The Record of the Saints Caliber (57 page)

Nuriel buried her face in her hands, trying to hold back her tears. She sniffled and grabbed the leather purse at her side, hands trembling, and took out the folio. With a shaky hand she plunged the syringe into one of the glass vials and took up its liquid. Then, holding the injector in her mouth, she rolled back the leather sleeve on her left arm just enough to expose the veins in her wrist. The needle wobbled and scraped at her skin as she tried to find her mark. She took a deep breath and steeled herself, and then the needle bit into her flesh and she slowly plunged the Ev into her bloodstream.

Warmth washed over her. It was pleasing, forgiving, merciful. She was no longer hungry, and the memories of blood and death and deceit played across her mind with delightful, meaningless abandon until they vanished. She leaned against the tree, looking up at the starless sky, smiling from ear to ear. The firelight flickered and blazed before her, washing over her waves of heat and pine smoke. She exhaled, her breath becoming a long stream of mist against the black sky, and in her mind she saw it as a river of stars. She imagined being amongst them, in the heavens. She imagined being naked and unashamed before the blazing, violent, beautiful life of a star. She was just a little thing, a speck of nothing before it. But it was hers. It was
her
star. It was bright and beautiful and she was its guardian. The pressure waves of heat washed over her, blowing her hair like hurricane winds. She closed her eyes and took up its energy; its warmth; its life.

In her naked, fanciful musings she had breasts. Not unseen masses of flesh forever imprisoned beneath unremovable armor. She could almost remember them, as if she had once seen them. Her hand wiped across the cold, star-metal breastplate she wore, but in her mind she felt her breasts. They were warm and firm. She was a woman. She was an angel before a star. She wasn’t a warrior bound to service, enslaved by the holder of her Sanguinastrum. She laughed and kicked her feet.

Nuriel’s hands moved over and around her breastplate as she smiled with ecstasy. She was an angel of the stars. She was naked and beautiful and free. The idea was almost real to her. She wanted to fly away and she was almost certain she could.

She could fly away and be free of it all.

Her hands caressed around her breastplate some more, and as they did they moved toward her back, feeling for her angelic wings that would certainly be there.

And it suddenly struck her. She
couldn’t
fly. She
wasn’t
an angel.

A sense of panic filled her and she sat bolt upright, her hands gripping at her chest, at the cold, unforgiving, unrelenting star-metal. She wasn’t naked, and her breasts were unseen masses of flesh, forever hidden from her. One hand moved down between her legs. Through the leather she could feel the cleft of her vagina, but she remembered that its purity was gone. Even that had been taken from her. Like her freedom and her breasts, it had been taken from her. Savagely stolen.

Her hands began moving frantically over her breastplate. She clutched at the rim around her collar and she screamed as she yanked and tugged at it. She wanted it off. She
needed
it off. She wanted to see her breasts and know that they were there.

But it was futile.

Star-metal was unbreakable. Impenetrable. Immutable. And it was forever sealed around her chest. She tore at it and scratched at it, her screams becoming ever more frustrated until she finally collapsed upon her knees, her tears coming in long wails and screams.

She looked up at the stars, her eyes red and her cheeks streaked with tears. “Why?!” she screamed, her voice filling the empty, arctic night with her rage and fear.
“Why?!”

She collapsed onto all fours and looked up, seeing the fire before her. The little boy was there in the flames holding the skeletal baby. His mother was there too, looking upon her with a soft smile. “Why?!” she screamed again.

The boy’s hand reached for her through the fire, becoming skeletal as it exited the flames. “Come,” he said. “Come burn with us.”

“I’m sorry!” Nuriel screamed, her words being choked out by her tears. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you! I’m sorry for what I’ve done to everybody!”

“There, there, now, child.” said the mother warmly as she looked down upon Nuriel. “Crying won’t bring us back from the flames.”

“Come on,” urged the boy, his skeletal hand still extended through the flames for her. “Come burn with us.” In his arms the skeletal baby kicked and squealed with delight as its hollow eyes fell upon Nuriel.

