Part Six: Becoming, Part One
DAVID
Not ten feet away stood a dead man.
"What the…? Where am I?" I asked, confused.
"I told you, kid. Paradise," came a voice from behind me.
I turned around, to see a slightly overweight, but friendly man. He was dressed much like his voice gave away: a 1920's street hustler, a hobo, or whatever you want to call it.
"Whistler, I presume?"
"One and only."
"Um, David, aren't you forgetting someone?" Asked the familiar voice of Sanders.
"Holy shit! Sanders! Your alive! Berenson killed you, but your alive!"
"Not really. I'm dead. So are you. Same with Marc and Ripper."
I wasn't listening. I jumped up and hugged the boy I had treated as a son.
"Wait…why are we in heaven? We did some pretty awful shit. This is heaven, isn't it?"
LaRouche was asking the question. Out of nowhere he and Ripper appeared.
"Yes, Marc. This is heaven. You're here because everything you were taught about heaven and hell is a lie."
I looked around, and saw so many people, all just being happy and stuff. Everyone. I saw people I knew, or thought I did. Lots of white. Here and there were more of those Archron things, and other…beings that I couldn't quite put a finger on.
"Better explain it a little better, Sanders. Their more confused than I was when I got here," Said Marco McCabe, striding through the crowd towards the little gaggle of Antimorphs and Whistler.
"Hey Marco. Yeah, listen: you get to choose, ok? If you want to go hell and become a Drac, by all means, you are allowed."
"If this is heaven then why don't I remember anything?" Asked Ripper, "Why don't I know who I am?"
"You're the Ripper, same way Marc is the Loyal and David is the Beast. Just as Skorre is the Warrior and Aleks is the Mercenary and Sara is the Innocent. That's all you get to find out until you finish your job on the mortal plane," Sanders explained.
"What job?" LaRouche asked.
"Each of you has a destiny to complete, kiddo, and I gotta tell ya, if it was up to me, Taggart here wouldn't be going back. But the Power works in mysterious ways, I guess."
"Just tell them, dude. I've got lunch with Elfangor and Kurt Cobain in a half hour," whined Marco. I may be dead, but I still found myself with a strong urge to kill him.
"Alright, alright. Give me a second, alright?" Sanders composed himself, and began to speak to us…
"Of old there was the Power. God, the maker, whatever holds your fancy…"
In the beginning, there was only the Power. It floated alone in the Void until it created the First: The Maiar. The Maiar were created with the powers of demigods, able to create and nurture life.
The first five to be brought into being were Darius, a Maiar who created all life to occupy the Universes. Marius, his brother and twin, who created the forces of nature, fire and water and earth and wind… Next was Chira, the Maiar who created friendship, and thus love, amongst mortals. Then, came Gray'Ang, who made the laws and morals that would preserve peace and tranquility in reality. Last came Lathos, who created the Stars to give light to the worlds of mortals.
The Maiar also create their home, Paradise, and bred more of their kind to populate it. While the Maiar were created with one destiny: the creation and preservation of the universe, mortals had a greater gift. They could choose their own destiny and make of it whatever they wanted. While the Power itself rarely, if ever communicated or interfered with the affairs of the Mortals, the Maiar were bound to its will.
The multiverse was at peace. Then, came one being, of a species lost forever in time, with an idea: To control others.
This being gained followers, and chose for the first time, Evil.
The Maiar noted that those who practised Evil should not be allowed into Paradise upon death. They created a giant organism to monitor and sort life upon death, painlessly casting the Evil into the Void, where they would be unmade.
It was not given any name, but it was given a title.
The Machine.
The Machine performed its task for hundreds of eons, until slowly, it found that it could take the minds and souls of the dead who passed through it. While the Good were still admitted to Paradise, the Evil, that should have been cast into the Void, became part of it. No one missed them.
The Machine absorbed billions of Evil spirits, and soon, it gained sentience, knowing only one thing in its limited view of the multiverse, have been exposed only to malice, hatred, bigotry, pain and torture for untold years:
Evil was superior to Good. Good must be destroyed.
