Ragnarok: The Fate of Gods Page 4

  It gave the overlord a god-like omniscience.

  Dumah despised having the spies watching over him at every moment of the day. But of the two of them, his disdain for Hugin was far stronger. Sneaking in the shadows, knives in the back, smoke bombs and other secret ninja-matters were not something the ex-colonel approved of. It was far from an honorable approach to one’s profession.

  “I’m assuming you saw the whole thing,” he said to the ninja.

  “Most of it,” Hugin replied. His tone was calm, but powerful. He knew he was a threatening presence. “I came in about the time he was berating you for chatting about the vainglories of the Roman Conflict as if it were a memorable softball match. I must say, he put on quite a show.”

  Standing on guard, with the ninja sitting at his own desk, Dumah became sympathetic of Zeke’s situation only a few minutes before. “The Raven of Thought doesn’t just drop in to say good evening. Why are you here?”

  Hugin swung his feet to the ground and stood up. His movements were fluid. Like one would expect of a ninja. His voice darkened. “You advised our boy to be patient back there. You may want to consider that yourself.” He circled slowly, like a shark. “I’m just checking on you. You’ve troubled us greatly with your little request. I wanted to make sure you weren’t disrupting our plans any further.”

  “Your boss has my support, as always.” He stepped toward his desk. His chair. His power seat. The ninja didn’t interfere. Sitting, he continued. “However, I stand by my decision that testing Branderlief in the city is insane, and I refuse to allow it.”

  The chair shook, and Dumah found a knife sticking through the leather, just centimeters from his ear. Hugin’s arm remained outstretched. “You’re lucky he still respects you,” the spy growled. “Had you refused my orders, your spine would be hanging from the plate by now.”

  Dumah felt smug. The ninja was agitated. But he was still dangerous. “Gather your data somewhere else. I do hope it’s not too much of an inconvenience.”

  “As a matter of fact, I was tied up with some business over Old Japan. A band of pirates have been attacking our supply ships. Since I’m taking the Muselheim south anyway, delivering our cargo should be no trouble.”

  The governor pushed him further. “That’s too bad. I’ll have to try harder next time.” He stood. “I may be nothing more than a lower-city supervisor, but it’s still my duty as a leader to protect these people, and I would gladly inconvenience you a thousand times if it would save just one of their lives.”

  The ninja growled. “Watch yourself. If you fall out of favor with the Karellan, I’ll see to it that you aren’t so much as the supervisor of a sewer. If you want to think of your people, you’d better start protecting your position. Just a friendly warning. We’re watching you.”

  The smoke bomb ignited before Dumah even saw it. A cloud expanded and filled the room. He coughed. He ran to the window, tore open the velvet drapes and slid open the glass. The smoke slowly faded.

  Unsure of Hugin’s position, he shouted in all directions. “Damn ninjas! Ever think I don’t care where you’re going! These drapes are going to reek for weeks!”

  Hugin was long gone, and didn’t hear the rant.

  Chapter Three: Church

  Zeke hated going to church.

  The stained glass windows let in no light. The images remained darkened. Dead. Much like the world.

  A man in flowing blue robes stood in front, shouting in a voice Zeke thought was terribly melodramatic. “In days past there were believers and infidels. They warred over faith. They fought and slew one another over their gods or beliefs. And all of them heretics. Heretics among inquisitors.”

  The Armageddonist Cathedral was packed, as usual. Nearly all the residents of the lower city congregated weekly to practice the new religion. They believed the Church offered them truth at long last. A religion that was proven true.

  The Church gave them promises. They worked to help better the world. To raise every citizen up to first-class. And the most wretched of tenets, Zeke believed, was the claim that the draugr were punishment for worldwide sin. For the war. For the now-deposed High Theocracy. The church claimed that by atoning for these sins, God would remove the draugr from the world. The Church gave people hope.

  False hope, in Zeke’s eyes.

