then pivoted toward Alastor. The Radio Demon just stood there, hands clasped atop his cane, as the white flame beast began to rampage toward him. The grass caught fire. With a megaton swing of that blazing arm, it slammed into the powerful sinner.
And he exploded into grey dust.
Striker leaned back for a moment. That wasn't what he thought it was. The Radio Demon wasn't going to go down in one punch.
The beast seemed to know exactly what happened. With a flick of the arm, faster than meat would have allowed, and the white flame claw closed around something. Then with a heave, it hurled that something hard. The bench that Striker was even now just picking himself up behind exploded into splinters as the Radio Demon was sent rocketing through it. He rolled to his feet fairly elegantly, but his smile had turned from one of malicious amusement to one of concern.
"That shouldn't have been possible," Alastor said. "Samuel, did you see me after I Partook Moth? Did you see the path to my exeunt?"
The beast answered Alastor's earnest question by letting its still meat-based lower jaw gape wide, and emit a mind shattering howl of unspeakable fury.
"There's no need to be obtuse," Alastor said, idly fiddling with a tear in his suit-jacket.
The white flame beast turned toward Striker, and his reflexes put two bullets into its chest, blowing massive holes through the flesh of his sternum, holes which immediately bloomed with blasting heat and fire. Those wounds should have killed. The bullets in this gun could kill anything short of one of the Ars Goetia. Hell, they could even kill two of the Deadly Sins! But this thing didn't even flinch at the impact of them, the ruin of them ignored. Instincts born long ago during his upbringing screamed in his ear, and he was launching himself back and aside, only barely clearing the murderous swing of that thing's burning claw.
Striker kipped back and up to his feet, ducking behind a tree, only to have the tree ripped up by its roots, sending him rolling down the mound that its roots raised as it came. Striker rolled toward where his gun had been bashed from his grasp, willing to risk the hit to save his investment. Never give your life for a gun, but never abandon the tool that can save you, either. He barely closed his fist around its barrel when a boot slammed hard into his gut, launching him into the air. He tumbled for a moment, trying to pull in a breath, but as he fell, he saw beneath him that the white flame beast reared back with the tree it had uprooted. And the instant that Striker had fallen far enough, it swung that tree with all the technique of a baseball batter.
The impact narrowed Striker's vision desperately, further cementing his lungs' empty nature, and sent him rocketing across the water of the pond. He hit the surface twice, both times moving so fast that he skipped across the top of it like a well-thrown stone. The third time he hit it just right – or just wrong – to that he sank the five feet to the bottom. He kicked hard, only barely breaking the surface and pulling in a desperate breath. His entire body hurt. He pulsed himself forward a few times, until his Sinner-skin boots found a root on the bottom, and gave him a place he could stand.
Across the water, he watched as the white flame beast now turned its attentions to Alastor. Alastor swung his cane hard at the tree as it completed its second circuit, to clobber the Radio Demon as brutally as it had the imp. The impact was announced by the sound of shattering glass, as the entire uprooted tree exploded into splinters. A great red rune appeared above Alastors' head, and those splinters changed as they flew, turning into Sapperlings, which immediately turned and mobbed the white flame beast at their creator's will, to rapidly drain the blood of their victim. The white flame beast rooted its feet, and flexed as though tensing its shoulders.
There was a blast of incredibly bright light, and heat that even though Striker was up to his mouth in water made him want to pull himself completely under the surface. When the afterlight was blinked away, Striker could see ash falling off of the white flame beast, the Sapperlings all incinerated, and now literally everything that could catch on fire on that side of the lake was now on fire. Alastor took a step back, new runes swirling around him, as shards of pristine darkness raced out from around him to shackle and spear the white flame beast. But the beast just waded through the assault and lashed out with a haymaker blow by its flaming claw. The blow as warded by Alastor's cane, but the impact obviously sent a jolt through the Radio Demon that he hadn't been expecting. His smile, obvious even at this distance, had a note of alarm.
And the note grew stronger when the still meat-based arm of the white flame beast lashed forward in a viper strike, slamming so hard into the Radio Demon's ribs that a blast of gore exploded out of the back of his coat-tails. When the beast which was once named Samuel pulled that hand back, it held in its fingers a pulsing, black organ. Alastor's heart.
"Now this is truly interesting," Alastor said, black ichor beginning to ooze from his mouth. Alastor clenched his fist hard, and black tendrils erupted from the ground to drag the beast off of him, to slam him hard into the burning turf and into the artistically arranged rocks nearby. With a delighted chuckle, Alastor faded into shadows, which slipped into the mad flickering of the half of the park which was now on fire.
