20 – The Cult of the Dead God

Erika sat in the rear seat of The Warrior’s enchanted van, glowering out the window as they traveled away from the bird city, back toward the long, black cobblestone bridge.

“Am I the only one who thinks we shouldn’t be headed toward the giant monster chained up under a bridge?” The Stalker asked, echoing Erika’s thoughts.

Nothing about the situation felt good to Erika, but she didn’t exactly have better ideas. They were headed back to where Erika found herself after appearing in this realm, with The Warrior believing that the barrier between here and home would be thinner there because of the ritual. The location where The Warrior and the others had appeared would have been viable as well, but they had moved around, gotten turned around, and now no longer knew the spot. The bridge, on the other hand, was linear, and Erika’s truck would act as a landmark for the exact spot.

No one answered The Stalker’s question. The Warrior, having taken over driving the van, focused on the road ahead—the van could not fly, despite being able to stop in the middle of the air, thus necessitating that they navigate the strange geography of the bird city. Two cultists who Erika didn’t recognize were giving The Strategist some first aid in the far back of the van, leaving Simone in the middle with Erika and Carter.

The Stalker, having taken over the passenger seat, looked around the van with a scowl. Noting that everyone was too busy stuck in their own thoughts, she huffed, tapping the end of her gun against the cracked windshield. “I’m just saying, that’s a fucking big monster and we’re low on big bullets.”

“Does it register when you look at it?” The Warrior asked, her tone relatively light, though her serious expression killed any levity. “Can you see more of it than what is poking up above the bridge?”

Erika watched The Stalker’s face in the mirror as her eyes shimmered with the use of her power. Grinding her teeth together, The Stalker twisted her head like she was trying to wrench her gaze away, but her eyes swiveled to keep staring in the same direction. Reaching forward, Erika swept a hand in front of The Stalker’s eyes.

It shouldn’t have mattered with The Stalker’s power—she could see through people and walls as long as she was focusing on a target—but Erika broke her line of sight.

The Stalker hissed, clasping her hand to her face, covering her eyes. “The fuck is it?”

“You could see it?” Erika asked, still leaning toward The Stalker.

“No—fuck. I don’t know. It’s more like… I could see everything but it.” Eyes closed, The Stalker rubbed the sides of her cheekbones in a circular motion, massaging away her strain. “That’s not how my powers are supposed to work. First that dumb nudist bitch and now this?”

“The naked woman from the hotel? You see everything but her as well?”

“No. I don’t see her at all unless I’m five feet away; she’s the first thing I’ve seen that I can’t track across the city. This—” she growled, flipping a middle finger out the broken window at the chained up limbs. “—is more like a hole in the world filled with a million different things that I can see.”

“A hole back to our world?” The Warrior hummed, angling her head for a brief moment before her eyes drifted back to the road.

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Just musing to myself,” she said with an obviously forced chuckle. She flipped on a turn signal, then headed in the same direction, squeezing the van between two close obsidian buildings.

They couldn’t use the van’s ability to phase through structures. Apparently, the window being broken would have deleterious effects for the occupants should they try.

“Probably for the best that you can’t see it in its entirety,” The Warrior said, lightly rubbing at the rim of her glasses. “I’ve never seen something like it, but even without your powers, it makes me uncomfortable. I’d like to get a little closer—”

“Do not poke the dead god,” The Strategist groaned from the back of the van. “You might wake it up.”

Erika twisted, leaning over the back of the seat.

The Strategist was face down, half curled up in an awkward position to fit inside the van. One of the cultists carefully looped a thin sewing needle through the skin of his shoulder blade, tugging together a gash that might have seen him lose an arm. It didn’t look like the prettiest job, but as long as they could get back home, they had The Healer on hand.

“You know something about it?” Erika asked, quelling the faint nausea at his injures by reminding herself that she had seen something far worse not so long ago.

Comparing him to Anna didn’t help, it just reminded Erika of Anna’s injuries.

“It’s big,” he said, tone flat.

“Yes, but what makes you think it is dead? It’s moving, if only twitches.”

“Just a phrase,” he said, hissing in pain as the cultist poked the needle in a bit too far. “Careful!”

