22. A Thousand Other Faces
Chapter twenty-two
A Thousand Other Faces
Odysseus
Ambermourn’s dwelling was concealed by numerous spells, high-class ones at that.
That would pose a problem for lower-class Elementals.
Griffin surveyed them carefully before placing his hand on the tree leading to his home, flashing yellow eyes, and pumping every ounce of energy he had into the tree.
The tree seized wildly before exploding into thousands of pieces that sprayed across the muddy ground, and all over us.
Soren and I shielded our eyes from the sparks and shrapnel; Griffin huffed in satisfaction when the staircase below revealed itself. “Griffin one: tree zero.”
“Nice work. Let’s get down there.” I hurried down the steps, sword drawn, fueled by rage, and kicked the front doors open.
They crunched under my boot and burst open, revealing an intricate home that he had spent years perfecting.
Ambermourn was at a desk in his grand office stuffing gold-spun books into a carrying case, his hair matted with sweat to his olive face.
He jumped when he heard the doors burst open, and when he saw me at the head of the line, his worries only deepened.
“Ambermourn!” I roared, pointing my sword towards him. “Where is the Liber Silentium?”
“Like I’d tell you!” he laughed, throwing his hands behind his back as if to conceal it, though he held nothing.
I pressed the tip of my sword to his throat, which made him swallow softly.
“You seem to forget that I have no issue slicing your neck open. My fiancé is getting his ass handed to him right now by his own father, and I will not tolerate that any longer. Either tell me where the book is…” Blood began to spill from an incision I made in his skin, “Or I will kill you now.”
“Go ahead! I was the one who spoke the spell, so unless I’m alive, that spell cannot be nullified. Atlas will continue to wreak havoc on this world, and so will the other Horsemen. You need me, whether you like it or not.”
“Liar!”
Griffin placed a firm hand on my forearm. “Hear him out. He’s right, after all. Galaxy told me this when we were fighting Famine.”
I lowered my sword slightly, which made Ambermourn sigh in relief. “What is it you want, Ambermourn?” I sneered.
His smile grew wide, wicked. “Oh, many things, Odysseus Levasseur. First, I wanted to see your little fiancé be pulverized by the true strongest God alive. Now that I have…” He gestured to a painting on the wall, one that looked new.
The paint on it was still drying in some places, proving he had just finished it.
The painting was a rendition of Pandora before she had been awoken.
She stood valiantly against a lightning-cracked sky, her long black hair trailing her in the wind.
She wore battle armor and looked as glorious as a God of Electricity should.
“You want… Pandora?” Soren breathed, shaking his head. “But, why? What can she do for you that we can’t?”
“Pandora is the promise of a new world. A world where Elementals rule once again, and those scum Humans are replaced by creatures that actually respect our planet, and those who reside on it.” He raised his hands slowly, his eyes crazy and delusional.
“She is our hope for a new future, where we have reestablished powers and a planet ruled by those who created it, not those who abuse it.”
“You’re insane…” Griffin scoffed. “Pandora is nothing but trouble! She will turn on you the second she gets a chance. Don’t be surprised when she stabs you right in the back!”
He swished a hand at us. “Fine, choose not to cooperate. Your precious Nicodemus will die by his father’s hand, and Atlas will continue to destroy the world. It’s your choice: show me where she is, or let him suffer.”
Soren and Griffin looked to me for a final answer, as if I had the right one.
All I could think about at that moment was how crushed Nicodemus looked before I left, how utterly defeated he and his team were, and how little time we had to play games.
All of those dead Humans and Elementals on the field…
it made me stomach sick to imagine what other damage could be done.
I sighed through my nose before conjuring a portal to Nicodemus’s personal Realm. “Enter,” I spat morosely.
Ambermourn cautiously slipped through the portal and crossed the magnificent room, spinning in a circle to take in the sights.
His gaze fell on the coffin that stood in the center of the room, encasing the slumbering God inside.
He placed a hand on her tomb, a hand that trembled with excitement.
“Finally, my darling, I have found you…” he crooned to the God.
“You saw her. Now recant the spell,” I ordered sternly.
He pressed his face to the cool ice and tapped along it to see if there was any reaction from the inside. “I will… as soon as you free her.”
“What?” Soren gasped.
“Like Gehenna!” I drew my sword again and poised for attack. “You got what you wanted! You want her free, then do it yourself!”
“Should I remind you what exactly you’re fighting for?” He threw a hand out, which made a mirage of the deadly fight Nick was facing blur into our sights.
Death held him suspended over the battlefield, his scythe pierced directly through Nick’s body.
Nick hung like a doll, already looking to have died by the attack, as Death screeched.
Thousands of demons spread from the battlefield to swarm other areas of the world, to cause havoc and destruction anywhere and everywhere they could.
I cupped my mouth in disbelief at the sight of Nick hanging on Death’s scythe. “Oh Gods, no!” I whimpered.
Ambermourn opened his hand further to make the mirage a portal to the field. Wind whipped violently in the room, and dust from the desert coated the cold ground we stood on. “It’s your choice, Mr. Levasseur! You want to play God? Then it’s time to play!” he cried over the sounds of destruction.
“What choice do we have?” Soren breathed to me.
I swallowed loudly before closing my eyes, raising a hand, and bringing it down on the coffin.
I grunted from the expulsion of power I had to use to crack through every layer of the coffin, but once my element pierced each one, a loud sizzling erupted.
The elements storing Pandora fizzled and shrieked under the vibrations of my energy cutting through them, splitting one by one to reveal the woman inside.
Ambermourn hungrily watched me crack open her tomb, his eyes alight with excitement and victory.
