Aniwye's words end with a crack of thunder, her declaration carrying the power of the Undying even through dreams and years past. Killian asked her to raise a God? Is he mad? Who raises a child with that as a goal!?
Instantly, I both lose respect for such a legendary figure and gain some wonder. Why is he so confident? Why is he so… domineering? Raise a God? Really? The Undying is the only man to reach the Badlands and see the land in which the Binary Lords live. Sure, he came back with limbs that were not his, but that is a part of his skill set. What doesn't kill him only makes him stronger. Literally. But… to extend that confidence to your child?
I just can't comprehend it. How callous do you have to be to raise a son like that? First, toss them away from you and his mother to a demon. Then, have that demon manipulate and deceive them their whole lives until they are mature.
I—I just can't.
Aniwye picks up on my turmoil and comments on it. I can see visible affection on the face of the Ogre, as if she is thinking of a loved one. Her eyes radiate light in the horrifying environment toward the false moon above.
"You cannot understand him because you have not seen the sights he has. Felt the flames he has. Heard the sounds he has. Killian is the only human that has earned my respect. He walks from the heartland of your Territories to the heartlands of mine. Not unhindered, but unstopped. He has walked from the Boulevard Of Shadows to Weirwind to the Underworld itself. Clipped the wings of an Angel as a mortal. Drank the waters of the Cardinal and felled the King Of Monsters."
She bends down just a bit from her massive stature of over twice my height and looks me in the eye with her huge pupil. I stay frozen as her very presence owns this reality I am in. She knows it and so do I.
"You attempt to comprehend one of the greatest of your race. No. Of all races. Killian is among the ten strongest to ever live, a Paramount, a title only one other human can boast. That is the same as if I were to understand the inner machinations of Leviathan or Behemoth. One does not simply comprehend such… such Godliness. Their goals are beyond our understanding. We are merely different entities upon the same plane. They reach for the reins of reality as we just walk upon it."
Aniwye rears back up to her full height as she harrumphs. Her words leave my mind spinning. I only knew of the first feat she spoke of. Killian Graves is far more than he lets on. So, he was the one who made it to the Underworld? Interesting. He reached the Boulevard Of Shadows and came back alive. The man found the origin of the weather. How much has he done? How much has he seen?
He even drank from the waters of the Cardinal and killed some being I'd never heard of, but with a title that speaks volumes.
Aniwye is right. The man is different from us. Completely. He managed to kill an Angel as a mortal. That wording means he did so as a 6th Sigil, and she wouldn't speak of it unless it was on his own. That feat... is only rivaled by the current Prime. No one else can boast about that. To jump that gap... is tremendous. Wyatt's father is a living legend. Well, that is if he's still alive. No one has seen him in years, not even Aniwye from what I've gathered.
But her… reverence of him is odd. It's almost… human. I see Aniwye turn around and begin to walk back into the dream, but I call out to her, wanting to keep her from leaving and learn more.
"Why do you act so human, Aniwye? You seem to have… I don't know emotions about others that are more than just negative. No other demon I've seen has ever shown such emotions. You seem to care, even if you don't want to help. It's... so odd."
The Ogre turns around and faces me curiously. She chuckles before speaking; her harsh-sounding words rumble throughout the dream once more.
"We are not so different, you and I. Most demons are controlled by Mother to the greatest extent, her mind an influence on us all. But the very powerful, like the Lords, the Angels of the mind like me, and those born first of our race, the Morns, are immune to her call. So we live as we please. Even if for the two Lords, that includes still wanting to kill humans."
I try to keep the conversation going, slowly leading it back to Wyatt, even knowing she can read my mind.
"And why do they want to kill humans? Why can't there be peace?"
She doesn't laugh at me this time but appears to ponder for a second before answering.
"You all are a nuisance. Your presence, as a race, only manages to strengthen the other two large factions on Mari, the only ones that can truly pressure the Lords. Your inventions and innovations with steel only serve to inspire the Pygmies. Should you never exist, Armaments wouldn't either. And your ideas of Ether and tactics only give the Nahullo more ways to scheme and plan. Not to mention if you all die, the Underworld would eventually die without numbers to replenish Death's dying army. For some reason, only your kind goes to the Underworld."
