Darksiders: The Abomination Vault (2 page)

And just as swiftly he straightened, pulling away. “No. I’m not leaving as your enemy, Lilith, you can content yourself with that. But neither will I leave as your plaything.”

Lilith recoiled hard enough to rock the granite throne. For a long moment, her features twisted between astonishment and rage, slowly settling into a wary respect.

“She must have been truly special to you,” she said.

It was his turn to recoil, clearly stunned and more than a little alarmed at his host’s clear knowledge, not only of his identity, but his history and motivations as well.

“Go,” Lilith continued before he could draw breath to speak, “before I decide to take offense. Go and find your toys. I’ll be fascinated to see whom you invite to play once you have them.”

He was gone without another word. Lilith stared at the far wall long afterward, ignoring the plaintive cries of her pets, her fingers drumming thoughtfully on the arms of her throne.

F
ROWNING WITHIN THE SHADOWS
of his hood, the visitor marched stiff-legged through the fleshy corridors. Every curse in Creation hovered about his lips, but he refused to give them voice—not, at least, until he was certain he was beyond the range of Lilith’s hearing. He truly couldn’t afford to make unnecessary enemies.

Not yet.

Throughout his trek, he passed not one single room or passage leading off the main hallway. He had no doubt they existed; presumably the flesh had some means of opening whenever an orifice was required.

Beneath his robe, his own flesh crawled.

Viscous fluids squelched beneath his tread or dripped on him from above as the corridor quivered. At one point he stepped on a particularly soft and pliable spot, sinking nearly to his knee before the substance ceased to stretch, and was rewarded with an obscene sigh from somewhere far behind.

It was actually a relief when he finally reached the door—or the hideous folds of leathery skin that passed for a door—and found himself outside Lilith’s “palace,” on the blasted plains of Hell proper. Blackened rock crumbled with every step, and he could feel his face cooking in the heat, for all that the great pits and pillars of flame were many leagues distant. Impossible spires, the homes and towers of potent demons, reached crookedly up from the horizon like threads on the frayed borders of reality.

For all the distance between him and the infernal societies, however, he found that he was not alone.

She was waiting for him, crouched idly on the cracked
earth. She was, upon first glance, everything Lilith was not. Her features were broad and vaguely flat; not ugly, really, so much as
shallow
, as though carved by a sculptor who’d ultimately thrown down his tools and decided “Close enough.” Hair the color of cooling magma fell across shoulders clad in harsh, blocky armor. Her entire aspect was squat, even as she stood to greet him, and it took the hooded visitor a moment to realize that, in fact, he barely reached her chin.

She was accompanied, one to each side, by a pair of only vaguely humanoid shapes, half her size, hewn of rough stone and covered in glowing sigils. Even without her artificial cohort, the visitor would have known her for a Maker—one of the greatest of the progenitor races called, collectively, the Old Ones.

“I could have told you it wouldn’t interest her much.” The woman spoke with the voice of a particularly gruff and surly avalanche.

“I … I’m sorry, what?”

“Lilith. Your plan. I have free run of the complex, heard the whole thing. I could have told you it wouldn’t interest her.” A massive shrug made her armor shift slightly across her torso. “She was desperate, once, to regain the knowledge and power that were stolen from her, but that was long ago. She’s moved on to other goals, and they don’t require the sort of brute force you’re offering.”

“And you’re certain of this because …?”

“Because I’ve spent centuries trying to convince her otherwise. I cast my lot with hers, abandoned my realm and my people, because I was fascinated at the thought of the wonders she might perform, might
create
. I’ve devoted far more time and effort than you, to no greater effect.”

The gray-robed figure reached up, scratched briefly at his hidden chin. “I see. And who are you, exactly?”

“Belisatra.”

Another shallow nod. “I’ve heard of you. Lilith’s pet Maker.”

Belisatra scowled, and the two figures at her sides shifted idly, stone scraping deafeningly against stone. “You might devote
some
effort toward not being offensive,” she told him. “Considering that I’m offering to help you.”

“You? Why?”

“Because if we succeed,
I
can make the Charred Council restore Lilith’s power. I can stand at her side as she changes Creation. And because, Lilith aside, the legacy you seek is almost as fascinating to me as the greatest of her creations.”