I wanted nothing more than to tear them out of his skull and incinerate them.
The final layer, Nick’s layer, cracked and disintegrated before revealing the forlorn face of Pandora, who had been blissfully unaware of the world around her during her time inside the coffin.
Seeing her in person again sent shivers down my spine, as I was fully aware of what I was releasing onto this Earth, into our lives once again, but what choice did I really have in the matter?
She slumped forward before hitting the ground with a thud, her hair cascading over her face to conceal it from us.
Ambermourn rushed forward to take her shoulders, shaking her once or twice to wake her.
Slowly, her head stiffly lifted so she could survey the room around her.
When her electric eyes fell on us, they widened, and she skittered back in fear into Ambermourn’s embrace.
He caught her shoulders and rubbed them lovingly.
“Go, far from this place. I will come to you when this is over,” he instructed, nodding to a portal he had conjured on the floor behind her.
She did not say a word, only continued to crawl backwards until she had slipped through the opening, which closed once it had swallowed her whole.
Ambermourn let out a low, melodramatic laugh, and clapped his hands proudly. “Finally, FINALLY! I have waited so long for this day…!”
I flashed across the room as a beam of light and reappeared to grab his throat and slam him into the stone floor.
This knocked the wind out of him, and made him wheeze in absolute pain underneath me.
“Listen, you spineless little worm…” I hissed, my voice layered by multiple versions of me, as I was teetering on the edge of my ultimate form.
“I have done as you asked. You will recant the spell, so I can finish tearing your intestines out.”
“Why would I do such a thing when you plan to kill me? I want immunity!” he declared.
“You are in no state to demand anything further!” Griffin roared.
Ambermourn flashed him a crooked grin. “I am in every state. You need me for the spell, do you not?”
“Maybe alive, but barely breathing…” I choked him harder, making him gasp loudly. “Recant the fucking spell, and I will consider sparing you.”
“Make me a promise! Gods honor!” he heaved.
“Gods… honor…!” I snarled through clenched teeth.
“That’s more like it.” I let go of his throat so he could conjure the Liber Silentium and flip to the right page. He cleared his throat before raising one hand and calling into the air, “Dormite, o magni equites. Fortiter pugnastis!” (Slumber, oh great Horsemen. You have fought valiantly.)
An eerie stillness consumed the field beyond the portal.
Each Horsemen froze in place, as if someone had hit the pause button on them.
It started with Famine, who locked up when the spell reached her, freezing her in time.
Her long locks collected around her face as she raised both arms to cover it, her body contorting until it shrunk to the reasonably-sized cloaked figures Atlas’s familiars usually became.
War followed the transition, as did Pestilence.
The three lined up in perfect formation and began to walk across the blood-stained sand to Death, who had also frozen in his tracks.
Nick dangled from Death’s scythe before sliding forward and off the weapon, falling into his mother’s waiting arms, where she desperately tried to heal him.
The three Horsemen consumed Death completely in their smoky bodies creating a veil between he and the rest of the world.
The smoke contorted as he fought against the transition, but finally, the figures separated, revealing a slumped over Atlas Crawford, who laid in a ball on the ground, emotionless.
The chaos of the day seemed to end with one single sentence, one spell, that turned the world upside down previously.
Ambermourn backed up towards the portal he had conjured Pandora as we watched things settle down. Soren cracked his whip and made it wrap around his neck, causing him to choke off and jerk forward. “Oh no you don’t! You’re not getting out of this unscathed!”
“You said you wouldn’t hurt me!” he reminded.
“We said we wouldn’t kill you; we never said we wouldn’t hurt you.” I set my sword in its scabbard and flexed my hands. “You want freedom? Give us the book.”
“After I worked so hard to get it?” he cackled, choking off when Soren tightened the whip.
“Don’t play games with us. Give him the book!
” Soren made flames erupt down the whip, inching closer and closer to Ambermourn.
He heaved on soft pants of fear as the flames grew closer, threatening to burn his face and neck.
Finally, he snapped his fingers, which made the book reappear.
He held it towards me with trembling hands, his gaze fixed on the flames. “That’s what I thought,” Soren hissed.
I ripped the book from his hands and slid it into my carrying case, then approached Ambermourn with a Gehenna-bent fury. “We need to make sure he never uses that spell against us again.”
“W-What do you mean?” he stammered.
I placed my fingers on his temple and cheek. “You will not leave this place with any memory of that spell; not on my watch.”
“Wait just a minute…!”
I ignored him completely and flashed gold eyes, focusing all my energy on the spell I mouthed.
Ambermourn fought desperately underneath me but could not break my hold.
“Dele memorias indignorum!”1 I declared before opening my mouth.
Ambermourn’s memories of the past day exploded from his mind and into the air as a golden stream of light that I swallowed.
A rewind of everything he experienced floated within the stream, funneling into my body so I could ensure that he did not use anything against us ever again.
The process was extremely painful for him, and I was glad for it.
When I was done, I closed my mouth and let go of his face. He flopped forward with agonized moans, his expression soulless and drained. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and nodded to Soren. “He’s harmless now.”
“God’s honor… pfft, what a dumb fucking rule.” He snapped the whip off him and let it wrap around his arm. “We should get back to the field and do damage control.”
“I agree.” I conjured a portal to a random location and kicked Ambermourn through it, leaving him in a lifeless lump in the sands of a dark, cold desert.
Once the portal shut, Soren and Griffin stepped through the one leading back to the battlefield.
I knew the moment I followed I would be submerged in chaos, so I took a single moment to take a settling breath before sauntering through.
1. Dele memorias indignorum: Erase the memories of those unworthy