  “But they were crushed for their blasphemy!” the priest continued. “But their eyes were blinded to the glory! And now Hell is full and the dead walk the earth! Judgment Day is here to punish us for the sins of our past! Only by humbling ourselves and asking for forgiveness can we be free of the plagues that walk among us.”

  Zeke scoffed. He didn’t understand how so many people could be blind to what had happened. When the malak appeared, the world had the same reaction. It was the end of the world. People turned to religion for help, and the churches were far too happy to boost their attendance.

  The churches initiated the building of the plates. They divided the world into two classes. The righteous and the infidels. At least, that was how it started. It wasn’t long before it became a division between the rich and the poor.

  The churches united. Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu. All of them. It would have been a miraculous statement of unity and cooperation, were it not for the inquisitions and purges of the so-called infidels. Hundreds of thousands of people killed in the name of God. In the name of religion. In the name of class, politics, or whim. There was little doubt that the High Theocrat abused his power.

  No one remembered when the war began. The lower class citizens knew for centuries that the High Theocracy must be eliminated. It started as protests and renegade attacks. The Church put down these rebellions quickly.

  Over the years, the fight grew more organized. The Church grew more fierce. Each side recruited soldiers. Planned attacks. Rallied troops. Before they knew it, they were ten years into a full-blown war.

  No one knew when the war began, but everyone knew when it ended: Rome.

  And now they replaced the High Theocrat with the Karellan. The righteous citizens with first class citizens. And the Unified Theocracy for the Church of the Armageddon.

  Sheep, thought Zeke. He hated going to church.

  “Only then can we be whole!” shouted the priest. Solemn and respectful, the people were silent and listened. “Only then can our souls once again belong to us and to God!”

  The organ sang. A dirge echoed through the hall. But Zeke had long since stopped listening. He was scanning the crowd, looking for someone. Looking for . . .

  “Mr. Branderlief?”

  He spun to face Daniel, standing behind him near the entrance. The boy was waiting intently for him to speak. “You can drop the formalities. Since we’re going to be working together.” He hesitated. He usually wasn’t so relaxed around the Supervisor’s minions. But this boy was different. Somehow. “Go ahead and call me Zeke.”

  Daniel seemed pleased. “So you’ve visited the Supervisor?”

  Zeke was only half-listening. Slightly embarrassed for letting his guard down, he had begun scanning the room. “So do you associate with this crowd of doomsayers and sweet-talkers?”

  Daniel didn’t seem to mind the change of subject. “The church? I’m not a practicing Armageddonist, if that’s what you mean. Some times I have to send reports through the church hierarchy, but I tend to follow my own dogma.”

  “Good. Maybe we can get along, then.”

  “Issues with the church? I’m not saying I buy into all their end-of-the-world talk, but are they really so bad? They give people hope.”

  Maybe not, he thought. “So did the last church,” he pointed out.

  “Point taken.”

  But Zeke wasn’t finished. “Maybe they view it as a harmless lie. It’s for the people’s good. Maybe they want to give them hope. Change the world. But they’re still lying. It starts there. Then it spreads. The people in the Church lie. They lie for wealth. They lie for power, to control. Then the congregation starts to lie
. Before too long the entire institution is wrapped up in saying whatever they want to hear for whatever purposes they have in mind, and they’re very far removed from giving people hope. By then, we could be living under another tyrannical theocracy, with everyone so buried in lies that they don’t see the truth.”

  Daniel struggled for words. “I guess I can’t argue.” He paused to think. “Sometimes it’s easy to forget how hard we fought to get rid of the Church.”

  Zeke looked at him closely. The boy was no more than seventeen or eighteen. He probably couldn’t even remember the war. “Only because you didn’t fight yourself.”

  There was a long pause. They both stood there, silently trying to resolve the awkwardness. It was Daniel who spoke first. “I’d still like to think I can make the world better. I just prefer to do it with guns instead of faith.”

  “I used to be the same way. Before Rome.”

  “So why do you want to see me?”

  “I’m sure you know. You work for Dumah, and I know you know more than either of you are letting on.”