He had doubts and suspicions, of course; would have been a fool not to. And she’d have been as great a fool not to
expect
him to have doubts and suspicions.

But in the end, where else had he to turn?

“All right, if you think you—”

“But I want to see it first.”

The hooded man offered up a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul. “Why does everyone here insist on interrupting me?” Then, before Belisatra could answer, “
You want to see what
?”

The Maker laughed, low and gravelly. “Don’t ever take me for a fool. You’d never have come to Lilith with this if you weren’t absolutely certain they still existed; if you hadn’t already found at
least
one of them. Besides, I can practically
smell
the emanations. I may lack Lilith’s experience and expertise with the Nephilim, but I recognize their scent well enough.”

The robes shifted and shuffled, the hood twisting about as though checking for spies. Then, with a simple flick of the wrist, it sat in the shrouded traveler’s hand.

Not particularly impressive in any way, it was just a pistol, clunky and thick. The Forge Makers had been crafting sleeker weapons for centuries, if not longer. A complex array of multiple
polygonal cylinders sat heavily at the weapon’s center, rotating and revolving with ungainly clicks, feeding ammunition to the weapon’s triple barrels.

Belisatra frowned. “I was expecting something more …”

She started to look away, and found for the barest instant that she couldn’t. The weapon seemed more solid, more weighty, more
real
than the man holding it or the badlands plain on which they stood. It tugged at her gaze like a petulant child, refusing to relinquish its grip.

She saw the inner workings, the mechanisms, though she couldn’t possibly have seen. The gun didn’t open, the pieces didn’t slide apart; she simply saw inside the horrid thing, as well as out. She saw, and she knew that the metal of the frame had been melted down from treasured heirlooms and ancient works of art. Saw the tendons that wound through the jagged gears; the shriveled eye, crammed between the barrels, to assist the wielder’s aim; the old blood, still impossibly fresh, pumping through the iron itself; the hammers of bone, and the seemingly infinite supply of teeth, drawn through the dimensions to serve as projectiles.

In its own way, it was far more disturbing even than the organic passageways that wound through Lilith’s home. Those had been grown, but this? This had been
taken
, forged from the hopes and organs, synapses and souls, of the living.

On some primal level she could sense but not quite hear, it still screamed.

“This,” the traveler said, his own voice hushed and almost reverent, “is Black Mercy.”

“What …” Belisatra took a step back, finally tore her gaze from the deadweight in his hand. “What does it …?”

“Now? Now it simply kills. Now it’s just a particularly potent gun with a rather distasteful shot. But at its height? When the Nephilim rode between worlds, trampling whole races as
they passed? A soldier armed with Black Mercy could slaughter armies. This isn’t a pistol, Belisatra. Black Mercy is a handheld massacre, a herald of genocide. You and I, we’re going to wake it up—and we’re going to find the others. If,” he added intently, challengingly, “you’re still game, of course.”

“Yes …” Again her gaze had locked on the weapon, but now their bond was one of fascinated avarice, not startled revulsion. “Oh, you couldn’t keep me away.”

Within the hood, teeth glinted in a crooked smile. “Well, then, my companion …” A second flick of the wrist, and Black Mercy disappeared up a voluminous sleeve. “You get to suggest a starting point.”

“I think I can do that. I …” Her head cocked to one side. “We’ll need to gather my little helpers.” She idly reached out, brushed her knuckles across the nearer of the stone figures. “They’ll try to stop us, you know.”

“Let them. I know the ways of Heaven and Hell too well for them to—”

“And the Horsemen?”

Again he stopped mid-sentence. “The Charred Council’s attack dogs? What of them?”

Belisatra smiled without an iota of mirth. “You’ve heard of the Horsemen, clearly. And just as clearly, you’ve heard nothing
about
them.”

“Deadly, obscenely powerful, without mercy, and all that, yes, yes …”

“I mean
who
they are. The Four Horsemen are the Council’s enforcers, yes. They’re
also
the last of the Nephilim.”

The other sucked in a breath. “The Nephilim are dead!”

“As a race, yes. But to the very last? Not quite. And should they learn of your efforts—
our
efforts—I can’t imagine they’ll respond kindly.”