The Machine achieved sentience and cut itself off from the Maiar. It sent out a call for all of great Evil to come to it and join it.
Trillions of Mortals found their way to the Machine in its fiery dimension of Tartarus.
One thousand of them merged through the Machine and had their souls interwoven with evil energies, tied into the very fabric of time and space. They became the Shrikes.
The rest became the first Demons. Dracs. Since they had once been mortal, they could not cross the dimensions on their own and could indeed be killed, but as the Machine sent its call out for Evil to the dead and living alike, new Dracs would always be made.
The Machine made its first attack. Using the Shrikes to lead the Dracs into battle, they attacked the dimension of Tamir-La. They failed.
The Machine deduced that the reason for the failure of is minions, is that they lacked an effective field-commander. A general. The Machine could send its soldiers to the target, but it could not lead them.
It looked into Paradise and saw what it needed. A Maiar on its side.
Marius and Darius were the most powerful of the Maiar. Of the two, Marius wanted the power to create life and make the universe perfect and fill it with perfect life. Marius was impatient with the slow guiding designs of the Power, and was often chastised by his brother for it.
The Machine appeared to Marius in his dreams. It showed him a path, a way for his plans to unravel themselves upon the universes.
For ten thousand years, it poisoned his mind.
Over this time, Marius, once the proudest and most beautiful Maiar, became dark and sinister. He covered himself in black and wore an armour of Skulls.
Marius fashioned himself a sword: Azure Wrath. With this blade, he cut his chest and swore fealty to the voice in his dreams, though he knew not what it truly was.
Darius at last confronted his brother, though it was too late.
The two kinsmen duelled with their blades, Darius bearing a dagger built by Marius as a present. Purposly, Marius made the blade weak and shabby. It quickly broke to the awesome power of Azure Wrath, leaving Darius defenceless.
With that, Marius stabbed his brother through the heart, and the blood of the Maiar that created life was tainted by the evil blade. The blood fell through time and space and into Tartarus. Some fell into the Machine and created the High Demons. Some fell into the fields of fire and spawned the Lesser Demons.
As this happened, Darius died, his body becoming one with the Power.
Marius changed. His form, once fair a true, became ragged and evil. He would never again assume a form that was pleasing to the eye. He dropped his sword and ran.
Marius fled to Tartarus, where his will joined with the Machine. Marius proclaimed himself the Dark Lord of Hell (a word in the language of the Dracs that means fire) and built his Dark Tower of Gharanz-Tyre.
With that, the name Marius fell into obscurity. That Dark Maiar would be forever more known as Mephisto: The Great Hate.
"So," said Sanders, "That's what Mephisto is. That's what the Shrike, the thing that killed you, serves."
"Maybe so, but what about this whole 'Beast' thing?" asked LaRouche.
"Uh oh," Marco said, sounding worried, "Here's where the shit hits the fan.
"Marco, shut up," Sanders said, sounding pissed at Marcos annoying tone , "David, I'm about to tell you some things you probably aren't going to like. Things that are going to make you mad."
"Tell me. I'm not afraid."
"You will be."
The wars raged for millions of eons, untold lives were lost.
Mortals took up arms on both sides of the conflict. Every day, the empire of Hell expanded to fill more dimensions with fire and ash, their populations enslaved or killed.
In this time, all the first generation of Maiar, save Chira, were killed.
At their height of the conflict, Gray'Ang breached the front gates of Gharanz Tyre and caught Mephisto outside the tower. Using Azure Wrath, he duelled with the Dark Lord and wounded him, a mark he still bears.
Though Gray'Ang was killed, the Machine was alarmed. For the first time, it realized that it could be defeated.
After much deliberation, it took almost all of its power and poured it into a simple red stone, and named it.
Ragnarok. Dracish for "Machine Stone".
When Mephisto held the Ragnarok Stone in his hand, his power increased a hundred fold! No mortal or Maiar could stand in his path.
All seemed lost. Hell was on the verge of total domination.
Then, dissention brewed in the ranks of the Machine. A Shrike named Crayak-The Lord of Treason realized that if it could come to possess the Stone, it would dominate Hell.