Striker only at about that point managed to drag himself onto the far shore. And when he did, Alastor was exiting the shadows ahead of him. There was a gaping hole in his chest, fractured ribs sticking out of the meat, where the white flame beast had ripped his goddamned heart out. "What…" Striker began to ask.
"I keep having to discard hypotheses. Today is turning out to be more entertaining and more enlightening than I could have possibly imagined!" Alastor said brightly, laughter adding to the blood and ichor that ran down his chin. And as he straightened his bowtie, Striker watched as a new black heart grew from nothing, watched as the ribs reformed themselves, and as flesh and skin pulled themselves into place over the injury in the time it took for him to make that statement.
"That's great for you. How do we kill that thing?" Striker demanded. He scowled at his gun. Once gain he wished he could have made it something other than a percussion cap revolver, because then he could use brass instead of paper. Gapped copper and paper let powder get wet.
"Kill him? Why would I want to do that?" Alastor asked. In the distance, there was another almost nuclear pulse of heat and light, as the tendrils were shredded apart from within, and the white flame beast began to storm toward them. It didn't wade. It walked on the top of the water, which seethed and boiled around him.
"Because it's going to kill us if we don't!" Striker pointed out the obvious. He felt naked without his hat. He could see it over there, on fire. His hat was fireproof, and still.
"You lack imagination," Alastor said, calmly watching as the monster who had just ripped his fucking heart out approached with bestial strides. "But if it will assuage you, I'll do something to buy us a little time."
"What are you going to do this time?" Striker held his gun close.
"Announce the chapter," Alastor said.
"The what?" Striker asked.
Chapter 16
Iam Perii, Perditus In Aeternum
In any other circumstance, the chance to raid deeply into Purson's Private Library would have been the highlight of Moxie's year, and took second spot for his entire life. But instead of just being able to dig into the lost arts and Unsacred Songs that the Ars Goetia brought with them when the were cast out of Heaven, instead he was looking for some trick to getting past the protections of the King of All Hell.
"Any luck?" Millie asked, as she arduously packed another imp into the garbage can near their hiding spot. The conservators of this collection weren't the most observant of imps, which meant that despite a good half dozen of them being dispatched, they still were none the wiser that there were intruders in their midst. And despite that, six times running, one of them got too close, asked a question Millie or Moxie couldn't answer, and then got a knife through the eye.
"I'm sorry. I can't find anything," he told her. Despair again pressed in on him. Lucifer's Magic was angelic in nature, but it was twisted. Most said that it was just what Hell did to angels, but Moxie was fairly certain that wasn't at all the issue. Rather, it was because Lucifer could dig into that angelic wellspring, but his halo, which angels could use to focus its imago before releasing it into the world, was shattered and most of it lost. It was like singing perfectly, but your microphone being damaged. The power of the rest of the Ars Goetia was its own beast, called by most Fallen Magic, as they not only lacked their haloes, but their wings had been ripped from their backs. Trying to compare what the Ars Goetia were capable of to the power that the King of All Hell was like trying to compare apples to atom-bombs.
"Then maybe there's something else we can find? Maybe make the King fire him and take away his protection?"
"That..." Moxie almost dismissed it out of hand, but then gave it thought. "that would work, possibly. If we can prove that Birch has broke one of Lucifer's Laws, then he might strip Birch of his position as Proxy, and the Remit of Lucifer with it! You're brilliant!"
"Aw, you're too kind," she said with a blush, before wiping some black blood from her face onto the dead monk's sleeve and finally slamming the lid down on the limb and packing it out of sight. Moxie left the discarded pile of tomes and began to move with her through the forest of forsaken words.
"So..." Moxie spoke quietly, as they maneuvered out of one area of strong, penetrative auras and into a place which didn't but against them, but instead simply ate such wandering miasmas. "What do you think it would take? Could we frame him for something?"
"I don't know the law as well as you do, hun. What'd'ya think he'd trip over if we did it?"
"I don't know," Moxie said, pulling her out of the pathway and into the shadow of an incunabula, the debatably living texts holding ancient secret magics outside the purviews of either Heaven or Hell that it would take a far sterner mind than Moxie's to survive reading. After a few seconds, a tetrad of armed imp monks moved past, speaking in Enochian. From their tones, they didn't seem to be alarmed or aggressive. For the time being, Moxie and Millie were still incognito. After ensuring that they were good and passed, Moxie guided Millie out, a hand at her back on the scratchy jute robe she was wearing to blend in. "Maybe we could set a trap for him. Or..."
"Make him time travel or something!" Millie said enthusiastically.
Moxie's brain hit the breaks and then he had to mightily restrain himself from embracing his wife. "Of course!"
"Hrm?" Millie asked, glancing back at him.
