Darksiders: The Abomination Vault (32 page)

Belisatra stood revealed, clad in blocky armor, surrounded by more than a hundred of her artificial soldiers. She held before her what appeared to be a rifle made of bone, linked by a cord of hair to … 
something
. Something that loomed, dark and heavy, even before the vapors had faded.

“Oh, no …” Death’s shoulders slumped.
It was destroyed! We were so
sure
that one was destroyed!

“What is it?” War asked, more alarmed by his brother’s reaction than by anything he’d yet seen on the battlefield.

The response, when it came, was barely a whisper. “Earth Reaver …”

What emerged from the fog, following the tug of that hair like a hound on a leash, was a mobile platform the height of a four-story building. It crept, slow but inexorable, on four quivering crab-like legs, constructed of linked femurs and other long bones. Its upper body—if
body
was even an applicable word for this monstrosity—consisted of nine separate tentacles the color of rotting flesh. In fact, they
were
rotting flesh, for each tentacle was formed of dozens of handless arms, connected one to the next, wrist-to-shoulder. And at the end of each of these nine limbs, a shrunken, lipless mouth, constructed from jawbones and skin, blackened gums and jagged teeth.

In the center of those tentacles, looming above the rest of the grotesque device, rose an enormous obsidian mirror.

“Tell your people to fall back,” Death ordered Azrael. The words were ashes and bile in his mouth.

War spun.
“What?”

“We are the greatest of the White City,” the angel proclaimed, holding himself almost rigid. “We do not—”

Death’s fist closed on the fabric of Azrael’s robe, just above the edge of his breastplate, and lifted the angel clear off his feet. “If you want any of the White City’s greatest to be alive this time tomorrow,” he spat, shaking Azrael like a child, “then
run
!”

His grip opened and Azrael landed with an awkward stumble. The angel’s face had gone red with fury, but War stepped between them before one or the other could act further. “I’ve never seen my brother like this,” he said. “Perhaps we should—”

A symphony of hisses, clatters, and squeals sounded from the thing Death had called Earth Reaver. The four legs halted and dug into the soil, followed by the awful tendrils. The wet
sounds of
chewing
drifted across the plains as all nine mouths literally ate their way down into the dirt.

When Death stopped arguing and ran for cover, War and Azrael were wise enough to do the same. What they did not know, what troubled Death even as he pounded across the brittle earth, was that “cover” would do them precious little good.

Behind them, the Maker aimed her rifle at the mass of combatants still battling in the center of everything, apparently unconcerned that she was targeting more than a few of her own constructs in addition to many angels and demons. The great obsidian mirror rotated and angled itself with a low grinding, tracking the smaller lens of obsidian in the barrel of the gun, so that each was always aimed at the same spot as the other.

Belisatra squeezed the trigger.

A blur passed through the ground, so fast as to be almost invisible, between the platform and the target. And when it struck, the ground exploded.

Not just any detonation, this. Not a column of fire. Not a geyser. Where the Grand Abomination spoke, there burst a full-fledged, world-shaking volcanic eruption.

Earth Reaver
. The Nephilim had christened it well.

The initial blast launched enough debris to plug the sky: dust; shattered stone; the dried skin and sludgy humors of this infected realm; and tiny bits of what had once been angels, demons, and constructs—all became a cloudy film that cast the plains into early midnight. Cooked and diseased meat wafted on the air, thick enough to
taste
, let alone smell. Jagged rock and blazing cinders rained in vicious squalls, shattering and burning whatever they struck. The ground rippled and split, forming a whole new array of crevices and slow-moving rivers of pink-veined puss.

All of which, really, was just a precursor for what was to come.

If the initial cloud had briefly cast the region into artificial night, the spout of lava that followed was a bloody, hellish dawn. It surged from the newly made pit, engulfing everything it could catch. Most of the demons, and more than a handful of constructs, vanished into the roiling torrent. Only a few angels were caught within, but of those who managed to fly up and over the lava flow, almost half died anyway, either struck by falling debris or plummeting once their wings ignited in the rising heat.