“Sorry. I’ve never done something like this.”

“Yes… I can tell,” The Strategist’s voice dripped with sarcasm, but he dismissed the cultist, flicking his eyes back to Erika. “Like don’t tickle a sleeping dragon.”

“Have you got any useful insight?” The Warrior called from the front.

“Not in a position to be making plans at the moment, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Your brain still works, doesn’t it?”

“Pain is distracting, and I need more information. Information which I presume our friend possesses.”

Something about the way his sharp eye focused on Erika made her shift in her seat. She twisted back, facing forward once again, only to catch The Warrior looking at her through the mirror.

“The Mummy is the faction that brought us here,” Erika said with a sigh.

“You mentioned them after the hotel,” The Warrior said, nodding for Erika to go on.

Only for The Strategist to grouse from the back, “She clearly could have mentioned them more. I might have been able to plan around this whole debacle.”

“Yes, well…” Erika hadn’t thought The Mummy would go after them. “They want me to break those chains, I bet.”

The Stalker’s eyes widened. “You can break things that big?”

“I assume so. Last time, they ambushed The Fixer and trussed them up with smaller chains. When I broke those, larger chains also broke.”

“A symbolic link?” The Warrior mused, more to herself than a proper question.

Erika didn’t know what that meant, so she shrugged and moved on. “Once I realized you all were here, I kind of thought one of you would get chained up like The Fixer was, but… that’s obviously not the case. Don’t know how they’re going to convince me to break them this time.”

The Warrior snapped her fingers. “Speaking of, would someone pass the box to The Agent?”

“Got it,” Simone said, digging the oblong metal crate out from under the seat. It was about as long as Erika’s arm, but only about as wide as her handspan, making it somewhat awkward to maneuver around.

As soon as Erika touched it, she felt the films clinging to it. Dozens, if not hundreds of thick, protective barriers, invisible to the naked eye. Several encompassed the entire thing, but an extra dozen hovered right around a modern, regular keyhole right at the front narrow end.

“This is the thing you want me to break?”

“If you would; do so as nondestructively as possible, please. The contents are important. Be careful, however. The protections I could discern include simple things like tracking markers and guilt compulsion—the latter likely intended to make anyone who breaks in confess, returning the case to its owners. Then there are trickier things, like the unmaking aura, which causes all tools, lockpicks, and anything but the real key to disintegrate upon touching the lock, as well as a bloodline curse—”

“Got it,” Erika said, hearing the click as she pulled her bobby pin from the keyhole.

“You what?” The van swerved as The Warrior twisted to look, nearly striking a pole off to the side of the road before she corrected herself.

Erika flipped up the case’s top, revealing a long, silver knitting needle. Aside from the knob at one end and the point at the other, it didn’t look like anything particularly special. Erika started to reach for it, but The Warrior was faster, leaning far over to snatch it out from under Erika’s hand.

“That, is a high quality catalyst,” The Warrior whistled.

Erika couldn’t help but notice the van taking a turn entirely of its own accord as The Warrior examined the silver needle up close. “Does it help us?” she asked.

“At this exact moment? Not particularly. Enchanting is a preparatory process; it takes time, effort, materials, and equipment which we currently lack.” She rolled the needle between her fingers like a bored student fiddling with their pen, only for it to vanish on its way back to the other end of her hand—from her wink before turning back to the road, that was an intentional bit of slight of hand. “Now, whether it helps us in the future remains to be seen. For now, let’s just see what we find where you entered this realm.”

To Erika’s surprise, Carter started nodding along. Prompting him with a nudge of her elbow, Erika perked an eyebrow.

“I think she’s right,” he said simply. “We’ll get back if we go back.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You asked if I could get us home, and I think—”

Outside the window of the van, Erika caught a glimpse of a person standing between two of the obsidian buildings—a human, not a bird thing. Carter continued to talk, but a sudden rush of foreboding déjà vu hit Erika like a sack of bricks. Between the next gap in buildings, she spotted a human again, just standing, though now closer to the van. At the next narrow space, she spotted them again; they were the same person, wearing simple white slacks, a charcoal button-up, and wild white hair that Einstein would have envied. They held a blue crystal ball in one hand, but it was only at the fifth time Erika spotted them that she realized they were lifting their arm, slowly, raising it ever higher each time she saw them like a zoetrope.