A few calming breaths, and then, “I don’t much care
how
they respond, really. My quarrel is with the generals of the White City and the Dukes of Hell, not the Horsemen. But after all they’ve done? I’m quite certain that not a single tear will be shed, anywhere in Creation, when the Nephilim have gone well and truly extinct.”

T
HE ASHES SEEMED TO GO ON FOREVER
.

A thin layer at first, very much like a gentle coating of gray, clinging snow. Deep enough, if only just, to retain the imprints of passing feet—or would have, had there been any.

After barely a few finger widths, however, the fine particles began to compress, suddenly and swiftly. A light dusting became a shifting grit, then a sucking mire. And below even that, the ash had lain so deep, for so long, it had condensed into a layer as unyielding as any earthen crust. If this world even
had
a surface beyond the omnipresent dust and cinders, it was buried so utterly that it would never again appear to the living.

It filled the air as well, that ash, casting a constant veil across the face of the horizon. It diffused the light into perpetual dusk, blotting out the lingering embers of what had once been a sun. For those rare few unfortunate enough to pass through, it smelled of burnt oils and singed meats; clung to the nostrils and throat in an oily film. The wind was perpetual across the barren land, unimpeded by mountain or forest or wall, refusing to ever let the choking soot settle.

Equally constant, audible over the roaring winds only if
one made the effort to listen, came the tolling of an impossible, and impossibly distant, bell. It could not exist,
did
not exist, anywhere in this blasted realm. Only a lingering echo of what once was, it sounded not so much in the ears as in the memory.

Not merely a dead world, this, but a
murdered
one. What wide and varied life had once thrived here was long since stripped away, leaving nothing behind but death.

And, more recently, Death.

He stood at the edge of a colorless dune, before a squat, rounded structure, little more than a blister in the ashes, browned and pitted with age. Even the windswept soot seemed unwilling to touch him, rushing around him in short, sharp flurries. The soles of his age-worn boots remained atop even the flimsiest layer of packed ash, as though he were weightless—or perhaps, again, it was merely that the ash wanted nothing to do with him.

Hair as black as a demon’s shadow hung to his shoulders in matted, greasy locks. Below them, torn and stained streamers of bruise-violet fabric whipped and trailed from the back of his belt; perhaps the only remnants of what had once been a tunic or cloak, perhaps something more. The dark leathers and piecemeal armor he wore from the waist down, and the fraying strips that wrapped his palms and forearms, were equally grimy and unkempt. The skin of his exposed torso, shrunk tight over a wiry frame, was the dull gray of a corpse even without the filth in the air.

Only the deeply scored mask hiding his face from all Creation still retained some semblance of cleanliness, of its original bone white. The gaping sockets—through which eyes of burning orange gleamed, unblinking—and the mask’s general shape were enough to evoke a skull in any viewer’s imagination. The lack of mouth, or most other features, somehow made it even worse.

No sentient being remained anywhere in this world to gaze upon him, and the ash-choked air would have made him almost impossible to see even if there were. And still he did not remove the mask; had not, in fact, even given thought to the possibility. It was a part of him now, an immutable barrier between who he was and who he once had been.

Death stood, his hands raised before him, his mask shuddering slightly as his mouth formed constant, silent chants. The magics of the oldest Horseman swept through the winds, delving deep into the ash, and where nothing lived, the ancient dead responded.

Bones, petrified by time and stained by soot, worked and wiggled like snakes on their way to the surface. They punched through to open air, rearing into a veritable thicket and slowly pressing themselves tightly together. They danced, however briefly, to an orchestra that only Death could hear.

Long since dried to flecks of powder, the blood of a thousand corpses transformed once more to liquid, sluicing and bubbling from the depths. Where the bones did not fit perfectly together, that blood surged into the gap, mixing with ambient ash to form a thick, viscous mortar. And where the macabre construction required more meticulous handling than the raw materials could manage, there appeared Death’s helpers. Ghouls—the desiccated corpses of beings never native to this world—materialized from the ether, reanimated and drawn through the walls between realms by the Horseman’s will. With mindless obedience but impossible precision, they arranged the jagged bones just so.