The Invincibles (25 page)

“
That’s one way of talking things out,” Wrath said, waltzing over. He’d stripped off his robo-armor and had his most serious burns treated and bandaged.

“
Put Danny in a cell,” Nightshadow said. “Then we’ll clean up here.”

Chapter 11: FARTHER THAN HEAVEN

Hyperman ripped another Blood Seraph in half by its bony, lopsided wings and eye-blasted three more swooping down at him. Even a cursory scan showed that the Blood Seraphs weren’t even close to being alive. That meant killing them wasn’t murder. Best of all, Hyperman had read in Prism’s golden-glowing aura that it possessed self-regenerative powers. No matter the severity of the damage the planet took, it would heal and replenish itself!

Knowing this, he let completely loose.

He hurled entire city blocks of crystal towers at the invading armies. He picked up entire mountains of gold and silver and dumped them down onto the Blood Seraphs. Bounding up into the sky, he fired eye-blasts anywhere and everywhere, roasting any fleeing enemies. At mind-numbing hyper-speeds, he blitzed back and forth all over the planet, smashing and burning everything to get at the enemy. Floating cities, cloud gardens, ocean song farms, and computer forests, he set them all blaze and didn’t worry about it. They’d heal, regenerate, or grow back.

He no longer had to hold back at all. This truly was heaven.

He’d gotten so caught up in destroying the invaders that he’d lost track of Areva. She’d blended in with the legions of other Silver Seraphs fighting alongside him. However, he was sure she was fine. She was more used to these types of cosmic clashes than anyone he knew.

Unfortunately, despite the combined efforts of him, her, and all the other Silver Seraphs, more and more Blood Seraphs poured down from the skies. While Hyperman could have joyfully kept this up forever, he knew the war was taking its toll on his comrades. Their dead fell from the sky and piled up on Prism below. He had to do something more to turn the tide in their favor.

Focusing his hyper-vision out into space, he pinpointed the wormhole the Blood Seraphs continually spilled out of just beyond Prism’s orbit. Like a gigantic foaming mouth, it threatened to engulf the entire planet. Yelling at all the Silver Seraphs to hang back, Hyperman started whirling around and around. Seconds later, he spiraled around at the center of a massive tornado that lashed tendrils out all across the planet. Concentrating, Hyperman levitated upwards, bringing the storm with him up through the dim orange sky. The twister tore and thrashed through the Blood Seraph armies, sucking them all up into its vortex.

Hyperman heaved the massive windstorm whipping up through the atmosphere into the wormhole. It took the Blood Seraphs with it into the shimmering dark through to the other side. That much mass passing back through destabilized the wormhole, causing it to shudder and blink. Finally, the wormhole collapsed back into itself and closed, vanishing as if it’d never been there at all.

The Silver Seraphs cheered and went to finish off any remaining Blood Seraphs. Hyperman sped back across the planet, knowing his work wasn’t done yet. Lucifer still lurked somewhere on Prism, and he was probably as dangerous as all the Blood Seraphs put together.

Hyperman zoomed toward the very heart of Prism across a gold grassy plain that dominated the landscape, fluttering the perfect, saintly white roses that grew there. A chunky, black plateau mounted up on the horizon. The Sacrosanct Keep sat on top with a luminous white sun boiling in the sky above. An Edenic garden of sweet-smelling, star-shaped fruit grew around the gigantic Keep. The Keep’s strange, shiny aura blurred Hyperman’s hyper-vision and prevented him from scanning its insides. High silvery-white walls and gigantic golden-bronze doors greeted Hyperman as he landed down in front.

He bashed in the tall, intimidating front doors. Inside, dust motes swirled and scattered about the corridors. Colored light splashed down through the stained glass windows depicting the Celestials and their good works across the universe. Through another set of huge doors, rows and rows of seats with kneelers led down to a central amphitheater with a platform that boasted a gorgeous white round table. A starry-silver podium bounded up next to it.

Celestials lay dying all over the place. The smell of them alone almost dropped Hyperman to his knees. He recognized a few of them from his travels across space-time. There was one-eyed Odin cloaked in raven wings, peacock-feathered Hera, and falcon-headed Horus with his sharp, taloned feet.

Ordinarily, Celestials possessed tight sculpted muscles, perfect youthful looks, and glowing unblemished skin. However, ugly, purple tumors now burst open across their dull, flaky skin and sick pus erupted out. Veins spider-webbed across their eyes. Black blood dribbled and foamed out of their nostrils, ears, and mouths. Before, bright, golden-green auras had shone around them, but murky black had leaked across and threatened to overwhelm that usually brilliant, powerful color of life.

A hyper-scan showed nano-bots encrypted with odd, magical formulas flooding through the Celestials’ veins, secreting mystic toxics specifically targeted for the divine. Hyperman saw the Celestials’ organs and veins hardening and blackening, and knew they had no hope. He felt his own body processing and breaking down the nano-bots to nothing, keeping him healthy. His regenerative abilities must have surpassed those of the Celestials some time ago.

Noticing a burly, white-bearded mountain of a Celestial clawing up onto the great table and struggling to stand, Hyperman super-sped over to him. He caught him as he collapsed. Sick sweat plastered the Celestial’s cherubic-blue skin, and a red omega symbol flamed faintly across his beefy forehead.

“
Are you Yahweh?” Hyperman asked.

Weakly, the Celestial nodded. When he talked, he sounded like he was choking. “L-L-Lucifer,” he managed to say and nodded up toward a corridor. “Library.”

Hyperman set him gently down onto a massive, comfortable-looking chair up at the table.

“
Rest,” he told him. “I’ll take care of Lucifer.”