Behind the stunted dune—poor protection indeed, but better than none at all—a heap of debris shifted, jolted from within. Dirt and sludge sluiced away, revealing the Horsemen, Azrael, and a handful of angels. In addition to the smeared filth coating them head-to-toe, most had suffered various degrees of singeing and burning, though Death had an almost comical clean spot across his face and chest roughly the size and shape of Mortis.

“
Now
can we call a retreat?” Death asked.

Azrael waved a hand at one of the angels accompanying him. She, in turn, produced what appeared to be a small golden trumpet and raised it to her lips. The sound, when it came, reverberated from all directions, in the mind as much as the ears. The surviving angels reacted instantly, assembling from all corners. They were a sorrowful lot, battered and filthy, but their backs and wings remained straight, their heads unbowed.

“What good is a withdrawal against
that
?” The question came from Ezgati, who had come in response to the summons. Her left arm dangled uselessly, bone and blackened meat strapped to her side by what appeared to be the reins off a Knight of Perdition’s mount, but her right—and the warhammer clutched in that hand—appeared as steady as ever.

“They’ll have to move Earth Reaver to a new location before
firing again,” Death said, shouting to be heard over the ongoing, frighteningly close eruption. “It can’t affect the same area twice; all the region’s faults and magma have already been channeled into the first volcano. And it’s slow. If we regroup at the cliff, we ought to have at least a short while to strategize.”

“Squads of five!” Azrael barked. “Keep moving, but maintain some distance between each group. Each flight is responsible for covering the one behind. Move!”

They moved. Death and War watched as the angels gathered, guided by either instinct or prior training into organized groups. “They’ll need to stay low,” War pointed out. “With everything in the air, it would be too easy to get lost, disoriented.”

“That works in our favor.” Death stepped out from behind cover, leading his brother toward a nearby ravine with several dead angels sprawled within. Kneeling at the edge of the crevice, he scooped up two of the fallen Redemption cannons, heaving one over to War. “It means Hadrimon can’t easily pick us off with Black Mercy.”

War snapped the heavy clip from the front of the weapon, checked the ammunition, and shoved it back into place. “Be easier on horseback …”

Death merely grunted, and then they were running, keeping some few score paces behind the last of the angels.

Unseen things crunched, slid, burst, and squelched beneath their feet; they hurtled narrow but seemingly bottomless gaps, through rising curtains of steam and other, fouler vapors. Despite its difficulties, Death welcomed the terrain. Between the generally flat plains and the thick fog—volcanic and otherwise—it was all that provided them any sense of travel, no matter how fast they moved.

Belisatra’s soldiers appeared sporadically through the fog, as did the occasional lingering demon, but none posed much of a threat. Among Harvester, Chaoseater, and the pair of cannons,
the Horsemen faced precisely no difficulty whatsoever in covering the angels’ retreat.

Not, at least, until they neared the escarpment. In the final crevice before the flatland leading up to the cliff face—a crevice far enough from the nascent volcano that it was not yet filling with boiling fluids—Azrael and several angelic squadrons had taken shelter. More angels crouched nearby, or circled low in the air above.

And several lay sprawled in the dust farther ahead, strewn across the plains like flowers after a storm.

“Hadrimon is somewhere overhead,” Azrael told them as they neared. “With all the fumes, I doubt he can make out more than vague shapes and movement, but with that weapon at hand, that appears to be all he needs. He’s picking us off as we attempt to cross over to the cliffs. I thought you said that the enemy needed to take this realm before they could awaken the Abominations.” From anyone else, it would have been accusing, almost sullen. From Azrael, it just sounded curious.

The time for dissembling and half-truths had clearly passed. “Awakening the Grand Abominations requires the blood of an extinct race called the Ravaiim,” Death said. “Most of them died here, making this the only
reliable
source. But some fell in battle on other worlds, and if Hadrimon or Belisatra learned where, they could have distilled a small amount of blood from the earth there. Not much, but enough to awaken Black Mercy and Earth Reaver for a short while.”

“Not short enough, I fear. If you’ve any further plan in mind, now would be an auspicious time to share.”

It was War, not Death, who answered. “We don’t actually have to
defeat
the enemy here. If we just keep them from acquiring what they need, we can wipe them out later.”

