Consequences (Mythklok, Chapter 17) (Part 1 of 2)
Title: Consequences (Mythklok, Chapter 17)
Author: tikistitch
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A chase up and down America and all around the Dreamtime
Warnings: Slash, AU, OCs, swearing, smoking, character death.
Notes: Notes after the jump
Cross-posted to capslokdethklok.
This is a Metalocalypse AU which tiktaalikroseae has dubbed “Mythklok.” Here are the other bits, about an angelic visit (Chapter 1), a hunt (Chapter 2), a barbecue (Chapter 3), a ski trip (Chapter 4), a sword fight (Chapter 5), Bette Davis Movies (Chapter 6), a concert (Chapter 7), tall tales (Chapter WTF), a trial (Chapter8), an argument (Chapter 9), a stray cat (Chapter 10), Satan’s shinkansen system (Chapter 11), the highway to Hell (Chapter 12), a meeting with Satan (Chapter 13), a tiger hunt (Chapter 14), Hamms beer signs (Chapter 15) and kidnapping and Monty Python (Chapter 16).
And it all everything eventually ends up rolling to my fic journal, tikific, where you are welcome to come poke it with a pointed stick.
THE STORY SO FAR: This is thing has now slithered completely out of canon and into the realm of pure barking madcap weirdness. Charles is a Fallen angel who used to go by the name of Sariel. For many centuries he tried to leave memories of this existence behind him (as Heaven is full of douche bags) but now several weird immortal beings have started showing up at Mordhaus and making his existence even more complicated.
Raziel is a ditzy Seraph who used to be his partner in crime. She is also now King Wotan’s fiancée. Wotan, as we all know, is head of the Norse pantheon, and, as we all suspect, Skwisgaar’s birth father. One of Wotan’s hunting buddies is Shiva, lord of destruction and Dethklok super fan. Charles is currently involved with Shiva’s son, Ganesh, a well-tailored elephant god with a rather sexy British accent.
In the last few chapters, Charles dragged Raziel off to the Southwest United States to seek out information regarding the legendary New World monsters that seem to be of interest to the Legion, the angel army. They met Spider Grandma, a Hopi Kachina; Aaron, the tribe’s mute human shaman; and Eototo, one of Charles’ old flames who evidently wanted to renew a bit of that old spark. However, when Our Heroes returned home, they leaned that Aaron had been kidnapped by angels, evidently in the company of very compliant Eototo. The angels' motives remain unclear. It was decided that King Wotan would lead a hunting party to trail Eototo in the real world, while Pickles, in the company of Raziel, would search out Aaron in the Dreamtime.
Consequences
Part 1 of 2
A number of years ago….
He saw her when he was still miles away. It took some minutes before he was finally alongside her. Of course he stopped. And not just because it was an old woman. Because that's just what you did in these parts. It might be hours, or even days, until someone else passed by.
The hood of her truck was propped open, steam still emitting.
"I could, uh, take a look and pretend to know what the heck I'm doing, or I could just give you a ride," he shrugged.
"I'll take the ride then," she laughed, puffing on her pipe. "Which way you headed?"
"You going to the Rez?" he asked. She nodded. "I'm not in a hurry." She climbed inside his dusty car, and they drove for some miles in silence.
"You don't talk much, huh?"
"No," he agreed, trailing his cigarette out the window.
"They call me Grandma," she offered.
It took a minute or two to sink in. He swallowed hard, but kept his eyes fixed on the road.
"Then you, uh, probably know who I am?"
"Yep. I know what you are. I seen you around before.”
"But, you'll still ride in a car with me?"
"You offered. Didn't want to be rude."
The continued for many more miles, past two sets of gates, and finally to Grandma’s house.
He got out of the car, just to be polite.
“You eat, or do you jist smoke?” Grandma asked him.
He laughed. “Mostly, I just smoke.”
“But, your kind?”
“We eat. Yeah.”
“I got some stew on. Oughta be jist about ready.”
He stood, cigarette in mouth, hands in pockets, a bit baffled.
“Ain’t gonna ask you twice,” said Grandma. “C’mon.”
The present day….
It seemed like they should be sitting around a campfire, with ritual dancers moving about.
Instead, they were gathered in Grandma’s well worn living room, with the television sound turned down: two Kachinas, an angel, and a death metal musician.
“I tried to find a stylish but practical spirit walk outfit!” Raziel told them. She was proud of herself for choosing a pair of low-heeled boots.
“Yer not necessarily gonna be wearin’ dose clothes anyway, Lady Raz,” Pickles laughed.
“No?”
“Naw. Yoo walk as a spirit animal.”
“I don’t wear fur as a rule,” she supplied.
“Might not be fur, dood,” Pickles laughed. “I’m an octopus.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Raziel frowned. She had seen Pickles’s spirit octopus once before, though out of the corner of her eye. She hoped her spirit animal wasn’t going to be something tacky. “You don’t think I’m something icky? Like a snake?”
“I dunno. Yoo don’t know until yoo try.”
“Hrm. Wotan calls me his raven.” Raziel indicated Huginn, who was sitting on her shoulder. “Maybe I’ll be a bird?”
“Yeah, birds’re cool. Den yoo can fly an’ shit.”
Raziel nodded, apparently satisfied, and held out a hand. She looked at the bud Kwahu had dropped in her palm. “Does this go down better with whiskey?” she asked. “I drink whiskey now!”
“That ain’t a bad idea, babe,” Grandma laughed. “Kwahu, go grab a bottle for us? Now, you kids understand I’ll be there for ya to start ya out?”
“Yeah. I t’ink we can find out way dere,” Pickles told her.
Raziel downed the drug with a shot of whiskey, glad that Sariel had taught her to drink spirits. Hey, spirits to start a spirit walk! It was sort of funny. She should probably tell her joke to Pickles. Though, he may or may not think it was a joke. She tended to get the giggles when she was under the influence of human drugs. It wasn’t unpleasant, just something that didn’t hold a lot of fascination for her. But she couldn’t tell Pickles her joke anyway, as she was now alone, and Grandma’s living room was gone. She was out in the wilderness.
Raziel walked for a time and enjoyed the red desert. It was nice here, very sunny, and there were a lot of pretty rocks to look at. She wished she had thought to bring along a beach umbrella and her sunscreen. And then she noticed something flying over her head. It was definitely too big to be a bird. It was red and blobby and wriggly.
“Ew! Pickles, you’re a flying octopus?” she screamed.
“Yeah, dood. Wait a minute.” The red octopus started spinning. And then he was Pickles. “OK, dat’s better. Da octopus t’ing tends t’ get dehydrated in da desert.”
Raziel noticed for the first time that she was now much, much shorter than Pickles. She also had a tail. “I’m a kitty cat?” she asked.
“You’re a jaguar, babe.” It was Spider Grandma. Raziel and Pickles had arrived at an appropriately spiritual looking campfire. Pickles seemed a bit chary around Spider Grandma for some reason, perhaps because her spirit animal was none other than a big spider.
“That’s pretty cool,” Raziel said, licking a paw, and twitching her tail. “But, I’m gonna be kind of useless as a bodyguard. I mean I can’t hold a sword in this Form.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to see, huh?” Pickles said nervously.
“I think you two will be all right,” Grandma laughed.
“Could you do one thing?” Raziel asked Pickles.
“Yeh?”
“Scratch behind my ears?” Pickles obligingly scratched her head, and she purred and rubbed his leg. “God that feels good!”
“Can you tell where Aaron is, Pickles?” Grandma asked.
“I t’ink his Dreamtime is off dis way.” He hiked a thumb in the appropriate direction. He wasn’t quite certain how he knew. But he did.
“You’re not going with us, Grandma?” Raziel asked.
“We been tryin’ to find our way in for years dear. Seems like there’s something pretty powerful blocking the way. But I’ll stay here by the campfire and wait for ya.”
Pickles started off in what looked to Raziel suspiciously like a random direction. Raziel thought he seemed to be relieved to put some distance between himself and Spider Grandma. Humans were weird sometimes, she mused. She was wondering what Geri and Freki the wolves might make of her feline spirit form, when she noticed the scenery had changed. It looked like someone had taken a television and turned the saturation all the way up.
“This looks like our television is broken!” Lady Raziel said.
“Yeah, dis is my Dreamtime. I t’ought we’d start out here.”
After they walked for a bit, Pickles asked, “So, why do ya t’ink dey took da boy?”
“Why?” purred Raziel. “Oh, angels, we’re such a bunch of assholes.”
“Dey took him jist t’ be jerks?”
“Angels can do that sometimes. Sariel - I mean your Charles - thinks-”
“I know he’s got two names, by da way.”
“Oh. Sorry. He tends to change his human name every few years and it always confuses me who knows him as what.”
“He showed me, yoo know, what he was, right after we met.”
“NO! Really?”
“Yeh. Is dat weird or somethin’?”
“It’s very weird. He hates that Form, for one thing. He must have really trusted you. Or maybe really wanted to get laid?”
Pickles suddenly grinned. Either possibility sounded OK. “But, anyway, dood, what did he t’ink?”
“I don’t know how much you know or don’t know about earth gods?” Pickles shook his head. “Well, they’re sort of strange. You get them everywhere you go in the universe. Angels usually laugh at them, because they can be pretty pathetic. But here, for some reason, they grew very strong. And they only seem to be getting stronger. You heard the story that Lord Ganesh led his people to fight off the Legion? The angel army?”
“Yeh, I heard he’s pretty badass.” They had stopped to watch a golden butterfly float by. It was very pretty. And three stories high.
“He’s pretty badass,” Raziel continued. “Anyway, the New World gods are even weirder. I haven’t seen anything like them, and I’ve been everywhere. They’re sort of more like humans than gods, in some ways. Some say they were once human. And other people think they’re all from somewhere else, and just moved to earth for some reason.”
The butterfly had passed, so they continued walking.
“So, even you angel doods don’t know?”
“No, we don’t know. What I do know is, recently - well, recently to us, meaning a couple centuries ago - the Legion came down and slaughtered most of the New World gods. Nobody knows why. I think maybe Michael and a couple others might know. But, angels love to gossip, and one of the things they say is that the New World gods had somehow created some very powerful magic. Most people say it was monsters, though it actually may have just been a spell. Or it may have been actually nothing at all, just a story.”
“So,” Pickles was watching a nearby stream and a gorgeous school of rainbow-hued fishes swimming by. “Da angels wiped out all da people jist t’ get rid of magic dat might not even exist?”
“Yep,” said Raziel. “And you wonder why Sariel doesn’t like going around looking like an angel.”
The colors were slowly fading to something that reminded Raziel more of the earth.
“This looks like a human city,” she purred.
“Dis is lookin’ awfully familiar,” Pickles said. He looked like he was getting uneasy again.
She noticed he was now wearing the most adorable little outfit. And Pickles had grown even more adorable himself! “Hey, Pickles, do you always wear mascara?” she asked.
Pickles stopped and looked at himself. She noticed he also suddenly had a full head of hair. “Dis is weird, dood.” He looked up.
“Hey, Pickles!” It was another mascara-wearing boy.
“Who is that,” Raziel asked suspiciously.
“It’s Caim! Damn, I haven’t seen dat motherdoucher in twenny years.”
“Pickles,’ said Raziel, switching her tail in front of him. “We’re on a mission.”
“Yeh. But, jist let me talk to da dood!”
“Pickles-“
“Dood,” he whispered to her. “Dis was my firs’ boyfriend. An’, he’s still hot!”
“Pickles he’s adorable, but we didn’t come here so you could make out with your old boyfriend….” But the drummer had maneuvered around her with surprising agility, and was now chatting up the admittedly very cute Caim. Raziel emitted a guttural growl, and suddenly wished Sariel had come along, as he was much better than she at the whole yelling at people for being stupid thing.
And now there was another figure looming on the street.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the sour middle-aged man yelled at Pickles.
“Daaaaaad!” Pickles whined. He was suddenly not quite so adorable, Raziel thought.
“What are you doing with that boy?” Calvert asked.
“Nothin’,” Pickles grunted.
“Why are you wearing makeup?”
“It’s my look,” he said sullenly.
“Are you supposed to be my daughter?”
“No!”
Pickles clenched his fists. Raziel switched her tail.
“You belong in a garbage can, because you’re a piece of trash!” Calvert shouted.
“Shut da feck up!” Pickles yelled.
“OK, enough of this shit,” Raziel growled. She snarled and jumped onto Calvert’s chest. He screamed, and turned into a rat, which she caught by the tail.
“Whoa! What da feck was my dad doin’ in my Dreamspace?” Pickles wailed.
“It’s not your dad, Pickles. They want us doing this bullshit.” She bit the rat’s head off and spat it out.
“Raz! Hey! Ya don’t have t’ go all Ozzy on me.”
“We’re looking for Aaron, remember?”
Pickles nodded, a bit chastened.
They walked for a bit, as the suburban streets slowly faded.
“That was your first boyfriend?” Raziel asked. “In real life?”
“Caim? Yeh.” Pickles got a wistful smile.
“He looks familiar.”
“Yoo ever get t’ Wisconsin?”
Raziel shook her head, and they continued walking. “So, is your dad that much of an asshole in real life?” she asked.
“He’s WORSE.”
