The Record of the Saints Caliber (68 page)

Hadraniel inhaled deeply and looked at Nuriel, fear in his eyes.

“Where’s Ovid?” asked Nuriel.

“Last I saw him he went into the church.” said Adonael, pointing across the way. He was about to say something else when the front doors flew open and the black-haired Saint stumbled out of them, falling upon his hands and knees and almost toppling down the stairs. Nuriel could see blood everywhere on him. It stained every inch of his bodysuit and even clung to his armor as darker, opaque splotches.

“There was a boy!” roared Ovid, struggling on the steps. He lifted his head. There was a ghastly wound at the base of his neck that was caked with what seemed a mountain of dried blood. His face was deathly pale and splattered with crimson. His black eyes wide, frantic. “There was a boy!”

Nuriel, Hadraniel and Adonael exchanged a quick look and bolted toward the church, dashing up the stairs to him. Adonael grabbed him around the shoulders and tried to help sit him down on the stairs, but the dark-eyed Saint seemed to be driven by something and resisted any aid, struggling to stand on his own.

“The boy!” he roared, gripping his horribly injured neck as he swung his head around frantically. “There was a boy with a babe!”

“Ovid!” shot Adonael, grabbing the Saint around the shoulders and more or less forcing him to sit down on the stairs. “Calm yourself!”

“We must find hi—” Ovid choked on his last word and began coughing. Thick, wet sprays of blood stained his lips and cheeks and Nuriel noticed fresh oozes of blood trickling from stab wounds in his gut and side. The Saint flared his Caliber, swatting Adonael away from him and tried to stand but fell back on his butt. Adonael and Hadraniel took him by either side and made sure he remained seated.

“What happened?” asked Adonael.

Ovid held his neck but Nuriel could see his eyes desperately scanning the streets. “He was with some women and children…there were escapees…”

“Calm down,” said Hadraniel, trying to sound relaxed. “Just calm down.”

“I’ve got to find him!” Ovid struggled to stand up but Adonael and Hadraniel held him down. Even had he managed to stand up, Nuriel didn’t think he possessed the strength to make it down the stairs.

“Just calm down and tell us what happened.” said Adonael. He and Hadraniel placed their own hands on his wounds and began flaring their Calibers, helping him hasten his healing.

“I can’t…I can’t let him get away.” said Ovid, panting. He closed his eyes and laid his head back on Adonael’s shoulder. “I’ve got to—”

“All rise for the glorious and exalted Behemoth Kraken.” came a loud but lifeless voice from the court.

Nuriel and the others whipped their heads around to find Saint Rathaniel sitting high upon a brown steed in full barding that gleamed in polished silver. The helmet upon the horse’s head was horned with a golden spike and down the snout was painted Rathaniel’s stellaglyph in red. Upon the horse’s armored haunches was a tall pole that flew the banner of Behemoth Kraken: a field of green painted with a many-tentacled beast.

Rathaniel himself was a taller Saint, and though he sat straight and rigid in his saddle there was something about him that seemed to slouch and project a demeanor of defeat. Nuriel wasn’t sure if it was his vacant white eyes, which themselves seemed dull and drooping, or the way his thin, white hair draped lazily down his scalp. Neither his hair nor his eyes had any of the luster or opalescence that Saints possessed, and his eyes sagged with dark circles.

He held the reigns of his horse with his right hand, and Nuriel could see that his left arm was missing just above the elbow. At first Nuriel thought it was the wind that was causing the horse’s reigns to shake, but on closer inspection she noticed that his right hand trembled violently. His Star-Armor was sharp and angular, with the breastplate that encased his chest creating a V-like shape with the sharp shoulder pauldrons and coming down to a single point just above his waist. The armor upon his whole arm, as well as his legs, was similarly sharp with V-like protrusions upon the joints, giving his armor an almost spikey appearance.

Adonael looked at Nuriel and Hadraniel with some concern and mouthed the words, ‘stand up’ to them. Nuriel was a couple stairs down from them and she turned to directly face Rathaniel. Adonael and Hadraniel both lifted Ovid into a standing position and held him between themselves at the top of the stairs.

Down the road Nuriel could now hear the clomping of horseshoes upon the brick road. They came slowly, steadily, and with a heaviness and weight that seemed too great to be any normal horse. Nuriel could feel her fellow Saints behind her all straighten and she thought she even detected Ovid making a better effort of standing on his own.

Obscured by the tall brick homes at either side of the road came a hulking, black, silhouette. If Nuriel didn’t know better, she would have thought it two or three riders coming side-by-side. But even that wouldn’t account for the sheer height of the horse. It was something titanic and the hooves beat upon the brick road like sledgehammers. The rider too was something enormous; something round and mammoth.

From behind, Nuriel felt her hair ruffled by Adonael’s hot breath as he whispered, “Do not look him in the eyes and speak as little as you can get away with. Address him properly and don’t say anything that might so much as suggest that your shit smells better than his horse’s. In fact, don’t consider yourself anything but a kernel of corn between his fucking teeth. And if he tells you to do something, you fucking do it without question or hesitation. No matter
what
it is.”

The shadows seemed happy to rid themselves of the thing that came through them, and now the light of day somehow seemed to shy away from the court as Behemoth Kraken upon his steed lumbered into view. Nuriel felt her breath stick in her throat; she felt the air around her give pause. The sun itself blinked with passing cloud. She had beheld the demon Yig, yet what stood in the courtyard was something more terrible and more monstrous. It sat upon a horse that Nuriel was certain could not exist in nature. It dwarfed Rathaniel and made his horse seem no more than a pony. Its fur was blacker than star-metal and it was girded snout to tail in thick, iron plates riveted and bolted together, all of them painted green. The beast looked out from a great helmet sculpted to look like some serpentine skull, and its eyes shown a bloody brown. Its hooves were easily a foot in diameter and Nuriel could almost hear the brick beneath it groan in protest of the thing.

