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[b][u][center]Heaven Damned 13

Blood Price

For DuskCypher

By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

The end was coming, and if they didn’t come up with something to stop it, the Republic and all that lived within its bounds would be dead before the sun rose.

Jean was one of many magi within the Republic’s Senate that gathered at Stonehenge on the eve of their destruction. The panther was silent, as were many of the Senators as they stood in the closed dome, looking at the projected maps that the messenger laid out in the middle of the circular chamber.

Their seers had found a fast-moving wave through the universe cutting down all in its path. Much of the Theocracy had already been killed by it, and yet, despite snuffing out the lights and lives of dozens of solar systems and more spaceships and convoys between them, it wasn’t slowing down in the slightest. In a few hours, it would probably hit the front lines of the other forces that had revealed themselves of late, and who knew what would happen when those different energies connected.

The projected map also showed a contingent of those other invading forces nearing the edge of their system. The symbol of the wheel, suitable for those strangers that rolled over everything in their path and obliterated them without hesitation or resistance, was coming to their borders, too. Whatever hopes that the Senate had of the many years of war being limited to the Theocracy had come to an end; they would share the fate of Council space if they didn’t do something to take charge of their destiny.

“Not good, is it?” the wolf to his right, a Senator named Paul, muttered. “I would have hoped that this would be done after our time…”

“This is nothing but absolute destruction. If it didn’t happen in our time, then it would happen in our children’s. I doubt that would have been any better.”

“Even so, at least it might have been their problem, not ours.”

“Still not better,” Jean said, the feline flicking his ears as he crossed his arms. “And if the Theocracy couldn’t stop them for thirty years, I don’t know if we have any better chance.”

Paul didn’t say anything, much to Jean’s disappointment. The older canine might have been eager to push problems off to the next year, to always think that they had time to solve a problem later on, but he had always been an optimist. The Senate benefited from the general good nature of the wolf, and to have no best-case examples thrown his way drove home the severity of the situation.

The plain-clothed messenger bowed his head and left once the full map was rendered in magical beauty. The Senate remained quiet in the great dome of Stonehenge, every member waiting for someone else to say what they all knew.

Nobody did. Nobody wanted to admit it.

“Any magical thoughts?” Paul muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

“Against that? Not many.”

The arcing slice of energy on the moving map shot throughs pace faster than any celestial body, natural or artificial. The only reason that there was any doubt whether it or the invaders would reach the Solar System first was the fact that the invaders had set off toward them first, with a massive lead that the arcing light was rapidly cutting short. The fact that they could see the advance of the killing energy moving with such ease should have been impossible on the vast scale of the universe, but they could.

“It seems that the Reaper has declared an end to the war,” one of the younger Senators said. “Could we…celebrate?”

“Are you an idiot?” a cantankerous badger shouted. “That’s coming right for us.”

“But we’re not their enemies!”

“It doesn’t matter! That thing is killing everything in its path. If the invaders don’t kill us first, then the Reaper will finish the job for them. Damn them…damn them…”

Jean clenched his fists as the helplessness in the room went from heavy to palpable, almost pressing down on him like the arms of an old friend. The panther had faced lesser versions of that before: the Republic was never not in peril, considering its smaller size and the disasters resulting from their constant experiments with magic. Whether it was a famine that swept three whole planets, a storm that was on the verge of ripping away half a gas giant’s atmosphere, or some created monstrosity that had to be banished from the space between and sent elsewhere, there were constant crises brought before the Archaean Senate.

This, however, was something on a whole different scale. And if they didn’t do something drastic, then Jean knew that the badger Senator was right. They were all going to die at the hands of the Reaper.

He pulled his robe of office a little tighter around him, the silver shimmer of the cloth a reflection of many others doing the same thing for a sense of comfort. Jean ran through every spell that the great mages of the Republic had learned over the centuries, but even those that had been perfected felt like they were not up for the task. They’d learned various shielding spells against the power of the Council, yes, but they were imperfect at best, and never meant to hold out against something like what the Reaper had let loose. Some summoning spells they had might be sufficient to hold off the invaders for a time, sowing strife and delay against them, but what would that matter if the Reaper’s power still cut them all down?

