Temptation

The flames fully engulfed the barn, sending the structure crumbling to the ground. Mike had pulled himself further from the fire, the throbbing in his knee blooming into full-blown agony. Abella walked behind him with her wings outstretched to protect him from the heat and burning embers while carrying Dana. After being thrown out of the barn, she had injured her last remaining limb and had been trying to roll away from the fire.

Bigfoot came charging around the barn so fast that he slid sideways across the snow. “Velvet is gone!” he cried as he came to a stop. “Leeds did something to her, she went after him!”

Mike tried to stand but fell down with a groan. “Why didn’t you go after her?”

“She’s way faster than I am and can jump along the treetops. Without knowing where she’s going, I can’t exactly cut her off.” He turned his eyes on Abella. “But you. You could track her, right?”

Abella frowned, then looked down at Mike.

“You realize Leeds is trying to separate us, yes?” she asked.

Mike let out a grunt, then nodded. There was no doubt that this was all according to Leeds’ plan, but they couldn’t just leave Velvet to whatever fate he had in store for her.

“And you still want me to go?” Abella looked uncertain.

“We need to regroup. If you can catch her now, you can bring her back. We need to find Quetzalli, Yuki and that damn owl. Something went wrong, and until we know what, we’re going to be stuck here while he picks us off.” He fixed Abella with a hard stare, trying his best to hold back tears of pain. “He’s planning to kill us one at a time. I think Velvet is his first target.”

Bigfoot roared, his body expanding as he slammed a fist into a nearby tree. The trunk cracked, the impact causing the branches to shed their snow.

“I will make him suffer,” he declared. “Even if it takes me the rest of my days!”

“I’ll be safe with this guy,” Mike continued. “We’re stronger together than apart. Please.” His eyes now shimmered with tears as he tried to shift his leg. “Bring her back for me.”

She responded by spreading her wings and taking to the sky. He watched her go with a tight feeling in his chest, followed by a chill. Leeds had outplayed them again, and he wouldn’t feel good until they were all together.

“We need to find the others.” He laid both of his legs out and frowned. His injured knee was swollen, but he was able to bend it a little. It was probably just a sprain, which was preferable to pretty much anything else knee-related.

Dana grunted. She had finally got one of her arms twisted back into place and was flexing her fingers.

“Fucker couldn’t bite me, so used his tongue to crush me against the roof of his mouth.” She grabbed onto her other arm and twisted it. There was a loud crunch and a bone popped through the skin. “Can someone help me with this?”

Mike gagged, then turned away.

“I can help.” Bigfoot knelt down and, with directions from Dana, helped get her bones realigned so that her rapid healing could take over. The luster faded from her hair and her skin paled until she nearly matched the snow, but she was back on her feet. Her eyes were still rimmed with red as she pulled out her sword.

“The good vibes are officially gone,” she growled. “Gonna have to straddle the line between apathy and rage, I guess.”

A gray figure descended from above. It was Emery, his hands fidgeting as he darted around.

“Emery. We need you.” Mike let Dana help him up. The pure agony in his knee had faded to tolerable levels, allowing him to put a bit of weight on it. “With Abella gone, you’re our eyes in the sky. We need to find Yuki, Quetzalli and the owl.” He looked over his shoulder at the forest, then pointed. “Last I saw the owl, she was headed that way.”

Emery nodded, then shot into the air.

“Then we shall head that way as well.” Bigfoot moved ahead of him. “I will ask the trees if they’ve seen them.”

“Good thing the others are memorable,” Mike muttered with a wince. He wasn’t entirely certain how a tree’s memories worked, but imagined the magical trio would be fairly distinct. He took a step that became a hop. “Do we have anything I can use as a crutch?”

Bigfoot looked over his shoulder. “We’ve never had a shortage of legs around here, but I’ll see if I can find you something.” He disappeared into the trees, leaving Mike with Dana.

“Glad to see he still has a sense of humor,” Mike said.

“It’s either that or scream.” Dana helped him walk toward the trees where Bigfoot disappeared. Once they were there, Bigfoot appeared with a large branch with a scoop that would fit beneath Mike’s armpit. Dana used her sword to cut it to the right size.

His knee was already feeling better, but the crutch helped immensely. Bigfoot moved ahead of them and would come back every few minutes to check in. Emery would dive down to hear the report, then take to the sky once more.

Moving through the dense woods, Mike felt the familiar humming return. If he tried to focus on it, he could hear individual whispers in a language he couldn’t quite grasp. Every now and then, he would get the impression that someone had passed by recently, or hear two trees speaking with one another. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see the words translated to images in his head, like a waking dream.

