Chapter 88
Alexa, play ‘Kool-Aid’ by Bring me the Horizon
“You’re the same thing, only bigger. The same brand of cockroach I’ve been squashing my whole life. An ugly, evil, belly-to-the-ground, supernatural piece of crap. The only difference between them and you is the size of your ego.”
—- DEAN WINCHESTER, SUPERNATURAL
I f I hadn’t been pushed so far past my limits, I would have never considered coming up against Yahweh. However, the god had forced me so far beyond my breaking point that there was no going back.
“You don’t want to do this, Ramel,” Yahweh warned, and I laughed, the power of Lilith’s blood leaking through the handle of the scythe and blending with my own magic. For the first time in my long and miserable life, I wondered if Lilith had always made sure I had everything I needed to take this asshole out.
I guess we were about to find out.
“Oh, but I very much do.” I grinned. The energy was humming through every fiber of my earthly body. “Let’s see if I can make God fucking scream,” I hummed, before unleashing the wild energy that was coursing through me.
It was as if time stopped. The thin stone that made up the gothic arched windows lining the hallway crumbled beneath the might of my magic. The shockwave of pure rot that exploded from me annihilated every angel Yahweh had taken with him through the hole in the veil.
Yahweh himself was forced to retaliate. I had never seen Yahweh in battle before, and even I took pause to marvel at the terror of his magic.
He breathed life into the rubble around us, and I watched in awe as the angels that I had reduced to piles of rotted gore changed into a fleet of sentient animals. Foxes, wolves, and even a rhino rose from the ashes and charged toward me. With a swipe of my scythe, I took their lives, and their empty bodies fell back into a state of decay before they could reach me.
When his creations made of flesh and bone were not enough to overcome me, he spun the rubble that had fallen around us into living beings made of stone. These monsters took the form of man and launched themselves at me without hesitation.
“Fuck!” I snarled as the rock golems rushed me. I melted into the decay at my feet, manifesting behind Yahweh and away from his stony soldiers.
God was laughing now. With another wave of his hand, more objects sprang to life and attacked me. A chandelier released itself from the ceiling, and I was forced to decompose the massive amount of crystal into fine white spores moments before it could crush me.
While I was busy fighting off a slew of inanimate fucking objects, Yahweh called the rotting remains of his angels and animal carcasses to himself in a spinning vortex of flesh and sinew.
I watched in horror as he stitched his creations together to form one massive breathing monster. The thing was all skin and eyes. Feathers expanded from unnatural crevices, and several mouths gargled in pain, exposing mismatched teeth as it rolled grotesquely toward me.
I had the distinct impression that the creature was in too much pain to make the conscious effort to attack — it was just acting on instinct. Its thrashing was a product of the unimaginable agony it must be experiencing.
Yahweh was watching me with an unhinged smile on his many faces, clearly waiting to see what I would do.
I swiped my scythe through one of the stone golems, cutting through its torso. It fell in pieces before me, seeming to die before my very eyes. I narrowed my eyes at the stony corpse.
Had it just been animated or… truly alive?
“I am God, Ramel. When are you going to understand? I am the creator. I breathe life into the world. If I will it, it will be so. You cannot stop me. You stand no chance.”
I was horrified. These things were alive. They had thoughts and feelings, and Yahweh had created them with the sole fucking purpose of attacking me. I worked to cut down another one of the stone golems while Yahweh’s Frankenstein monster let out a spine-tingling screech from one of its many mouths.
How many angels had he trapped in there? Were they all conscious? The thought of being stitched together and forced to share a body and consciousness with so many other beings made my stomach roll with nausea.
I reached out with my magic to examine the creatures Yahweh had created and found that I could feel their life force the same way I could with humans.
They were alive. They were fucking living, breathing beings.
I glanced at Yahweh and shook my head, tutting my tongue.
“You may be the God of Creation, but I am Lilith’s Keeper of Death, Yahweh. If you create them, I can kill them.”
I looked into one of the eyes of the horrifying monster as it rolled toward me. My chest squeezed with the unmistakable sting of sympathy.
Death, to most, was a terrifying moment of finality. However, to some, death was a mercy. It meant peace and rest. It meant the absence of pain. Death meant the end of a life well lived and marked the beginning of the next great adventure.
Death was not the enemy. Not always. Looking up at Yahweh’s abomination, I knew who the true enemy was, and for fucking once, it wasn’t me.
I allowed my death magic to flow forward. Using my power as if it were an extension of myself, I stroked the creature gently, pressing the rot past the mismatched patches of flesh and deep into its mess of a body. I found a horrifically large heart that had been made by fusing several smaller hearts together.
The obscene organ beat erratically, and I forced myself not to flinch as I rotted away the layers of flesh and bone that separated me from the pulsing muscle. Once it was exposed, I wasted no time sinking the blade of my scythe into it. The monster screamed as its life force was released from the fleshy prison Yahweh had trapped it in. As the monster died, I felt the souls Yahweh had trapped within it flutter past me on silent wings. The juxtaposition of the gentle brush of the angel’s souls with the ugly, monstrous sac of flesh I had just released them from made my black heart sing.
‘Thank you,’ they seemed to whisper, and I allowed myself to feel a small spark of happiness for them. They were free now. Yahweh couldn’t hurt them anymore.
Yahweh roared in fury as I stepped through the quickly disintegrating remains of his monster. He threw more creations at me, but I cut them down one by one until there was nothing left standing between us.
His ever-changing eyes were burning with fury, and I watched as he tried to use his magic directly against me, but I was so filled with Lilith’s death magic that his power wilted and died the moment it made contact with my skin.
Fear flickered through his perpetually shifting face, and for one shining moment, I realized that I had won. He couldn’t beat me. I may not be able to kill him, but he couldn’t kill me either.
“It seems you’re out of ideas,” I growled, reaching forward and wrapping my ink-black hand around his throat. “Let’s see what happens when an Aetherium blade severs the head of a god,” I purred, drawing back my scythe.
Yahweh narrowed his eyes at me, and reality flickered in and out of focus around us. Suddenly, we were in Heaven. I blinked against the bright white light, and Yahweh chuckled.
“Not quite out of ideas yet,” he replied, before vanishing from my grip. Only his voice echoed around me as the veil shifted again, and I found myself standing in the middle of the street in front of Voodoo. There was a burning on my left hand, and I glanced down. The goat head ring on my finger burned bright red, then crumbled to dust and ash. Yahweh’s laughter echoed around me as he annulled my marriage to Lilith, dismantling the protection the bond had given her.
“You may have won the battle, Ramel, but you have not won the war.”
I spun around in the middle of the busy city street, not bothering to move out of the way of the cars as they sped by. Reality twisted again, and suddenly, I was back in the House of the Fallen. The hallway I had battled Yahweh in was now empty. I went to look out across the city of Hell, which was now in ruin, to the bridge that led to Heaven. The bridge was clear. The angels had all left. Everything was silent, and suddenly, I was afraid. It was too quiet. Something was horribly wrong.
“You will never be anything more than a vessel, Ramel. A leech that can only siphon power from the gods that gift it to you.”
That’s when it hit me. Yahweh had been a distraction. He hadn’t come here to unmake me. He had come here to keep me busy.
Lilith!
Yahweh’s laughter echoed around me as I ran.
“Run all you want, Ramel,” Yahweh laughed. “You can’t save her. You never could.”