“Yuck. Hey, you want me and Wotan to adopt you after we’re married?”
“Dood, dat would be cool! Could I be a Viking? Hey, wait!” His eyes narrowed. “Would dat make me related t’ Skwisgaar?”
“Uh, probably.”
“Eh. Maybe not den.”
Suddenly, Raziel came to a halt. When had they wandered away from the suburbs of Wisconsin and back into the red desert?
There was a boy standing in the middle of nowhere. He looked to be about 12 years old. When he saw they were looking at him, he broke into a mischievous grin.
“Aaron?” asked Raziel.
Hunting inevitably reminded Ofdensen of exactly why he hated hunting.
The party had stopped for the thousandth time, apparently so Wotan and Skwisgaar and Ganesh could stand around and be tall.
He dismounted and lit a smoke. He tried to distract himself meanwhile with pleasant notions of dismembering Eototo. Perhaps it would be time again to conjure a flaming hacksaw. That had been probably the best idea he and Raziel had come up with in ten centuries. He wondered idly, if things didn’t work out with Wotan after all, whether the little angel would come and work for him as a Klokateer. What they could do with security! He however immediately dismissed the notion, as she would certainly decide the hoods to be tacky and declare as an emergency switching his entire staff to wearing thigh-high boots.
“You are completely mad,” Ganesh was telling him.
“What?” He shrugged off the notion of being surrounded by female Klokateers in thigh high boots. No, too damn distracting. “No,” he told Ganesh. “You’re wrong.”
“You could not possibly be more mistaken!” Ganesh countered. “Not within a finite universe.”
“What ams you guys argusings abouts now,” grumbled Skwisgaar. “We ams not gots times for da grabby handses t’ing!” Ofdensen turned red as an Alabama football team.
“He is under the misapprehension that the Marx Brothers were funnier than Monty Python,” Ganesh sniffed.
“You guys ams both wrongs,” Skwisgaar snorted.
“Pardon me?” said Ganesh.
“Da funniest guys ams da Two Swedish Dads. Dat ams da goods comedies!”
“Are we ready to carry on?” Wotan was asking.
“Dese dudes am thinksing dat da Marxists Brothers an’ Monty Pythons ams funnier dan da Two Swedish Dads!” Skwisgaar scoffed.
“Oh, the Two Swedish Dads! That is a splendid comedy program!” Wotan laughed.
Ganesh looked at Ofdensen. “Must be something genetic,” Ofdensen whispered.
Wotan was clapping Skwisgaar on the back affectionately. “Now, my Lady Raziel, she’s always watching this Mighty Boosh thing.”
“Yes, I loaned the Lady my DVD boxed sets,” Ganesh allowed. “Mighty Boosh is brilliant!”
“I told her, Lady, this program makes it look as though our television set is broken!
Ganesh was staring at Ofdensen, who was looking distracted again. “What can be going through your head?”
“Oh. Uh. Raziel. Sometimes, she gets really stupid ideas.”
“Hello Lady Raziel,” Aaron said, grinning wide and taking her hand. “I’m glad you could come and visit me here! I had a lot of fun playing with you the other day! I liked your drawings. They put them up in my room!”
She looked down at herself. She now had a hand. She was back in her Raziel body. Only with her angel wings. She was in her odd smaller angel Form.
“Can I call you Raz? You said I could call you Raz!” pressed Aaron.
“Sure, Aaron. What happened to my dream kitty?” she asked.
“You’re in my Dreamspace now, Raz,” Aaron told her. “This is your True Form.”
“Actually, it isn’t….”
“Yoo don’t look like dis when yer an angel?” Pickles asked. He sounded disappointed. She noticed he had a silly, smiley expression, as if he was stoned on human drugs. Well, she guessed, they were all stoned on drugs.
“Pickles. No. My True Form…. I’m a monster when I’m an angel. Like Gabriel.”
“Yer sure? Yoo know, Charles used to get out his wings sometimes. He don’t like t’ do dat too much anymore.” He sounded wistful again.
“I…. Oh, it doesn’t matter.” She frowned and grabbed Pickles’ shoulder. She seemed to be having difficulty concentrating. “Aaron, this is Pickles, and he helped me find you.”
“It is my great honor to meet such a powerful shaman,” Aaron said, bowing low.
“What, me?” laughed Pickles, obviously flustered. “Dood, I’m jist a stoner.”
“You found me here, fair and square! You got past my tricks!” Aaron laughed and began to hop around on one foot.
“Yeh, mebbe.”
“Aaron, we’ve come here for a reason,” Raziel told him. “Do you know where you are in the real world? I mean, where they took you?”
“Yes, I’m with the angels now, Raz” he said, still distractedly hopping. “I can’t tell you where exactly. I know the Dreamspace very well, but not the real world. Hey,” he stopped hopping, “did you want to play another game? I don’t have a lot of people to play with here.”
“Maybe later, Aaron. We’re sort of in a hurry….”
“Just one more game! One more game! Oh, I know, let’s play hide and seek! OK, 1-2-3 go!” And he was running like a whirlwind.
“Aw, shit!” said Pickles, taking off at a run. He was annoyed to find his Dreamspace body was as out of shape as his actual body.
“Pickles!” Raziel shouted. She was overhead, coasting on her dark wings. “Use your spirit animal.”
“Oh, yeh!” Pickles laughed. He transformed, and suddenly an improbable party consisting of an angel and a flying red octopus was pursuing the fleeing boy across the desert.
Skwisgaar was annoyed.
“There is something wrong with the trail!” he declared to Wotan.
“Why do you say that?” The king looked curiously at the trail They were somewhere either in Southern Mexico or Northern Central America. Wotan, who rarely used a passport when he traveled, was a bit vague on human boundaries sometimes.
“I know we’re pursuing the angels,” Skwisgaar stated. “Their magic is pretty clear to follow. But Eototo…. It’s fucked up. It’s like he’s here and not here.”
“Eototo is a New World god. And, well, they’re kind of weird.”
Skwisgaar frowned at his father. How the hell had Wotan dragged him off on another goddam hunt? He wanted to be back, sitting on his couch, fingering guitar riffs, and not out in the middle of the jungle doing what the fuck. “You know,” he said, “You would have been better off bringing somebody else along.”
Wotan grinned. “Has it occurred to you I may have dragged you out here for a reason? I mean, other than to discuss fine television comedy?”
“Yeah?”
“Like Sariel said, Eototo is a hunter, so I wanted someone with fresh eyes along. And also, the New World gods, they’re a lot like humans in some ways. I mean, to us.”
“You mean, to you?”
Wotan smiled. “Unlike Old World gods - unlike me - Eototo’s power is rooted up north, where he lives. So, his magic should be growing ever less powerful as we travel south. And, he can’t disappear into the Dreamtime, like I can.”
“Why is that, anyway?”
“No one knows.”
“What good is it being a god, if you don’t know this stuff.”
“An excellent question!” Wotan grinned.
Where the hell were they now, Pickles wondered. Was this the Vatican or some shit?
He had turned back to his human form. "Dis place looks awfully strange. What's up wit' all da gold?"
"Wait, I know this place," Raziel said.
She ran along the golden corridors.
“Dammit, Raz, don’t yoo run off too!” Pickles called, greatly annoyed.
She turned the corner and opened a familiar door.
"Father?" she asked.
There were four of them in the Creator’s studio: Michael, Uriah, Gabriel and Raphael.
And what was quite strange was they looked like they were trying to intimidate Him.
Raziel frowned. She had been startled at first by Uriah. But then she noticed it didn’t seem they could see or hear her. So, premonition, or memory, she wasn’t certain. But she couldn’t seem to quit staring.
“He doesn’t need to be exiled, Father,” Michael was booming. “He needs to be extinguished. He is not right. He has never been right.”
“My children are neither right nor wrong. They simply are,” the Creator sighed. He was standing at his easel, painting. He seemed much more irritated than intimidated.
“Something must be done! Discipline must be maintained,” Michael stated.
“Why not let us take this extra measure?” Uriah inquired, unctuously. “Such a small thing. To insure stability.”
“Because that is my will, Uriah. I will talk to you, Michael.” The Creator made an offhand flip of his hand, and suddenly, Uriah, Gabriel and Raphael were flung out the door as if they were no more than dead leaves in a breeze, and not hulking Seraphim.
Raziel gasped. There was a hand on her shoulder. Pickles. “Dood,” he whispered. “We gotta go!”
“I just need another minute,” she told him.
The golden office door slammed shut, and the Creator turned to talk with a now chastened seeming Michael.
“Sariel is to be exiled,” the Creator said quietly. “No more. No less. Is this understood?”
“Yes Father.”
“Dood, are dey talkin’ in da angel language?” Pickles asked. Raziel nodded.
“An’…. Is dat who I t’ink it is?”
“That’s Him.”
“Whoa.” There was really nothing else to say.
“And what of the girl?” Michael asked.
“What of the girl?” There was a warning in the Creator’s voice.
Michael pressed ahead. “She should be kept away from him.”
“You told me they are estranged. You lied to me then?”
“She is…. She is difficult to predict. They both are. Those two are not like us, Father. You know this.”
“I know.”
“And Earth is…. If she appears on earth too, it might create a dangerous situation.”
“Then I will rely on you, the new head of my Legion to keep us out of danger. Or will two disgruntled children be too great a task for you?”
Michael didn’t answer.
“I know Gabriel is interested in the role.”
“Your will be done,” Michael finally said.
“Now, is there anything else, or may I get back to my painting?”
Michael nodded meekly and made for the golden door.
“Raz, dood, we gotta go,” Pickles urged. She nodded and they followed Michael out the door.
“You guys SUCK at hide and seek!” It was Aaron, grinning.
And they were back in the desert.
They had surrounded him in an instant. Raziel held one of his hands.
“Didja wanna play another game?” he urged.
Raziel was down on her knees. “Aaron, we can play another game later. It’s really important that we find out where the angels have taken you. OK?”
He frowned. “I don’t know the real world too well. Hey! Maybe my father would know!”
“Yer fadder?” Pickles asked. He exchanged a confused glance with Raziel.
“My father knows everything!”
“All right. Can you take us to him?”
Aaron grinned and tugged Raziel’s hand.
Ofdensen stood in the clearing, emptying a riding boot, annoyed. How the fuck did he keep getting rocks in his shoes when he was riding a fucking horse? And it was a fucking magical horse that was fucking riding on air! There weren’t fucking rocks in the fucking air….
His contemplation was interrupted by Skwisgaar, who beckoned him follow into the dense jungle. He tugged his boot back on and stumbled into the underbrush. They’d made it all the way down to South America now. He was starting to feel Eototo had led them off on a wild goose chase. He wouldn’t be surprised if they just continued down to Tierra del Fuego, and then back up the other side of the planet, with maybe a quick visit to the dancing goddamn penguins.
He had lost sight of Skwisgaar, but decided it would probably not be prudent to call out, given he had no idea in hell who else might be around. Instead he thrashed, muttering, through the thick vegetation. He thought he saw the bright light of a clearing and stepped towards it. He would have lost his footing if Skwisgaar and Ganesh hadn’t each grabbed an arm at that very moment from behind.
The vegetation had stopped because the ground had fallen away, and he was standing on the edge of very steep cliff.
Although Ofdensen, as a being who could actually fly, was not someone who suffered inordinately from vertigo, he took a quick step backwards.
“I’ve never been entirely certain how someone of your stature can make quite so much noise,” Wotan was laughing. For once, Ofdensen ignored the insult. He was staring into the valley at the foot of the cliff.
There was an ancient abandoned city there, great stone ruins spread over many acres.
“No way. We found El Fucking Dorado?” He noticed, off to the east, there was a not terribly dormant volcano looming over the valley. It was emitting puffs of smoke, and if you stared long enough, you could barely make out a red glow at the top.
“And if you look towards that area?” Wotan said, pointing. Ofdensen grabbed some field glasses from Skwisgaar. “If I am not mistaken, that greatly resembles a human military installation.”
“Way out here?” Ofdensen said. But the Norse god appeared to be right.
“Didn’t the Blue Corn Maiden say Eototo traveled to some place where the indigenous people had all been killed?” Ganesh inquired.
“A powerful place. I think we found it.” Ofdensen frowned. “But why would they build a human military base?”
“I would recommend that those of us who can move around without it sounding like a herd of thundering elephants might take a look around,” Wotan suggested.
“Angels don’t need to be stealthy,” Ofdensen said irritably. “Anybody sees us, we just crush their skulls.” He stomped his foot. He still had a rock in his shoe.
Raziel and Pickles had set off with Aaron leading the way. The landscape shifted once again.
“So, your father is not out in the desert?” Raziel asked.
“No. My Dreamspace is the desert because that’s all I know. But, my father has been many places and knows many things.”
“Hey,” said Pickles, looking up into the dense vegetation, “maybe we could swing from da vines!”
“As an octopus?” Raziel laughed. “That would be impressive.”
“This is where I go to meet my father,” Aaron explained. “It’s a powerful place. He is a powerful man.”
They had come to a clearing. They were on a hillside, overlooking the overgrown stone ruins of an ancient city. The nearest building looked to be some kind of temple. It was high, with a vast stone staircase leading up to what looked like an altar.