The panther hissed through clenched teeth. The debate was already raging between the other Senators, magisters and mundane alike. Those with power were being begged to come up with some idea, while those without were on the verge of panicking.

Paul was no exception. The taller wolf nudged him with an elbow.

“You know magic. Isn’t there some spell or other?”

“There are…experimental ideas, but they’ve never been proven.”

“Seems like the time to suggest them.”

“There are costs. Great costs,” Jean said, shaking his head. “And we don’t know if they’d work in the first place.”

“Well, from what we’re seeing, I’m pretty sure that most of us would take a chance of living instead of the sure death that we’re seeing coming our way.”

“Logically, you’re correct. That said…”

He glanced left and right. His ears flicked back and forth, picking up some of the conversations going on around him. Most of the magi were keeping mum on the idea of experimental spells, and he couldn’t entirely blame them. Magical power was a key to authority in the Republic, but it was a key turned carefully, and often infrequently whenever one was on untested ground. The number of Senators that had lost their power through a poorly-researched spell or a greater-than-anticipated cost in lives was high. Most were trained not to even suggest a spell that they couldn’t predict.

But at a time like this…

Glancing at the map once more, it was clear that the wave would reach the edge of the Solar System just behind the invading forces. If they were incredibly lucky, killing the otherworldly enemies would blunt the edge of the Reaper’s power just enough that the outer planets and colonies would die and save Sol itself. Jean doubted that they would have that sort of luck, and…

And there was an option.

Not a good option, nor one that they had ever tried before, but an option, nonetheless. He shook his head as he imagined it.

“There’s something,” Paul said.

“…There is,” the panther admitted. “A ritual that we’ve been considering for some time. Ostensibly, it should be able to completely protect the planet from anything that comes at it. The downside is that…there’s a price.”

“Blood?”

“What else?”

Blood Prices were hardly uncommon with the magic of the Republic. Magic, as it was said, always hurt something. It was just whether it was the caster or someone that the caster got to pay the price for them. Jean himself had gone through no less than twenty-three individuals that had sacrificed themselves for the spells that he’d cast for the good of the Republic, and he knew that some of the magisters had an even higher body-count.

Of course, that was something that the general public tried not to think about. The power of the Archaean Republic demanded that there be something paid, and everyone preferred to assume that it was convicted criminals that were called out and sacrificed for the sake of everyone else. Nobody wanted to think about the desperate people on the street selling their lives for the sake of their families, or the poor folk that thought that they might get a leg up if they got rid of an undesirable member.

Or the lotteries that sometimes called for even greater groups during times of tragedy.

“How much?” Paul asked.

“What?”

“How many sacrifices?”

“…We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?!”

“We’ve never tried it,” Jean hissed under his breath, keeping his voice low as the Senate argued the merits of other, lesser spells, the magisters trying to theorize of how to make them strong enough to actually survive what was coming. “We have the theory, the ritual circles, and everything else that we need to cast it, but we’ve never tried it. There’s never been a need. Do you remember the Apocalypse Codex?”

The wolf winced.

“I remember,” Paul muttered. “They thought it would take thirty. It took three thousand.”

“Indeed.”

“But it worked. Didn’t it?”

“…Debatably.”

It had been one of the more recent spells that they had ‘experimented’ with, hoping to stop the cascade of apocalyptic events on Mars before they got out of hand. The various semi-magical events that had been unleashed from an unauthorized lab on the red planet had ended up bringing flooding, lightning storms, even undead to the planet, ripping through it and nearly destroying the colony entirely before someone had unearthed the Codex spell from the archives. The Senate had emergency approval to cast it, and they did.

It had killed three thousand Sol citizens, and most of them had been rushed into the ritual before it could completely collapse on itself when they realized that the initial thirty had been nowhere near enough. Even then, the Codex rested underneath the planet’s surface, buried well below anything that might come near it again, because the spell itself was completely unstable. Not enough lives had been paid into the spell to ensure that it would never be broken, and the Republic wasn’t going to risk all of that coming loose again.

