Chapter 18.1

 

Everything was chaos. One part of her could see the walls of the flat, shabby, dark, smoke-stained and badly in need of fresh rendering; the kitchen just a few steps away and the other part of her – an equal part that thought and felt as independently as the other – was soaring through an infinite space where the was no up or down; no landmarks to fix upon, no stars to guide an errant ship.

She was not alone in this void. A few metres away (and what is distance when the space you occupy is endless?) flew a being of dazzling light she could only interpret as eyes and circles and wings…

And claws.

Claws that were currently ripping at her, tearing away the flesh she once held so dear, sending plumes of fractal splinters streaming into the void, where they were being sucked away by creatures unseen; wraiths that inhabited the edges of her senses, almost visible as they gobbled up her lost energy, the way a last meal is briefly visible in the stomach if it’s excised from the body in time.

She twisted to the left (if left still existed) and ripped away the claws embedded in whatever she could call skin, taking hold of the offending limb on whatever was above the claws with one hand and using her other hand to twist the claws away. She felt, rather than heard, the snap as it was separated from its host, spinning away into the void and releasing its own stream of fractal soul energy. She dropped the claws, already dissolving into shadow, and thrust her hand into the flow, feeling the energy and relief as her own wounds were staunched and damage to her reversed.

She could feel the other part of her, still rooted in the Mundis, where this part of her had lain dormant, gestating slowly inside her flesh, hidden away from the prying noses of those who would do it harm. With that part of it, it remained aware of the other beings inhabiting the space. The soulless one, the human, the enlightened man. She could hear their speech, their arguments, their plans.

The enlightened one had secrets, writhing and twisting inside his form. Human, this one, but old, old as their time was counted, almost as old as the Oldest One, down there in his labyrinthian caverns, forever hiding from the Sight of God.

She felt the trumpet being revealed. It was not world-ending, not one of the Seven hidden away at the dawning of Creation, but it held some power, some fragment of chaos; enough to break the fabric of His creation and allow something to travel between the worlds. She could see the door opening through the other’s eyes, a bright flash of darkness as something was released from Hades into the Mundus. Something that was never part of His creation, but had formed nonetheless as an equal and opposite reaction.

It was a demon.

A minor one at best. Barely sentient but with a hunger it was impossible to satiate, living in the perpetual torment of being separated from the Creator.

An imp, as the Lords of Chaos called them. Barely alive, by the feel of it, possessed of rudimentary intelligence and mobile enough only to heed the limited commands issued to it.

Barely Alive.

Barely.

Alive.

The part of her fighting in the void merged for just an instant (though when time becomes irrelevant, an instant becomes an eternity) and snatched up the creature as it rounded the corner at the top of the flight of stairs, heading for what the mortal part of her referred to as the attic. Closing her fingers was enough to crush whatever life the thing possessed and, had she discarded the stream of fractal energy the fragile creature had possessed, the imp would slowly re-form inside the belly of Chaos, where Lilith had spewed forth demons since the beginning of Creation.

She did not discard it.

Instead, she absorbed the small stream of life particles it released and fashioned an extension of herself, a long, tapering construct of whatever passed for flesh in the Void. The Great Balance was tipped in favour of Heaven with this simple action, and would need to be addressed soon, else Chaos would spew forth enemies to take it from her.

But just for a moment, as she detached herself from the humanity of Creation, a thought entered from the World of Mundis, chaotic and disrupting.

She thought a simple word.

And the thought became Word.

And the Word was Fucket