It was nearly an hour later when Emery dropped down and flitted about like a hummingbird. At the same time, Mike detected a dead spot in the ramblings of the woods, as though a part of it had gone silent.

“There’s something over there!” Emery pointed off to the left. “There was a fight!”

Mike limped ahead as fast as he could but was grabbed from behind by Bigfoot, who pulled him through a portal with Dana. For just a moment, he could hear the forest as it shouted in his ears, and then it went quiet when they came out of the portal and into a small clearing. At its center was a spiked dome made of ice, the ugly lovechild of an igloo and a morningstar. All around the dome, dead Nirumbi with bloody handprints on their foreheads lay on the ground. A small group of Nirumbi who were attacking the dome froze when they saw Dana.

Dana let out a shriek before diving into their ranks, causing panic among the Nirumbi. The sword whipped through the air, removing limbs as the zombie carved up the remaining attackers.

“What the hell?” Mike knelt down to check one of the dead Nirumbi. The handprint was distorted, a definitive match for Leeds’ claws. The body was riddled with bloody wounds, some still packed with shards of ice.

“Quetzalli?” Dana moved up to the dome and knocked on it with the butt of her sword. “You in there?”

“We’re all in here!” The muffled voice that answered was Yuki’s. The ice crumbled and turned to slush, revealing the kitsune standing over Quetzalli. The dragon was kneeling over a bloody figure on the ground.

It was the owl. Her body was broken, and her wide eyes darted back and forth from Mike to Bigfoot as they came near.

“It was an ambush,” she whispered, her cracked beak clacking. “These Nirumbi were loyal to Leeds, please do not punish...”

“Easy.” Mike knelt by her side and tried to maintain a neutral expression when he realized that there was no way she was going to survive her injuries. He was fairly certain there were bones protruding beneath her thick feathers and wasn’t about to ask. “We won’t punish the others for the crimes of the few.”

The owl relaxed, letting out a sigh mixed with a gurgle.

“I don’t understand.” Bigfoot knelt down by the owl. “Leeds shouldn’t have been back until nightfall at the earliest.”

The owl coughed, then tilted her head toward Mike.

“I underestimated him,” she said. “These Nirumbi weren’t just looking for ... a leader, they ... wanted a god. We stumbled on ... shrine...”

“Shhh.” Yuki knelt and put her hand on the owl’s forehead, then looked at Mike. “The Nirumbi built an altar in the woods. When we found it, they ambushed us. They were using ritual sacrifices to summon him.”

“How does that even work?” Mike asked.

“A life for a life. They were able to shorten his revival at the cost of many of their own. He is technically a demon, and they can be summoned for a price.” She looked sadly at the owl. “We thought we had him. The Nirumbi were only armed with spears, but then Leeds summoned this giant floating head from deep in the woods. It bit down on her and then spit her out when Quetzalli zapped it. That’s when I summoned my barrier, but we thought it was still out here waiting.”

“I killed the head,” Dana added. “It’s just Leeds now.”

“Don’t ... assume...” The owl looked at Mike. “Caretaker. I am unable to hold up my end of the bargain.”

Mike gritted his teeth. He couldn’t exactly hold it against her. The plan had been to lure Leeds into a set of runes powered by the owl’s magic. The runes had been carved into a large log that could be carried as a mobile prison. Bigfoot was going to carry it out of the woods, thereby breaking Leeds’ barrier.

“We’ll figure something ou—holy shit, no, stop!”

The owl, using her clawed finger, had jammed the talon into the soft flesh of her orbital socket. With a yank, she pulled her eye free as light burst from her socket. She handed it over to Yuki.

“All my knowledge,” she explained. “In exchange, someone must care for the forest children. Please...” she begged, blood now leaking from her beak.

Bigfoot put her hands together and placed them on her belly, his massive hand covering both of them.

“I will guide them, sister owl.” He stroked the feathers on her head. “I regret that I couldn’t know you better. Now sleep and be one with the woods.”

Yuki took the bloody orb from the owl. Upon touching her fingers, it solidified into a crystalline sphere, which she tucked into her robes.

The owl gasped for air, and then fell silent. Her chest fell one last time and an ominous wind blew through the clearing. The feathers blew off her body and filled the air, blinding Mike temporarily.

When the wind was gone, so was the owl.

“Shit,” he muttered to himself, then looked at Yuki. “She ripped out her own eye and just ... handed it over. How does that even work?”

