The Justiceers - Part Two: Chapter Three
the next chapter in my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two: Wave of Mutilation
2.3
The raging furies of hell were dancing beside an army of floating aquamarine light-shards. Each was the marker of battle-armor worn by one of Carrigan’s hoard, his battalion of brainwashed infantry surging through the blackness of Grammaton’s dark side.
Fire wielders held fast against waves of Cryptoids surging from the depths of a nearby emergence. Hardened warriors, these sickest creatures, built for battle, designed to work as a whole. Such lessons Carrigan saw in their ways. Tactics and habits he’d come to actualize within the rhythms of his hoard. He always loved a good challenge, some tenacious enemy, thriving on chances to prove his mettle.
What he’d actually proven with his unholy achievements, unseen to self, was only the complete lack of regard he held for life itself, and how exhaustively that blackest source had shattered his connection with soul.
Ash was now Carrigan’s first bonafide Ravager; the future stars of his hoard.
The ‘portal’, as he’d called it, was a gateway to harnessing those most incredible capabilities of Grammaton’s shimmering heart-light. Enabling a human to become something greater by infusing their body, mind, and soul with this planet’s unique inner source.
Carrigan had been working from Persephone Station these last decades because of its unparalleled access to this unique phenomenon. The scientific discoveries he’d uncovered through the research of his conscripts were profound.
Spiritual advisory within The Periphery would educate citizens on coming to understand their place within the universe, its most central teaching was that of planetary consciousness. Each and every planet, sun, and moon throughout the cosmos was told to have a soul. Informing just how connected people were to the planets upon which they were forged—its matter having taking form through their bodies, the prime mother to all born there.
What he’d come to discover is that Grammaton was more of a living being than any planet previously understood by man.
Still, Carrigan didn’t believe that nonsense. He’d spent his life dismissing words of spirit wholesale. Seeing such beliefs as weakness, pathetic ignorance towards reality, finding himself seethe with anger towards those of faith.
Countless fools he’d fended off over the years trying to ‘save his soul’.
He’d burn them all in the wrath of Bilial; both his totem of destruction and chosen idol, that mythical demon of ancient space-time’s fitting name bestowed by his greatest ally. It made Carrigan feel unknowably powerful to wield the title, if only between he and that other.
Ash led this charge, now infused with energies empowering them to explode-forth waves of surging electricity. Carrigan’s portal would transform all in most unexpected ways. This one could see things unfold ahead of time, up to three minutes in the coming future being constantly witnessed in their mind.
It had been a most exciting discovery for Carrigan after he had Ash peeled from their warming tank to find they knew he’d be doing so.
Carrigan replaced most of Ash’s insides with artificial components — he’d not want something as unnecessary as a human heart to stop one of his Ravagers. Only one arm had ended up falling off, but he’d seen it as a sign, removing the other to gift a balanced dispersion of cybernetic brawn.
The horde had shouted in whole, its victory cry reaching their master in his stealth-cruiser prowling the distant sky. Ash had chimed through Carrigan’s notification panel. No words, just the affirmative. They’d killed them all.
Ash didn’t think autonomously, their brain reformed to be an extension of Carrigan’s war machine, nothing else, acting on preprogrammed intention, nearly unaware of their existence as a human.
These sights they’d see, flashes forward to moments ahead, were so consistent and overwhelming, they’d lost track of what ‘now’ even was. It would not matter, they were a tool of war, and this offered most useful advantages towards their purpose.
Ash could only feel pings of slightest satisfaction, entirely dependent upon delivering great success to their master. It was all they lived for. The rest of time they’d feel like complete garbage.
Carrigan programmed them this way, to feel like shit about themselves unless they’d done his bidding, believed his lies, it was how he’d kept them wrapped around his finger and pleading for the approval he’d consciously dole out in single droplets alone, ensuring all stayed thirsty for more.
This is why Carrigan loved leveraging the talents of people like Ash. He didn’t even need the technology; they were just the kind of idiot who’d fall for his tricks.
They were on a fall-line plunging into that emergence with three goons, themselves a bit lower down, making sure if some deadly proposition went unseen below it would be them who paid the price. Carrigan wasn’t about to risk his only Ravager without precaution. He’d now idea what reserves or surprises the Cryptoids had waiting for them, his drones were incapable of withstanding Grammaton’s heart-light.
In fact, most all technologies of The Periphery would find themselves turned to bricks when met with that strangest current.
While Ash had gifted protection, a gift from their integration with the shimmer, all three soldiers below them would surely die, there was no doubt of this to anyone. Battle armor could not protect a body from deteriorating upon extended exposure to this light. Carrigan actually had the trio take their armor off before heading downward. There was no sense wasting it, and they had no say in the matter.
A humming grew louder as they went lower, vibrating throughout their bodies. Ash would witness the woman below them seize, beginning to shudder from head to toe, violent curdling gargles to emerge from her throat before asphyxiating.
They were almost there.
Carrigan had done it at last, his sense of contentment was peaking right now, soon to die off, settling back to his perpetual state of dissatisfied resentment.
They’d captured a Cryptoid Queen.
With her in hand, Carrigan planned to control them all. What a tool these beasts would offer his ever-growing war machine. The Queen was being prodded and studied by his scientists as he watched on from his private offices across the complex. So many goals he’d made to never achieve, but this one felt different.
Carrigan switched off the monitor, having seen plenty, knowing he’d be notified of anything of importance. These were moments Carrigan wouldn’t know what to do with.
A normal human being, one still connected to their soul, might do something that which would feel relaxing, or even enjoyable at times like these. He’d be lost, often sitting in silence. Occasionally, doing what he was about to.
He’d gone to a cabinet in the corner of his office. The only one, in fact.
There was this girl long ago. She’d seen something in Carrigan. He’d used her up and spit her out. Still, she’d loved him so, the fool. This girl had sent him letters for years before her death. He’d gotten every one.
He’d read them all in time, most twice. Yet, he’d ignored her while she was alive.
This woman spoke of strangest things, a spiritual blowhard like those others he had such little respect for. Her writings spoke of synchronicities regarding their personalities, divine messages coming to her so focused upon him, and he’d had a good a laugh at her expense.
At any moment in those years Carrigan could have simply lifted a finger. He could typed any message, reached out to quell this woman’s pained confusion, and it would’ve saved her life. The fact he didn’t was something his soul could not forgive him for.
You see, not all human beings get to go home at the end. Not without eons spent cleansing the dirt from their lives of terror.
Souls choose when and how every individual would be re-integrated.
What Carrigan never saw, what that woman had tried to explain in the ways she knew, was that he himself shared the soul of a god. The darkest source which he’d let corrupt him was in fact that god’s own judgement.
This man, born of such seeds, had been forsaken.
His highest self, that one one beyond, was in-fact, ultimately the same as Arthur Katrinus. Just as that woman he’d let perish shared soulful lineage with Miriam Halafax.
By abandoning himself so deeply in his pursuit of power, ignoring his hearts every plea along the way, and discarding so callously that kindest woman he’d ever know, who loved him more than anyone else — spirit had lost faith in Carrigan.
It chose to let its own dark creative powers consume the man in the terror he wrought of his own volition. He’d fucked around, and he would come to find out.
Week after week, month after month, year after year — he’d find himself looking at these writings, feeling his heart die more inside. He’d become addicted to it.
After all this time, it was the only thing that reminded Carrigan of the person he’d been, and every once in a long while, there’d be a moment when combing through these letters mindlessly, he’d swear he could feel something inside his chest.
Carrigan Marks — lost Judge of The Justiceers — had no idea what it was.