The entire valley lay in the shadow of an angry, smoking volcano.
“Dood,” Pickles whispered, “dis is da coolest place on da planet!”
“It’s not really on the planet, Pickles! We’re in a dream now.”
“But it looks like dat Congo movie t’ing! Do ya t’ink dere will be killer apes?”
Razlel frowned. She grabbed Pickles by the shoulder. “There are angels here.”
Pickles started to say something, and then decided to remain silent. She was right. There was a terribly un-mellow vibe to the place.
A man emerged from a doorway at the top of the temple, followed by three other men. Raziel’s grip on Pickles’ shoulder tightened. The first man was tall and slim, and wore some kind of hooded robe. The other three were very large, almost too large to be men.
The first man stood at the altar. He threw back his hood.
Pickles felt the wind knocked out of him as Raziel, with an insane amount of strength for such a small person, grabbed him and Aaron and flew them suddenly on a frantic, zig-zag path around the dense vegetation and back into the deep jungle.
Pickles lay for a moment where Raziel dropped him, panting for breath.
“OK. Pickles?” Raziel was asking. He sat up and nodded. “Can you stay with Aaron for a little while? I need to talk to Sariel.”
“What da feck? Were dose da same angel doods as in dat gold room?”
“Yeah. Yeah. We got some problems. Look, we’ll discuss when I get back, OK?”
“Uh, yer talkin’ to Charles? Yoo know how yer gonna do dis?”
“No idea. I’m like you. I just kind of do it.”
Wotan saw something out of the corner of his eye and turned. “Raziel?” he asked. His Lady was standing there, but she ignored him. Instead, she had grabbed Sariel by the collar and was whispering in his ear. He stared at her a moment, evidently too stunned to speak, and then he disappeared with her for a few moments.
After a time, Sariel returned to the real world. Raziel was not with him.
“Was that my Lady?” Wotan asked him.
“Yeah. Yeah,” Sariel said, not meeting his eyes. He was fumbling for a cigarette. “We’ve got problems.”
“No sign of Eototo,” Ganesh reported, arriving alongside Skwisgaar.
“What?” said Sariel. “He should be here. Raziel just spotted him and the angels in Dreamtime.”
“I ams confused!” Skwisgaar stated. “I ams thoughts we ams huntsing the real Eototos?”
“I thought so too,” Sariel admitted. “New World gods are like humans. They can’t just go walking in Dreamtime. His body must be here somewhere. He’s either asleep or on that drug.”
“We could resurvey the area,” Ganesh mused.
“No, his body ams nots here!” Skwisgaar announced.
“What?” asked Ofdensen. “Whaddya mean?”
“Dat ams why da trail was fucked up! We ams not chasin’ Eototos, we ams chasing his dreams!”
“That’s impossible,” Ofdensen protested. “No one can fucking track someone through Dreamtime in the real world like that.”
“Skwisgaar evidently can!” Wotan grinned, giving an impossibly annoying “That’s my boy” look.
“OK, Wotan, given this is possible, where the fuck is Eototo?”
“He is definitely walking in Dreamtime, if my Raziel saw him. And we need to follow him there.”
“What about the real world?” the angel protested. “I do not like this military shit! And, what happens when the Legion figures out where I am, like they always do? We’re gonna have Legion Seraphim here, and soon.”
“Seraphim?” mused Ganesh, studying his fingernails. “Won’t be a problem.”
“Ganesh, don’t underestimate-“
“Oh, I have allies, and many of them, in this locality. Kindly trust me, it will not be an issue.”
“Allies?” asked Ofdensen. He stared at the volcano for a few moments, then appeared to decide something. He took out his Dethphone. “Look, can you guys hold here for a few minutes? I’m going to jump to a place with cell phone coverage.”
“What are you going to do, Sariel?” Wotan asked.
“I’m calling for reinforcements.”
“OK, I have an idea.”
Raziel and Pickles had escorted Aaron back to Pickles’s Dreamspace, as she decided it would be relatively safe from the angels. Aaron was fascinated with the newspaper taxis, not to mention the plasticine porters. He had seen neither taxis nor porters in the real world.
“Aaron,” Raziel told him, “I don’t really understand this, but the place you met your father? It’s also in the real world, right?”
“Yes, it’s both places!” he smiled, bumping a rocking horse person so it nearly choked on its marshmallow pie.
“So, the place the angels took you in the real world - does it have a place here?”
Aaron grinned. “Sure!”
Pickles and Raziel looked at each other.
“Dood, can yoo take us dere?” Pickles asked.
“Can we take a boat?” Aaron asked, eagerly pointing to the tangerine trees on the shore.
Nathan Explosion debarked the Dethcopter, Kwahu the eagle Kachina at his side.
They were alone in an Amazon jungle clearing.
And then, quite suddenly, they were not.
"Uh, hey," Nathan began nervously. "I dunno if you dudes remember me?"
The Yannemango tribesmen looked at one another, and regarded Nathan suspiciously. Some weapons were raised.
"Maybe you could show them the stuff, dude?" Kwahu hissed.
Nathan nodded, and motioned for some Klokateeres back up the gangplank to bring out a crate.
The tribesmen frowned, peering in as the strange hooded men put a crowbar to the crate. And then they all broke into grins, excitedly pulling out the Dethklok hoodies and clattering in their language.
"Damn, you mean that hoodie shit actually works?" Nathan laughed.
Kwahu smiled. “Dude, everybody loves Facebones!”
“Wotan?” Ofdensen pulled the Norse god aside before the two of them walked into Dreamtime. Wotan stared inquisitively at the angel.
“We gotta agree one thing: when we find Eototo, the goal is to interrogate him. I really wanna know what he knows. We gotta know what’s going on.”
“You’re telling me not kill him?” Wotan asked.
Ofdensen shook his head. “I need you to stop me from killing him.”
The Dreamtime stream had iced up, so Raziel, Pickles and Aaron had proceeded on foot, marching through the snow for a time. When the snow banks got too high, Pickles and Raziel switched to flying, Raziel easily carrying Aaron, who appeared to enjoy riding with an angel as much as he’d enjoyed most everything that day.
And then the energy changed.
Raziel and Octo-Pickles exchanged a glance.
“Angels?” asked Pickles.
She nodded, and they landed, and Pickles slipped back into Pickles form.
“Is dis it?” Pickles asked Aaron, indicating the next snowbank. They were completely surrounded by white now, and he had no idea how the boy knew where they were.
Aaron nodded, so they began to carefully crawl up the bank for a peek.
“Can we have a snowball fight?” Aaron inquired.
“Maybe after this, babe,” said Raziel. She and Pickles had climbed to the top of the snowbank. They carefully peered over.
The angel and the Dethklok drummer looked at each other.
“We gotta go,” said Raziel.
“Looking for something?”
It was Eototo.
And, even from the other end of the field in Dreamtime, Ofdensen could tell, the bastard was smiling.
They stood in the shadow of some kind of temple. Or dream temple, rather. Ofdensen had to keep reminding himself it was Dreamtime. Everything looked just like the real world version. It was confusing.
Ofdensen held up his hands. “Eototo,” he shouted. “We just wanna ask you some questions. Where did they take Aaron?”
“We, huh? Is that your earth god boyfriend?” Eototo laughed, indicating Wotan.
“You sure you don’t wanna kill this guy?” Wotan whispered.
“Eototo,” Ofdensen persisted. “Where the hell is Aaron? We just want him back.”
“Hey, Sariel, remember this one?” Eototo spread his arms, and the skies opened up in a rainstorm.
“Eototo!” Ofdensen shouted through the downpour. “Goddammit, don’t start with the fucking rain dance!”
The chief waved his arms, and warning thunder sounded.
“Crap, we gotta get out of the clearing,” Ofdensen told Wotan. But then they were both knocked off their feet by a lightning bolt.
“Little bastard thinks he can throw a thunderbolt,” Wotan grumbled. He stood up in the howling rain and raised his spear, Gungnir. It was the spear that never missed, and always killed.
“Wait, Wotan!” Ofdensen yelled.
Wotan let it fly at Eototo.
Gungnir missed.
The Norse god stood, stunned.
“My house. My rules!” laughed Eototo. He clapped his hands above his head.
Wotan felt the wind knocked out of him as Ofdensen slammed him out of the way of another lightning strike.
“I will kill that bastard,” Wotan growled, standing. He lurched back as Ofdensen wrenched his arm.
“Wotan! We’re not gonna get him this way!”
“He’s dead,” Wotan shouted, shaking free of Ofdensen’s grasp.
“You’re dead!”
“Get out of my fucking way!”
“This is his Dreamtime! He’ll fucking turn you to a box of ashes.”
“Get off me, Sariel.”
But then Wotan was down from a hard sucker punch to the jaw, an angry angel sitting on his chest.
“Goddammit will you listen to me you Scandanavian son of a bitch! I’m not taking you home in a fucking box! Raziel would fucking kill me!” Ofdensen shouted at him.
Wotan pushed him off and stood, all fury.
Ofdensen held up his palms, like one would at a wild creature. “I’ve got another idea, OK?”
Wotan scowled and rubbed his jaw. He exhaled. “Damn, you’ve got a mean right.”
“Look, Wotan,” Ofdensen pleaded, “we really don’t have time to play ‘in a fistfight who would win’ right now. I have an idea. We couldn’t find Eototo in the real world Amazon, right? And, he’s really fucking powerful….”
“He never left the Southwest!” said Wotan. “You think you know where he’s hiding?”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“I think I have the same idea,” Wotan mused. “If we can find him, I know what we can do with him.”
“I know of someone who’s perfect for the job.”
William Murderface was still a bit dizzy.
He had jumped to several places now along with Dick Knubbler. This was evidently some kind of angel thing or demon thing or whatever the heck Dick really was. And it was pretty fucking cool. Though, it could make him a bit woozy, especially when they went long distances.
He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he liked hanging out with Dick Knubbler. Maybe it was the whole deal that their producer had been a real live demon from hell all along? But it was also cool just being in the room with him.
They were with some kind of weird old gal in the desert right now. He liked her. She’d given him a hug, and told him, “Well, ain’t you somethin’?” Which, you know, was exactly right. They went out driving to some lonely house in the middle of nowhere. Now, why exactly would you put your house so far out? Would make it hard as hell to get into strip clubs at night. These desert people were weird.
The latch on the gate was broken, and it flapped in the wind.
It didn’t look like the parents were in, because a girl answered the door. But the old gal started talking to her. She said, “Where is he, babe?” And the girl burst into tears.
“We know you got him hidin’ somewhere.” Grandma told her. “Now, you need to tell me where.”
The girl looked at Dick. “You’re an angel, aren’t you?”
He nodded, not saying something for once.
“I knew you’d come for him, eventually,” the girl said, opening the door to her home’s small crawlspace.
“Will you come back and play?” Aaron asked them uncertainly. They were back in his Dreamtime in the middle of the warm, red desert.
“Definitely,” grinned Pickles. “I got a lot of cool stuff to show yoo! I got a zeppelin we could ride!”
“We gotta get you in the real world,” Raziel told him. “And then we can come back and play. OK?”
“All right. I’m getting a little cold.” Despite the warm Dreamtime sun, Aaron shivered.
“Yeah, it’s a cold place,” said Raziel, squashing him in an angel hug. “But we’ll be there soon. OK?”
“See ya soon, dood!” Pickles grinned.
And then they were in Grandma’s living room, on Grandma’s couch.
“You really have your own zeppelin?” Raziel asked Pickles.
“Course, dood! In da Dreamtime.”
Spider Grandma had just arrived back at her house. She looked sad. “So. We know where we’re going, kids?” she asked.
Raziel nodded. “Pickles, you stay here, I’ll take Grandma and-“
“NO!” Pickles was adamant. “Wherever you’re goin’, I’m fecking goin’ too!”
“Pickles. It will be dangerous. Charles would-“
“I don’t give a shit what Charles would or wouldn’t. I was dere at the beginnin’ and I’m feckin’ finishing dis!” the drummer declared.
“OK. Well. We’re gonna need coats then, Grandma.”
An angry god stood in a tropical clearing in the Dreamtime.
“Eototo? I’d like to chat.”
“Chat with this!” Eototo shouted. He was up the temple steps, standing by the altar. Wotan leapt frantically to avoid the lightning strike.
Eototo saw the flash of silver wings out of the corner of his eye, but too late. Sariel was on him. The angel gripped Eototo by the throat and held him, shaking him like a rag doll. The Dreamtime storm abated as the Kachina’s dance was halted. Eototo clawed desperately at Sariel’s hands, but was unable to break the grip.
“Sariel!” Wotan shouted, suddenly at his side. The angel released the Kachina, who sunk to his knees, gasping for breath.
“Aaron. Is. His. Son,” Sariel said.
Wotan was looming over Eototo. “Is this true?” he asked.
“You don’t understand!” Eototo coughed, holding his bruised throat.
“Is. It. True?” Wotan repeated.
“It was the fucking angels!” Eototo protested.
Wotan was now down on the ground, fists full of Eototo’s collar.
“Is it true?” he whispered.
The Kachina nodded.
Wotan stepped back, motioning with his hands. A steel cage suddenly surrounded Eototo.
“Oh, fuck you,” Eototo snorted, jumping up and making a sweeping gesture with his hands. He paused, confused. He gestured again. And then again.