“It’s an old-school thing you should be familiar with. Far preferable to having someone else rip it out for you.” She stood and looked at everyone else. “Where are the others?”

“Chasing Leeds.” Mike looked at Bigfoot. “We’re good here if you want to try and track them down.”

Bigfoot nodded, then stood.

“I’ll try and bring him to you in one piece,” he said. “But no promises. You can survive without a limb, right?”

With that, Bigfoot took off, vanishing into the woods. Mike sighed and looked down at the remaining feathers still on the ground. Everything had gone sideways fast, but he felt as though he should be used to it.

“Hey.” Yuki put a calming hand on his shoulder. “We can still do this.”

He put his hand on hers and sighed. “I sure hope you’re right.”

Though the battle for the fate of the world continued for countless millennia, Beth experienced it as a matter of hours.

Jenny’s turns had become so long that the Earth rotated in fast forward from Beth’s perspective. It was little more than a whirling blue and green mass, the landscape often changing drastically as a result of whatever hell the doll unleashed.

Pestilence, despite hours of pleading that sounded like a hive of caffeinated wasps, had been forced to continue playing. Every round they had lost always ended up with their body being separated into individual bugs and then spread apart. Beth got the impression that Pestilence, as a hive mind, was forced to endure everything that each insect experienced. Between rounds, Pestilence sat on the ground and rocked, hugging their legs close to their chest.

Famine lasted a bit longer, but Jenny’s troops had developed a real taste for him. Jenny cackled in glee, forcing Famine to endure being consumed at the end of each of his rounds and then slowly digested for an amount of time that Famine was unable to describe to his siblings. Her real masterstroke had begun when she had the mimics become microscopic and eat him from the inside. This method of torment soon evolved into a single mimic eating Famine’s brain cells while War and Pestilence were forced to care for him as he wasted away into madness.

War, true to his name, put up a much tougher fight. While Jenny found new and interesting ways to make him spend years with nothing to do, he attempted to fight back by doing the same. As the two of them tried to one-up each other, it was clear that Jenny was completely unphased.

Eventually, Famine and Pestilence lost the game. They were disheartened between rounds and made terrible decisions. Beth noticed that both of them started going all in, wagering the maximum number of troops regardless of strategy. Once beaten, neither of them spoke or even seemed to be paying attention to the game anymore, rather, they looked absolutely exhausted. Their former bluster was gone, as they seemed to know that they had been thoroughly beaten.

Beth thought back to how Murray had made sure to rebuild her mind each time to prevent her from going mad. For the horsemen, the sheer dread of starting each round seemed to have broken them.

As angry and bitter as War had become, it was clear that Jenny refused to give him what he wanted. In rounds she lost, she always showed up wherever he was. In rounds she won, she stole his troops away as silently as possible and then made War come looking for her.

The end came for War when he had the bright idea of encasing Jenny in a giant metal cube and then using a drill to bury her deep beneath the ground in Yellowstone National Park. He seemed extremely proud of the fact that Jenny would have to sit around for hundreds of thousands of years in quiet contemplation until the supervolcano beneath finally erupted.

Beth actually got to watch the blast from her viewing position and had been terrified that something had happened to the game itself. Murray had appeared to reassure everybody that all was well and then reminded them that only a couple of minutes had passed in the real world.

Beth had no idea what War had done while stuck on Earth for so long, and his shit-eating grin of victory turned sour when Jenny appeared in a blaze of golden light.

Boring, Jenny had exclaimed, then mimed a yawn. Beth was a hundred-percent convinced that Jenny was bouncing her consciousness out of the game, but didn’t want to risk confirming it. But since you want to play dirty, let’s do it.

On her next victory, she had blinded War at the beginning of the round and then hid deep in the mountains. Next round, she blinded him again, then had him captured and took his legs. She made him squirm, crawl, and roll across entire countries looking for her while she taunted him with nursery rhymes when he got close. The Earth was now spinning so fast during each turn that Murray declared he was having to reset geological events just to prevent game issues due to continental drift.

“How long has it been?” Beth finally asked Murray before the next round could start. He opened his mouth to reply, and she quickly added “Inside the game, down on the virtual Earth.”

“Eons,” he replied as War reappeared.

The horseman only lasted a couple more rounds before he finally broke apart. Heavy muscles sagged as he dropped his sword to the ground and wept.

“I can’t go on any longer,” he cried. “I don’t even remember what killing feels like. I’m just so numb, that I ... that I...”

Aw, c’mon, mister. Jenny rocked her horse violently, making it scoot closer to War. This is the most fun I’ve had in years!