“Come now,” said the mother, smiling at her. “You know what you must do. Burning is the only way to cleanse yourself.”

Nuriel’s hands gripped at the snow as her body was wracked with uncontrollable sobbing and tears fell in steady drops from her face. “I can’t do it,” she said, crying. She looked up at the mother. “I can’t do it.”

“Burning is the only way, dear.” said the mother.

Nuriel buried her face in her hands, sobbing. “No! No. No…no…no…no…”

“Your baby needs you,” pleaded the boy. “You did this to him. You did this and you said you’d come back. You promised us.”

“Come burn with us.” said the mother, smiling warmly. “Then everything will be right. Everything will be forgiven.”

Nuriel looked up, the vision blurry through her tears. The boy’s skeletal hand was extended to her, the skeletal baby squealing with delight in his arms. The mother looked down at her, smiling softly. “You know what you must do,” said the mother.

Nuriel collapsed upon the snow, bawling for a long moment before her tears finally let her get a word out. “I’ll do it,” said Nuriel between her choking sobs. “I’ll do it.” Her hands clutched at the snow before her, spilling out between her fingers as her grip tightened. “I’ll give my soul to Apollyon. I’ll be free of everything, and then I can burn with you forever.”

Nuriel sat up in the snow and wiped the snot from her face. Through the fire she could see the boy jumping up and down excitedly. “She’s gonna do it, mama! She’s gonna do it!”

Nuriel buried her face into her hands and wept. “I do it. I offer my soul.” she said between sobs. Then she looked up, and it took all her will to scream out into the night, “I offer my soul to Apollyon! I give it to you! Take me!
Take me!
”

There was a tremor in the ground. It was almost imperceptible at first, but it grew slowly in intensity. Nuriel wiped her nose and looked around. The trees shook. It was like something large and unseen was walking towards her. The ground shook again, rattling the very logs in the fire, causing them to settle and the fire to die a little. Nuriel stood up, her feet feeling a little uneasy beneath her.

All around her the land began to crack. Great veins opened in the snow and glowed in a soft, vermillion light. A sulfurous reek seeped from the earth. The ground shook again. And again. There was a strange sound in the air, a thrumming that was at once unsettling and otherworldly. From deep beneath the earth an eerie sound came that chilled Nuriel to the bone. It was a moan, like the very dirt and stone of the earth was pained. Then, no more than twenty-feet before her, there was a terrible crack. A giant fissure in the snow opened and a fierce, red light shown from it. That terrifying moan reverberated beneath the land again, and then a dark form rose up from the fissure.

“A soul of Aeoria’s own has given a cry and the Demon, Yig, beckons to call!” roared the beast as its enormous, clawed feet came to stand upon the earth. The snow at once began to melt in its presence and the very earth shuddered as if in protest of the creature. The cold air smoked around it, the atmosphere trembled with its heat waves. It was a hulking monster at least fifteen-feet tall, and it stank of rust, decay and brimstone. It was demonic in form and entirely black as pitch except where veins of pulsing fire shown. It was like a blackened log in a fire, cracked and pitted and pulsing with raw heat. The creature had thick legs and arms, both equipped with terrible claws that throbbed with fire. Its face was not bestial, but a twisted mockery of a man’s whose eyes shown like white-hot coals. Great, curved horns upon its head seemed too large and heavy for it, and they too pulsed with infernal reds and yellows.

Nuriel stumbled back from the creature. Radiant heat from its body washed over her, carrying with it the reek of charred flesh. Everywhere around her water trickled as the snow melted, and her own fire was dowsed as the tree branches above it poured off water. The beast fixed its impossibly hot eyes upon Nuriel and her feet failed her and she fell into a wet puddle of melting snow. This creature was something Nuriel had learned about in Sanctuary. It was one of Apollyon’s Unbound, a demon freed to walk the mortal world and who delighted in its destruction. It was rumored amongst the Saints that the Unbound were once men; once mortals. What had brought them demonic life to the service of Apollyon was unknown.