“Eototo,” Wotan asked. “Where is your body right now?”
Eototo grabbed the bars. “Oh. Fuck no. Fuck no.”
“My home,” said Wotan. “My rules.”
In the castle of Valhalla, William Murderface was just shutting a door. Dick Knubbler waved his hands at the doorknob, saying an incantation.
They grinned at each other, and slapped hands in a high five gesture.
In the real world, a small knot of very large Seraphim gathered in the Amazon valley, near the ruined city.
Lord Ganesh and Skwisgaar Skwigelf strolled casually out to greet them.
“If I might be so bold,” Ganesh began politely. “But are you perhaps familiar with me?”
“You are Lord Ganesh,” the lead Seraph sniffed. His wings were a reddish color that matched the current hue of his face and neck.
“Then, if you have an awareness of my history, it is with this in mind, that I offer the following counsel: you might find it fruitful to depart this place immediately.”
“Or else?” The Seraph flapped all three sets of fiery wings, as if for emphasis.
“Hmmm. Well, if you would prefer to put it in those terms, then, or else, we will make you leave.”
“You and what army,” snarled the Seraph.
“This one,” said the God, laying out one elegant hand. Suddenly, a pack of vermin emerged from the jungle and started to swarm the giant angels.
“Master of Rats,” Ganesh explained to Skwisgaar, as at least one of the Seraphim fell, screaming. “One of my lesser known duties, but nonetheless, and important one I feel.”
“You ams gots some resume, dude.”
“I do try,” Ganesh agreed. They both looked up to the sky, where one or two of the angels had attempted to fly off.
“So, ams da bats also da rodentses?”
“Actually, that is a rather good question! Bats fall under the order Chiroptera, so are not indeed rodents, as they lack the ever growing incisors.”
A Seraph, barely visible beneath a carpet of attacking bats, screamed and fell out of the sky, causing the earth to shake as it landed.
“Dats ams interestings!” Skwisgaar concluded.
“But, I feel they are all under my purview,” the god said modestly.
“Aaron’s mother wasn’t using magic. You did it,” Sariel said, ruffling his wings.
“Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Self-righteous treaty-talking angel bastard,” Eototo spat. He sat on the stone floor, sliding a finger along the bars of the cage Wotan had magicked around him. “Your angel friends wanted their fucking monsters.”
Sariel, who wasn’t currently wearing his jacket, due to the fact of sporting a rather large pair of silvery wings from his back, held out a hand to Wotan. The god dug out the pack of Marlboros he’d been safekeeping and handed it to the angel.
“What happened?” Sariel asked, crouching down to offer the pack to Eototo.
The Kachina sighed and took one. “It was after you disappeared. They gave me a new assignment.”
“I was an assignment?” Sariel asked, smiling wryly.
Eototo accepted a light from Sariel. “They only asked me to keep tabs on you. It never seemed like it did any harm. There was never anything to fucking report, other than you sold fucking violins.”
Sariel laughed bitterly. “Actually, I didn’t sell violins. That’s why I finally just took off.”
“Anyway, after you up and left, they decided they wanted to find the monsters. I don’t even fucking know if they exist!” He sighed. “And Grandma locked away all our secrets with the humans. Useless. Fucking. Humans. I had to do something. Those guys were gonna fucking kill me.”
“So, Aaron….”
“Look, if I’d known what would happen with Aaron, I never would’ve tried it! The world doesn’t need another monster.”
“He’s not a monster,” Wotan rumbled. Sariel looked up to him and held up a hand.
“I figured if the next shaman was my own son, I’ll be able to talk to him,” Eototo explained.
“It doesn’t always work that way,” Wotan said.
“So, the plan was, you were going to summon the New World monsters for them?” Sariel asked.
“Yeah. But, jokes on them! I never fucking figured out how,” Eototo said, laughing.
“This was all a bluff?”
Eototo grinned. “Yeah, it was a con! And a great one. I figured out where, the power spots. There’s this place here, and another up north. But I could never figure the how to summon them from Aaron. He’s a stubborn kid.” His expression darkened. He shrugged. “I mean, if he even knows.”
“But, you didn’t tell the angels that?”
“No. I convinced them for the spell to work, it would have to all be in the Dreamtime. So, we spent years, where I’d fly back and forth, going through this place in the real world, memorizing every fucking detail, every rock, every vine, until I had an exact copy in my Dreamtime.”
“What did they want with the monsters?”
“From what I understood was they were gonna summon them and then destroy them, once and for all. But, they’re a guy short now, or something? That’s why they started building these military bases. I guess they have human allies now. Lots of them. Anyway, when they heard you talked to Aaron-“
“When you told them I talked to Aaron,” Sariel commented.
“Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, they got all agitated about it, and insisted I put up or shut up. They took Aaron up north. I guess they consider him a hostage. I figured I’d put on a show for them in the Dreamtime, and then go back to my real body and escape. Your angel guys…. Well, they don’t seem too bright.”
“You really thought you were gonna get away with this?”
“Those guys are spread pretty thin nowadays. I don’t think people realize how weak they’ve become. I figured the Maiden and I could just take off.”
Sariel smirked. “You were really gonna take Maiden along?”
“She’s put up with a lot of shit from me over the years,” Eototo said.
“That’s not an answer,” Wotan observed.
“Anyway, Aaron….” Sariel said.
“The Seraph girl. And that…. I’m not sure what he is. They found him. I don’t know how. It doesn’t matter. Why are you so obsessed over one single human?”
“He’s your son,” Wotan said. “Why are you not obsessed?”
“He’s human! What does he have? Maybe ten more years at most? In that wretched body?” Eototo protested.
“But, you were going to abandon him?” Wotan asked.
“It was him or me. You would’ve done the same.”
Wotan frowned.
“Sariel, tell him!” Eototo said.
Sariel stood up. He flicked ashes from his cigarette. “I would die to protect the humans under my care,” he said.
“Bullshit! For humans? Sariel! They die.”
“That is why they matter,” Wotan said.
Wotan and Sariel exchanged a glance. Wotan inclined his head. They turned, and began to walk off.
“WAIT!” said Eototo! “Where are you going?”
The god and the angel paused. “We have stuff to do,” Sariel explained.
“You can’t leave me here!” Eototo protested. “You can’t strand me in Dreamtime! It’s cruel!”
Wotan and Sariel looked at each other, and then departed for the real world.
They alit in the front entrance of Mordhaus.
The Seraphim.
A resident was there to greet them.
“You angelses! I know dat ams not da polites Forms for greetsing peoples!”
Three True Formed angels glanced at the tiny figure standing there shouting up at them.
“And what exactly are you supposed to be.”
“I ams Toki Wartooth, an’ I ams da currents protectors of dis castles. You ams puts your wingses away and Court Formses now, or dere ams be da consequences!”
“What if we were to stomp on you? That would be a consequence.” The Seraphim chuckled.
“Dis ams your last warningses! Ams puts aways dose wingses!”
“We’ll keep our ‘wingses’ out, thanks so much,” the angels laughed.
Toki made a signal.
There were screams. And suddenly the Seraphim were tangled up in netting: 100% cotton and wool blends and acrylic and alpaca and mohair and flax and silk and spider webbing and thin gold fibers and polyester and cashmere and more.
They all three fell to the ground with seismic crashes. But their thrashing only made the netting ever tighter and tighter.
After a time, they stopped struggling.
“Now, ams you angelses goings to behaves yourselfs?” Toki asked one last time.
They arrived in the Amazon valley riding the sky, and wearing Dethklok hoodies. The Yannemango elders. Plus Nathan Explosion and Kwahu the Eagle Kachina.
“Guys,” Sariel told Nathan and Skwisgaar. He had not even had a chance to change back to Court Form after walking out of Dreamtime. He pointed over to the smoking volcano. “We just need that to go off.”
“YOU NEED WHAT?” Nathan boomed.
Sariel’s silver scowl was very impressive. “Oh, like you haven’t done it before.”
“Can’t you use your angel magic shit?”
“I’m asking you to use your Dethklok magic shit!”
“I don’t even know what to play!” Nathan wailed.
“Don’t you guys have a volcano song?”
“It ams not matter, no ones can tells what Nat’an ams singings anyways,” Skwisgaar snorted.
“I’M NOT IN GOOD VOICE TODAY!” Nathan wailed. “I’ve travelled internationally!”
“NATHAN!” The voice originated from the only person in the vicinity as loud as Nathan, Wotan.
“Uh, hey, King Wotan dude,” Nathan muttered. Sariel grinned. From diva to bad kid, in under ten seconds.
“I understand we’re going to get an impromptu concert from you fellows!” Wotan continued, seemingly oblivious. He clapped Skwisgaar on the back. “I haven’t had a chance to see my boy play yet! I am very pleased. VERY PLEASED!” He gave Nathan a couple of friendly whacks on the back, and then walked off with Sariel.
“High strung?” the god whispered.
“Can be,” Sariel grinned.
“Artists,” said Wotan.
If it wasn’t actually the Arctic, it was close enough. Alaska? Maybe it was Alaska. Raziel had heard there were snow bears up there. She had often told Wotan she wanted to go, so she could play with them. She bet they would make good friends for Geri and Freki.
It was somewhere in the real world. It was clearly a military facility of some kind, although it wasn’t at all clear from what country, or for what purpose.
Raziel knew which building. She wasn’t certain exactly how she knew, but she did. Everything looked sort of prefabricated, as if it had been constructed in great haste. Raziel was probably unfamiliar with the term, but it was built like a Quonset hut There were a couple of sentries stationed there, clutching their ridiculous little human guns. Raziel made short work of them. And then Grandma had to help them with the lock. There was some magic on it, and Raziel wasn’t familiar with it.
They were close.
And then they were through the door, and she had pushed into the room.
There was a familiar wheelchair. Raziel’s heart leapt. She sprang across the room.
She knew in an instant.
“Oh no,” she whispered. “Oh no.”
They were watching from the hillside, several earth gods, and an angel.
Nathan had suddenly decided this would be an appropriate moment to try out his unfinished number about angels fighting ice monsters inside a volcano. They had brought along a guitar for Skwisgaar. Some Yannemango elders had elected to play percussion.
“First time I’ve ever asked them to intentionally cause a catastrophe during a concert,” Ofdensen told Wotan, as they watched the red glow atop the volcano become more and more intense. “It’s kind of relaxing.”
As they watched, the lava finally overtopped the volcano’s cone. It was surprisingly quiet. And even beautiful. An orange stream started oozing down the side of the ancient mountain, bound for the military facility.
Grandma used her hands to shut the hooded eyes for the last time.
“Goddammit,” Pickles whispered. “Goddammit.” He turned and kicked over a wastebasket. He wanted to strangle someone. He wanted to burn something down. He wanted….
“You humans are fragile little things, and this one was weaker than most,” Grandma told him sadly. “Lady Raziel?”
“Raz?” asked Pickles.
She was by the wall, fists clenched, breathing hard, looking down.
“You OK Raz?” Pickles asked.
As if to herself, Raziel repeated, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”
Raziel looked up. She looked over to Pickles and Grandma.
“Take him. And run.”
She turned.
Lady Raziel of the Seraphim strode outside. Within steps, she was in her True Form, and each footstep made the earth tremble.
She made the middle of a clearing, and stood still. She let the earth magic fill her. There was a lot here, a lot to drink in. She surrendered to it, let it stoke her fire. Some of the humans at the military installation had taken notice now, of course. It was difficult to ignore a 50-foot angel of vengeance standing on your doorstep. Seraphim were difficult to ignore. And her anger was great. And her vengeance would be terrible.
They were moving some equipment. Good. She thrust out her arms, and with one motion, she bore a sword in each hand. And they were on fire. The flame trailed a graceful arc as she sent her blade through a row of their pitiful toys, the tiny jeeps and little tin tanks. And then another slash, breaking and burning their toys.
There were Seraphim, too. Three of them. She had the one before he even alit, her flaming sword breaking him before his feet made the ground. The second was luckier, and managed to cross swords with her two or three times before she had his head off with one mighty slash.
The third she rent in two. His screams were horrifying.
And then she let herself turn to fire. Her body was as fire, from the tips of her magnificent wings to the crown of her head and on down to the bottoms of her feet. She burned the base quickly to embers, and then reduced the embers too. Nothing would dwell here. No, not for seven generations.
“RAZIEL!” The voice seemed to come from inside her head.
She turned. Pickles was standing on a snowy hillside, a tiny body cradled in his arms, Spider Grandma beside him.
She knelt before them, her fire slowing dimming.
“It’s time to go, babe,” Spider Grandma said. “We’re done here.”
And Raziel was back in her Court Form, hugging onto them, taking them back to their home.
Sariel was still holding his phone. He had just jumped back from the city. He was crouching, as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
Wotan was standing over him. "What is it, son?" he asked quietly.
"There was... There was another facility up north. Not as big. But, Raziel took it out. All by herself.
"That's my angel," Wotan grinned.
"They found Aaron. He.... He didn't make it."
"Oh. Oh. Damn."
"Wish I’d let you fucking kill Eototo."
"Can’t bring back life with more death."
Sariel frowned. Wotan had extended a hand down to him. "Come," the god said, simply. “We should tell the others.