I grow quiet for a moment. To think that the Mother Below isn't even the reason we fight. Instead, it is because two super-powerful demons have decided we are less annoying dead than alive. I recover quickly, however, and twist the conversation to eventually reach Wyatt.
"And you do not have this discrimination? This want to eradicate us?"
The Ogre shakes her head. Lightning strikes far away in the dream, but no sound ever reaches us. I ignore the oddity and focus on her response.
"No. I am me. I am my own person. I make my own decisions, deduce my reasonings, and solve my problems. I hate only those that deserve it and kill only those I must or want to. Some random human is none of my interest, just as a bird in the forest is none of yours."
I hit her with it the moment she finishes speaking.
"So then, why won't you help Wyatt? He is not just some random human to you, is he? You raised him, cared for him, taught him to live, even if it was a clone of some kind."
My challenge of her finally provokes her as she grows a bit enraged. The Ogre breathes out steam and flashes an eye of red light at me, and I meet her with a golden one.
"You are becoming anno–. Hmm… interesting. Powers of time are the rarest. Space is the second. You have both in one. How interesting... You have more potential than I thought. I apologize for underestimating you, human. What is your name?"
My eyes surprise her and stop her mid-sentence. Her face goes wide as she steps toward me, her giant foot sliding forward.
I smile at the recognition. It feels good to be recognized, even by an Angelic demon. No, especially if it's an Angelic demon. I bow a tad bit as I introduce myself formally. A chance still remains if she is willing to recognize me.
"I am Johnny Caldwell of the Timberlands. And I, and these eyes of mine that you find so interesting, ask for your help. Save your child."
Aniwye looks at me for several moments as the rain stays frozen in the air, lightning pauses in its strike, and mud floats in the air from movement. Every action in this dream that occurs only happens should she will it. Wyatt will only live should she will it. Before she speaks once more, cementing either the kid's death or life, she sighs with apparent lament.
"Fine. I will help him. Not because I care, however. I want something from this, with one condition. You let me read your memories from front to back. No resistance. I would like to know what led to you getting those eyes."
Relief intertwined with happiness rushes through me as she agrees, but I feel a pit in my stomach at her condition. Read my memories? What does that do? How do my memories have anything to do with my eyes? Why?
She answers me before I can even articulate the question.
"You do not seem to know the truth of a Proof or an Absolution. All your actions in your life, Johnny, add substance to your soul. The first Proof that makes a creature become Wondrous aligns its Sigil and soul, making them synergize far more. This is how a part of the body is enhanced. It also starts to bridge a gap toward your Absolution, making it easier to acquire. So tell me, what part of yours was enhanced, Johnny?"
I don't quite follow where she is going with this, but I answer her. The question is simple; she could read my mind for it if she wanted to.
"My eyes."
The demon nods like a school teacher praising a student for being correct.
"Exactly. Your eyes. You are a marksman. Your most valuable asset is not your hands, fingers, or mind. It is your eyes. You use them to measure time and space to fire a bullet. You have become so intrinsically in tune with your eyes that you can hit anything. Without them, you would be weak. Anything else you can lose and remain, but not your eyes. At least not permanently. And so, when you reached the very edge, your mind, body, and soul reaching for anything that could help, the Mother even betting on your death with her omniscient will, do you know what happened?"
Aniwye pauses for suspense with a giant finger in the air before continuing.
"Your soul and Sigil began to combine, even if only just a tad under all that pressure. Only those who can withstand that pressure and come out will undergo this change, this synergy. This synergy gave the part of your body already closest to your Sigil a unique ability just to you. But these unique abilities, Powers-to-be for a 6th Sigil like yourself, all come from somewhere deep down. I wish to know where. This will help me learn how to replicate it just like I tried to make Wyatt's Power focus on his soul. Perhaps, I will even be able to create my own for myself with enough knowledge."
I now get what she's going for. She means everything we do in our life leads to these Absolutions. The merging of our soul and Sigil. But then what does the Proof do for the jump to Angelhood?
Aniwye answers this as she swipes at me, causing the dream to fracture into a thousand pieces and sending me back to the bed of Myra.