"He's already broken one of Lucifer's Laws!" Moxie said. "All we'd need to do to have Lucifer strip him of Remit would be to prove that he used Blitz and Loona to Break the Arrow and kill the Radio Demon's mortal self!"
"I still don't understand why he'd wanna do that," Millie pointed out.
"That's the great part! It doesn't matter why he did it!" Moxie said.
"But wouldn't that still leave Loona and our boss in trouble?" she asked, concern etching her face.
"The Law of Proxy!" Moxie said. "Because Blitz and Loona were acting on Birch's behalf, whether they wanted to or not, anything that they did is no reflection on them and lands entirely at Birch's feet! Birch was the one who Broke the Arrow!"
"So we don't even need that silly book," she waved ahead of them. Moxie nodded, but then his usual cynicism and pessimism caught up with him, and that nod turned into a guilty shake.
"Actually, we'll need it more than ever."
"I don't follow," she said.
"Getting Lucifer to pull the Remit just means that it will be possible to kill him. If he says anything to us at all, we still lose, whether or not he has the Remit. We need to find a way to protect ourselves. So we still need to be here after all."
"One less thing to look for, though," Millie said. Moxie, though, rubbed at his jaw. "Mox... Moxie what are you thinkin' about?"
"I'm thinking... that we could wander this place all day and not be able to find what we need," he said.
"Well, what about... this one," she said, pulling a book from a stand. It had an obvious human face stretched across its cover.
"That's just a Necronomecon. We've got one of those at home," Moxie said.
"Ours doesn't look like this," she said, toying with its slightly floppy nose.
"Ours is paperback. It still has all the same information inside. No, what we need is something that Purson is going to put a lot of protections for. And if everything I've read about this place is correct... if even any of what I've read about this place is correct... I won't find it if I were to search for a thousand years."
"Hon, take a deep breath. We'll get through this," she said, hands squeezing his shoulders lightly.
"I know. But I'm going to need you more than ever," Moxie said.
"Was that ever in doubt, Hon?" Millie asked. "What'd'ya need?"
"To keep me safe for the next few hours," Moxie said as he unhappily dug into his back pocket, and pulled out the thick baggy that was full of at least six types of psychotropic and hallucinogenic drugs. Her eyes darted from the bag then back to him. "There are secrets only madmen and fools can find in this library. This is the closest I can be to being both."
"I'll keep you safe, Sweetie. I promise," she swore, as he tore the bag and dumped an obviously unhealthy amount of illegal substances into his maw.
"Was that ever in doubt?" he mirrored her. And he kept walking, as the walls slowly started to sag, the books began to bleed, and the breeze began to talk to him.
"See? Easy as that and we've got a bit of room to breathe," Alastor said brightly, as he twirled his cane idly, walking down the street.
"Room to breathe? How did... where the fuck are we?" Striker looked around him. Somehow, a moment ago he was in the park, and now he was in the streets of Outer West Pentagram. He didn't remember coming here, and he was still soaking wet as though he'd just emerged from the pond. Something unspeakably strange was happening, something outside Striker's understanding.
But he didn't get to be the most dangerous imp in Hell by being stodgy, hidebound, and locked to an unworkable paradigm. He was what he was because he adapted faster than his peers. Because he reacted to unforeseen circumstances, and didn't get tripped up when things went off of the trail. So he gave himself a shake, and focused. Yes, he was on the sidewalk now. Yes, there was still wet lake silt on his boots. Alastor's wounds had healed, but Striker's revolver was still water-fouled. Deal with the things you can deal with first.
"I'm performing a little experiment. It seems that Samuel has taken umbrage to some of the things I've done in the past. So I'm going to see if he's truly angry enough to keep pursuing me, or if he'll just rampage for a while to get it out of his system," Alastor said.
"And when he comes for us?" Striker asked as he bored the wet paper cartridge out of the cylinder and started to replace it. He wasn't going to bother with his expensive bullets, because it was obvious they weren't doing the trick.
"You're such a pessimist," Alastor chided. "But if he does come, then we'll have to get out of the way of the car he's just thrown at us."
Striker immediately flattened himself against the wall of a bank, and the car that indeed sailed through the air less than a second later smashed into Alastor, rolling into the back of a stopped armored-car. When the passenger door opened, Alastor was sitting in it's passenger seat with his legs crossed, twirling his cane idly and staring at the white flame beast which stalked up the street, his now bare feet dragging molten asphalt with him, piles of it left burning in his wake.
A lot of people took one look at the Radio Demon, and decided to be somewhere else. Which was smart of them. Doubly smart when the enemy was something that seemed like it could actually hit Alastor meaningfully. "Oh Samuel, would you mind answering something for me? Where would you say the burning sensation starts? In your heart, in your brain-stem, or somewhere else?" Alastor asked.