Crayak rallied the legions of Dracs under its command, as well as all but 13 of the Shrikes to his side. They waged a brutal civil war that lasted for over a thousand years.
In the end, Crayak raided Gharanz-Tyre. It duelled with Mephisto and, partly due to the interference of the Power, cut his hand off. The hand-which bore the Stone-fell into the fabric of time, and was lost.
Crayak, seeing that it would loose, ran. It soon found a universe, and fortified it, barring the minions of the Machine, and all but the most powerful Maiar from entering it, though they could look in and use the Ether-the gap between dimensions-to communicate with it inhabitants in their sleep.
The wars of the Machine were stopped. With all of its power gone, it hadn't the resources left to wage war. Mephisto looked back on the mortals, and in his rage, created the Vampires, dead mortals inhabited with demon souls, to act as his agents on the Mortal plane.
Still, Puck the Half-Drac, chief servant of Mephisto, had a plan to find the Stone and return it to his master. Puck impregnated a human sorceress with his demonic seed, and the Beast was born. A creature of unimaginable power and sheer ferocity and destruction. It rivalled Mephisto for power and even assailed Gharanze-Tyre itself!
Puck broke the Beast down, and made the evil and essence of the demon half reside inside a human body. He set each within every universe-even Crayaks-with the objective of destroying it. Even one destruction would set a chain of events in order that would cause the Stone to hop from world to world, space to space, until it reached Hell again.
While each Beast was named David (Drac for 'Beast') and marked with a 666 (the symbol of Hell) to show its identity, it lacked a human soul. None succeeded, while some indeed came close.
One…just one…redeemed himself, or will, if he is allowed to continue his path. David Hunting has created himself a soul through his actions and feelings. He now has a conscience and has a genuine need inside to do good.
Your path, David Taggart, would have ended up much like his, if not for Pucks intervention. While Hunting was saved by his human comrades who manipulated time and space to achieve their ends, you were forsaken. No help came for you.
"Insane, ain't it?" Asked Marco McCabe with a sly smile.
"You've got to be shitting me…I'm the Antichrist?"
"Well, that's one way of putting it," Sanders replied.
Whistler spoke up, "The Power felt that you had to hear this from someone you knew and trusted. Also considered was former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Randy Rhodes."
"Not the time, Whistler!"
"Jesus, here I am, a servant of God himself, and I'm working for the devil. Whadda ya know?" Ripper muttered.
"Why tell me this?" I asked, confused, "What does this achieve?"
"Your not dead for real, yet, David. You cant go one of two ways here," Sanders explained, "You can stay here, with us, and live in Paradise. Just choosing not to go back will be enough to redeem you, but the results of that could be disasterous. The Yeerks would control the entire galaxy within a century, and in that the Machine would win."
"Whats the other choice?" LaRouche asked.
"Go back. Fight the Shrike. Without you, Aleks, Skorre and Sara will die. I've got to say, I think this is how you have to do it. Everything works out, everything serves the Power. You might succeed in your mission, David, but theres always a failsafe in this little game of life."
I sat down. This was too much to absorb. I was evil incarnate. I would end the world. I would doom every mortal to a life of slavery and torture…Puck was my FATHER…"
"Fuckin' hell," I muttered.
"I've got to go," Marco said, "Lunch time."
I didn't see him leave. I looked at the floor. What was I going to do?
"I cant make you do anything, David. You have to make this choice on your own."
I looked up at Sanders, "I wish I could have been there, with you, when you died. At your side."
"No you don't, David," he said, gravely, "The things that I saw as I died would have destroyed you."
I didn't know what Lewis Sanders meant. It didn't matter.
I looked at LaRouche. I looked at Ripper, noticing that his teeth were normal and he was clean-shaven and human looking. I had never seen him this way.
"Heaven can wait."
With that, we fell back to mortality.
"Good choice, kid. Now do your fuckin' job. Don't let daddy down," came a sneering, sarcastic voice.
Puck.
It didn't matter. I opened my eyes, to see Aleks, Skorre, and Sara fighting for their lives.
Time to set things straight. Time to slay a demon.