"The Proof is both a psychological restraint and a physical one. You must convince your mind, body, and soul that you are no longer human, something greater than you were born as, God-to-be one might even say. That you are something more. It is easy for demons, Pygmies, and Nahullo as we are all prideful in our own ways. For your race, it's incredibly erratic. Anyway, let's get this done. We're running out of time. My target should be back soon, and I'm on a schedule. I've done enough already for this kid, and you're pushing my generosity."
My eyes flutter open to a room lit by only candlelight, and I sit up quickly, reaching for the comfortable steel of a gun. I almost instantly touch the revolver on my waist and look around for Myra, who sent me into that dream.
To my left on the bed, she lies. At first glance, she seems asleep, but as I look closer, I can see the look of terror etched onto her face, carved into the skin. The muscles on her face are tangled into an expression of despair, one so demoralizing it sinks my heart into my feet with guilt.
Her body is unharmed, but her mind is shattered. As I look closer, I notice the subtle bruises around her temples, the only visible sign of the deadly attack that took her life in that dream. I can only imagine the horror she experienced before succumbing to her injuries.
The candlelight flickers across her skin, casting shadows that seem to dance across her motionless form. I can't help but wonder what kind of person could inflict such pain on another, what kind of monster could have the power to destroy a mind. But I already know. I knew the answer the second I failed to see her in that dream with Aniwye.
I take a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves and reach out to gently brush her hair away from her face. The strands are still soft, but a coldness to her skin sends a shiver down my spine. I take the book I gave her, the pages of the journal warmer than the corpse despite the recent death.
In the quiet of the room, I can almost hear the echo of her last breath when her life was taken by the relentless assault on her mind. The thought of her suffering, alone and terrified just a few feet from her child, is almost too much to bear.
Consequences. Every action. Rarely do people ever pay their own dues. We almost always push it to someone else. I'm no different. I want to stay, to let myself feel the guilt, but I cannot. I must move. Time stands still for none. Not me, not Remington Shaw, and not even the Prime.
With a shudder, I stand and walk toward the crib, a voice speaking to me from the depths of my mind.
"I recognized you and not her. And when I looked into her mind, there was nothing of Wyatt. So I took the liberty to remove a threat. I recommend you leave quickly."
"Aniwye!?"
I blurt out loud at the surprise of a fully coherent voice in my mind. The demon quickly yells at me mentally for my blunder.
"Quiet! How else am I to come with you and read your mind? Walk along the street? You're smarter than this. That woman was right, you know? Desperation does not allow for stupidity."
She knows what Myra said? Of course, she does; she probably read her mind before killing her, the recent memories likely easy to access. After a moment, I whisper back to her quietly as I stand above the crib of the child of Myra and Kai Vinson.
"I know. I know… It's just. Nothing. I'll improve. As always."
I can hear a mental nod occur as I feel a spike enter the back of my mind. I grimace and try to brace myself, but a voice within tells me not to.
"Don't resist!"
Pain sears through my mind as the psychic parasite that is Aniwye burrows deeper into my consciousness, ripping through the walls I've built to keep my mind safe from any other kinds of attacks. It's like a thousand needles piercing my brain, each latching onto a specific memory and extracting it with excruciating precision.
I do as she says and let her mind roam through mine, refusing to resist as I agreed to. I can feel her rummaging through my most private thoughts, exposing every moment of vulnerability and weakness I've ever experienced.
My hands tighten around the baby crib, and I accidentally shake it slightly from the agonizing pain. A cry from the baby meets mine as I nearly fall to the ground, but I'm forced to do something as I hear pounding footsteps from outside the room.
"Ma'am?!"
The guard! Fuck! I whisper under my breath as I buckle from the knees, toes, and elbows toward the ground.
"Aniwye?!"
A stern reply meets me that harbors zero negotiation.
"This was the deal. You will fulfill your end first. I can help after I'm done, but you will be left braindead if I stop now."
Fucking hell! Gritting my teeth, I reach down and draw my gun. I point the barrel of the gun toward the door of the master bedroom with a single blurry eye. Ether flows through me rapidly as I force Deadeye's Gaze to the limit and prepare Glitch.