The white flame beast let out another howl, this one sounding slightly more human, as though there was more a throat for it to pass through. It then grabbed the nearest fire hydrant it could find, ripped it from its mooring, and hurled it hard at Alastor. Alastor didn't even shift in his sit, he simply held out one finger, and when the hydrant hit it, it stopped dead. Then, Alastor tapped the hydrant, and it flew perfectly back toward its source, slamming hard into the white flame beast's chest, before twisting and attempting to reset itself onto the torrent of flying water that had been released with its destruction. It was unable to.
"There's no need to be so uncouth, Samuel. Just a couple of gentleman scientists talking theory," Alastor said. The water that surrounded the white flame beast flashed to steam as it pulled itself to its feet. It quickly swallowed the beast's position in a billowing field of cotton white. The screams of the terrified were drowned out by the pair of Sinners who now crawled out from under Alastor's seat, which incidentally was somebody's car.
"What the fuck, buddy! We was robbin' this car fair and square!" one of them shouted.
"Shut the fuck up, Match! That's the fuckin' Radio Demon!" the other pulled him away, backing up from the Overlord in their midst. Incidentally, that moved them toward the billowing steam. Striker could have warned them, but honestly, reloading a percussion cap revolver was a bitch, and he wanted to be sure he had six for when the white flame beast showed itself. One of them turned, pulling a sawed off shotgun from his coat and letting both barrels fly. The impact of the shot checked the white flame beast's advance out of the steam by one sixteenth of a step, and its attention was on the Radio Demon, not the trash that was in his way. At least, it was, until the other one took a pry bar and swung it with all his might at the thing's face.
It didn't try to block the hit. It just slammed into the burning beast's face and caused the man to flinch back with a sore arm, the white flame beast barely deflecting at all from the hit. The Sinner swung again. And this time, the white flame beast's arm shot up and caught the prybar. But something was different. While the arm was still made of solid white flame, it started just past the armpit, whereas the wound that Striker's bullet had caused had undone the thing's entire shoulder almost to the clavicle. It was regenerating a wound by an Intoxinated bullet. That was why Stygium was in such high demand in certain circles. It was one of the few substances which, when alloyed with lead or moonsilver, was fatally poisonous to Sinners. The wounds might not be Purified, such as when the Steel of Angels touches them, but they were the next best thing. And this monster was regenerating them.
The white flame beast held the pry bar in its hand for just a moment, its human lower lips pulled into a scowl of derision. Then, the entire bar flashed white, turned from solid to liquid in a heartbeat. The Sinner screamed, backing away with boiling metal coating his hand. The white flame beast grabbed the other one, the shotgun bearer, by his face with its flaming claw, and he started screaming even worse. It was the kind of scream that Striker was intimately familiar with. It was the scream of somebody who thought they were immortal, being shown that they absolutely were not. After holding the gunner's face for about two seconds, the white flame beast let him drop, and he collapsed to the street. The flesh of half of his face had been seared away to ash, right down to the bone.
"This is fascinating. On a scale between one being perfectly calm and ten being Lucifer versus Michael, how angry would you say you are right now?" the Radio Demon asked, as he stood up out of the seat. Another Sinner, this one wearing the livery of the armored car company, shoved the car out of the way, took one look at the white flame beast, and promptly decided that today was a good day to quit.
The monster that had once been named Samuel hurled itself at Alastor, its asphalt rending strides causing the tarmac to spray behind it as it came. Alastor though, split in half, then again into four. The white flame beast tried to clobber one, but another of the Alastors easily glided behind him, hooked his cane under his chin, and heaved back with a strangle hold as the others re-merged with him. The Radio Demon might have noticed that the proximity of the thing's head to his shoulder was setting his suit on fire, but if he did notice it, he didn't care.
"Hmmm," Alastor said, leaning away from the flames which were setting half of his hair on fire. "It's coming up through your spinal column. Not centred in the brain, then."
Alastor then twisted hard, and hurled the white flame beast into the wall of the bank. He then reached into his pocket and pulled his pocket watch, giving it a stare while his suit smoldered to black and his burnt flesh and hair regrew. Striker leaned back so he could see into the building. The beast hadn't gone very far before it slammed into the metal of the vault. The hardened steel and titanium began to glow orange as the beast pulled itself out of the bricks that it'd been punted through and stood at the edge looking down at them both. Its 'head' snapped to Striker, and the imp had only a split second to react to it switching targets to him.
