Hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah! The end has come for sinners and sons! Ring the bell and paint thine doors, or into the altar sheathe thine swords!
Against the darkness that accompanied the Holy Diver’s advent, neither Fritzi nor Binky could see the monstrosity that lurked within, slinking over rooftops like a monstrous snake. But they were experienced Espers, and their sense for the supernatural warned them even more assuredly than the sudden
loss of mana in the atmosphere around them.
Cataclysmic rituals, arcane and terrible, scored the blackened sky and revealed the silhouette of a
thing with too many hands and too many eyes, lines of pure gold tracing its beautifully sinuous form. The sky would soon be blotted out by one behemoth, but another one, older still, reigned upon the skyscrapers, wielding a spear to break the world and a staff to remake the world. The intonations continued unabated and hymnic, resounding like the clarion of the apocalypse. And before the aces of GEMINI, concentric halos formed, resounding with the brilliance of daybreak.
The end was nigh, and against the beast that rattled the stars, it would take everything they had to survive.
…
And within the echoes of the Dawnraiser’s song, the sleepers woke once more. Following the oracles of the Morning, they found each other, opening up hidden cabinets, forgotten lockers, abandoned warehouses. Armed themselves with what lay within, armed themselves with an arsenal of weapons meant solely to inflict the worst damage they could. Chaos fomented suffering, and suffering birthed trauma, and trauma…
…became the most wonderful source of mana.
Under the omniscience of the all-seeing eyes of the Machine Child, the agents placed their cathode-tube masks, offered up their eyes, and proliferated into the chaotic mess that had become Pax Septimus. Stalking. Coordinating. Aiming. Assassinating. What killed Espers the most often were bullets, and in the chaos of the weretigers’ war, in the frenzy of the Mavericks’ death-race, in the hurricane of the GEMINIs’ spelldance, the willful puppets took their marks, stilled their hearts, and pulled the trigger.
Flesh rent and blood splattered within the millisecond. There was no need to aim for the head. A surprise attack would lead to a fatality even if the bullet itself wasn’t lethal.
As a matter of fact, Morning
preferred that.
…
Yet at the pier, recording the sounds of the ocean, observing the detritus of the foul tide, the Bookman cared not for what laid behind. There would be accounting to be done at the end, and contracts to be written, annulled, fulfilled. Scarlet lapped at his leather loafers, his four horns tinged by the break of Dawn and the breath of the Diver.
He closed his book.
THE BOOK OF SOULS IS MISSING YOUR NAMES
THIS TOWN AIN’T BIG ENOUGH
BEGINNING OF THE END
FIND THE JUSTICE.
Justin first turned to “look” at Jacqueline, who managed to get her quip out while Finn was still brewing.
”I do not feel that those two outcomes are mutually exclusive, are they?” His grin was wide enough that the skin at the corner of his lips was starting to tear.
”These two ladies found my offer very convincing, and this one was as mouthy as you before she changed her mind.” Justin stroked Pac-A-Fist’s hair, but his eyes were on the gear boy that was shouting at him. He looked on with mild amusement as Finn vented at him.
”I would have been fine staying at my mansion and letting my minions take care of this. But your lot sacked it and I haven’t been able to find a buyer for what remains.” He slammed his palm on the railing.
”Taking it out of your flesh will be pittance, but I expect the process to be… therapeutic.” He leaned in to Betty and dragged his tongue against the side of her head. Her lips crooked into a smirk as the tip of his tongue wandered around her ear lobe.
There was no better time for Marrie to strike. She dove off the roof towards her target,
But she did not dive alone.
As soon as her feet left the edge of the roof, a hole opened up in the sky. For just a moment, GEMINI and Justin’s arena was bathed in sunlight. But that sunlight was soon obscured by a massive entity. The halo of light made its shape impossible to identify, but its silhouette was massive. Marrie descent could be measured in feet per second, the diver
miles.
Marrie had thought things through. She was quiet, it looked like the right moment to strike. But then the apartment building betrayed her. The brick work seemed to come alive and shoved her off course. Not a harmful attack on its own, but she was going to miss the balcony and land on the pavement below. Then a gunshot rang out, and the building seemed to change its mind. Brick and mortar coalesced into a serpentine dragon just in time to catch the rooky esper.
The end of Su’s gun smoked.
Gunther peaked out from a wall.
”Well darn it!” The poltergeist grinned.
”Seems I was expected this time.”There was hardly time for anything else. Something else was about to make landfall.
Pax Septimus roughly translates to “Peaceful Seventh.” Originally the city might have been named after the seventh heaven referenced in the Talmud: the place where the throne of god resides. Regardless of the case, god certainly wasn’t in Pax Septimus now.
The holy diver slowed their descent as they reached their destination. Everyone on the ground could feel a wind storm kick up as the air was displaced by the Diver’s sudden arrival. The espers and even Justin needed to brace for the mighty behemoth’s arrival.
Oros had described the Diver as looking like a christ figure, but it looked more like a cultist pretending to be a christ figure. An onyx robe hid onyx flesh, and the Diver’s eyes were covered by a crown of thorns that were wrapped around its head. It even held a coal colored cross, but it was not burdened by it. Rather than carrying it like it weighed as much as the sin of all mankind, he wielded it like a hammer, a tool to punish all the sinners in Pax Septimus and beyond.
By this you will know that I am the Lord: With the staff that is in my hands I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink and the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.
— Exodus 7:17–18
Once the air settled again, the rain continued to fall from the sky. Only now it was bright crimson.
There would be no working taps in Pax Septimus.Its water supply clouded over red. The toilets, tubs, and sinksl filled with blood. Showerheads clogged with coagulating vermillion. The dead hadn’t even started to pile up and the city already smelled like a slaughter. No windshield wiper was enough to clean away all the red. The city was filled with screams, but the Diver was just getting started.
But the GEMINI espers could not reach the diver at this time. It was hovering a block or so over, and Justin was ready to push his attack.
Gunther’s souls fled to take residence in some cars parked on the street and elevated them up to the balcony. Justin, Betty, and Pac-A-Fist rode them like magic carpets to the other side.
Betty screamed Finn’s name as she made a bee line for the boy. Her opening move was almost generic at this point: a giant crescent slash that threatened Finn, Jacqueline, and Ashley by virtue of how large her sword was. Her body was radiating a black mist, tipping everyone off that she was casting a melody on herself.
Pac-A-Fist rode her car clockwise around the side of the building, to Gemini’s right flank. Joining her was a dumpster one of Gunther’s souls had taken control of. The lid flipped open and The espers were peppered by debris. Su put her shield in the way to keep the larger items away from her squad, but she could only do so much. A pak-man head started to grow in Pac-A-Fist’s palm. It grew to the size of a basketball before she threw it over Su’s head. It made digital om-nom sounds as it soared homing in on the espers as it flew.
While all that was going on, Justen stayed back. His closed eyes were turned towards Marrie, who was still on the dragon statue.
”You said you were only going to hunt me down if I hurt her. Didn’t you hear me?” With all the blood falling from the sky, almost everyone was coated in crimson. But not Justin. Instead, the blood seemed to swirl around him. There wasn’t a single speck of blood on him.
”I don’t mind your vain attempts to end me, but to stab me in the back? To go back on your word? At least have some nobility.” The blood raining down on Marrie suddenly stopped. It was coalescing into an array of bloody spikes. One by one, they started to fly towards Marrie's head.
At least Justin seemed occupied for the moment.