To Consequences, Part 2 of 2.
Author: tikistitch
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A chase up and down America and all around the Dreamtime
Warnings: Slash, AU, OCs, swearing, smoking, character death.
Notes: Notes after the jump
Cross-posted to capslokdethklok.
This is a Metalocalypse AU which tiktaalikroseae has dubbed “Mythklok.” Here are the other bits, about an angelic visit (Chapter 1), a hunt (Chapter 2), a barbecue (Chapter 3), a ski trip (Chapter 4), a sword fight (Chapter 5), Bette Davis Movies (Chapter 6), a concert (Chapter 7), tall tales (Chapter WTF), a trial (Chapter8), an argument (Chapter 9), a stray cat (Chapter 10), Satan’s shinkansen system (Chapter 11), the highway to Hell (Chapter 12), a meeting with Satan (Chapter 13), a tiger hunt (Chapter 14), Hamms beer signs (Chapter 15) and kidnapping and Monty Python (Chapter 16).
And it all everything eventually ends up rolling to my fic journal, tikific, where you are welcome to come poke it with a pointed stick.
THE STORY SO FAR: This is thing has now slithered completely out of canon and into the realm of pure barking madcap weirdness. Charles is a Fallen angel who used to go by the name of Sariel. For many centuries he tried to leave memories of this existence behind him (as Heaven is full of douche bags) but now several weird immortal beings have started showing up at Mordhaus and making his existence even more complicated.
Raziel is a ditzy Seraph who used to be his partner in crime. She is also now King Wotan’s fiancée. Wotan, as we all know, is head of the Norse pantheon, and, as we all suspect, Skwisgaar’s birth father. One of Wotan’s hunting buddies is Shiva, lord of destruction and Dethklok super fan. Charles is currently involved with Shiva’s son, Ganesh, a well-tailored elephant god with a rather sexy British accent.
In the last few chapters, Charles dragged Raziel off to the Southwest United States to seek out information regarding the legendary New World monsters that seem to be of interest to the Legion, the angel army. They met Spider Grandma, a Hopi Kachina; Aaron, the tribe’s mute human shaman; and Eototo, one of Charles’ old flames who evidently wanted to renew a bit of that old spark. However, when Our Heroes returned home, they leaned that Aaron had been kidnapped by angels, evidently in the company of very compliant Eototo. The angels' motives remain unclear. It was decided that King Wotan would lead a hunting party to trail Eototo in the real world, while Pickles, in the company of Raziel, would search out Aaron in the Dreamtime.
Consequences
Part 1 of 2
A number of years ago….
He saw her when he was still miles away. It took some minutes before he was finally alongside her. Of course he stopped. And not just because it was an old woman. Because that's just what you did in these parts. It might be hours, or even days, until someone else passed by.
The hood of her truck was propped open, steam still emitting.
"I could, uh, take a look and pretend to know what the heck I'm doing, or I could just give you a ride," he shrugged.
"I'll take the ride then," she laughed, puffing on her pipe. "Which way you headed?"
"You going to the Rez?" he asked. She nodded. "I'm not in a hurry." She climbed inside his dusty car, and they drove for some miles in silence.
"You don't talk much, huh?"
"No," he agreed, trailing his cigarette out the window.
"They call me Grandma," she offered.
It took a minute or two to sink in. He swallowed hard, but kept his eyes fixed on the road.
"Then you, uh, probably know who I am?"
"Yep. I know what you are. I seen you around before.”
"But, you'll still ride in a car with me?"
"You offered. Didn't want to be rude."
The continued for many more miles, past two sets of gates, and finally to Grandma’s house.
He got out of the car, just to be polite.
“You eat, or do you jist smoke?” Grandma asked him.
He laughed. “Mostly, I just smoke.”
“But, your kind?”
“We eat. Yeah.”
“I got some stew on. Oughta be jist about ready.”
He stood, cigarette in mouth, hands in pockets, a bit baffled.
“Ain’t gonna ask you twice,” said Grandma. “C’mon.”
The present day….
It seemed like they should be sitting around a campfire, with ritual dancers moving about.
Instead, they were gathered in Grandma’s well worn living room, with the television sound turned down: two Kachinas, an angel, and a death metal musician.
“I tried to find a stylish but practical spirit walk outfit!” Raziel told them. She was proud of herself for choosing a pair of low-heeled boots.
“Yer not necessarily gonna be wearin’ dose clothes anyway, Lady Raz,” Pickles laughed.
“No?”
“Naw. Yoo walk as a spirit animal.”
“I don’t wear fur as a rule,” she supplied.
“Might not be fur, dood,” Pickles laughed. “I’m an octopus.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Raziel frowned. She had seen Pickles’s spirit octopus once before, though out of the corner of her eye. She hoped her spirit animal wasn’t going to be something tacky. “You don’t think I’m something icky? Like a snake?”
“I dunno. Yoo don’t know until yoo try.”
“Hrm. Wotan calls me his raven.” Raziel indicated Huginn, who was sitting on her shoulder. “Maybe I’ll be a bird?”
“Yeah, birds’re cool. Den yoo can fly an’ shit.”
Raziel nodded, apparently satisfied, and held out a hand. She looked at the bud Kwahu had dropped in her palm. “Does this go down better with whiskey?” she asked. “I drink whiskey now!”
“That ain’t a bad idea, babe,” Grandma laughed. “Kwahu, go grab a bottle for us? Now, you kids understand I’ll be there for ya to start ya out?”
“Yeah. I t’ink we can find out way dere,” Pickles told her.
Raziel downed the drug with a shot of whiskey, glad that Sariel had taught her to drink spirits. Hey, spirits to start a spirit walk! It was sort of funny. She should probably tell her joke to Pickles. Though, he may or may not think it was a joke. She tended to get the giggles when she was under the influence of human drugs. It wasn’t unpleasant, just something that didn’t hold a lot of fascination for her. But she couldn’t tell Pickles her joke anyway, as she was now alone, and Grandma’s living room was gone. She was out in the wilderness.
Raziel walked for a time and enjoyed the red desert. It was nice here, very sunny, and there were a lot of pretty rocks to look at. She wished she had thought to bring along a beach umbrella and her sunscreen. And then she noticed something flying over her head. It was definitely too big to be a bird. It was red and blobby and wriggly.
“Ew! Pickles, you’re a flying octopus?” she screamed.
“Yeah, dood. Wait a minute.” The red octopus started spinning. And then he was Pickles. “OK, dat’s better. Da octopus t’ing tends t’ get dehydrated in da desert.”
Raziel noticed for the first time that she was now much, much shorter than Pickles. She also had a tail. “I’m a kitty cat?” she asked.
“You’re a jaguar, babe.” It was Spider Grandma. Raziel and Pickles had arrived at an appropriately spiritual looking campfire. Pickles seemed a bit chary around Spider Grandma for some reason, perhaps because her spirit animal was none other than a big spider.
“That’s pretty cool,” Raziel said, licking a paw, and twitching her tail. “But, I’m gonna be kind of useless as a bodyguard. I mean I can’t hold a sword in this Form.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to see, huh?” Pickles said nervously.
“I think you two will be all right,” Grandma laughed.
“Could you do one thing?” Raziel asked Pickles.
“Yeh?”
“Scratch behind my ears?” Pickles obligingly scratched her head, and she purred and rubbed his leg. “God that feels good!”
“Can you tell where Aaron is, Pickles?” Grandma asked.
“I t’ink his Dreamtime is off dis way.” He hiked a thumb in the appropriate direction. He wasn’t quite certain how he knew. But he did.
“You’re not going with us, Grandma?” Raziel asked.
“We been tryin’ to find our way in for years dear. Seems like there’s something pretty powerful blocking the way. But I’ll stay here by the campfire and wait for ya.”
Pickles started off in what looked to Raziel suspiciously like a random direction. Raziel thought he seemed to be relieved to put some distance between himself and Spider Grandma. Humans were weird sometimes, she mused. She was wondering what Geri and Freki the wolves might make of her feline spirit form, when she noticed the scenery had changed. It looked like someone had taken a television and turned the saturation all the way up.
“This looks like our television is broken!” Lady Raziel said.
“Yeah, dis is my Dreamtime. I t’ought we’d start out here.”
After they walked for a bit, Pickles asked, “So, why do ya t’ink dey took da boy?”
“Why?” purred Raziel. “Oh, angels, we’re such a bunch of assholes.”
“Dey took him jist t’ be jerks?”
“Angels can do that sometimes. Sariel - I mean your Charles - thinks-”
“I know he’s got two names, by da way.”
“Oh. Sorry. He tends to change his human name every few years and it always confuses me who knows him as what.”
“He showed me, yoo know, what he was, right after we met.”
“NO! Really?”
“Yeh. Is dat weird or somethin’?”
“It’s very weird. He hates that Form, for one thing. He must have really trusted you. Or maybe really wanted to get laid?”
Pickles suddenly grinned. Either possibility sounded OK. “But, anyway, dood, what did he t’ink?”
“I don’t know how much you know or don’t know about earth gods?” Pickles shook his head. “Well, they’re sort of strange. You get them everywhere you go in the universe. Angels usually laugh at them, because they can be pretty pathetic. But here, for some reason, they grew very strong. And they only seem to be getting stronger. You heard the story that Lord Ganesh led his people to fight off the Legion? The angel army?”
“Yeh, I heard he’s pretty badass.” They had stopped to watch a golden butterfly float by. It was very pretty. And three stories high.
“He’s pretty badass,” Raziel continued. “Anyway, the New World gods are even weirder. I haven’t seen anything like them, and I’ve been everywhere. They’re sort of more like humans than gods, in some ways. Some say they were once human. And other people think they’re all from somewhere else, and just moved to earth for some reason.”
The butterfly had passed, so they continued walking.
“So, even you angel doods don’t know?”
“No, we don’t know. What I do know is, recently - well, recently to us, meaning a couple centuries ago - the Legion came down and slaughtered most of the New World gods. Nobody knows why. I think maybe Michael and a couple others might know. But, angels love to gossip, and one of the things they say is that the New World gods had somehow created some very powerful magic. Most people say it was monsters, though it actually may have just been a spell. Or it may have been actually nothing at all, just a story.”
“So,” Pickles was watching a nearby stream and a gorgeous school of rainbow-hued fishes swimming by. “Da angels wiped out all da people jist t’ get rid of magic dat might not even exist?”
“Yep,” said Raziel. “And you wonder why Sariel doesn’t like going around looking like an angel.”
The colors were slowly fading to something that reminded Raziel more of the earth.
“This looks like a human city,” she purred.
“Dis is lookin’ awfully familiar,” Pickles said. He looked like he was getting uneasy again.
She noticed he was now wearing the most adorable little outfit. And Pickles had grown even more adorable himself! “Hey, Pickles, do you always wear mascara?” she asked.
Pickles stopped and looked at himself. She noticed he also suddenly had a full head of hair. “Dis is weird, dood.” He looked up.
“Hey, Pickles!” It was another mascara-wearing boy.
“Who is that,” Raziel asked suspiciously.
“It’s Caim! Damn, I haven’t seen dat motherdoucher in twenny years.”
“Pickles,’ said Raziel, switching her tail in front of him. “We’re on a mission.”
“Yeh. But, jist let me talk to da dood!”
“Pickles-“
“Dood,” he whispered to her. “Dis was my firs’ boyfriend. An’, he’s still hot!”
“Pickles he’s adorable, but we didn’t come here so you could make out with your old boyfriend….” But the drummer had maneuvered around her with surprising agility, and was now chatting up the admittedly very cute Caim. Raziel emitted a guttural growl, and suddenly wished Sariel had come along, as he was much better than she at the whole yelling at people for being stupid thing.
And now there was another figure looming on the street.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the sour middle-aged man yelled at Pickles.
“Daaaaaad!” Pickles whined. He was suddenly not quite so adorable, Raziel thought.
“What are you doing with that boy?” Calvert asked.
“Nothin’,” Pickles grunted.
“Why are you wearing makeup?”
“It’s my look,” he said sullenly.
“Are you supposed to be my daughter?”
“No!”
Pickles clenched his fists. Raziel switched her tail.
“You belong in a garbage can, because you’re a piece of trash!” Calvert shouted.
“Shut da feck up!” Pickles yelled.
“OK, enough of this shit,” Raziel growled. She snarled and jumped onto Calvert’s chest. He screamed, and turned into a rat, which she caught by the tail.
“Whoa! What da feck was my dad doin’ in my Dreamspace?” Pickles wailed.
“It’s not your dad, Pickles. They want us doing this bullshit.” She bit the rat’s head off and spat it out.
“Raz! Hey! Ya don’t have t’ go all Ozzy on me.”
“We’re looking for Aaron, remember?”
Pickles nodded, a bit chastened.
They walked for a bit, as the suburban streets slowly faded.
“That was your first boyfriend?” Raziel asked. “In real life?”
“Caim? Yeh.” Pickles got a wistful smile.
“He looks familiar.”
“Yoo ever get t’ Wisconsin?”
Raziel shook her head, and they continued walking. “So, is your dad that much of an asshole in real life?” she asked.
“He’s WORSE.”
“Yuck. Hey, you want me and Wotan to adopt you after we’re married?”