  “The mission.”

  “Very good,” Zeke condescended. Snapping back to his usually all-business manner, he continued. “He sent you to spy on me.”

  “He did nothing of the sort,” Daniel protested.

  “Of course he did. Now, don’t go thinking I don’t trust you. If he wanted to kill me he wouldn’t need to drag me all the way to Pusan. I just want to establish with you and your team that I’m in charge. I won’t be taking orders from anyone.”

  Their conversation had caught the attention of several members of the congregation. Church-goers stared angrily at them. “Let’s go outside,” Daniel suggested. He pushed open the large door of the cathedral and they stepped out into the dim fluorescent lower city.

  Just ahead of them, a large crowd of people stood by a small stage. A Korean man in the blue robes of an Armageddonist priest was shouting out names. It was a promotion meeting. The Church’s routine selection of lower-class citizens to be integrated into plate-society.

  “Is that all, or did you want something else?” Daniel asked, not entirely convinced that Zeke had hunted him down simply to assert dominance.

  “Charlie.”

  “Charlie?”

  At the back of the crowd, a huge man was hunched over. A tiny figure stood beside him on the ground. “You be good, Emily,” he told his daughter. “You’ll be living in a better place, okay? So I don’t want you to be sad.”

  The girl was in tears. She was no more than five or six years old. “I don’t want to live in the sun. I want to stay here.”

  Charlie put his hands on her shoulders. “I know you do sweetie, but Daddy can’t always protect you here. There are bad men down here. Men who want to hurt you, or steal from us.”

  “Why do they want to hurt me?”

  The giant pulled out a small rag and dried her face. “I don’t know, sweetie. But it’s very dark down here, and bad men like dark places.”

  “Why can’t you come with me?” Her breathing was erratic.

  “I’m sorry. But they didn’t promote daddy. They won’t let me go up to the plate. But I’ll be thinking of you every day, and I’ll send you money every week so you can go to school.”

  “School?” The new subject caught her interest. She calmed down slightly.

  “Yeah. School. You’ll love it. You go there and get smarter and you’ll make lots of new friends and . . .”

  “You’re not my friend anymore?”

  The big man looked like he had just been shot in the gut. “Sweetie, of course I am. Look, this is just for a little while. Daddy is going to try harder, and when I get promoted to first-class citizen, I’ll come see you right away, and we can live with each other forever.”

  “You better!” she shouted, trying to sound angry.

  “I will. But until I can come protect you again, I have a present for you.”

  Emily smiled behind her tears. Charlie reached into his pocket. When he pulled his hand out, a strand of green ribbon hung from his finger. He held it up to her eyes, so she could see the small brass bell tied to it.

  He flicked the bell. It rang only once, a thick, low sound, then stopped. Tink. “Whenever you’re scared, put this on.” He tied it around her wrist. “See the bell?”

  “Yes,” she said, sounding sad.

  Charlie flicked the bell again. Tink. “Now, do bells make good sounds or bad sounds?”

  “Good sounds,” she answered.

  “That’s right. Now see, bad things like ghosts and monsters don’t like good sounds like this. So whenever you’re scared, just ring the bell and it will scare them all away.”

  Emily shook her wrist. The bell rang freely. Tinkle, tinkle, ting, tink, ting.

  She smiled weakly. “Will it scare away draugr?”

  “Of course it will,” said Charlie. He smiled. He was very convincing. “But you don’t have to worry about them. Draugr can’t get up on the plate. It’s too high for them.”

  “Will it scare away malak?”

  He nodded, selling his confidence to his daughter. “It'll even scare the malak. But there’s no malak up on the plate either.” The five-year old girl believed him. Zeke and Daniel, however, could see the doubt in his face.

  “There’s not?” asked the girl, looking for comfort.

  “Nope. That’s why they built the plates. The malak always come out of the ground, so people built cities high up in the sky where it’s safe.” He looked up at the plate. Even the little girl might know he was worried, but he was so tall that when he looked up, she lost sight of his face.