He hurled himself back, firing a bunch of good-old lead into the approaching monster. He might as well have spat into the wind. The thing missed him with his first punch, which shattered the tarmac with the blazing white claw. The next, which came entirely too quickly after the first slammed a hand hard on Striker's boot, hard enough that it felt like it was trying to disarticulate his ankle. He pulled his foot out of his boot, getting his toes past the clench point just before his fireproof boot erupted into white-hot flame. Striker fired again as he flew back, putting a bullet through where the thing's eye would have been, if it had eyes. Since it didn't, more spitting into the wind.
Moving so fast that Striker could only barely see it, it then lashed out with a hook that, had it been an eighth as fast, been something considered 'blockably telegraphed', a savage blow that caught Striker in the face and sent him flying across the tarmac. Like with the water, he bounced twice, only the surface was far less forgiving. He was fairly certain the only thing that saved him from road-rash deserving of a motor-cycle wipeout was that his clothes were mostly leathers.
Striker pushed himself up, rubbing at his face which hurt like a bastard. And he found something... off. He pawed at his mouth for a moment. And he felt that something was missing. His razor sharp eyes spotted it about half-way between where he'd been hit, and where he'd landed. His gold tooth. The beast then looked to Alastor. But Alastor wasn't there.
Which of course he wasn't.
Alastor was busy standing in the center, watching the whole thing with amusement.
Unable to find Alastor, the white flame beast began to advance on Striker again. Striker spat out some black blood and raised his pistol. He knew he couldn't meaningfully hurt this thing with what he'd loaded, but without Seraph Steel, he had nothing. And frankly, he wasn't sure that even Angel Steel would have done the job. As its legs corded, its stance putting weight for a launch, Striker lowered his gun and fanned the hammer at the white-flame beast's knee. And for a wonder, the gambit worked, three bullets into the tender meat of a knee was enough to turn what would have been a launch into a blunder, more sideways than forward as it careened into another parked car. The alarm went off for only two honks before it melted, along with most of the rest of the car. Another howl hit the air, geysers of flame flashing out of the bullet holes.
Within seconds, those geysers vanished, and the wound was gone.
Then, it was charging at him again. Not in one massive bound, but in bestial vaults. Striker reached into his boot and pulled his knife. This was his last ace. This thing was stolen from the Human World a long time ago, a knife that had once been strapped to the ragged stump of a stubborn warrior's wrist before a hopeless battle. He didn't understand the particulars of why it made this jagged piece of iron so deadly, but if it worked, it worked. The creature tried to grab Striker through the knife, and ended up with it embedded in its wound for the problem. Even the tiny twitch of Striker's captured hand caused it to saw through meat and bone. Against ordinary quarry, they would have fled in pain and terror. This thing didn't have either.
There was another pulse of flame, this one so close that Striker had no option but to turn away from it and clench his jaw against the pain of it as his faintly scaly hide cracked and burned, black blood frying under the presence of the white flame beast. Striker twisted the knife in his grasp, sawing its way sideways out of the hand that closed almost Alastor-fast in its wake. He tried to run, but he felt his left hand burn even hotter, even worse. He looked back, and saw that the beast had him by his left. And its face, now reconstituted to just below the eye sockets, let out another blast-furnace roar. Striker knew exactly what it was about to do, felt an unstoppable heat start to build up in the bones of his entire arm up to the shoulder. And he knew he had no time to trickster his way out of it.
So he put that jagged knife on the outside of his elbow, and then pulled it through.
He back-rolled away, his stump drizzling black blood as the limb still in the beast's grasp flashed into ash. Striker back-crawled away until he found a pool of molten tarmac, and shoved the limb into it. It seared hard, pain almost as intense as when Satan embedded the Remit of Wrath Incarnate into Striker's soul. He hadn't screamed then. And he didn't scream now. But he finally rolled to his feet, and had to hurl himself aside as the white flame beast had not been still as he was flopping on the floor like a dying fish.
And then Striker found himself on the right. Alastor leaned down at the waist to him, smiling sublimely. "Did you learn anything interesting?"
"Where the fuck were you hiding?"
"On the right side," Alastor said.
"The right side of what?" Striker demanded, clutching at his maimed limb
"The page, little fool!" Alastor said with a flourish.
Now that Striker thought about it, he did seem a bit more 'middle' than usual. And not just because of his missing left hand.
"Stop thinking so much. If you stretch to the right side Samuel might see you."
Striker turned a baffled look to Alastor, then to the white flame beast in the street.
It wandered the street, its head swinging to and fro, looking for the prey which had eluded it. A car screeched to a halt sideways in the street, one bearing the sigil of the Peacekeepers. Instantly, two Sinners threw the doors open and pointed oversized crossbows at the white flame beast. "Stay right where you are! Any movement against us will be met with gruesome force!" the one who had been driving shouted.