“Dood, dat would be cool! Could I be a Viking? Hey, wait!” His eyes narrowed. “Would dat make me related t’ Skwisgaar?”
“Uh, probably.”
“Eh. Maybe not den.”
Suddenly, Raziel came to a halt. When had they wandered away from the suburbs of Wisconsin and back into the red desert?
There was a boy standing in the middle of nowhere. He looked to be about 12 years old. When he saw they were looking at him, he broke into a mischievous grin.
“Aaron?” asked Raziel.
Hunting inevitably reminded Ofdensen of exactly why he hated hunting.
The party had stopped for the thousandth time, apparently so Wotan and Skwisgaar and Ganesh could stand around and be tall.
He dismounted and lit a smoke. He tried to distract himself meanwhile with pleasant notions of dismembering Eototo. Perhaps it would be time again to conjure a flaming hacksaw. That had been probably the best idea he and Raziel had come up with in ten centuries. He wondered idly, if things didn’t work out with Wotan after all, whether the little angel would come and work for him as a Klokateer. What they could do with security! He however immediately dismissed the notion, as she would certainly decide the hoods to be tacky and declare as an emergency switching his entire staff to wearing thigh-high boots.
“You are completely mad,” Ganesh was telling him.
“What?” He shrugged off the notion of being surrounded by female Klokateers in thigh high boots. No, too damn distracting. “No,” he told Ganesh. “You’re wrong.”
“You could not possibly be more mistaken!” Ganesh countered. “Not within a finite universe.”
“What ams you guys argusings abouts now,” grumbled Skwisgaar. “We ams not gots times for da grabby handses t’ing!” Ofdensen turned red as an Alabama football team.
“He is under the misapprehension that the Marx Brothers were funnier than Monty Python,” Ganesh sniffed.
“You guys ams both wrongs,” Skwisgaar snorted.
“Pardon me?” said Ganesh.
“Da funniest guys ams da Two Swedish Dads. Dat ams da goods comedies!”
“Are we ready to carry on?” Wotan was asking.
“Dese dudes am thinksing dat da Marxists Brothers an’ Monty Pythons ams funnier dan da Two Swedish Dads!” Skwisgaar scoffed.
“Oh, the Two Swedish Dads! That is a splendid comedy program!” Wotan laughed.
Ganesh looked at Ofdensen. “Must be something genetic,” Ofdensen whispered.
Wotan was clapping Skwisgaar on the back affectionately. “Now, my Lady Raziel, she’s always watching this Mighty Boosh thing.”
“Yes, I loaned the Lady my DVD boxed sets,” Ganesh allowed. “Mighty Boosh is brilliant!”
“I told her, Lady, this program makes it look as though our television set is broken!
Ganesh was staring at Ofdensen, who was looking distracted again. “What can be going through your head?”
“Oh. Uh. Raziel. Sometimes, she gets really stupid ideas.”
“Hello Lady Raziel,” Aaron said, grinning wide and taking her hand. “I’m glad you could come and visit me here! I had a lot of fun playing with you the other day! I liked your drawings. They put them up in my room!”
She looked down at herself. She now had a hand. She was back in her Raziel body. Only with her angel wings. She was in her odd smaller angel Form.
“Can I call you Raz? You said I could call you Raz!” pressed Aaron.
“Sure, Aaron. What happened to my dream kitty?” she asked.
“You’re in my Dreamspace now, Raz,” Aaron told her. “This is your True Form.”
“Actually, it isn’t….”
“Yoo don’t look like dis when yer an angel?” Pickles asked. He sounded disappointed. She noticed he had a silly, smiley expression, as if he was stoned on human drugs. Well, she guessed, they were all stoned on drugs.
“Pickles. No. My True Form…. I’m a monster when I’m an angel. Like Gabriel.”
“Yer sure? Yoo know, Charles used to get out his wings sometimes. He don’t like t’ do dat too much anymore.” He sounded wistful again.
“I…. Oh, it doesn’t matter.” She frowned and grabbed Pickles’ shoulder. She seemed to be having difficulty concentrating. “Aaron, this is Pickles, and he helped me find you.”
“It is my great honor to meet such a powerful shaman,” Aaron said, bowing low.
“What, me?” laughed Pickles, obviously flustered. “Dood, I’m jist a stoner.”
“You found me here, fair and square! You got past my tricks!” Aaron laughed and began to hop around on one foot.
“Yeh, mebbe.”
“Aaron, we’ve come here for a reason,” Raziel told him. “Do you know where you are in the real world? I mean, where they took you?”
“Yes, I’m with the angels now, Raz” he said, still distractedly hopping. “I can’t tell you where exactly. I know the Dreamspace very well, but not the real world. Hey,” he stopped hopping, “did you want to play another game? I don’t have a lot of people to play with here.”
“Maybe later, Aaron. We’re sort of in a hurry….”
“Just one more game! One more game! Oh, I know, let’s play hide and seek! OK, 1-2-3 go!” And he was running like a whirlwind.
“Aw, shit!” said Pickles, taking off at a run. He was annoyed to find his Dreamspace body was as out of shape as his actual body.
“Pickles!” Raziel shouted. She was overhead, coasting on her dark wings. “Use your spirit animal.”
“Oh, yeh!” Pickles laughed. He transformed, and suddenly an improbable party consisting of an angel and a flying red octopus was pursuing the fleeing boy across the desert.
Skwisgaar was annoyed.
“There is something wrong with the trail!” he declared to Wotan.
“Why do you say that?” The king looked curiously at the trail They were somewhere either in Southern Mexico or Northern Central America. Wotan, who rarely used a passport when he traveled, was a bit vague on human boundaries sometimes.
“I know we’re pursuing the angels,” Skwisgaar stated. “Their magic is pretty clear to follow. But Eototo…. It’s fucked up. It’s like he’s here and not here.”
“Eototo is a New World god. And, well, they’re kind of weird.”
Skwisgaar frowned at his father. How the hell had Wotan dragged him off on another goddam hunt? He wanted to be back, sitting on his couch, fingering guitar riffs, and not out in the middle of the jungle doing what the fuck. “You know,” he said, “You would have been better off bringing somebody else along.”
Wotan grinned. “Has it occurred to you I may have dragged you out here for a reason? I mean, other than to discuss fine television comedy?”
“Yeah?”
“Like Sariel said, Eototo is a hunter, so I wanted someone with fresh eyes along. And also, the New World gods, they’re a lot like humans in some ways. I mean, to us.”
“You mean, to you?”
Wotan smiled. “Unlike Old World gods - unlike me - Eototo’s power is rooted up north, where he lives. So, his magic should be growing ever less powerful as we travel south. And, he can’t disappear into the Dreamtime, like I can.”
“Why is that, anyway?”
“No one knows.”
“What good is it being a god, if you don’t know this stuff.”
“An excellent question!” Wotan grinned.
Where the hell were they now, Pickles wondered. Was this the Vatican or some shit?
He had turned back to his human form. "Dis place looks awfully strange. What's up wit' all da gold?"
"Wait, I know this place," Raziel said.
She ran along the golden corridors.
“Dammit, Raz, don’t yoo run off too!” Pickles called, greatly annoyed.
She turned the corner and opened a familiar door.
"Father?" she asked.
There were four of them in the Creator’s studio: Michael, Uriah, Gabriel and Raphael.
And what was quite strange was they looked like they were trying to intimidate Him.
Raziel frowned. She had been startled at first by Uriah. But then she noticed it didn’t seem they could see or hear her. So, premonition, or memory, she wasn’t certain. But she couldn’t seem to quit staring.
“He doesn’t need to be exiled, Father,” Michael was booming. “He needs to be extinguished. He is not right. He has never been right.”
“My children are neither right nor wrong. They simply are,” the Creator sighed. He was standing at his easel, painting. He seemed much more irritated than intimidated.
“Something must be done! Discipline must be maintained,” Michael stated.
“Why not let us take this extra measure?” Uriah inquired, unctuously. “Such a small thing. To insure stability.”
“Because that is my will, Uriah. I will talk to you, Michael.” The Creator made an offhand flip of his hand, and suddenly, Uriah, Gabriel and Raphael were flung out the door as if they were no more than dead leaves in a breeze, and not hulking Seraphim.
Raziel gasped. There was a hand on her shoulder. Pickles. “Dood,” he whispered. “We gotta go!”
“I just need another minute,” she told him.
The golden office door slammed shut, and the Creator turned to talk with a now chastened seeming Michael.
“Sariel is to be exiled,” the Creator said quietly. “No more. No less. Is this understood?”
“Yes Father.”
“Dood, are dey talkin’ in da angel language?” Pickles asked. Raziel nodded.
“An’…. Is dat who I t’ink it is?”
“That’s Him.”
“Whoa.” There was really nothing else to say.
“And what of the girl?” Michael asked.
“What of the girl?” There was a warning in the Creator’s voice.
Michael pressed ahead. “She should be kept away from him.”
“You told me they are estranged. You lied to me then?”
“She is…. She is difficult to predict. They both are. Those two are not like us, Father. You know this.”
“I know.”
“And Earth is…. If she appears on earth too, it might create a dangerous situation.”
“Then I will rely on you, the new head of my Legion to keep us out of danger. Or will two disgruntled children be too great a task for you?”
Michael didn’t answer.
“I know Gabriel is interested in the role.”
“Your will be done,” Michael finally said.
“Now, is there anything else, or may I get back to my painting?”
Michael nodded meekly and made for the golden door.
“Raz, dood, we gotta go,” Pickles urged. She nodded and they followed Michael out the door.
“You guys SUCK at hide and seek!” It was Aaron, grinning.
And they were back in the desert.
They had surrounded him in an instant. Raziel held one of his hands.
“Didja wanna play another game?” he urged.
Raziel was down on her knees. “Aaron, we can play another game later. It’s really important that we find out where the angels have taken you. OK?”
He frowned. “I don’t know the real world too well. Hey! Maybe my father would know!”
“Yer fadder?” Pickles asked. He exchanged a confused glance with Raziel.
“My father knows everything!”
“All right. Can you take us to him?”
Aaron grinned and tugged Raziel’s hand.
Ofdensen stood in the clearing, emptying a riding boot, annoyed. How the fuck did he keep getting rocks in his shoes when he was riding a fucking horse? And it was a fucking magical horse that was fucking riding on air! There weren’t fucking rocks in the fucking air….
His contemplation was interrupted by Skwisgaar, who beckoned him follow into the dense jungle. He tugged his boot back on and stumbled into the underbrush. They’d made it all the way down to South America now. He was starting to feel Eototo had led them off on a wild goose chase. He wouldn’t be surprised if they just continued down to Tierra del Fuego, and then back up the other side of the planet, with maybe a quick visit to the dancing goddamn penguins.
He had lost sight of Skwisgaar, but decided it would probably not be prudent to call out, given he had no idea in hell who else might be around. Instead he thrashed, muttering, through the thick vegetation. He thought he saw the bright light of a clearing and stepped towards it. He would have lost his footing if Skwisgaar and Ganesh hadn’t each grabbed an arm at that very moment from behind.
The vegetation had stopped because the ground had fallen away, and he was standing on the edge of very steep cliff.
Although Ofdensen, as a being who could actually fly, was not someone who suffered inordinately from vertigo, he took a quick step backwards.
“I’ve never been entirely certain how someone of your stature can make quite so much noise,” Wotan was laughing. For once, Ofdensen ignored the insult. He was staring into the valley at the foot of the cliff.
There was an ancient abandoned city there, great stone ruins spread over many acres.
“No way. We found El Fucking Dorado?” He noticed, off to the east, there was a not terribly dormant volcano looming over the valley. It was emitting puffs of smoke, and if you stared long enough, you could barely make out a red glow at the top.
“And if you look towards that area?” Wotan said, pointing. Ofdensen grabbed some field glasses from Skwisgaar. “If I am not mistaken, that greatly resembles a human military installation.”
“Way out here?” Ofdensen said. But the Norse god appeared to be right.
“Didn’t the Blue Corn Maiden say Eototo traveled to some place where the indigenous people had all been killed?” Ganesh inquired.
“A powerful place. I think we found it.” Ofdensen frowned. “But why would they build a human military base?”
“I would recommend that those of us who can move around without it sounding like a herd of thundering elephants might take a look around,” Wotan suggested.
“Angels don’t need to be stealthy,” Ofdensen said irritably. “Anybody sees us, we just crush their skulls.” He stomped his foot. He still had a rock in his shoe.
Raziel and Pickles had set off with Aaron leading the way. The landscape shifted once again.
“So, your father is not out in the desert?” Raziel asked.
“No. My Dreamspace is the desert because that’s all I know. But, my father has been many places and knows many things.”
“Hey,” said Pickles, looking up into the dense vegetation, “maybe we could swing from da vines!”
“As an octopus?” Raziel laughed. “That would be impressive.”
“This is where I go to meet my father,” Aaron explained. “It’s a powerful place. He is a powerful man.”
They had come to a clearing. They were on a hillside, overlooking the overgrown stone ruins of an ancient city. The nearest building looked to be some kind of temple. It was high, with a vast stone staircase leading up to what looked like an altar.
The entire valley lay in the shadow of an angry, smoking volcano.