Upon its saddle of green-painted iron was the thing known as Behemoth Kraken. Like the creature he rode, he was something too much to exist in nature. He was head to toe in painted black armor every bit as heavy and substantial as his steed’s. Each of his shoulder pauldrons was sculpted in iron to be a massive, tentacled creature. Some of the tentacles where raised up and stood taller than his head, others were down and hung beneath his elbows. His body was like a giant sphere, his black breastplate sculpted into a kraken that hugged his chest and whose tentacles trailed down and around the armor of his arms and legs. His helmet was crested with a frightening serpent and his face was too large to be contained by it. A long, scraggly black beard hung past his chest and he looked upon them all with dark, scowling eyes.

His gaze turned and Nuriel found herself staring directly into the eyes of the monster. Without hesitation her own eyes fell away, and she found it impossible to put them back upon his form. She swallowed hard and had a strange urge to kneel, though something in her mind told her that she dare not move.

“H
A!
H
A!
H
A!
” he boomed, and Nuriel was certain the very windows of the church were rattled. His voice was an unnatural baritone that was as deep and frightening as the very abyss. “M
Y
S
AINTS BEFORE A SEA OF DEATH!
B
LOOD AND LIMBS!
C
ORPSES!
”

Nuriel heard a tremendous, earth-shaking thud and chanced raising her eyes up. Behemoth Kraken had come down from his horse and the very bricks he had landed on had sunk beneath him. He was a titan of a man, and Nuriel thought he stood at least nine-feet, maybe ten. His arms and legs, girded in armor, were like tree limbs; his form round, bulbous, hulking, monstrous. Nuriel wondered if estimating his weight at a full ton was being conservative. Upon his back Nuriel could see the handle of some titanic sword, but her eyes once again fell to her feet of their own accord.

For a man so round, so gargantuan and heavy, he moved fluidly and quickly. He strode forward past Rathaniel, ground trembling beneath him. He picked up a man’s severed head from the courtyard near the fountain. With a black, gauntleted hand whose every finger was sculpted to be a tentacle, he held it up by its blood-soaked hair.

“H
A!
H
A!
H
A!”
he clutched the head in both hands and pressed it to his red lips and gave it a kiss. Blood flowed out of its neck, into Kraken’s long, black beard. Then he held it before his face and exploded it to pulp between his hands. “H
A!
H
A!
H
A!
” he boomed, pulling one hand down the length of his beard to wring it out of blood. “H
A!
H
A!
H
A!
L
OOK AT THE MEAT!
L
OOK AT OUR TOYS!
”

Nuriel could hear him grabbing limbs or fallen bodies but couldn’t bring herself to look up at him. She turned slightly to the side and could see Hadraniel also had his eyes plastered to his own feet. He was trembling.

“A
H, BUT WHERE ARE THE YOUNG ONES!
I
WANT SOME YOUNG ONES!
Y
OUNG AND FRESH!
Y
OU,
S
AINT!
Y
OU,
WOMAN
S
AINT!
C
OME HERE AND KNOW ME BETTER!
C
OME AND TELL ME WHERE THE YOUNG ONES LAY!
”

Nuriel felt her heart skip a beat. As the only female, she knew he had to be addressing her, yet some part of her mind clung to futile hope that he was addressing somebody else. She bit her lip and kept her eyes plastered on the stair she stood on, stupidly clutching to chance he had not meant her.

She felt a foot tap hers and then Adonael hissed,
“Go to him!”

Nuriel inhaled slowly and raised her eyes just enough to walk down the stairs without tripping. At the base of the stairs she stopped. She could feel his looming shadow in the distance but couldn’t bring herself to move any closer.

“H
A!
H
A!
H
A!
A
WOMAN
S
AINT!
I
HAVEN’T FUCKED YOUR LIKE SINCE
S
AINT
T
IA WAS GIVEN TO US!
H
A!
H
A!
H
A!
C
OME!
C
OME HERE SO THAT WE MIGHT KNOW ONE ANOTHER!
”

Nuriel couldn’t tell if her heart was palpitating or if it was the monster’s voice rattling her chest. She sucked on her lower lip, looking down at her star-metal boots. Her leg trembled as she got it to move forward a step. And then another. She breathed deep and looked up and walked forward, her eyes locked on the monster’s legs. She stopped within his all-consuming shadow.

“T
ELL ME, WHAT IS YOUR NAME!
”

“N…Nuriel.”

Her face felt small in his hand as he grabbed her chin, his fingers wrapping around her cheeks. He forced her head up, but somehow her eyes still pointed down.

“H
A!
H
A!
H
A!
Y
OU’RE A PRETTY ONE,
N
URIEL!
” She felt his other hand brush through her hair. “T
ELL ME, IS YOUR PUSSY AS GOLDEN!
H
A!
H
A!
H
A!”

Nuriel was taken aback and reflexively tried to flinch when she felt a large, warm wetness on the side of her face. Unfortunately, the man’s grip was like a vice and she couldn’t budge. She was forced to endure his enormous tongue as it lapped its way from her chin to her scalp and back down her other cheek.

“Y
OU TASTE LIKE BATTLE!
Y
OU TASTE LIKE SEX AND BLOOD AND SWEAT!
R
ATHANIEL, LET US REJOICE AMONGST THESE DEAD!
C
OME HITHER AND MEET MY NEW
S
AINT!
”