And the beast ignored them. It turned its back on them, panning his lack of eyes vaguely over the spot where Alastor and Striker had last been. It moved to the pool of molten tar that had imp blood leading to it. The Peacekeepers seemed baffled by its suddenly peaceful actions, and the driver nodded to the passenger, who ducked back into the car and started to radio for backup. The white flame beast leaned down, nostrils flaring as it took in a deep breath, trying to smell its quarry.
"Will it be able to track us?" Striker asked.
"Unlikely. It probably doesn't even know that we're over here," Alastor said.
"And what do we do if it does?" Striker asked.
"Do you think the right side was my only trick? Please. I contain multitudes," Alastor bragged.
The white flame beast's head snapped up, and it seemed to stare straight up for a moment.
"Is that...?" Striker asked.
"How unexpected," Alastor said.
And then the white flame beast looked upon them in full, with one thunderous stride entering the Right- Side despite Alastor obviously not wanting it to. "Oh fuck!" Striker shouted, scrambling away from the white flame beast's advance.
"Sir, where did it go?" the Peacekeeper on the radio asked.
"It... just disappeared," the driver said, looking about and trying to reacquire it. When that failed, he tured to his subordinate. "Radio in a possible teleporter. And get some people in here to quarantine this place. Fuck me this is gonna be a mountain of paperwork."
Alastor slapped away a haymaker blow from the white flame beast's flesh hand, and ducked under a raking by its still flaming claw. Much of the arm had already regenerated, only the hand and claws still made of living white flame. In fact, much of the dude's head was also pulling itself together, as a pair of eyebrows formed over a furnace of white that blasted out under them. But there was one part of the beast which wasn't all white flame or ashy flesh. A red, bleeding wound on his side. Striker took the educated guess, quickdrew his pistol, and fired a round directly into that existing, bleeding injury.
The fucking thing flinched.
Driving simple lead into that wound caused the white flame beast to recoil, clutching at the fresh gout of red that pulsed out of its body. Even Striker's Stygium laced rounds hadn't had that much of a reaction from it, save for the first two which blew its head off. Striker made to fan the hammer, to drain three more rounds into the wound, but then remembered why he couldn't. With a snarl that showcased his missing gold tooth, he single actioned the pistol the old fashioned way, and sent another slug straight through the meat hand and into the wound. The white flame beast let out a roar, pained yes, but even more rage-poisoned than before.
"I think it's time we leave," Alastor said. A bunch of red runes burned around him, and he snapped his fingers.
With the sound of a massive metal cable snapping under strain, reality twisted and bent, and he felt himself fall sideways for a moment before gravity resumed its pull on his boots. Striker fell about a foot, landing on gravel. He gave his head a shake, trying to cast off the skipsickness. There was a reason he hated when his coworkers skipped. It always left you at least a little bit woozy on the other end. When he pushed himself to a proper stand, he actually knew where he'd been skipped to. Black Tooth, one of the tiny 'border towns' peopled mostly by imps and runaway fiends from the other Rings, gathered here because they were right up against the Pride Wall and thus not the kind of place where the Peacekeepers bothered to run their patrols. This made places like Black Tooth perfect smugglers' dens.
Notably, the Radio Demon was not with him.
"Howdy, partner. You havin' a doozy of a day?" An old, but still brawny Wrath imp asked from a rocking chair on a porch nearby.
"Just a bit of a scrap. You know how it goes," Striker answered.
"Want need a patch-up kit? I gots one in my kitchen, if'n you need it?" the Wrath imp cast his thumb over his shoulder, into the tiny saltbox house he was rocking in front of.
"That's mighty neighbourly of ya'," Striker said.
"Gotta look to our folk, 'round here," the imp said, and then went back to rocking and smoking a pipe. He liked Black Tooth. It reminded him of better days, and better people. He gave the old-timer a nod, almost tipping his hat before remembering it was probably ashes beside a lake right now. Inside the house was nostalgic for him. He'd grown up in such environs. But the draw to his eye was the satchel hanging on the wall marked with the tilted star. He pulled the thing onto the big, open kitchen table and uncomfortably unzipped it. No Ambrosia – slim chance of that, honestly – which killed Striker's hopes of getting his arm back. It did have a tin of Sweet Tar though. That stuff, skimmed off the top of the Abyss by insane or greedy imps, would if nothing else kill the pain and prevent infection. He scraped the road-tar off of his stump with his knife, and then slathered the stuff of imps' souls over the wound. Instantly, the pain was gone, and the tar quickly changed color until it was the same shade as his flesh.
Maybe he could find a decent prosthetic?
"Howdy partner. You here fer yer friend?" the old-timer's voice came from the porch.
"You know the saying, 'best not be around here right now'?" Alastor's voice came from outside. Striker emerged, tucking his knife back into his boot, having to skirt around the old-timer to do so. The fella obviously didn't need any more convincing than he'd received. "There you are. I hoped you hadn't hidden in a hole somewhere. It wouldn't have saved you from him."