“Stay away from me!” He backed away from Jenny and hid behind Murray. “She’s done things to me! You’ve seen it, you even told me it was getting hard to rebuild me!”

“Rest assured that each round is only—”

“I don’t care!” War yanked on Murray’s robes, causing the man’s head to snap back and forth. “I quit! I quit! Please, send me back!”

Quitterquitterquitterquitter...

Beth felt light-headed, as if she was falling, and then the world beneath them was flattened like a giant ball of clay, turning into a map. A golden fire rolled across it, destroying all of War’s remaining troops. The scene dramatically transitioned again, and now she was staring at the game board proper.

“We’re back,” she whispered.

“Agh!” War looked over at Jenny and fell backward out of his chair. Screaming, he ran away from them and out into the surrounding mists, leaving his massive sword behind.

“And with this, I conclude our mediation.” Murray clapped his hands together. The pieces of the board game floated neatly back into the box, and then the box slid toward Beth.

“Good game,” she told Famine and Pestilence.

“Fuck you,” Famine replied, then stood and stormed off. Pestilence stayed behind only to slump forward with their face in their hands.

Beth’s initial reaction was to feel bad. Despite how they had treated her, she knew well the effect of Jenny’s in-game wrath. They had received it on a scale she couldn’t possibly fathom.

“Fuck those guys,” she muttered. With a deep breath to steady herself, she turned away from the table.

“It was very boring to watch.” Death held out Tick Tock. “Though you did make my brother cry during one of the last rounds. That was amusing.”

“It was far more interesting from our point of view. Especially when we were winning.” She took Tick Tock, then stuffed the Risk game inside. Reggie hopped down from his seat as Beth took Jenny in her arms. The doll’s laughter filled her head, and she chuckled.

“You did good,” she told Jenny. “We couldn’t have won without you.”

That’s because I’m the house champion, Jenny declared. They didn’t know what hit them.

“Let’s talk about it later,” she muttered, then looked up at Murray. The angel was trying to smile in her direction, but had opened his mouth into a comically wide grimace.

“So you’re taking them back?” she asked. “We’re done, everything goes back to the way it was?”

“Almost.” Murray stared at Death for a moment. “I will have to dismiss the horsemen first before returning you to your realm. Since they have wandered off, it may take me some time to find them. But I must warn you that there will be consequences to your actions.”

Beth narrowed her eyes. “Why the fuck should we have to suffer consequences?”

Murray held up his hands. “Peace, child. These are natural consequences, and this one cannot be avoided. I fear that the horsemen have been permanently damaged by your actions here.”

“We’re not paying for their therapy,” Reggie declared.

“The horsemen of the Apocalypse are physical manifestations of an idea or construct. They aren’t people like you or...” Murray looked at Reggie, then Jenny, then back to Beth. “Or other humans,” he finished. “Death is the exception, for he is merely the cessation of life. The others have been intricately woven into your society. Upon our return, the idea of Pestilence, War, and Famine will have shifted. I cannot promise that it will be for better or for worse.”

“Then I demand compensation,” Beth declared. “For all of mankind.”

“Denied.” Murray licked his teeth, then his lips. “Though you were the victors of your game, your actions while playing were based solidly on free will. My job here was never to fix your mistakes, but to investigate a complaint.”

“Who complained? In a court of law, you are entitled to face your accuser.”

“The complaint wasn’t filed in a court of law. Rather, I chose to indulge you before for the sake of the Father and His divine will.”

His divine will can suck a...

Beth covered Jenny’s mouth, knowing it would do no good. Luckily, Jenny took the hint.

“Are you going to do that hideous screaming thing again?” she asked.

Murray nodded.

“If you need us, we’ll be inside.” She turned away from the angel and walked toward the house. The mist swirled around her ankles until she made it onto the steps. Death rushed ahead of her to open the door, and they all walked inside.

Death closed the door behind them and locked it.

“Oh my god, we fucking did it!” Beth let out a whoop of delight, then knelt down to high-five Reggie. The rat king did a little dance on the floor, then tossed his crown into the air before catching it.

Tears of joy and relief sprang to her eyes, and she wiped them away before turning around and giving Death a big hug. This, of course, was a huge mistake. It felt like the air had been sucked out of her body upon contact, and he patted her delicately on the back like she might break. Each touch of his hand felt like a jolt to her nervous system.

“We beat them, we won,” she muttered into his robes, then shivered. Her teeth were chattering now, and she stepped away from Death. “Shit, I’m freezing.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth did she see the cloud of condensation form in front of her and then disperse. Death always left her with a bit of a chill, but this was more than that.