“Dood,” Pickles whispered, “dis is da coolest place on da planet!”
“It’s not really on the planet, Pickles! We’re in a dream now.”
“But it looks like dat Congo movie t’ing! Do ya t’ink dere will be killer apes?”
Razlel frowned. She grabbed Pickles by the shoulder. “There are angels here.”
Pickles started to say something, and then decided to remain silent. She was right. There was a terribly un-mellow vibe to the place.
A man emerged from a doorway at the top of the temple, followed by three other men. Raziel’s grip on Pickles’ shoulder tightened. The first man was tall and slim, and wore some kind of hooded robe. The other three were very large, almost too large to be men.
The first man stood at the altar. He threw back his hood.
Pickles felt the wind knocked out of him as Raziel, with an insane amount of strength for such a small person, grabbed him and Aaron and flew them suddenly on a frantic, zig-zag path around the dense vegetation and back into the deep jungle.
Pickles lay for a moment where Raziel dropped him, panting for breath.
“OK. Pickles?” Raziel was asking. He sat up and nodded. “Can you stay with Aaron for a little while? I need to talk to Sariel.”
“What da feck? Were dose da same angel doods as in dat gold room?”
“Yeah. Yeah. We got some problems. Look, we’ll discuss when I get back, OK?”
“Uh, yer talkin’ to Charles? Yoo know how yer gonna do dis?”
“No idea. I’m like you. I just kind of do it.”
Wotan saw something out of the corner of his eye and turned. “Raziel?” he asked. His Lady was standing there, but she ignored him. Instead, she had grabbed Sariel by the collar and was whispering in his ear. He stared at her a moment, evidently too stunned to speak, and then he disappeared with her for a few moments.
After a time, Sariel returned to the real world. Raziel was not with him.
“Was that my Lady?” Wotan asked him.
“Yeah. Yeah,” Sariel said, not meeting his eyes. He was fumbling for a cigarette. “We’ve got problems.”
“No sign of Eototo,” Ganesh reported, arriving alongside Skwisgaar.
“What?” said Sariel. “He should be here. Raziel just spotted him and the angels in Dreamtime.”
“I ams confused!” Skwisgaar stated. “I ams thoughts we ams huntsing the real Eototos?”
“I thought so too,” Sariel admitted. “New World gods are like humans. They can’t just go walking in Dreamtime. His body must be here somewhere. He’s either asleep or on that drug.”
“We could resurvey the area,” Ganesh mused.
“No, his body ams nots here!” Skwisgaar announced.
“What?” asked Ofdensen. “Whaddya mean?”
“Dat ams why da trail was fucked up! We ams not chasin’ Eototos, we ams chasing his dreams!”
“That’s impossible,” Ofdensen protested. “No one can fucking track someone through Dreamtime in the real world like that.”
“Skwisgaar evidently can!” Wotan grinned, giving an impossibly annoying “That’s my boy” look.
“OK, Wotan, given this is possible, where the fuck is Eototo?”
“He is definitely walking in Dreamtime, if my Raziel saw him. And we need to follow him there.”
“What about the real world?” the angel protested. “I do not like this military shit! And, what happens when the Legion figures out where I am, like they always do? We’re gonna have Legion Seraphim here, and soon.”
“Seraphim?” mused Ganesh, studying his fingernails. “Won’t be a problem.”
“Ganesh, don’t underestimate-“
“Oh, I have allies, and many of them, in this locality. Kindly trust me, it will not be an issue.”
“Allies?” asked Ofdensen. He stared at the volcano for a few moments, then appeared to decide something. He took out his Dethphone. “Look, can you guys hold here for a few minutes? I’m going to jump to a place with cell phone coverage.”
“What are you going to do, Sariel?” Wotan asked.
“I’m calling for reinforcements.”
“OK, I have an idea.”
Raziel and Pickles had escorted Aaron back to Pickles’s Dreamspace, as she decided it would be relatively safe from the angels. Aaron was fascinated with the newspaper taxis, not to mention the plasticine porters. He had seen neither taxis nor porters in the real world.
“Aaron,” Raziel told him, “I don’t really understand this, but the place you met your father? It’s also in the real world, right?”
“Yes, it’s both places!” he smiled, bumping a rocking horse person so it nearly choked on its marshmallow pie.
“So, the place the angels took you in the real world - does it have a place here?”
Aaron grinned. “Sure!”
Pickles and Raziel looked at each other.
“Dood, can yoo take us dere?” Pickles asked.
“Can we take a boat?” Aaron asked, eagerly pointing to the tangerine trees on the shore.
Nathan Explosion debarked the Dethcopter, Kwahu the eagle Kachina at his side.
They were alone in an Amazon jungle clearing.
And then, quite suddenly, they were not.
"Uh, hey," Nathan began nervously. "I dunno if you dudes remember me?"
The Yannemango tribesmen looked at one another, and regarded Nathan suspiciously. Some weapons were raised.
"Maybe you could show them the stuff, dude?" Kwahu hissed.
Nathan nodded, and motioned for some Klokateeres back up the gangplank to bring out a crate.
The tribesmen frowned, peering in as the strange hooded men put a crowbar to the crate. And then they all broke into grins, excitedly pulling out the Dethklok hoodies and clattering in their language.
"Damn, you mean that hoodie shit actually works?" Nathan laughed.
Kwahu smiled. “Dude, everybody loves Facebones!”
“Wotan?” Ofdensen pulled the Norse god aside before the two of them walked into Dreamtime. Wotan stared inquisitively at the angel.
“We gotta agree one thing: when we find Eototo, the goal is to interrogate him. I really wanna know what he knows. We gotta know what’s going on.”
“You’re telling me not kill him?” Wotan asked.
Ofdensen shook his head. “I need you to stop me from killing him.”
The Dreamtime stream had iced up, so Raziel, Pickles and Aaron had proceeded on foot, marching through the snow for a time. When the snow banks got too high, Pickles and Raziel switched to flying, Raziel easily carrying Aaron, who appeared to enjoy riding with an angel as much as he’d enjoyed most everything that day.
And then the energy changed.
Raziel and Octo-Pickles exchanged a glance.
“Angels?” asked Pickles.
She nodded, and they landed, and Pickles slipped back into Pickles form.
“Is dis it?” Pickles asked Aaron, indicating the next snowbank. They were completely surrounded by white now, and he had no idea how the boy knew where they were.
Aaron nodded, so they began to carefully crawl up the bank for a peek.
“Can we have a snowball fight?” Aaron inquired.
“Maybe after this, babe,” said Raziel. She and Pickles had climbed to the top of the snowbank. They carefully peered over.
The angel and the Dethklok drummer looked at each other.
“We gotta go,” said Raziel.
“Looking for something?”
It was Eototo.
And, even from the other end of the field in Dreamtime, Ofdensen could tell, the bastard was smiling.
They stood in the shadow of some kind of temple. Or dream temple, rather. Ofdensen had to keep reminding himself it was Dreamtime. Everything looked just like the real world version. It was confusing.
Ofdensen held up his hands. “Eototo,” he shouted. “We just wanna ask you some questions. Where did they take Aaron?”
“We, huh? Is that your earth god boyfriend?” Eototo laughed, indicating Wotan.
“You sure you don’t wanna kill this guy?” Wotan whispered.
“Eototo,” Ofdensen persisted. “Where the hell is Aaron? We just want him back.”
“Hey, Sariel, remember this one?” Eototo spread his arms, and the skies opened up in a rainstorm.
“Eototo!” Ofdensen shouted through the downpour. “Goddammit, don’t start with the fucking rain dance!”
The chief waved his arms, and warning thunder sounded.
“Crap, we gotta get out of the clearing,” Ofdensen told Wotan. But then they were both knocked off their feet by a lightning bolt.
“Little bastard thinks he can throw a thunderbolt,” Wotan grumbled. He stood up in the howling rain and raised his spear, Gungnir. It was the spear that never missed, and always killed.
“Wait, Wotan!” Ofdensen yelled.
Wotan let it fly at Eototo.
Gungnir missed.
The Norse god stood, stunned.
“My house. My rules!” laughed Eototo. He clapped his hands above his head.
Wotan felt the wind knocked out of him as Ofdensen slammed him out of the way of another lightning strike.
“I will kill that bastard,” Wotan growled, standing. He lurched back as Ofdensen wrenched his arm.
“Wotan! We’re not gonna get him this way!”
“He’s dead,” Wotan shouted, shaking free of Ofdensen’s grasp.
“You’re dead!”
“Get out of my fucking way!”
“This is his Dreamtime! He’ll fucking turn you to a box of ashes.”
“Get off me, Sariel.”
But then Wotan was down from a hard sucker punch to the jaw, an angry angel sitting on his chest.
“Goddammit will you listen to me you Scandanavian son of a bitch! I’m not taking you home in a fucking box! Raziel would fucking kill me!” Ofdensen shouted at him.
Wotan pushed him off and stood, all fury.
Ofdensen held up his palms, like one would at a wild creature. “I’ve got another idea, OK?”
Wotan scowled and rubbed his jaw. He exhaled. “Damn, you’ve got a mean right.”
“Look, Wotan,” Ofdensen pleaded, “we really don’t have time to play ‘in a fistfight who would win’ right now. I have an idea. We couldn’t find Eototo in the real world Amazon, right? And, he’s really fucking powerful….”
“He never left the Southwest!” said Wotan. “You think you know where he’s hiding?”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“I think I have the same idea,” Wotan mused. “If we can find him, I know what we can do with him.”
“I know of someone who’s perfect for the job.”
William Murderface was still a bit dizzy.
He had jumped to several places now along with Dick Knubbler. This was evidently some kind of angel thing or demon thing or whatever the heck Dick really was. And it was pretty fucking cool. Though, it could make him a bit woozy, especially when they went long distances.
He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he liked hanging out with Dick Knubbler. Maybe it was the whole deal that their producer had been a real live demon from hell all along? But it was also cool just being in the room with him.
They were with some kind of weird old gal in the desert right now. He liked her. She’d given him a hug, and told him, “Well, ain’t you somethin’?” Which, you know, was exactly right. They went out driving to some lonely house in the middle of nowhere. Now, why exactly would you put your house so far out? Would make it hard as hell to get into strip clubs at night. These desert people were weird.
The latch on the gate was broken, and it flapped in the wind.
It didn’t look like the parents were in, because a girl answered the door. But the old gal started talking to her. She said, “Where is he, babe?” And the girl burst into tears.
“We know you got him hidin’ somewhere.” Grandma told her. “Now, you need to tell me where.”
The girl looked at Dick. “You’re an angel, aren’t you?”
He nodded, not saying something for once.
“I knew you’d come for him, eventually,” the girl said, opening the door to her home’s small crawlspace.
“Will you come back and play?” Aaron asked them uncertainly. They were back in his Dreamtime in the middle of the warm, red desert.
“Definitely,” grinned Pickles. “I got a lot of cool stuff to show yoo! I got a zeppelin we could ride!”
“We gotta get you in the real world,” Raziel told him. “And then we can come back and play. OK?”
“All right. I’m getting a little cold.” Despite the warm Dreamtime sun, Aaron shivered.
“Yeah, it’s a cold place,” said Raziel, squashing him in an angel hug. “But we’ll be there soon. OK?”
“See ya soon, dood!” Pickles grinned.
And then they were in Grandma’s living room, on Grandma’s couch.
“You really have your own zeppelin?” Raziel asked Pickles.
“Course, dood! In da Dreamtime.”
Spider Grandma had just arrived back at her house. She looked sad. “So. We know where we’re going, kids?” she asked.
Raziel nodded. “Pickles, you stay here, I’ll take Grandma and-“
“NO!” Pickles was adamant. “Wherever you’re goin’, I’m fecking goin’ too!”
“Pickles. It will be dangerous. Charles would-“
“I don’t give a shit what Charles would or wouldn’t. I was dere at the beginnin’ and I’m feckin’ finishing dis!” the drummer declared.
“OK. Well. We’re gonna need coats then, Grandma.”
An angry god stood in a tropical clearing in the Dreamtime.
“Eototo? I’d like to chat.”
“Chat with this!” Eototo shouted. He was up the temple steps, standing by the altar. Wotan leapt frantically to avoid the lightning strike.
Eototo saw the flash of silver wings out of the corner of his eye, but too late. Sariel was on him. The angel gripped Eototo by the throat and held him, shaking him like a rag doll. The Dreamtime storm abated as the Kachina’s dance was halted. Eototo clawed desperately at Sariel’s hands, but was unable to break the grip.
“Sariel!” Wotan shouted, suddenly at his side. The angel released the Kachina, who sunk to his knees, gasping for breath.
“Aaron. Is. His. Son,” Sariel said.
Wotan was looming over Eototo. “Is this true?” he asked.
“You don’t understand!” Eototo coughed, holding his bruised throat.
“Is. It. True?” Wotan repeated.
“It was the fucking angels!” Eototo protested.
Wotan was now down on the ground, fists full of Eototo’s collar.
“Is it true?” he whispered.
The Kachina nodded.
Wotan stepped back, motioning with his hands. A steel cage suddenly surrounded Eototo.
“Oh, fuck you,” Eototo snorted, jumping up and making a sweeping gesture with his hands. He paused, confused. He gestured again. And then again.