"Where in the Rings of Hell did you go?" Striker demanded, as he tried to reload his gun. With only one hand, it was even more slow than usual. Alastor stood straight-backed, a huge grin on his face. And despite the blood and ichor that still ran down his face, his suit was now immaculate.
"Well, I tried to have a confab with him between the perspective changes, but he decided to just wale on me for a while," Alastor said brightly. "So I decided to go all the way back to Chapter Three and catch my breath for a moment. Now, I'm right as rain!"
"But you lost him, right?" Striker said awkwardly, because he had to hold his gun-barrel in his teeth to ram a bullet into the cylinder.
The air became hotter.
"Hardly. And I might have accidentally taught Samuel True Teleportation!" Alastor related.
"Satan's Throne, what is wrong with you!" Striker asked.
And then there was a blast of flame, runes made of white light hanging in the air as the white flame beast appeared in Black Tooth. Alastor's grin twisted. "Oh, you have no idea, short-sighted imp, what is wrong with me."
The beast looked almost like the Sinner again, his head essentially regrown. Only the white flame blasting out of the eyes gave the trick away that something wasn't right about him. It hurled itself at Alastor, fists igniting the air around them, only for the distance to increase somehow between it and Alastor. The expression on its face shifted from frustration, to calm. Then, there was a snap, and the beast was standing directly behind Alastor. He grabbed the Radio Demon by his antlers and pulled back, driving a vicious blow into where Alastor's liver was supposed to be. Alastor twisted his head 180 degrees, grin wide, and hyperextended one of his arms in a brutal chop that slammed into the white flame beast's shoulder. Striker had seen blows of that magnitude cut Sinners in half. The white flame beast merely buckled its footing a little; then, with words distorted by the blasting of flame, it said something.
"B̵̼̰̠͒̚͝E̴̞͒̅-̷̛̩̌͛N̴̤͌̐̈́ͅO̵̭͉̻̓̃̂T̶̹̙̭̓̎̋" it said.
And then there was a snap as Alastor was blasted away, sent crashing directly through a building on the far side of the street and likely out the other side of it. Then those flame eyes turned to Striker.
Moonsilver Stygium blew off limbs, but they were expensive and this thing could regenerate them despite all common sense and all of history saying it shouldn't. Stygian Lead could poison, but what good was poison against an open flame? Destined Metal worked like it was mundane. He had no Infernal Talc, because carrying that shit around was tantamount to a death-wish. What else could he kill a Sinner with?
The Pride Wall.
Striker might not have the full use of his arms, but his legs were just fine. And even though they weren't nearly as long as the white flame beast's, he had decades of experience in juking bigger things trying to kill him. He let his instincts guide his path, sprinting down the streets with his tail giving him balance, and the whispers of greater heat his only warnings to the incoming blows. He dodged the ones he could. He rolled with the ones he couldn't. One blow sent him crashing through a kitchen window. He rolled off of the table and kept running, past the imp family which had been eating supper, and out their back door. Two streets to go.
The family screamed as the white flame beast entered their home. That was their problem, not Striker's. Kicking the door open, he continued his sprint, bounding up onto the fence that separated two buildings that were otherwise too close to shimmy past. Balancing slowed him down, but not as slow as going around would have.
Even as he dismounted, the fence was bursting into flame under his feet. His somersault gave him a glimpse of the beast behind him. Keep running. Around the next house, which had the Pride Wall as part of its back yard. Keep following me you dumb brute...
There was another metal snap sound, and Striker, who had been watching behind him, ran into something.
He turned, and saw the white flame beast standing right in front of him. He tried to dodge back, but getting away from one hand left him helpless to the other. It clenched fingers against his jaw. It drove its thumb through Striker's left eyelid, and then through his eye.
He did scream at this. He could feel a heat building up in his skull, as the white flame beast prepared to turn his entire upper body to ash in a flash. But Striker wasn't going down this easily. And he'd lined himself up perfectly. Striker made the sign of The Horns at the white flame beast's chest, and he invoked the power of the Remit of Satan, Wrath Incarnate.
The blast of force hurled the white flame beast away, sending him sailing straight into the Pride Wall. Striker fell to a knee, clutching his wounded face. He snapped his fingers, drawing them toward his right side, until he confirmed that yes, he had no vision in his left eye. If he wished to prod, he might find the organ collapsed entirely, ruined under the Sinner's thumb.
"Well, so much for that," Striker muttered, his voice ragged.
Then he looked up, and saw the white flame beast standing up. Unburnt. On the other side of the Pride Wall.
"What." Striker said.