“Um, Lady Beth?” Reggie looked around the living room. “Doesn’t it seem far too quiet in here?”

She looked around the front of the house and frowned. Someone should have come to congratulate them already ... right?

“Lily? Kisa?” She walked toward the office and frowned at the sight of a rat lying in the boundary of the door. It was on its back and breathing slowly. Further into the office, there were even more of them. It looked like they had all grouped together in a defensive phalanx, but their weapons lay on the floor as if discarded.

“Are they...” Reggie’s question went unasked. He stood away from them, as if afraid to know the truth.

“They’re asleep, not dead.” Beth looked at the door to the parlor with a frown. It was coated in a light green substance that she recognized immediately as chunks of Opal. She took a tentative step forward and something crunched beneath her foot. Startled, she stepped back to reveal the corpse of a scarab beetle, its metallic wings damaged.

“Motherfucker,” she muttered, then turned the corner into the lounge.

The room had been destroyed. The statues of Anubis were missing, and most of the artifacts were strewn around the room and broken. Opal’s plastic tub was cracked and lying on its side with traces of green, blue, and red slime everywhere. Of Tink, Kisa and Lily, there was no sign.

Her attention was drawn to the middle of the room where the thick marble table was. The top had been moved away from the base, revealing the empty void within. Decorated in glowing hieroglyphics, it held a few loose pieces of rotting fabric that definitely resembled gauze.

The table had been a sarcophagus, and its occupant was on the loose.

With darkness coming, Abella had to rely largely on her ears to track Velvet. The Arachne was making a horrid sound as she ran, something between a growl and a wheeze. If she didn’t know better, she would assume that it was a wild animal she tracked and not Velvet.

She could also hear Leeds. The bastard was laughing, but Abella got the impression that he was being deliberately loud about it. He wasn’t traveling in a straight line either, and the terrain made it impossible for Abella to land. She could try to outpace the Arachne and crash down in front of her, but that would only work if Velvet decided to stop. If she didn’t, it would take too long to get back into the sky and she might lose them both.

A band of shadows burst from the canopy below, but Abella had been watching for just such an event. She rolled to the left, which cost her altitude but caused the shadows to miss. Spreading her wings once more, she used the sudden burst in downward speed to power her new ascent into the sky. The dark bands trailed her upward, but eventually could reach no further. Hands formed on the end reaching for her before the long tendrils retracted into the forest below.

At her new altitude, she could barely hear Velvet over the wind. However, there were a few low-lying clouds she was able to fly through and hide herself from sight. She lost track of Velvet a couple of times, but eventually caught her voice on the wind as she shouted at Leeds.

“Give it back!” she cried, her voice distant.

Give what back? Abella tilted her wings and dropped out of the clouds, mist clinging to her wings and tail. Had Leeds taken something from Velvet? When would he have had the chance to do that? Velvet had been nowhere near the barn when...

“No.” Abella was hit by the horrifying possibility that one of the eggs had survived. Had Velvet hidden it from her? Or had she missed one when she broke them?

Distracted, she lost track of Leeds and Velvet. Cursing inwardly, she looked around, hoping to figure out where the two of them could have gone. The sun was officially over the horizon, leaving inky pools of blackness beneath her. Some of the stars had already come out, but it was nowhere near bright enough for her to navigate by.

Scowling, she realized that the treeline wasn’t as far away as she thought it was. There was a mountain beneath her, and the topography was immediately familiar. It was the mountain where the Nirumbi lived. Velvet and Leeds hadn’t moved out of her range. Rather, they must have gone underground.

She found the clearing from the previous night and landed. There were dead Nirumbi scattered around the entrance. She knelt by one of the corpses and frowned. It had been dead for long enough that it had become cold like the stone beneath.

“Fils de pute.” From the entrance, she could hear Leeds’ raucous laughter. She hadn’t been inside a cave in centuries, the last time being with her clan. It had been after her brother’s death, right before her banishment.

The cavern walls were narrow, and she crouched down to crawl inside. So many centuries ago, she had finally learned to hear the beating heart of the Earth Mother. It wasn’t a heart at all, but the flow of natural magic through the stone. The magic traveled best through the strongest rock, and she was unnerved by how quiet the tunnel itself was.

Without the open sky above her, she fought off a case of the shivers. Her clan had rarely gone more than a hundred feet into the mountain and she always preferred to be outside if possible.

Up ahead, she could hear Velvet shouting obscenities, but the echoing of the cave made her words unintelligible. Leeds would laugh on occasion, but there was nothing else to be heard.