And this? This ritual was considerably less known than the Apocalypse Codex had been. It could cost them far more than they had, but…

Jean sighed.

“Paul?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to need your help with this.”

“What do you need?”

“Everything.”

“…”

“If we’re going to commit, we need to commit. You have the support in the commons and the public. Can you rally it?”

“…If I push it, yes.”

“Push. Push [i]hard.[/i]”

#

It took an hour for the resolution to use the Seven-Layer Shield ritual to pass the Senate, and the people of Sol were pushed by Paul and his coalition of non-magisters to accept it as required. The threat of death was, as ever, a powerful motivator to get the public to agree to the mass-delivered contract to sign over their lives for the duration of the ritual to ensure that the Blood Price was paid, and soon, they were casting.

Jean stood at the forefront as the focus of the ritual, while Paul laid over the altar that had been brought in for the purposes of the initial sacrifice. The aged wolf groaned as he laid his head against the risen old stone that formed the head of the altar, taking deep, ragged breaths as the obsidian blade was brought out for its purpose.

“I can’t believe I agreed to this.”

“Die now or die later,” Jean said, shaking his head. “It’s the only way.”

“Hoped to…hoped to die at home, you know.”

“I know.”

“In bed.”

“With your wife?”

“Wife? Husband? Both, why not?”

They laughed, but it was a pathetic chuckle compared to the full-bodied laughs they’d shared before. They looked past the ritual circle to the map, shifted from the center of the room to the largest wall. The wave of the Reaper’s spell continued to arc across the galaxy, not slowing in the slightest despite its many victims, and the great armies of the invaders had been turned toward them. Outer scouts had reported that the strange wheels and winged creatures were nearly at the border of the Solar system, expected to breach it in two hours or less.

“Jean?”

“Yes?”

“Am I…going to feel this for long?”

“I’ve never been sacrificed, you know. But…probably not. When someone is…well…it doesn’t take long for them to go.”

“Good…” Paul took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Good.”

That said, just because a death didn’t take long didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like hell while it was happening. Jean looked at the other magi of the Senate, each and every one of them as experienced as him and many moreso. They were the assembled magical might of the archmages of the Republic, and each one had run at least one ritual in their career.

They were just as aware as he was that the draining of blood and life was as much spiritual as it was physical, and yanking someone’s soul out to power the spell would be far more torturous than the actual act of bleeding someone out. None of them spoke up, and Jean took his cue from them.

He took the obsidian dagger in hand, holding it over the wolf’s heart. A servant came forward with an open table, the words of the ritual covenant spread out in twisting, spiraling letters. They were of a different language than many of the other official rituals of state, the letters alone capable of twisting the mind and pulling it to dark, eldritch places that it was never entirely meant to go. He breathed in slowly, taking his time to settle his thoughts, before reading the first line.

From the first word, he was snared, his body held tight and his soul pulled to the cusp of his flesh. With every successive word, it was like tendrils were stealing across his skin, pulling at his fingers, his arms, his face. They framed him, invisible but firm as could be, and he had to force himself to keep reading through the spell.

All around him, the other magisters were calling out the same words, each a beat behind him. The force of will that they represented contained the spell around him and Paul, keeping it from spreading, forcing the attention of the power on the pair of them.

Covenant, petition, payment, and casting: those were the steps of any ritual. The Covenant was the tablet with the spell upon it, and the petition was the reading. A contract and a negotiation, in essence, where he was serving as the one making the offer to the one on the other side.

[i]Protect us[i] was the whole of the request. [i]Protect enough of us to live, and win.[/i]

He didn’t know what was on the other side, but something was listening. He could feel the tendrils around him curling, twisting, stroking along the sides of his face, and one of the tendrils along his arms – invisible but still there, so very there – stroked along his wrist to the edge of the knife. He felt its hunger, its need for the blood waiting on the altar, and Jean clenched his teeth before continuing to read.

