Things With Souls & Soulless
Chapter Eighteen
The Chosen
Together, we travel through plains that stretch beneath a turbulent sky thick with low, churning clouds.
Murmurs of thunder follow distant flashes of lightning—alluding to a warning that never quite arrives.
Ash arrives with the wind, accompanied by a fine mist of rain, coating my cloak and dampening everything it touches.
I head for home with the intention of veering off course miles before we reach it. The distance will give me adequate time to understand the danger he presents, and should I fail, I know the land well enough to disappear into it for a time.
Yes, my situation is more dire than I originally planned, but perhaps that is the key.
Sacrifice.
When my cries rang through the forest, he came for me without hesitation, without thought. In that, at least, I succeeded.
Now he rides beside me, both silent and watchful. He speaks very little, but I feel the weight of his attention each time it settles on me. It lingers more often than it should, drifting toward me before he forces it away to scan the horizon for the demons he insists stalk these lands.
We continue for hours in this manner until we reach a thick crop of trees. The foliage is lively—thriving. Bushes heavy with berries that might not kill you, but will leave you doubled over for days. Tasty, but not worth the price.
The Horseman draws his mount to a halt. I continue several paces before noticing, then pull sharply on the reins and turn in the saddle.
His eyes are closed. His breathing is steady. Shoulders loose.
Nothing appears amiss.
Then, all at once, he lifts his hand.
Static ignites in the air around us. Not seen, but very much felt.
As if the lightning stretched out its might and touched down here without notice.
The skin on my arms becomes gooseflesh. Every hair rises as the pressure around us builds. Even the tattoo under my hairline responds, not a tingle but warmth, heat.
I cup my neck, fighting off the burn, and search for meaning.
It’s then that I find it, as color leaches from the ground beneath us.
Grasses dull, from green to grey, their blades curling inward as if recoiling.
The soil dries, and cracks spread outward in jagged lines.
What was damp earth becomes lifeless dirt.
Nearby shrubs sag, their leaves shriveling in on themselves.
Even the trees—those that have somehow endured and lived on—bow under the assault, their leaves and needles losing all life, breaking off and falling to the bare ground. Bark splits. Sap dries up.
Within whatever seconds it’s taken me to come to grips with what I am seeing, the teaming life here that once was is no more.
I act without thought. I drive my heels into my mount and surge toward him. His eyes open at the sound, but the shove I deliver catches him completely off guard, rocking him so hard in the saddle that I nearly dismount him.
“There is enough death in this world without you adding to it,” I snarl, voice breaking with fury. I nearly unseat myself trying to strike him again, but he catches my wrist before it can make contact. “Don’t you dare do that again.”
He appears bewildered by my response and gently says, “It’s what I’m here to do.”
“No.” I wrench against his hold, breath stuttering as I seek out what little oxygen rides the thinning air. “If you’re going to kill off my planet, the least you could do is go do it somewhere I don’t have to see it.”
A line forms between his brows. “There’s a reason—”
“Save it! I don’t want to hear it. You’re making the situation worse. This land is already struggling to survive. And these people have already lost so much. How dare you take what’s left?”
Slowly, he releases my arm. “I’m afraid I don’t have a choice.”
“Don’t you?”
“No.” His voice is steady, unmoved. “Whether you like it or not, this world is ending. It’s been decided, and neither you nor I nor any of my brothers has any power over that.”
I fume as I jerk the reins, directing Enoch back to the path. Only later, after I settle somewhat, does he catch up with me and try to restart the conversation.
“If you were paying attention, then you’d realize I’m not killing off the planet, which I assure you, with time, I could do.
I’m only taking what’s needed and cycling the power back to Him so He can remake the world when it’s time or reuse the power to fight the battle we will inevitably face at The End of Days. ”
“Why would He need the power?”
“Because He’s given everything to his creations, and there’s simply not enough of him left to win this war if He doesn’t draw some of it back to Himself.
Also, this test for the souls can’t be a true test if there is no sacrifice, no opportunity to show that in desperate circumstances, they will still choose to rise above the madness and do what is right.
It’s what will earn them their place in Heaven. ”
I stew on this long enough that he goes on to explain further.
“Only when we’re truly tested do we prevail or perish.”
My glare earns me a small chuckle. “Do you even know who walks among you in these last days? What sort of souls do you believe are worth saving?”
I place my hand, which has grown stiff with pain, behind my pommel and stare down at it as it shakes uncontrollably.
My leg is a blazing inferno of agony that has me gritting my teeth with each step my horse takes.
My mind is cloudy as thoughts of another dose keep blinking in and out.
Even my stomach roils in on itself with nausea.
However, the conversation momentarily takes my mind off the pain, even if only for a moment, giving me something else to focus on.
He doesn’t wait for my reply. “The top six levels of Hell. All the souls who resided there. That’s who is reborn and will face judgment.
