20. A Catastrophic Catastrophe
Chapter twenty
A Catastrophic Catastrophe
Nicodemus
Dad was late again. This pattern of his lately was getting out of hand, and each time he flaked on me, I grew more and more impatient with his nonsense.
Regardless of his recent ‘side mission’ he still had responsibilities to me and his role, and I was not the only one growing frustrated by his absence.
Mom sat on the couch in my dorm room with her arms crossed, eyebrows furrowed, and a disgusted grimace smeared across her face.
Her right eye twitched every time I checked my phone, every time I peeked out of the door, or glanced out of the window.
Eventually, I gave up waiting for him and sat down beside her.
“So, want to go without him? He’s wasted enough of our time today. ”
“I ask for one day a month, one damn day that we spend together as a family. Apparently, he’s too busy fucking Ambermourn to make time for his actual wife and child!” she acidly spat.
I flicked her nose, which was crinkled from her scowling. “And to think I fell for the idea that you were ok with him doing this.”
“Cut the sarcasm, Nicodemus,” she hissed.
I put a hand up innocently. “Just trying to lighten the mood is all.” I checked my phone one final time before switching it off and stuffing it deep into my pockets, a reminder to stop.
My eyes drifted to the window, where in the distance, clouds had begun to gather.
They were as thick and black as tar, and lightning cracked through them ominously.
I squinted hard at the mass, unsure of what I was looking at.
“Huh, those are some weird storm patterns. Think Griff and Praxis are playing around up there?”
“I’m not sure. It does look quite nasty.” Mom stood to lean on my shoulder and watch the spreading clouds. “I hope everything is ok…”
A violent rush sounded behind us, and to my surprise, Claude flopped onto the floor. He scrambled to catch his bearings before grabbing my shirt and shaking me wildly. “Nick, you need to come quick! It’s Atlas!”
“What? What’s wrong?” I bawled, catching him to help him stand up.
He was panting on so much adrenaline that he could barely breathe in between words. “Ambermourn, he-…! He used the spell on him! He summoned the Horsemen! He got his hands on the Liber Silentium!”
“What? How?” Mom exclaimed.
“It doesn’t matter how! Hannah told me his location, but she was summoned back abruptly, which means we are in big trouble with a capital T. We need reinforcements, now!”
“I’ll go meet Hannah: you get the other Gods and find us!” I instructed Mom as Claude summoned a portal to where they were.
She gripped my forearms, her eyes like glass. “Nicodemus, under no circumstances are you to engage until we arrive. Do nothing beyond try and get that book from Ambermourn, do you understand me?”
I huffed once in fear. “What are we about to walk into?”
Her tone deepened, darkened. “The worst battle you may ever fight.”
The field Dad and Ambermourn were in was void of all life beyond the two.
The sky above them was that sickening black from before, which seemed to be brewing from my father, who stood motionless in the center of the field.
His eyes were pure black, but his body hung forward crookedly, like he was a puppet whose strings had just been cut.
Ambermourn watched him with the book locked in his hands, though the pages whipped wildly in the wind consuming the field.
I summoned my Shadows and Akira, who flanked me with weapons drawn, ready for commands.
Akira growled menacingly at three spots on the ground, which were dark voids where Dad’s familiars crawled up from.
They were no longer the happy-go-lucky family pets I had known them as; they stood as cloaked creatures, consumed by the purest form of darkness as they waited for Dad’s final command.
Ambermourn flicked his eyes to me, but only his eyes, as he was frozen by fear.
“Dad...?” I breathed in horror.
My voice seemed to ignite whatever was brewing inside of him.
His neck cracked, popped, when he turned it upright, as did his arms, which began to rise towards the sky.
His mouth opened to allow black smoke to plume from it, which clouded the ground in thick bundles.
His body began to turn to bone; his eyes, ears, and mouth leaked black tar that dripped like blood through his skeleton. “Oh fuck....” Jackson whimpered.
Ambermourn stepped back an inch, unsure of what he had done, but knowing it was serious. He pressed the book to his lips as he watched whatever held onto my father’s soul breach the surface for the first time in centuries.
A loud humming sound echoed from Dad, like thousands of insects buzzing.
Ambermourn and I covered our ears against the aggressive hum, which seemed to consume our bodies in its vicious claws.