As the spell echoed around him, he raised his arms to their greatest height. Paul looked up at him, fear and hope in the wolf’s eyes. The mundane Senator had been there for the entirety of the panther’s career in politics, had mentored him along at times, and had even been one that he would have called a friend. It had always been a case where, despite Jean’s powers, Paul had always been the one that had called the shots, that had been the one on top, and would have been the one to retire first to a good life.

And now, here he was, ready to cut that life short for the sake of everyone else.

Was there a second thought in Paul’s head? Did the wolf’s suddenly flattened ears and panting breath signal a weakening of resolve?

If it did, it didn’t matter. At the apex of the chant, Jean brough the black blade down, stabbing it, not through the heart, but the throat. He cut left, right, and out again, slicing through every vein, every artery, as he made his offering.

Paul’s eyes went wide. His scream died in a burbling stream, oozing from his destroyed throat and running down the stone sides of the altar. The red stains refreshed the marks left from past rituals, adding to the darkness that the stone brought with it, and –

[b]More.[/b]

The world shook, and the magisters reacted as they had known they’d need to. The archmages around Jean started pulling at the contracts that they’d sent out to the world, sacrificing individuals bit by bit. One became ten…twenty…thirty…a hundred –

[b]More.[/b]

No time for individuals. They cut the lives for dozens, then hundreds. The influx of souls into the chamber, passing through the archmages and then through Jean, was almost overwhelming. The panther slumped forward, his hands on either side of the altar, and they stayed there as if they had been glued in place. The ephemeral tendrils held him there like a living conduit to the world, passing the harvested souls through him and into the forming Covenant.

[i]How many?[/i] Jean wondered. [i]How many –[/i]

The answer came with the soul-destroying sensation of each cut-short life that passed through him. Already, they had reached thirty-thousand lives, ten times the cost of the Apocalypse Codex, and the requirements of the Covenant were not close to being met. Jean clenched his fingers tighter still against the edge of the altar, his breath barely enough to keep him conscious, and only the ritual linking him to the other side kept him from collapsing completely.

[b]More.[/b]

The archmages were in a frenzy, cutting lives by the thousands now, desperately feeding the blood of entire cities into the spell before focusing on entire countries, bleeding the lands and the regions of the earth dry of living souls. Jean just stared into the abyss, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open as he felt the remnants of so many just…gone. Gone in an instant, and then part of him, and then ripped out of him.

Could they live through this?

Would they deserve it if they did?

Jean felt the first of the archmages die. They had run out of contracts, and they were pulled in as payment as well. The first of many, he knew. The panther screamed, losing what little air he had as the soul went through him and landed on the other side, giving the power of the once-great mage to the thing that was giving them what they asked for.

[b]More.[/b]

Two, three, four, five more of the archmages passed through him. Jean was them for brief moments, his consciousness split between lives as rich and varied and powerful as his own. He was a man – a woman – an elder – a near-child – and so many more. He could feel their touch, their tastes, their hates, their loves as part of his own experience, and the panther could barely remember his name.

[b]More.[/b]

The endless flood continued, drawing him further and further to the altar, almost lying across it as his body weakened. The archmages of the Senate were losing their lives to the spell, another five dying as they ran out of contracts, and he could feel the fear of the others as they realized how, even if they survived, the world would be nothing like what it had been. Sol would be a wasteland, barely inhabited, and –

[b]More.[/b]

They were in the millions of lives, now, hundreds of millions, approaching the first billion. And it wouldn’t stop there, Jean knew. Somehow, they wouldn’t stop until they were completely filled with regret for what they had started.

#

It was a completely different scene for God. He knew that there was something happening in Archaean space, but he felt nothing but contempt for the mortals wielding their black magic down there. Oh, he was sure that they would try something to hold off his Ophanim, but they were hardly going to be a true threat. They had lost any capacity for that as soon as the Reaper had bowed to him.