“Stop the van!” Erika shouted as the figure held the ball completely outstretched, aimed down a narrow alley at their passing van.

The Warrior didn’t hesitate, grasping the parking brake and yanking it back. The van abruptly stopped without any of the momentum throwing Erika forward in her seat.

A void opened in the street just ahead of them, positioned between two more buildings. It was like someone had taken a massive tunnel bore, aimed it straight down, and carved out the entire core of the plateau. Instead of smooth obsidian or rough cobblestone, the walls of the bored tunnel shimmered and sparkled with little twinkling stars against a pitch dark void.

It lasted a mere few moments before collapsing violently back into itself, reverting the street to normal.

Erika charged out of the van, bat in one hand and revolver in the other. She didn’t know if it was fear, anger, or pure adrenaline that pushed her forward, she just knew that she couldn’t let what happened to The Hunters now happen to Carter.

She rounded the corner, gun raised, expecting to see the man standing between the buildings. He wasn’t there. It was just a deserted alley.

“Behind!”

Upon hearing The Stalker’s shout, Erika pivoted, blindly swinging her bat in a sweeping uppercut.

It went right between the legs of the man in the slacks. Erika heard the crunch of breaking bone, but the faint, nearly invisible tattoos lining his long face didn’t even twist in pain. He simply fell backward, vanishing into motes of light. Not expecting him to vanish, Erika briefly froze with her bat high and poised for a second strike.

Lithe, hot fingers curled around her wrist from behind. Erika let out a scoff as she twisted her arm, easily breaking out of the grapple. The man was there, hips notably unbroken—that can be corrected, Erika thought.

“Don’t touch her!” The Stalker snarled, flickering into existence before Erika could act, gun already pressed against the man’s temple. A fountain of molten magma erupted from her revolver, scattering the man into another firework of motes.

Knowing he was some kind of teleporter, Erika spun again, expecting him to pop up somewhere nearby.

He stood atop the van, casually staring downward as he aimed that blue crystal ball down toward his feet. Red-on-black eyes flicked up to Erika, staring at her and nothing else as he slowly cocked his head to one side—daring her to act.

Erika ground her teeth. She didn’t know for sure what that blue orb did; the street looked normal now, but if someone living got caught in that effect, she didn’t know if they could survive it.

The Warrior clearly figured out what was up. With the tinted windshield partially broken, Erika could see The Warrior fiddling with her shotgun, swapping shells. Erika couldn’t see anyone else, except for Carter, barely visible poking his head out of the side door Erika had left open. His wide, worried eyes locked onto hers.

Erika slowly lowered both the gun and her bat, teeth grinding the entire time. The Stalker, at her side, let out a low, throat-burning croak of frustration and anger.

Keeping the blue orb out and pointed at the van, he wordlessly reached behind his back. Erika tensed again, but he simply pulled out a heavy metal chain, roughly the length of his forearm. With a light, underhanded toss, he threw it toward Erika. It skittered across the cobblestone, sparking on first impact, before it ground to a stop just in front of her boots.

“What is it?” The Stalker hissed, sounding about as pissed off as Erika felt.

“He wants me to break it,” Erika said, not looking down. The man slowly tilted his head from one shoulder to the other in response. “It’s probably got some some… sympathetic link, or whatever The Warrior said; if I break it, those big chains probably break too.”

“Seems like a shit plan.”

The man with the faint tattoos lightly twisted the wrist holding the blue orb, making Erika suck in a breath through her teeth. “Not sure I have much choice.”

Maybe The Stalker could teleport to him and shoot him again, maybe The Warrior could fire her shotgun up through the roof of the van, maybe that orb only affected inorganic material—which would still have Carter and the others falling into a massive pit. Erika’s eyes searched, darting over the van, over the man, and even flicking down to the chain on the ground, looking for something she could break that would fix everything.

Erika crouched down toward the chain, hopefully buying herself a few more moments of thought.