Time to see just how strong I am now, huh?
As the guard steps through worriedly, the door opens with a screech, and I shoot at him immediately. Gunshots reverberate throughout the building as I unload quickly toward the man with Fanfire and even put a round of High Impact at the end.
The guard can barely react in time to my threat, so he takes a few bullets to the torso as he twists and moves behind the door that catches most of the other shots without a problem. The High Impact one, however, managed to go right through and hit him in the back. Grunts and the splattering of blood meet my ears as I reload frantically. However, a spark of mental pain slows what usually is a fraction of a second into a full second as I scramble to grab spare bullets from my pocket.
Raising my reloaded gun, I step toward the door carefully. After that butchered reload, the guard probably had some time to prepare. I Listen closely but fail to hear dripping blood or grunts behind the door. Instead, I hear a single droplet of blood splatter against the ground behind me, the noise apparent with Deadeye's Gaze and Listen bolstering my hearing amidst the tense silence.
I turn around instantly with a finger on the trigger as I see the guard standing over the dead Myra. His face twists to look at me just as he disappears from my sight. Speed? Invisibility? Time? No, I would have felt any of those. It's teleportation. Wait. Is this Harper Flores? The Cheat? Fucking hell. Myra has the big bucks to recruit a 6th Sigil as a guard. I got lucky to ambush him like that.
I twist around to the sound of a gun being cocked and meet a barrel with my eye. Adrenaline flows through me, rapidly infested with panic, but I rotate the Ether in my eye with forced calm. The man disappears from my sight as I twist around back to where he just was, with a bullet already leaving the barrel.
Another grunt of pain meets my ears now that my eyesight reaches the true nadir. One more use, and it's all gone. Even with Deadeye's Gaze, I can barely make out the man's figure on the other side of the room, but it appears I hit him sufficiently to slow him down.
Harper stumbles toward me as he raises his gun and fires at me. I dash to the side, jumping behind the bed but am hit from behind. Pain blossoms by my kidney, only further making it harder to stabilize my hands from the psychic turmoil Aniwye is putting me through. Fuck. I forgot it's not just him. The Cheat can swap the places of any two things within his sight. Fucker looked through the hole in the door to get behind me and used a candle to shoot me in the back.
I stand to look at where he is but get a feeling of danger and jump back. My instinct saves me as a trio of bullets lands just where I was crouched behind the bed. Then, out of nowhere, something rough slams me in the back of the head. Dazed, I turn around to find a barrel at my eye again.
A confused voice filled with blood and pain reaches me as I prepare my final Glitch.
"Johnny?"
But the man's body convulses uncontrollably just before I use the skill. His eyes squeeze shut as the gun falls from his hand, and sweat pours down his face, his hands twitching and grasping for something unknown. But it's not the physical display that catches my attention; the inhuman screams coming from his lips send shivers down my spine.
Screams that radiate through the whole mansion come from the man riddled with bullet holes that almost put me in checkmate. He falls to his knees and starts ripping out his own closed eyes before abruptly going silent and dropping to the floor of the mansion. A dull thud is all that resounds while my heart struggles to catch up to the frantic combat.
A satisfied voice comes out from within my mind to answer the question I've not yet even thought of.
"Done."
Not having the mental capacity to reply, I walk over to the crib while I bleed badly from the gunshot. I quickly inject myself with the Draught Of Invigoration before I lean down and pick up the young child. Aniwye is about to go through this city and kill Kai. At the very least, I can make sure their child lives. I'll drop him off at some nearby town. To leave the child here is a disrespect to both Kai and humankind.
Everyone knows the child of an Angel is likely to become one too. At least far, far more likely than an ordinary man.
Then, limping with blood dripping behind me, I leave the room with the two dead people inside. I stumble toward the steps and out of the house as I see guards rush toward me through my blurry eyes. With one hand, I unload the gun toward the targets in front of me. Even with the blurred vision, I put a round into each man's head. They simply aren't fast enough like Harper.
The dead bodies in my wake are enough for no one else to challenge me as I drop underneath the city into the swamp below, where very few are coasting their boats. I wanted to go in and out quietly, but it appears that Wyatt has influenced me.