The demon’s mouth spread into a wicked smile, but instead of seeing the gleam of white teeth, rows of charred fangs appeared, each pocked with throbbing heat. Steam wafted from its mouth, obscuring it in eerie fog as it barked an unholy sounding laugh. “You’re a precious one,” its hideous voice tore at the very atmosphere. Its eyes fell upon Nuriel’s crotch. “But not as precious as you were once.”

Nuriel scrambled to her feet and grabbed her star-metal claymore. Her Caliber began to shine a brilliant gold around her and she felt the Ev washed from her mind. Sparks of lucidity began to fire and the world around her was once again something real; something tangible; something that had consequences.

“Oh my precious darling,” said the beast, wagging a long finger that looked more like the charred branch from a tree in autumn. “I am not so easily fooled as to be summoned up just for a fight. In Hell despair rings like church bells and your cries were a most delightful melody.”

The beast took a step forward and the ground whined in protest. Nuriel raised her sword and became aware that she was trembling. She felt impotent before the creature; subservient even. Her Ev-muddled mind tried to focus and she told herself it was a trick. She had learned of it back in Sanctuary, of how demons could make one feel such a way.

“Oh, no-no-no,” said the demon. “Put down your sword and let me hear your song again.”

Nuriel flourished her blade and fell into a defensive stance. Her mind fluttered from the Ev but she held tight to the conscious lucidity that seemed so delicate.

The beast laughed. “Mmm,” it moaned as it raised its head, sniffing at the wind. “I smell the delicacies of my Master coursing through you.” It looked at Nuriel and she felt its white-hot eyes burning into her mind. She was flooded by warmth…a pleasing warmth. It started in her left arm, right where she had last injected the Ev, and it coursed its way up into her shoulder and spread through her chest and head and then down her body and into her legs and crotch where a sudden ecstasy erupted and she fell, weak-in-the-knees to the earth. Her sword collapsed beside her with a tremendous thud.

The creature stepped to her, the heat from its body pouring over her. Nuriel laid upon the cold, wet earth, her eyes upturned as an unending rush of Ev coursed through her. She smiled and writhed upon the ground. She was assaulted by a disarray of thoughts: hugs from Karinael; bloody spatters from dead Icelanders; Mother Brendaline’s tarts; her dead cat; the day she received her Call to Guard; the falling limbs of Gamalael. They were all so pleasant. All of them so equally pleasant and satisfactory and thrilling.

“There you are my precious darling,” it said in its otherworldly voice. Nuriel was certain it was next to her cheek, but she was too caught up in her own memories to care. “Mmm,” it moaned. “The things that have been done to you.”

Something deep within Nuriel stirred and told her to shine her Caliber. She did. She didn’t know how, but she did. A white radiance engulfed her and conscious thought began to flicker to life. She managed to look upon the demon as she lay on the ground, Ev coursing too violently within her for her to manage anything else.

“Oh, there you are my precious.” said the charred beast. “I see your problem. You never learned how to use the gifts of my Master. You’re chasing memories. Memories are like butterflies, my darling. There’s an entire field of them, and you go snatching after them. But there are too many, too hard to follow. And if you catch one, it’s so fragile that it breaks in your hand.” The creature paused and made a tisking sound at her. “You have to follow the emotions of those memories. Instead of chasing the butterflies, you just sit there and watch them, or walk amongst them, but never try to catch them. Look at their colors, my precious, and what do you see?”

Nuriel lay there, her eyes barely open. She looked at the memories as they flooded her. Her lips began to turn in a snarl.

“There it is, precious.” said the beast with delight. “Your memories are all filled with red. Fire and blood and the hatred you feel for what has been done to you and what you have been made to do to others.” The creature made its disgusting moan of pleasure again. “Yes, your butterflies are all red. The color of anger and hatred.”

Nuriel felt herself welling with a rage that she had never felt before and she sat up. She looked around, snarling.
They all deserved it. They all deserved what they got,
she thought, and she had the sudden inclination to kill. They had taken her freedom. They had taken her life. They had taken her womanhood. They had taken
everything
from her. Nuriel looked the demon in its eyes as she sat upon the ground.