“Eototo,” Wotan asked. “Where is your body right now?”
Eototo grabbed the bars. “Oh. Fuck no. Fuck no.”
“My home,” said Wotan. “My rules.”
In the castle of Valhalla, William Murderface was just shutting a door. Dick Knubbler waved his hands at the doorknob, saying an incantation.
They grinned at each other, and slapped hands in a high five gesture.
In the real world, a small knot of very large Seraphim gathered in the Amazon valley, near the ruined city.
Lord Ganesh and Skwisgaar Skwigelf strolled casually out to greet them.
“If I might be so bold,” Ganesh began politely. “But are you perhaps familiar with me?”
“You are Lord Ganesh,” the lead Seraph sniffed. His wings were a reddish color that matched the current hue of his face and neck.
“Then, if you have an awareness of my history, it is with this in mind, that I offer the following counsel: you might find it fruitful to depart this place immediately.”
“Or else?” The Seraph flapped all three sets of fiery wings, as if for emphasis.
“Hmmm. Well, if you would prefer to put it in those terms, then, or else, we will make you leave.”
“You and what army,” snarled the Seraph.
“This one,” said the God, laying out one elegant hand. Suddenly, a pack of vermin emerged from the jungle and started to swarm the giant angels.
“Master of Rats,” Ganesh explained to Skwisgaar, as at least one of the Seraphim fell, screaming. “One of my lesser known duties, but nonetheless, and important one I feel.”
“You ams gots some resume, dude.”
“I do try,” Ganesh agreed. They both looked up to the sky, where one or two of the angels had attempted to fly off.
“So, ams da bats also da rodentses?”
“Actually, that is a rather good question! Bats fall under the order Chiroptera, so are not indeed rodents, as they lack the ever growing incisors.”
A Seraph, barely visible beneath a carpet of attacking bats, screamed and fell out of the sky, causing the earth to shake as it landed.
“Dats ams interestings!” Skwisgaar concluded.
“But, I feel they are all under my purview,” the god said modestly.
“Aaron’s mother wasn’t using magic. You did it,” Sariel said, ruffling his wings.
“Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Self-righteous treaty-talking angel bastard,” Eototo spat. He sat on the stone floor, sliding a finger along the bars of the cage Wotan had magicked around him. “Your angel friends wanted their fucking monsters.”
Sariel, who wasn’t currently wearing his jacket, due to the fact of sporting a rather large pair of silvery wings from his back, held out a hand to Wotan. The god dug out the pack of Marlboros he’d been safekeeping and handed it to the angel.
“What happened?” Sariel asked, crouching down to offer the pack to Eototo.
The Kachina sighed and took one. “It was after you disappeared. They gave me a new assignment.”
“I was an assignment?” Sariel asked, smiling wryly.
Eototo accepted a light from Sariel. “They only asked me to keep tabs on you. It never seemed like it did any harm. There was never anything to fucking report, other than you sold fucking violins.”
Sariel laughed bitterly. “Actually, I didn’t sell violins. That’s why I finally just took off.”
“Anyway, after you up and left, they decided they wanted to find the monsters. I don’t even fucking know if they exist!” He sighed. “And Grandma locked away all our secrets with the humans. Useless. Fucking. Humans. I had to do something. Those guys were gonna fucking kill me.”
“So, Aaron….”
“Look, if I’d known what would happen with Aaron, I never would’ve tried it! The world doesn’t need another monster.”
“He’s not a monster,” Wotan rumbled. Sariel looked up to him and held up a hand.
“I figured if the next shaman was my own son, I’ll be able to talk to him,” Eototo explained.
“It doesn’t always work that way,” Wotan said.
“So, the plan was, you were going to summon the New World monsters for them?” Sariel asked.
“Yeah. But, jokes on them! I never fucking figured out how,” Eototo said, laughing.
“This was all a bluff?”
Eototo grinned. “Yeah, it was a con! And a great one. I figured out where, the power spots. There’s this place here, and another up north. But I could never figure the how to summon them from Aaron. He’s a stubborn kid.” His expression darkened. He shrugged. “I mean, if he even knows.”
“But, you didn’t tell the angels that?”
“No. I convinced them for the spell to work, it would have to all be in the Dreamtime. So, we spent years, where I’d fly back and forth, going through this place in the real world, memorizing every fucking detail, every rock, every vine, until I had an exact copy in my Dreamtime.”
“What did they want with the monsters?”
“From what I understood was they were gonna summon them and then destroy them, once and for all. But, they’re a guy short now, or something? That’s why they started building these military bases. I guess they have human allies now. Lots of them. Anyway, when they heard you talked to Aaron-“
“When you told them I talked to Aaron,” Sariel commented.
“Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, they got all agitated about it, and insisted I put up or shut up. They took Aaron up north. I guess they consider him a hostage. I figured I’d put on a show for them in the Dreamtime, and then go back to my real body and escape. Your angel guys…. Well, they don’t seem too bright.”
“You really thought you were gonna get away with this?”
“Those guys are spread pretty thin nowadays. I don’t think people realize how weak they’ve become. I figured the Maiden and I could just take off.”
Sariel smirked. “You were really gonna take Maiden along?”
“She’s put up with a lot of shit from me over the years,” Eototo said.
“That’s not an answer,” Wotan observed.
“Anyway, Aaron….” Sariel said.
“The Seraph girl. And that…. I’m not sure what he is. They found him. I don’t know how. It doesn’t matter. Why are you so obsessed over one single human?”
“He’s your son,” Wotan said. “Why are you not obsessed?”
“He’s human! What does he have? Maybe ten more years at most? In that wretched body?” Eototo protested.
“But, you were going to abandon him?” Wotan asked.
“It was him or me. You would’ve done the same.”
Wotan frowned.
“Sariel, tell him!” Eototo said.
Sariel stood up. He flicked ashes from his cigarette. “I would die to protect the humans under my care,” he said.
“Bullshit! For humans? Sariel! They die.”
“That is why they matter,” Wotan said.
Wotan and Sariel exchanged a glance. Wotan inclined his head. They turned, and began to walk off.
“WAIT!” said Eototo! “Where are you going?”
The god and the angel paused. “We have stuff to do,” Sariel explained.
“You can’t leave me here!” Eototo protested. “You can’t strand me in Dreamtime! It’s cruel!”
Wotan and Sariel looked at each other, and then departed for the real world.
They alit in the front entrance of Mordhaus.
The Seraphim.
A resident was there to greet them.
“You angelses! I know dat ams not da polites Forms for greetsing peoples!”
Three True Formed angels glanced at the tiny figure standing there shouting up at them.
“And what exactly are you supposed to be.”
“I ams Toki Wartooth, an’ I ams da currents protectors of dis castles. You ams puts your wingses away and Court Formses now, or dere ams be da consequences!”
“What if we were to stomp on you? That would be a consequence.” The Seraphim chuckled.
“Dis ams your last warningses! Ams puts aways dose wingses!”
“We’ll keep our ‘wingses’ out, thanks so much,” the angels laughed.
Toki made a signal.
There were screams. And suddenly the Seraphim were tangled up in netting: 100% cotton and wool blends and acrylic and alpaca and mohair and flax and silk and spider webbing and thin gold fibers and polyester and cashmere and more.
They all three fell to the ground with seismic crashes. But their thrashing only made the netting ever tighter and tighter.
After a time, they stopped struggling.
“Now, ams you angelses goings to behaves yourselfs?” Toki asked one last time.
They arrived in the Amazon valley riding the sky, and wearing Dethklok hoodies. The Yannemango elders. Plus Nathan Explosion and Kwahu the Eagle Kachina.
“Guys,” Sariel told Nathan and Skwisgaar. He had not even had a chance to change back to Court Form after walking out of Dreamtime. He pointed over to the smoking volcano. “We just need that to go off.”
“YOU NEED WHAT?” Nathan boomed.
Sariel’s silver scowl was very impressive. “Oh, like you haven’t done it before.”
“Can’t you use your angel magic shit?”
“I’m asking you to use your Dethklok magic shit!”
“I don’t even know what to play!” Nathan wailed.
“Don’t you guys have a volcano song?”
“It ams not matter, no ones can tells what Nat’an ams singings anyways,” Skwisgaar snorted.
“I’M NOT IN GOOD VOICE TODAY!” Nathan wailed. “I’ve travelled internationally!”
“NATHAN!” The voice originated from the only person in the vicinity as loud as Nathan, Wotan.
“Uh, hey, King Wotan dude,” Nathan muttered. Sariel grinned. From diva to bad kid, in under ten seconds.
“I understand we’re going to get an impromptu concert from you fellows!” Wotan continued, seemingly oblivious. He clapped Skwisgaar on the back. “I haven’t had a chance to see my boy play yet! I am very pleased. VERY PLEASED!” He gave Nathan a couple of friendly whacks on the back, and then walked off with Sariel.
“High strung?” the god whispered.
“Can be,” Sariel grinned.
“Artists,” said Wotan.
If it wasn’t actually the Arctic, it was close enough. Alaska? Maybe it was Alaska. Raziel had heard there were snow bears up there. She had often told Wotan she wanted to go, so she could play with them. She bet they would make good friends for Geri and Freki.
It was somewhere in the real world. It was clearly a military facility of some kind, although it wasn’t at all clear from what country, or for what purpose.
Raziel knew which building. She wasn’t certain exactly how she knew, but she did. Everything looked sort of prefabricated, as if it had been constructed in great haste. Raziel was probably unfamiliar with the term, but it was built like a Quonset hut There were a couple of sentries stationed there, clutching their ridiculous little human guns. Raziel made short work of them. And then Grandma had to help them with the lock. There was some magic on it, and Raziel wasn’t familiar with it.
They were close.
And then they were through the door, and she had pushed into the room.
There was a familiar wheelchair. Raziel’s heart leapt. She sprang across the room.
She knew in an instant.
“Oh no,” she whispered. “Oh no.”
They were watching from the hillside, several earth gods, and an angel.
Nathan had suddenly decided this would be an appropriate moment to try out his unfinished number about angels fighting ice monsters inside a volcano. They had brought along a guitar for Skwisgaar. Some Yannemango elders had elected to play percussion.
“First time I’ve ever asked them to intentionally cause a catastrophe during a concert,” Ofdensen told Wotan, as they watched the red glow atop the volcano become more and more intense. “It’s kind of relaxing.”
As they watched, the lava finally overtopped the volcano’s cone. It was surprisingly quiet. And even beautiful. An orange stream started oozing down the side of the ancient mountain, bound for the military facility.
Grandma used her hands to shut the hooded eyes for the last time.
“Goddammit,” Pickles whispered. “Goddammit.” He turned and kicked over a wastebasket. He wanted to strangle someone. He wanted to burn something down. He wanted….
“You humans are fragile little things, and this one was weaker than most,” Grandma told him sadly. “Lady Raziel?”
“Raz?” asked Pickles.
She was by the wall, fists clenched, breathing hard, looking down.
“You OK Raz?” Pickles asked.
As if to herself, Raziel repeated, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”
Raziel looked up. She looked over to Pickles and Grandma.
“Take him. And run.”
She turned.
Lady Raziel of the Seraphim strode outside. Within steps, she was in her True Form, and each footstep made the earth tremble.
She made the middle of a clearing, and stood still. She let the earth magic fill her. There was a lot here, a lot to drink in. She surrendered to it, let it stoke her fire. Some of the humans at the military installation had taken notice now, of course. It was difficult to ignore a 50-foot angel of vengeance standing on your doorstep. Seraphim were difficult to ignore. And her anger was great. And her vengeance would be terrible.
They were moving some equipment. Good. She thrust out her arms, and with one motion, she bore a sword in each hand. And they were on fire. The flame trailed a graceful arc as she sent her blade through a row of their pitiful toys, the tiny jeeps and little tin tanks. And then another slash, breaking and burning their toys.
There were Seraphim, too. Three of them. She had the one before he even alit, her flaming sword breaking him before his feet made the ground. The second was luckier, and managed to cross swords with her two or three times before she had his head off with one mighty slash.
The third she rent in two. His screams were horrifying.
And then she let herself turn to fire. Her body was as fire, from the tips of her magnificent wings to the crown of her head and on down to the bottoms of her feet. She burned the base quickly to embers, and then reduced the embers too. Nothing would dwell here. No, not for seven generations.
“RAZIEL!” The voice seemed to come from inside her head.
She turned. Pickles was standing on a snowy hillside, a tiny body cradled in his arms, Spider Grandma beside him.
She knelt before them, her fire slowing dimming.
“It’s time to go, babe,” Spider Grandma said. “We’re done here.”
And Raziel was back in her Court Form, hugging onto them, taking them back to their home.
Sariel was still holding his phone. He had just jumped back from the city. He was crouching, as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
Wotan was standing over him. "What is it, son?" he asked quietly.
"There was... There was another facility up north. Not as big. But, Raziel took it out. All by herself.
"That's my angel," Wotan grinned.
"They found Aaron. He.... He didn't make it."
"Oh. Oh. Damn."
"Wish I’d let you fucking kill Eototo."
"Can’t bring back life with more death."
Sariel frowned. Wotan had extended a hand down to him. "Come," the god said, simply. “We should tell the others.
To Consequences, Part 2 of 2.