simplerich

It was never meant to go this far. They had promised they would come for him. He kept thinking they would come. He wanted to believe them. There would be no harm in wandering around until they got here though he had thought. So he had wandered and now he was totally and unmistakably lost. Lost in what looked like an alley from an episode of NYPD blue. There was more garbage on the street than cars and some of the garbage looked like it may have once been human. He couldn’t imagine what set of events would have to transpire to relegate a person to a life like this… if it could be called a life. There was a man in a rat chewed trench coat leaning over a garbage can that looked like it had already been picked through pretty thoroughly by the animals…

“Hey! Kid! Whatcha doin’ here?” The voice came from above him. He spun and looked up to see a trio of angry looking faces peering down at him through dark sunglasses. The three wore fatigues and had close cropped hair. He knew better than to answer. There was no answer that was the right one. There were simply degrees of worse. Opting for the least dangerous he chose silence and quickened his pace. He hoped he could make it to the corner before they could make it down the stairs, out the door and down the street.

He hadn’t counted on the brick though. The first he knew of it was a tingling in the back of his head as the hairs the brick was hitting tickled his scalp in the microsecond before the world exploded in a cacophony of pain that sang through his body like a piece of Holst on Crystal or Crank. The last thing to pass through his mind before the symphony of pain being played in his head was swallowed up into blissfully quiet darkness was that he would probably not be run over by a car on this street.

When the world swam back into focus the pain was a dull ever present murmur in the background, like dry autumn leaves along and abandoned farm road. He could almost ignore it. He tried slowly to open his eyes and found himself laying in what looked like a hunting lodge. It was certainly no more than a cabin and, with the little movement he could manage without moaning he saw that it wasn’t at all wired or plumbed. Where the hell was he. He tried to sit up and a wave of nausea washed over him and awakened the string section of the orchestral movement that was the pain in his head. He fell back onto the pillow and barked out an accompaniment as the winds joined the strings when his head hit the pillow.

A light fell across him, slicing through the dust motes and laying across his chest. “I wouldn’t move just yet young Archangel.”

“I won’t… what did you call me?”

“Archangel. I know that’s not the name you go by where you are from, but the Horadrim were very specific when they laid out their rituals, and though that may not be what you were, it is what you are now. Just try and sit up slowly and drink this.” An old man extended what looked like a porcelain cup of something red and rank. It smelled of socks and something else, something rank like sour sweat after a long jog on a steamy august morning.

“I’m not drinking that. It stinks.”

“You’re in no condition to resist if I decide you’re going to drink it so why don’t you just make this easier on both of us and swallow it. I’d hate to have hard feelings between us this soon. You haven’t even heard why you are here.” The old man smiled as he sat down, handing him the cup.

He closed his eyes and listened to the symphony tuning up in his head and drank it. Instantly he felt better. The pain receded to a mere whisper that he could only hear if he tried to. Sitting up quickly he looked around the room. “Why am I here and how do I get back home? This is NOT New York!”

We’ll discuss that later first I need to show you something. Leading the new comer around the back of the cabin to a large crack in the ground. “See this?”

Looking down into the gully a bottom couldn’t be seen, “Yeah, I see it.”

“Good.” The old man put his hand in the small of the New Yorker’s back and pushed. It didn’t take much to put him off balance and down he went. Plummeting into the depths of Hell. He left a scream contrail behind him that followed him all the way to the bottom, and when the swearing started the old man knew that the new Archangel had survived the fall. “He is the one.” he said as he wandered back to the square to tell the others.

He fell and as he fell he screamed. An itching started between his shoulder blades but he only noticed it peripherally as his mind was presently occupied with the business of being angry and getting ready for the sudden stop that was sure to come… and to hurt.

He didn’t notice as his shirt was ripped from his body by two growths from his back. He didn’t notice when the two appendages unfurled into large wings. He didn’t notice that his fall was slowing and that instead of smashing himself into a fine paste he landed stumblingly on his feet. He also noticed he had enough breath left after the long scream to swear, profusely and multilingually. Once he had used all the swear words and insults that he knew in English he worked his way East across the Iberian peninsula and into Europe before he stopped… He didn’t KNOW those languages. Confused he turned on his heel as he looked around the room. His wings flapped slowly to keep his balance.

Wings? He didn’t HAVE wings! “I wouldn’t move just yet young Archangel.” the man had said to him. He hadn’t paid much attention then. The walls of the place around him pulsed slowly. The were malevolent. His heightened senses could feel the evil within them. Whatever lived here was so terrible and malefic it had permeated the very stone, twisting it with it’s hatred and twisted psychic stench.

Archangel knelt and picked up a stick that had fallen with him. He held the thing in his hand, it was less than a yard long and bent. Looking at the stick he smiled. A world of possibilities opened up before him. All of the bright avenues of lights and colors. Each a Kufurstendam of choices, teeming with decisions and consequences. He closed his eyes, holding the stick before him.

“Grow!” He commanded the stick. He felt a surge of power start in his chest and expand outward and down his arm. He convulsed as if in the throes of orgasm and his hand squeezed the stick tighter for an instant. When he opened his eyes the stick was no longer a stick but a staff. Over 6 feet high and almost as thick as a pop can it was vested with a part of his power. The archangel looked down at himself. The rippled muscles of his stomach flexed and rolled just beneath the skin as he moved. Dirt smudged him from the fall, streaking his chest and abdomen. He smiled to himself thinking of the dating opportunities this would present.

