Hell's Heroes

WITH A BANG

We needed words when we previously unleashed the full power of the Kah-Gash, spells to direct it. Not this time. We’ve moved beyond that. Grown, matured, fused completely with the weapon. There’s no pulsing sky, clouds bursting into flames, melting rocks. Instead we skip straight to the exploding-into-colors stage.

My body shreds and I know instinctively that I’ll never have a use for it again. Grubbs Grady is dead and gone. So are Kernel Fleck and Bec. We’re the Kah-Gash now, a bodiless force, purer than light, free of all constraints. We didn’t go this far the first time. We didn’t understand what was happening. We tried to fight the loss of control, the madness. Now we just swing with it, leaving our humanity behind, bursting forward at a speed I can’t begin to describe.

We smash through the tunnel, the world shattering behind us, the Disciples and the mages dead in an instant, Timas on top of the cliff a moment later, everyone on Earth a second after that. The planet rips apart as Juni predicted, and I’m to blame. But I don’t care. I’m caught up in the moment, crazy with power, oblivious to everything except the rush of the now, the here, the us.

We’re in a subuniverse of billions of flashing patches of light. We careened from one to another when we entered this realm before, but now the transition is fluid. Patches join and form windows. We shoot through without pause, picking up speed, the windows becoming a blur, sucking the remains of the world after us… other planets… stars… the universe… all matter… even time itself. And not just the human universe—we take from the Demonata’s realm too. Everything is sucked along in our wake.

A voice whispers, “The Crux.” It takes me a few seconds to realize it was Bec who spoke. It seems our individual selves still exist on some kind of level. We’re not entirely the single entity I thought we’d become.

“The Crux,” Bec says again, insistently.

“Why?” Kernel asks.

“I’ll explain later. Just direct us there.”

“But if we go to the Crux and take everything with us…”

“Trust me,” Bec says. “This is the only way. Bran hatched a plan.”

“Grubbs?” Kernel asks, still uncertain.

I’ve no idea what’s going on, what the plan might be, if Bec’s really on our side or playing us for laughs? But what choice do we have? “Make it so,” I mutter in my best Captain Picard voice.

Kernel sighs. I get the sense that we’ve adjusted our position. Our speed increases, the windows becoming a buzz of white light, noise building around us, drowning everything out, making it impossible for us to talk to one another.

I have a bad feeling about this, but it’s too late to stop, so I continue supplying power to the Kah-Gash. I take it from the lights and everything behind us, draining the universes dry, using energy, magic, time, and all the rest to propel us forward faster. Kernel’s guiding us. Bec… I’m not sure what the spirit of the Celtic girl is up to, but I get the impression that she’s busy too. Her mind seems to be focused on the flotsam behind us. She’s absorbing something from the spiraling remains of the universes. Not energy or magic. But what else could it be?

Before I can pursue the query, a fiery ball materializes in the distance. From Kernel’s description, I recognize it as the Crux, the center of all things, the place where the Big Bang happened. There was only one universe originally, sixty-four zones, half black, half white, demons in the white zones, Old Creatures in the black. No other life-forms. No time either. During a war between the demons and the Old Creatures, it exploded, creating life and the universes as we know them.

We shoot through the rim of the Crux. Kernel said it was the hottest place he’d ever been, but there’s nothing hotter than us right now.

There are sixty-four giant square panels floating around the lightning-pierced heart of the Crux. Clustered around them are balls of light—the Old Creatures—and enormous demons even more powerful than the masters in the cave. These are the original Demonata, those who existed before the new universes were born.

The Old Creatures and the demons react with shock as we tear into the Crux. Panic-stricken, they try to mount a defense of the giant panels. But we swat them aside and they’re torn to pieces by the trailing vortex, sucked in and ripped apart like all the others, perishing with a chorus of confused howls.

I expect us to slow to a halt, but instead we carry on at full speed, then split as we hit the center of the Crux. There’s a blinding flash. We separate into sixty-four fragments and strike the black and white squares. They flare, and ripples run across their surface. Sparks shoot out of them.

Then everything clicks together. The sixty-four squares join in less than the blink of an eye. We become one again, only now we’re enmeshed with the squares. We explode outwards, the squares expanding with us. We’re the barriers between zones, but we also fill the infinite space inside them, everywhere at once.

The expansion lasts millions of years, but it’s also instantaneous. That doesn’t make sense, but it’s the only way I can explain it. Time has shattered. The laws we lived by—that all creatures lived by since the Big Bang—exist no longer. In the absence of time, everything happens immediately yet gradually.

As I’m trying to get my head around the new laws, there’s a sudden click and the expansion stops. Everything settles. The last traces of the universes I was familiar with disappear completely. The worlds, stars, people, creatures… gone. Erased from history. The souls of the dead are gone too. In this universe, their bodies never existed, so their souls never developed. All is undone.

Before I can go insane with guilt, I notice beings blinking back into existence. The Old Creatures and the Demonata who were alive when Bec, Kernel, and I became the Kah-Gash are revived and returned to their proper places in the universe. The dismayed Old Creatures pop up in the black squares and wail at all that has been lost. The delighted Demonata—both the original demons and those they sired—materialize in the white squares and go wild with joy.

Time has been eradicated. Humanity and their kind are no more and never were. The original order has been restored. Death can function as an unconscious force, the way it was meant to. Demons will live forever, breed, and kill without limits. The Old Creatures will drift along meaninglessly in their otherwise lifeless zones, or be tracked down and slaughtered by demons. The Shadow and the Demonata have won.

The end.