It looked fairly ordinary, the kind of thing she might wrap around a chain link fence with a padlock to keep it shut. There was something strange about it—not a film, like most magical items that Erika had handled, but a weight. Even without touching it, the chain had a certain gravity like it was larger, heavier, and altogether more massive than what it appeared.

Gnawing her lip, Erika glanced up. The Warrior wasn’t moving anymore, just staring through a small gap in the windshield. The Stalker and Carter watched her as well, all waiting to see what she would do. The man, once again, twisted his wrist in a simple, subtle gesture—a threat.

Was breaking the chain her only option? The monk had implied that, if Erika cooperated, he would have let her and the others wander about until the next time he needed her. That conversation wasn’t here, and neither was the monk. There was no guarantee that this man would even let them escape afterwards.

Erika grasped hold of the chain, wondering how the man had even lifted it when it felt glued to the ground.

It was like she told Leslie: she couldn’t teleport around, she couldn’t magic up a protective shield, she couldn’t fix anything. Carter was the one who figured things out; he had even mentioned figuring out some small aspect of dealmaking, and right before this guy appeared, he might have figured out a way back home.

All she could do was break things. Bending time was little more than a party trick for her, and taking things from afar…

Erika blinked.

Slowly, she looked up. The guy had his blue orb held out, right where she could see it. He wasn’t moving, he wasn’t waving it around. It was just there…

Ripe for the taking.

Holding the chain in one hand, sliding it across the ground like she was getting ready to do something, Erika reached into her coat. Her palm settled around the blue orb. Speed being of the essence, Erika grasped and pulled. The ball met her with resistance, far more than she ever felt before, but Erika simply broke it out of the man’s grasp.

As he let out a startled gasp, Erika stood, raised the ball high, and slammed it down. A thousand shards of crystalline glass shattered across the street. The Stalker turned still and staticky just before she appeared atop the van, directly behind the man. Another blast of molten metal sprayed across the street, dispersing the man into a thousand motes of light even as Erika flung herself off to the side to avoid the stream of hot lava.

The Warrior threw open her door, shotgun aimed up and down the street. Not seeing a target, she turned her head to Erika. “Get in if you don’t want to be left behind!”

Not seeing the man either, Erika bolted for the van. True to her words, The Warrior didn’t wait for Erika to climb inside, flooring it the moment she was back behind the wheel, leaving The Stalker on top and Erika running across the street.

Simone, leaning out the side of the van, one hand holding tight to a handle and the other stretched outward for Erika, clasped onto Erika’s had as they passed and pulled her into the van. Momentum threw both of them to the seats, where Erika breathed. A faint giddy sensation crept up her back, making her laugh.

She had done it. She had solved a situation without breaking something.

Well, she had broken the ball, but that was after.

All it took was thinking, and not just acting.

Erika laughed again. Pushing herself up, she grabbed hold of Carter in a tight hug. He started squirming out of her grasp immediately, but Erika didn’t let go.

“Don’t celebrate too soon,” The Strategist groused from the back. “If this is their only plan, they are fools. We should depart at once.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let me have this, okay? I got out of this without breaking your ‘dead god’ out of its chains,” Erika said, looking up. The Stalker was in the passenger seat again, likely having teleported, but was twisted to stare at Erika. Erika flashed her a bright smile. “Thanks for the backup there.”

The Stalker continued to stare, eyes never leaving Erika, until a heavy bump jolted her. She nodded, then slowly settled back into the seat, eyes shimmering as she started scanning around. “I can track him,” she said. “He isn’t near, but he isn’t far either… and there are more of him in the distance? Or…” she trailed off, confused. “Or maybe I’m seeing echoes from his teleports, kind of like how I do it? I’m not sure.”

“Keep watch. Warn us if he gets close,” The Warrior said. “Now, young man, you were saying something about getting us out of here?”

With one hearty shove, he disentangled himself from Erika. “I think so, I think a lot, so I’m pretty good at it… but Erika will have to break something…”

“As long as it isn’t a chain,” Erika said, ruffling his hair. “Let’s get out of this creepy place.”