Oh, what a feeling of triumph that had been. Thirty years in the making, but thirty years well-spent. The Ophanim had gained great experience in the war against the Theocracy, as one-sided as it was. When the time came for him to take Lucifer to task and bring the demons of Hell to heel – as he had decided should happen at some point, now that the Begotten was about to be his and his alone – it would be most helpful to have his forces as well-trained and powerful as possible. This was a dry run for that, and with the other horrors that he had gained…

He ran his fingers over the designs for the seven seals. The years of planning, the decades of plotting between him and Mercy, had borne rich fruit indeed. With all seven of the Eternal Council properly bound, they would be a weapon beyond compare against the others that dared call themselves gods in the collected realms around the Void, and more, they would serve as a great power for anyone that dared crawl out of the Void and think that they could take a place equal to his.

It was time for order to reign. His will, and no other, would be the guiding force for all of reality. If anyone believed that it should be otherwise, they would find out just how wrong they were.

The arch of pain through the Begotten would have bothered him, once. When Lilith died, the pain of mortals had caused him some discomfort, and even the punishment that he had leveled on Abel had been something that plagued him to some extent. Not enough to remove Caine’s punishment, but enough to make him feel as if he had overstepped. If something had threatened the mortals like this, if there was a threat of extermination in those early years, perhaps he would have stepped in and stopped it.

Not now.

Never again.

Even the slight ache that he felt at the loss of a few of his followers across the Begotten meant little to him. Compared to the angels that he had sent along with the Ophanim, they were meager indeed, little more than tools to get this whole thing in motion. Now that they’d served their purpose, it was better to sweep the board clean. No more mortals, no more restrictions for what he could do in that world.

[i]Soon,[/i] he thought. [i]Soon.[/i]

He watched as his Ophanim reached the edge of the Archaean Republic’s home system. Earth, Sol, whatever they wanted to call their planet, had no true defense against his forces. Even if they had, the Reaper’s sweep would kill them all in short order.

“Heh…”

The tiger couldn’t help but chuckle as he swirled a cup of wine in hand. The sheer ease of his triumph made him feel drunk with power already, inebriated from his success. He could call the Ophanim to a stop right then and there and it would be done. His will, his commands, would be followed.

[i]It took far too long. I held back for thousands of years, imagining that things might get better, but they never did. A lesson, now. A lesson that mortals will never be perfect while they guide themselves. They must follow me.[/i]

And now, with the Seven, they would.

Oh, he wouldn’t lie. They could have grown stronger still, and the Reaper in particular could have become a threat to him in the long-term. The power of Death required no great faith to believe in it, for no being but gods were born immortal, and even the angels and demons between the realms had but a limited measure of immortality. They knew that they could be ended at any time if a greater power looked at them wrong, and they knew death intimately.

Such a creature gained faith in a way that he never could. His faith was only gained when someone believed that he existed and believed that his rules and way were just and right. It took more effort, more time, and while he had the infinities of Heaven to draw on, it was not quite the same.

The Seven, God knew, could have become something truly dangerous given more time. Led by the Reaper, they could have eventually challenged Heaven itself. Even now, he knew that if he hadn’t poisoned them, they could have fended off at least a portion of the Ophanim, and the Reaper’s touch would have been sufficient to reap his angels with ease. It would have prevented the purge, perhaps even turned it around.

[i]Ah, but no longer. I have them all. And the last touch of the Reaper will –[/i]

God’s attention pulled tighter to the Ophanim that were at the back of the great invasion force. They were –

“Nnngh…”

God pressed a hand to his chest as a great pain suddenly swelled, It was as if something had been ripped right out of him, and it was only getting worse. The tiger sat up, shaking his head –

“Nnnngh!”

He gasped as endless voices of his angels disappeared en masse, his metaphorical heart pounding in his chest as he felt them go by the millions. Stumbling from his seat, he grabbed for the wall, leaning on it as he swept himself to the viewing chamber.

He fell to his knees, weakened by pain and the loss of his followers as he opened a portal to the other world. The Begotten stretched out before him and God stared as his angels died by the millions, reduced to ash under the blade of the Reaper.