Yahweh stared vacantly back at him and tried licking bloody spittle off of his lips. Hyperman wondered how a divine creature that had thought he’d live forever could accept the fact that he was now dying horrifically. It must have been as painful as the disease eating away at him to know all his works and wonders were going up in flames around him. He’d lost his eternity and legacy in one day. It would have driven Hyperman mad.

Growls and screams echoed out of the corridor Yahweh had indicated. Hyperman jetted up toward them.

***

The golden library doors lay in blackened, burning pieces. Beyond them, the library stretched out to an impossibly colossal size, somehow looking bigger than the entire Sacrosanct Keep but still fitting inside. Floor after floor of ancient, forbidden texts; computers of wild, varying designs; and strange, unfamiliar maps, both paper and holographic, towered seemingly up and up forever.

White flames streaked everywhere, eating books and maps. Flimsy, pale smoke choked the air. Bookcases toppled over sounding like thunder, and the floors gave out. Computers sparked and exploded. Holograms became pixelated and filled with static before blinking out.

Hyperman’s mouth gaped open. The horrific scene before him was staggering. The Celestials’ knowledge and wisdom could never be replaced. So much hope and transformative science and magic were being burned away to ash and soot. The universe was losing out on more advances in philosophy, science, art, magic and every other conceivable subject than it could ever know.

Far above, Lucifer peered down over a railing at Hyperman. The devil didn’t look good, and Hyperman saw that Phoenix Bright hadn’t spared him from the nano-bot plague. Lucifer’s skin had gone blotchy gray and tumors riddled his flesh. His twisted, now malformed wings drooped weakly down behind him and could probably not take flight anymore.

Still, he held a Silver Seraph up by the throat while tearing off its wings. Nearby, a couple of other Seraphs hung impaled on their swords, both lit up like white-burning bonfires. At Lucifer’s nod, two other dying Celestials leaped over the railing down at Hyperman.

Susano-O-No-Mikoto, the Japanese Storm-bringer, wore full samurai armor branded with thunderbolts and wielded a lightning bolt-shaped katana. Tribal tattoos covered Lugh, the savage, naked Celtic Sun, from head to foot. Across his chest, a corona beamed out yellow, pulsing fire. The plague had shriveled both Celestials up. Their visible skin rotted and smelled. Monstrous tumors stuck out of their faces, yet they still attacked.

Casually brushing off the Celtic sun-fire, Hyperman sliced Lugh in half with an eye-blast. Susano-O slashed with his sword, but Hyperman dodged it and punched the Celestial’s head clean off. Hyperman swiped up the lightning sword and hurled it up at Lucifer. It flew high and true, piercing through the devil’s left wing into his back. It caused him to drop the Silver Seraph he had been tormenting and shake as electricity coursed through him. His flesh smoked and flashed, showing his bones encased beneath as if in an X-ray.

Hyperman met him with a wild haymaker punch that sent him stumbling back into the white fire. A bloody smile bloomed across Lucifer’s shadowy face as his wings sizzled and burned. He wiped off his mouth and licked his own blood.

“
I’m going to rape your soul,” he said in a muffled, mocking voice.

“
Me first,” Hyperman replied.

At hyper-speed, he lanced into the devil with trillions of hard, universe-cracking punches. His eyes exploded with enough blue supernova fire to consume an entire solar system. In mere minutes, he struck and eye-blasted Lucifer trillions of times, hitting him with enough firepower to destroy entire galaxies.

The world around them trembled and quaked. The Keep’s walls cracked and collapsed. The roof blew off. Dust, fire, smoke, and wreckage twisted and twirled all around them in a vast, monolithic maelstrom.

Finally, a hand firmly clasped Hyperman’s shoulder.

“
CAL!” Areva yelled. “IT’S OVER! STOP!”

“
NO!” Without thinking, Hyperman flung her off.

She went darting off into the smoke-gritty sky, but looped around and flew back down on her crystal wings. She brandished her sword, which fiercely flared blue, and brought the flaming-hot blade down against Hyperman’s back. It broke and exploded, the force of which hurled her wildly back off into the distance. However, the sword-blow stung and woke Hyperman up.

“
Areva?” he asked and looked at his hands. Gauzy, grayish-white blood thickly coated them. A mess of shredded black-and-white guts lay before him.

“
I killed him?” he mumbled. “I killed the devil?”

He stumbled about, finding that the Sacrosanct Keep lay in fiery ruins around him. Ash heaped up and broken bones poked out. The fields for miles and miles out had been blackened and scorched. Smoky dust and dirt gutted across the sky. He’d done this in his battle fury. He’d destroyed the heart of heaven. He’d left it looking like a holocaust. He was even more powerful than he had ever dreamed.

“
We won, Cal,” Areva said, limping toward him. “We beat them all back. The devil is dead, and the Blood Seraphs don’t have the life to sustain themselves without him.”

“
What about Earth?” he asked. “And Phoenix Bright? How do we get back there and stop him?”

“
We’ve gotten word that the other Invincibles took care of him. That might be the last message for a while though. The wormhole network’s down, and the vast distance makes communications hard. Not even you would be able to fly home, not when you’re this far away. Even at light speeds, it’d take decades.”

“
If you say so,” Hyperman muttered, still in shock over what he’d done. “I’m sorry for your losses, Areva, especially the Celestials.”

“
We have a lot of healing and repairing to do,” Areva replied, “and we don’t have an infinity of power to draw upon anymore either.”

“
Prism won’t be able to heal itself?” Hyperman asked.

“
No, not without the Celestials.”

“
What about the Silver Seraphs? Will you begin losing your powers?”

“
Not tomorrow or any time soon, but eventually.”

Solemnly, Areva bowed her head. “However, we’re still Silver Seraphs and we have our duties. We’ll find a way to go on.”

Hyperman nodded and again gazed over the destruction he’d wrought, feeling awed by his own power. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”