All the others have already been tested and either reside in Heaven as we speak or in the last three levels of Hell, and those unfortunate souls won’t get the opportunity for redemption. They’ve proven they don’t deserve it.”
“What do you mean, souls… like demons or—”
“There’s a great difference between the souls that reside in Hell and demons. Souls there are the dead who are being punished for their actions during the lives they were given. Demons are altogether different.”
“How?”
“The first demons are creatures created by Lucifer himself.
They are bred from when Lucifer and his brethren, the Fallen, held more power and shared small pieces of themselves to create guards for their new realm, Hell.
But eons have passed, and very few demons, if any, are created anymore.
The ones who are, are born and bred from other demons.
“It’s different in Heaven. God pulls power from both himself and the universe, splits a portion of his soul, and gifts it to everything he creates.
Lucifer and his lords gave very little of themselves because they had little to give.
And their abilities to create were rudimentary at best. Their vile creations are responsible for the hordes that now exist in Hell.
Without culling, they’ve continued to spread and procreate.
Hell is overrun with their kind, and still they persist. But with each generation of demon, the power grows thinner.
To the point that very little of God's essence exists, if at all.
They are mindless beasts. Evil incarnate.
“We call these demons, The Soulless.
“They are savage and lack the ability to choose right from wrong.
They hunger for something they cannot name.
They feed on the souls in Hell, rape, and cause a never-ending cycle of destruction because they ache for something they can never receive.
Especially the lower species, far removed from those Fallen turned out of Heaven or their spawn.
“It has created absolute chaos in Hell, and it is one of the reasons Lucifer fights so hard to rule earth or take over Heaven itself. He essentially created his own purgatory and does not want to live in it anymore.”
“So you’re saying all the humans alive in this generation—”
“Are souls who previously died and until recently resided in Hell awaiting this day. This is their opportunity to earn redemption. That is who we have been sent to test.”
I turn to meet his stare.
He eyes me critically, then says, “You being the only exception.”
This takes me off guard. “Why? How do you know—”
“Your soul has never touched Hell. I would be able to sense if it had. Yet, you live here, now. How is that possible?”
“I have lived much longer than I was originally designed to.”
“And you achieve this how, exactly?”
I stay silent but can feel his piercing gaze probing for this answer.
“Wait. Stop,” he says abruptly, startling me.
He then speaks a few words in a language I don’t understand, and both horses come to a halt. In one clean movement, he is off his horse and at my side. “You’re bleeding.”
He examines my leg and stills.
Leaning over, I take in the state of my injury and see he is right. Blood drips off my boot and falls to the ground below us.
The Horseman’s gaze ventures to the path we’ve walked. He stands and strides that way for a time before he comes back.
“Fucking Hell, you’ve left a trail directly to us.” Without asking, he unclips the top of my saddlebag and begins to rummage through the contents.
“Hey!”
“We need to wrap your leg and head in a different direction right now.”
“Surely, it’s not that bad.”
“It is. Unless you want to battle a creature in your current state, the likes of which you’ve never seen. They’re virtually unkillable. You should not only take me seriously but listen to every godforsaken word I say. Am I clear?”
His mood shifted so suddenly, and the look in his eerie eyes held true fear.
“Okay.”
He pulls out the blanket I use to cover myself with at night, and as his brother did to my cloak, he rips it to shreds.
But instead of tying me up, he uses those strips to cover my wound until the blood no longer bleeds through.
He saves the rest of the blanket and places it back in my horse’s pack before strapping it down.
“That’ll do for now. Let’s get out of here and move a safe distance from this place before I bind it with better care.”
He takes just a second to consider which way to go and turns his mount south.
“Your brothers are that way, if it helps.”
I don’t realize what I’ve revealed until it’s too late, and he spins around. The scowl he delivers has me wanting to shrink inside my own skin.
“Tell you what? I’m going to give you a bird’s-eye view of these creatures so you can see what we’re up against, and you’re going to fill me in on how in Heaven’s Gate you know not only who my brothers are, but where they are.”
I open my mouth, but choose to think long and hard about how to answer that before I do.
“Honesty would go a long way in establishing trust, Priestess. I can be your enemy or your ally. I know which I would choose if given the choice, and though you might think my purpose here is only to harm, I assure you, I am doing the bidding of God, and he would not punish those undeserving of his judgment.”
I sat with that statement for a long time.
The problem—the one I keep coming back to every time I attempt to validate that his argument has merit—is that the Good Book outlines an entirely different scenario.
That they are Harbingers of Death. They will bring about the utter ruin and end of this world.
They will kill every human in existence, and it is up to me to kill them before the end in order to see our world truly rebuilt.
Which truth to believe—his, or the book I spent my whole life studying down to the letter, enough to have every word on every page of scripture imprinted in the forefront of my mind?