  “So it’s safe?”

  “Would I let my little girl go up all by herself if it wasn’t?” He smiled broadly and looked down at her again.

  “I’ll miss you, Daddy.” She jumped at her father. He scooped her up with one arm and held her. Standing up, he saw the two men watching them.

  “Zeke! I’m glad you’re here! Little Emily just got promoted to first class citizen! She’s going to live up on the plate!”

  “Are you crazy?” He replied as if he were pleading with a madman. “You’re actually trusting your daughter to these . . . these plate-owls? Might I remind you that they’re the reason we’re stuck down here in the first place?”

  “You may want to reconsider your statement,” resounded a nearby voice. “The blame does not rest entirely upon the Church.” It was the Korean priest, a young man with well-defined features and thick black hair. As he approached them, Zeke could see that his robes were different from the priest inside. They were tighter. Flowed less. Below the waist, they were slit down the sides. Good for moving quickly.

  This man was a Slayer.

  “Jae-Hoon Lee,” he introduced himself, extending his hand. Zeke made no move to accept it.

  Charlie set his daughter on the ground. He knew his friend and the priest may not see eye-to-eye, and didn’t want her to see them fight. “Emily, you run home now. I have to talk to the grown-ups right now, but I’ll be home very soon and we can spend the whole night together.”

  “Okay daddy.” Her tears had stopped, but her face was still red. She ran off quickly towards a row of houses. Ting, tinkle, tink, tink, ting.

  When she was out of earshot, Zeke turned to the priest. “You’ve already claimed the child. Your business with us is finished.”

  “Zeke!” Charlie shouted. They both ignored him.

  “The Armageddonists receive their fair share of criticism,” the priest retorted. “I see nothing wrong with removing citizens from the slums. They’ll live a better life on the plate.”

  “How can you be sure? You sit down here in hell and trust every word your Hierophant tells you from the plate?”

  “He is a good man. What reason would he have to lie to us?” Though Zeke became agitated, the priest remained calm. “He is a man of God, and despite your opinions, he is working for what he believes is a better world.”

  “A better world? Where people
are randomly selected to be taken from their families? How does he justify the fact that no one who is promoted is ever heard from again?”

  Charlie stepped in. “They got rules up there. First-class citizens are too important to deal with us second-class folk.”

  “This isn’t some snobby aristocrat we’re talking about. It’s your daughter!”

  “It is unfortunate,” Jae-Hoon continued. “But your friend is right. The Hierophant is doing what he can, but he cannot circumvent the Karellan’s edicts. No non-government personnel may communicate between upper and lower cities.”

  “And you’re just going to accept that, Charlie? Sounds suspicious to me.”

  “Okay, so maybe I don’t entirely trust them,” the big man said, as calmly as Jae-Hoon. “But look around you. This place is hell. We got that damn pizza on top of us, killing off everything around us, and we can’t even go out into the country since the draugr showed up. Do you realize my little girl has only ever seen the sun from the city walls? Born in the city after it was shut off from the world. I have to give her any chance I can for a better life. If that means I have to trust the Church, I will. Father Lee here is a good man. I can believe him.”

  Zeke forced himself to calm down. Charlie was bringing his daughter into the matter. A nasty trick, since he knew Zeke cared for her as if she were his own family. Still, he disapproved of the promotion and refused to drop the subject.

  “Charlie, this man is a Slayer. His idea of improving the world is to run around staking draugr like they were vampire.”

  “If we’re discussing outdated weapons,” the priest said, “I might remind you that we are not in feudal Japan.” He gestured to the katana. “The Church has long since recognized draugr as distinct from folk monsters. But my training and my faith have given me strength. I’ve returned from many draugr hunts.”

  A department of the lower-city Armageddonists, the Slayers took it upon themselves to protect the world from draugr. They routinely went into the hills surrounding the city, looking for monsters to kill. Every day, they brought back two or three bodies.