“Easier said than done,” one of the nearby soldiers pointed out.

“True. But it does, if nothing else, alter our strategy.”

Death was already nodding. “I do have a thought, but we need shelter and we need time. A lot more time than … Azrael, Ezgati? Have you much in the way of explosives? Preferably large ones?”

“No,” Ezgati called from farther down the line. “Firearms only.”

“I’ve had some luck using the ammunition clips from Redemption cannons as explosives,” War said blandly. Through masks of filth and soot, several nearby angels glared at him.

“Good enough.” Death gestured at the nearest soldier. “Go up and down the line, gather one clip from everyone who has spares.”

“But we might—”

“You appear to have mistaken me for someone who’s
asking
.”

A beseeching glance at Azrael, a subtle nod from the scholar, and the angel was off to do as he had been … “asked.”

“I’ll draw Hadrimon off,” the Horseman continued, “and slow Earth Reaver a bit as well. Once that’s done, Azrael, I may have a way to end this, but I’ll require your assistance.”

“Of course.”

“Brother, I’ll need you and the cannoneers to cover me. Once I’m away, get everyone into the caves and establish the best perimeter you can. I’ll trust you to—”

“I should go.”

“—come up with … What?”

War squared his shoulders. “Tell me what you have in mind, and I’ll go. You must survive to enact your plan with Azrael, whatever it may be. And,” he added, his voice dropping, “I’m not certain our current allies would be all that pleased working beside me alone. Seems they hold a grudge.”

“They’ll get over it. I’m going.”

“But—”

“No. You’ve a better grasp of tactics than I; you’ll be more useful in planning the defenses.”

“The angels are more than capable—”

“And I’m faster than you are. And I’m done arguing.”

War was far too disciplined—and certainly too proud—to protest or complain further, but his expression and his posture were more than loud enough to convey everything he wouldn’t say.

But then, Death hadn’t said everything, either.
If Black Mercy
does
shoot one of us
, he hadn’t told War,
I’m more likely to survive it than you are
.

A little
.

“You need to move the injured,” he said, returning to Azrael. “Get them as far to the other end of the crevice as you can.”

“If I may ask …?”

“The plan is for Hadrimon to follow me. He may come in low, in order to see me through the fumes, and that could bring him within range.”

“Range of what?”

“Black Mercy doesn’t need to fire in order to kill. Any wound it delivers is fatal, yes—but so is any wound
at all
if it’s suffered by an enemy of the wielder, and if it’s still bleeding in the Abomination’s proximity. This weapon has slaughtered entire
armies
, Azrael.”

The angel recoiled, ashen. “And how far does this power extend?”

“Depends on how many it’s killed since it awoke. I’ll lead him past as far from the wounded as I can, but I make no promises.”

“Every time I think I’ve finally begun to understand how depraved the Nephilim actually were …”

“Trust me, angel. If you live until the last star burns out, until the Creator Himself has died and putrefied away to nothing, you still won’t even
begin
to understand how depraved we were.

“Be grateful.”

D
EATH VAULTED FROM THE CREVICE
and broke into a dust-churning run across the open expanse. He swerved randomly, never quite breaking his course for the escarpment, but doing what he could to avoid making himself an easy target. From behind, War and the White City’s surviving cannoneers opened fire, saturating the sky in a blanket of detonations—less concerned with actually hitting anything than with ensuring Hadrimon himself never had a moment to aim.

Still it was close. Black Mercy’s teeth tore into the ground uncomfortably near the sprinting figure. Bits of rock and soil flew, some rotting away before they could fall back to earth. At one point, Death sensed a line of impacts stitching its way toward him and could only crouch, Mortis held high. His entire arm went numb as the bullet plunged into the shield, and he could swear he heard a faint moan from the bestial maw. Again he saw the wavering and shifting as Mortis lashed out against one of Hadrimon’s allies—likely a random construct closing in from the plains beyond the angels—but he couldn’t even begin to see the results.

One of the cannons blasted the air directly above him, showering him with flaming bits of debris. Death winced, but rose and ran once more. The near miss, uncomfortable as it was, had probably also forced Hadrimon out of position.