The three demon familiars wrapped their hands around Dad’s neck, and as soon as they did, an explosion of dark energy exploded from the group.
Dad's body morphed into a solid black shape before his bone arms and legs burst through the blackness.
He was not the regular scale of the Grim Reaper, but a form much similar to my ultimate, that towered well into the sky.
His scythe cracked and sizzled as a dozen blades erupted from it, scaling the back of the weapon.
Their flames roared and made the air heavy and hot.
Dad's familiars smiled under their dark cloaks, with rows of sharp teeth breaking through the empty abyss that their face was consumed by.
Those smiles made shivers run down my spine.
“Nick, snap out of it! We need to get our hands on that book!”
Claude shook me out of my thoughts and made me whip around to Ambermourn. “You!”
“I think you have bigger concerns over me!” Ambermourn laughed, nodding to Dad. “Might want to contain your daddy before he obliterates the entire world.”
“You bastard!” I went to rush forward, but he dissipated in an instant, his coy smile filling his slick face as he disappeared.
Dad’s low moaning echoed through the air as he changed, his head snapping in various directions, as if he were fighting the transition. His familiars kept forcing it out of him until he lost himself to the evil within him, until all semblance of my father was stolen by the ancient forms behind him.
I did not recognize this Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper I knew was a gentle soul despite his terrifying exterior. The Grim Reaper I knew protected souls and humanity, cradled them gently into their afterlife, and would never bring harm to this world.
The man before me was no longer my father.
He was now Death, the last of the mighty Four Horsemen.
And he was going to bring calamity to this world in the most destructive way possible.
He breathed plumes of that sickening smoke and addressed his familiars with a deep, booming voice. “Exi et purga hunc mundum a peccatis suis!”1
“No!” I cried.
Dad’s command sent his familiars high into the sky before they split off, each spewing a ghostly haze behind them.
I tried to grab the end of his scythe, but he flicked me like a bug.
That flick looked harmless, but the action propelled me into a wall so hard that all the air was ripped from my lungs in an instant.
I wheezed horrifically, clutching my throat to try and catch my bearings.
Blood splatted from my nose, and my head pulsed from how hard it had hit the wall.
My Shadows were shocked that Dad would ever hurt me like that, and began to realize, too, that he was no longer the man I adored. Dad vanished alongside his familiars, his cloak slipping through my fingers when I went to jump forward and grab hold of him.
“Dad, please, don’t do this! DAD!”
“There’s no point trying to stop him now!” May tried to convince me as she held me back from chasing after him.
“That is not your father, Nicodemus. That is a monster…” Stark croaked.
Geneva and Magnus appeared next, panting on adrenaline as they rushed forward to claw at my sleeve.
“Nick, the number of deaths is skyrocketing on Earth!
We've lost four thousand people already!” Magnus exclaimed as he showed me the reaping list. Sure enough, numbers were rapidly ticking upward, moving at lightning speed on the page.
Names of fallen Humans covered the page, appearing one by one as they died on Earth.
I changed into my Elemental form and whipped my scythe free. “You two track down Ambermourn through his Shadow Walkers while I try and stop this chaos!”
“You can’t do this alone! This is beyond what we’ve ever seen before!” Geneva wailed.
I squeezed her arm lovingly. “I’ll do what I can, which will just have to be enough for now. Find Ambermourn and that book so we can stop this sooner.”
“Nick!” Odysseus and the other Gods, both Original, current, and soon-to-be, joined us, all in their Elemental forms and ready for the fight. “What do you want us to do?”
“I need to keep damage to a minimum. Life and Wind Elementals: go after Pestilence. Heal as many of the sick as possible. Fire and Water: go after War. Keep the battling at bay by putting up natural barriers between Humans. Electricity: go after Famine. Put up as many barriers and traps around food supplies as possible to keep him from starving people. Earth: do damage control. Heal the planet as rapidly as you can to keep it from falling apart. Death: you’re going to go after Atlas.
Keep him from killing off as many people as possible.
Resurrect whatever you can or hide Humans from him.
I will join each of you as I can to try and tame the Horsemen you are battling,” I instructed over the powerful winds that tore through the field we stood in.
“You’re going to need all the help you can get. Do you think you can get the rulers of Gehenna on your side?” Endymion questioned as he summoned his own scythe, and he and Seraphine came to my side.