“No…no, no, no, that’s impossible!”

And yet, it was happening. The Ophanim were staggered, damaged too greatly to fight, cut to pieces with barely the core of them left behind, and they were the strongest of his forces. The great cogs and wheels of their bodies were left jagged and rent, breaking off and spreading through space, while the angels themselves were unable to resist even that much. They were cut to pieces, devastated.

With each loss, God fell further, his body weakening, his muscles tensing and going limp by turns. He could no longer rise from all fours, could barely hold himself and Heaven together as the infinite faith of his realm and his followers deserted him all at once. It was as if all the substance beneath his skin had been ripped away, leaving him nothing to keep him together.

[i]Hold…hold…hold…[/i]

He gripped the stone, his claws scraping against it and leaving white lines behind. He slumped to the floor, barely breathing, his eyes wide, his fur going almost white as he strained for something, anything –

“Lord!”

It was Michaela.

It was Gabriel.

It was the remaining archangels that he had kept back, meaning to hold them to him as part of a victory celebration when the whole thing was done. Mercy was nowhere to be seen, likely half-collapsed herself –

[i]Curse her…her half-blood heritage…Lilith’s blood…[/i]

And his son. His son was nowhere to be seen. His offspring didn’t care whether he was dying from the lack of faith and followers. They didn’t care, might not even know.

But under the ministrations of his archangels, he was brought back from the brink of death. Their care, their faith, their concern, was enough to hold him and keep him from disappearing.

And as he stabilized, he stared at the Begotten. It had gone almost completely dark, angel and mortal alike all but swept from the board. His only remaining forces were perhaps six of the Ophanim in any sort of fighting condition, but that would be more than enough to rend a planet apart if it was required. The arc of the Reaper’s power had passed them, leaving behind all the other Ophanim injured almost past repair, and streaked towards the inner planets.

Despite himself, God smirked a vindictive smile, waiting for the last of the mortals to be wiped out. They would fall, soon, and the Nephilim would be no more. Then he would collect the broken Reaper, and –

A soft tone filled the air, and as it did, the reaping slice of the Reaper’s power was broken.

Oh, there was almost nothing left in the Begotten, not compared to the immense swathes of life that had once spread across its stars, but there was still something. Some small fragment of a fragment, less than a percent of the population that Earth had once had, but they were there. Enough to live, enough to breed, enough to spread.

And around the planet itself was the breaker of the Reaper’s last act: a seven-colored shield surrounded the planet, as powerful and potent as anything that God himself could have summoned, fed by the life-blood of an entire world of mortal beings. It glimmered in rainbow glory, neither Heavenly nor Hellish, but something entirely different, a defiance to all those that would come and take what belonged to mortal-kind.

God saw it, and he hated it.

As the archangels helped him to his feet, he called the Ophanim back to him. They began the long journey back across space, some moving at speed, others moving far slower as they were dragged along or had to ride the currents of the celestial winds to make their way back to Heaven.

God looked down at his archangels, drawing from their devotion to him. It was all that sustained him, but it was enough. It would have to be. He breathed in, out, in, out, before giving his commands.

“Find my children and bring them here. The ranks of Heaven must grow once more. Begin the creation of angels…as best you can. Prepare everything for me.”

“What will you do, Lord?”

“I will…”

For the first time in years, God seriously thought about his next move. He had been obsessed, determined to finish this, but he had been countered so hard that he would be set back for centuries, perhaps even millennia. He was weaker than at any point since his birth, and he could hardly back up any great threats at the moment.

But at the same time, there was someone due a visit. Someone that he had a feeling had been all too involved in this.

“I have to visit a lawyer.”

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: The Senate of the Archaean Republic is desperately trying to prevent their extermination, and God is gloating.

Tags: No Sex, Death, Destruction, Sacrifice, Killing, Murder, Ritual, Extermination, Barely Saved, Series, Magic, Tiger, Panther, Wolf,