Around the corner came a bald man wearing what looked like a Celtic Torc. It was gold with black arcane symbols running around its edge. He too carried a staff, topped with a large Red stone. The man looked at Archangel and gestured with the staff. Red Bolts of energy launched themselves at the man. Without thinking he knocked the red stars aside with his staff. Large biceps flexing easily as he did so. His smile vanished though as he saw behind the man more came. There were at least 6 of them. He concentrated on the man for a heartbeat and opened his mouth to say the word that would release the energy. But the man was gone. From behind him he heard the scrape of foot on stone. He whirled. The man had teleported behind him. They were all blinking out of existence and then fading back in elsewhere. In no time he was surrounded and it was all he could do to avoid the stars, much less launch an attack of his own.

One of the stars brushed his side and left a burning wound that sang to him in a high pitched castrati wail that he couldn’t silence. The pain awakened something within him. From lower this time he felt the energy coiling within him. It started at the base of his spine and shot in a lightening flash up his spine and out his mouth with a Yell “Ateh Malkuth!” He screamed swinging his staff around like a Pro baseball player who just missed the ball. Only he hadn’t missed Ball after Ball of energy shot from the staff, freezing the Torc wearing mages in place. Without a thought he took to the air and beat his huge wings with his powerful back muscles and made a circuit of the room. He brought the staff down on each of them, smashing them to bits as he passed each one. When they were all dead he looked at his side to see that it had healed itself during his rage without leaving a scar, just a clean spot.

He walked the way they had come, sensing the evil lay that direction. It was becoming almost palpable, like humidity on a July afternoon it clung to him and made it difficult to breath. He had to stop it. Not because he hated it, but because if he didn’t it would soon incapacitate him.

He rounded a corner to find a room full of women, or what looked as much like women as he looked like his former self. They had bat’s wings and were also topless, although the effect was a bit more dramatic in their case. The tiny scrap of blue they wore around their waste was more of a tease than it was a piece of clothing. he barely had time to take any of this in before they were blasting him with yellow sparkling orbs of scintillating corruption. Were he hit by too many of those he would certainly not survive it. He became a blur of movement as he batted the yellow missiles out of the air and barked Command after Command, unleashing a stream of fireballs in their direction which they seemed to ignore.

His mind seemed to separate itself from his body as he went through the almost automatic actions of defending himself. What they were sending at him… that was their strength. He should use its opposite against them if they were to have notice at all. Coming to a decision pulled his mind and body back together in the here and now and he switched commands. “Binah!” He yelled, bringing the staff down to waist level and focusing every cell in his body on that one word with an attention that Zen masters practice years to achieve. The effect was devastating. The women flew back from him like sticks in a tornado, and women they were now as the force of the word ripped their wings from them. What lay piled against the back wall was a tumbled pile of women, all village women from above ground whose tortured souls had been called into service of whatever evil master lived here.

Behind him he heard a door open and turned to see a horde of men, over seven feet tall, armor clad and armed with impressively long swords clanking their way towards him, swords drawn. Taking a deep breath he planted his feet on the ground, rolled his head around, cracking his neck and readied himself for the oncoming battle.

They came towards him slowly, deliberately and surrounded him. He let them. It was not yet time. They must strike first. That was the Way. No action, only Reaction. To act was to incur consequence. Consequence involved chance and he had no room in his actions for chance.

From behind he heard the air sigh as it was parted by the keen edge of his attacker’s sword. Archangel whirled and snapped his staff up into the air to intercept the whistling blade. The two collided with a crash and Archangel grunted as he felt the rope like cords of his muscles straining at the inhuman strength of his attacker. Archangel quickly dropped to one knee and curled underneath the armored fiend, his wings going flat over him like a blanket as the Black Knight fell forward off balance. With all the strength he had Archangel pulled his legs underneath his torso and thrust himself up and into the stomach of his attacker, picking him up off the ground and hurling him into the air. His wings beat furiously as they tried to lift the two of them off the ground. Archangel wrapped his arms around the Knight, feeling the dead cold beneath the armor on his bare arms and chest. He squeezed and whispered “Chokmah.” It was all he could do to whisper it even. The armor ceased moving in his arms and fell to the floor in pieces.

Archangel looked down at the floor and counted. There were five left. There were too many of them too keep this up and they stood on his Staff. He had very effectively disarmed himself with that maneuver. Archangel landed softly on the ground some 10 yards from the group of Knights and waited again as they closed with him. The tree that fights the wind is destroyed by the wind, he thought to himself. He had heard that many times but never understood it until now.

They didn’t attack one at a time this time. They surged to attack him in a rush. He was ready though. Every nerve in his body was alive and ready to respond. They swung and he wasn’t there any more, he was behind them. His speed was uncanny, and came from absolute concentration on what he was doing. A sword came dangerously close to his head and he ducked and spun out of the way allowing the sword to crash into one of the other Knights. Within minutes there were only two of them and they were well nigh crippled from their own attacks and the attacks of their fellows in arms.

Kneeling for his Staff he held it at eye level and felt the power building in his stomach again. He released it with “Kadmon” and felt it flash through his arms and run along the staff like arcing electricity before it burst forth onto the two remaining Knights, exploding their armor and destroying them.

He was close now, he could feel it. Just beyond that door lay the source of the evil that corrupted the town and had taken the townsfolk as hostage to his minions. He was breathing in short shallow gulps as the putrescence just the other side of the wall tried to gag him.

Archangel tried to slow his breathing and relax his neck muscles but couldn’t under the influence of the pure hatred he felt coming through the door and walls. Finally, as close to ready as he would come he stretched his wings, flexed them and his arms once more and opened the door.