The white flame beast took one furious stride toward him. Then the flame died in its eyes, the white fire dying down to blue, and then all the way down to yellow, as a pair of yellow eyes grew into the vacant orbs that had once belched flame. Samuel blinked, confused, and clutched a hand at his side, feeling the blood that even now leaked out of that unhealing wound.
"Where am I? Why don't I have a shirt?" Samuel asked.
"That motherfucker," Striker said.
"Ah, there you are, Samuel," Alastor said. "Why oh why didn't you tell me about this little trick of yours?"
Sam looked at Alastor, standing on the Pride side of the Pride Wall, then to Striker, then to himself, on the Greed side. "Oh, fuck me," Sam said.
"It was never Alastor who could leave Pride," Striker said, falling to a knee. "It was you all along."
"Yeah. Could... uh... we keep this between us?" Sam asked, looking nervous, as though he hadn't just beaten the fuck out of both the most talented imp in hell and the fucking Radio Demon just a moment ago. Alastor grinned, and Sam sighed, face falling into his hand.
Moxie died about six epiphanies ago.
The imp that wandered through the ever shifting maze of words had no name at this point. Once, it had been a spring wound so tightly that it would explode upon the slightest provocation. Now that coil was floating somewhere up and to the left of his head. He occasionally poked it, just to see how it quivered.
There were words that were spoken, a blasphemous notion to this place of words rendered hard into the world. He was unable to meaningfully interface with them, however. Voids of words would come to him. They would make fluid words at him. And then his beating heart would make them go away, and the fluid words would dissipate, letting him walk through the solid words again.
His curiosity rode within his skull where he'd lost his brain. Notions and ideas aplenty lived in this land. They flowed as a river launching itself up a cliff-face, building up the land as they went. And the imp moved in their tide. Sometimes those little appendages he used to fing would reach out, run along something SOLID. Many times, they would recoil, back into the white-black haze. Sometimes, they lingered. And whenever they lingered, he felt them pulled from fing-ers by his heart.
In the distance, he saw a figure in a red suit, tall and with antlers crowning his head. The figure spoke to a being of living ink. "Back again, Alastor?" the ink asked.
"I thought I should announce myself this time. Too many of your little helpers ended up dead the last time I sauntered in, and I couldn't find what I wanted," the red suit spake.
"You hadn't need to slay them then. While a once-man you be, a lore-man you are now," the ink said, making solid words as it did. "My library is open to those of lore. Your lore is mighty."
It was an echo. A not-now. Words liquid held in course. He felt his heart come close. The name Moxie was given back to him, but since he had no brain, he wouldn't hold onto it for long. Threat? Warning? Fear was in the spring, now. The he which was Moxie poked the spring again. Just to feel it tremble. Then he continued walking. Away from the echo. He drifted off of his chosen course as his heart bore him away.
He could smell love. It smelled like his heart. It smelled like black blood. When he looked at his heart, it was covered in it, head to toe in black and sticky like warm, slick tar, only its eyes sharp and yellow. He put words out. Words that made his heart swell. Then, after briefly comporting with the notion of time, he let himself slip into eternity again, to follow the flow of words.
So he drifted through the jungle of things made solid and eternal. So he drifted through the jungle of things made solid and eternal. So he drifted through the jungle of things made solid and eternal. At this point the concept of repetition returned to him. And he came upon a number.
37.
Without understanding why, those parts of the thing which was still tenuously Moxie put the parts of him that finged onto it, and held those notions close. Hope was in them. Hope and price. Take what you want and pay for it.
"I think we have it," the words were thunder to his ears.
And Millie, who had been guiding her utterly delirious husband since he'd taken a frankly unsafe amount of drugs, began to gently pull him out of Purson's Private Library before somebody realized that this particular drugged-out imp wasn't supposed to be here.
Iam Perii, Perditus In Aeternum
As it was decided upon Cain's death and damnation.
Strike against the doom!
Fight against extinction!
Strike down the Angel!
Spit in the eye of God!
Destroy the now! Ruin to the Eternal!
- Erasmus Von Brutte's battle song against the Radio Demon
...and honestly, the biggest insult of all is that stupid Latin you're using! I've met hog-farmers who've got better fluency in the Ionic Tongue than you do!
-The Radio Demon as he is killing Erasmus Von Brutte
This version of this chapter is simply for archival purposes. To see the chapter as it had been intended to be read, visit threads/the-gift-of-rage-hazbin-hotel-helluva-boss.931213/page-28#post-79484677 in the spacebattle's forum and follow it forward.
For an explanation of what Alastor's doing, it can be read at threads/the-gift-of-rage-hazbin-hotel-helluva-boss.931213/page-30#post-79717501, also at the spacebattles forum.