The Justiceers - Part Two: Chapter Twelve
the next chapter in my forthcoming novel
Part Two: Wave of Mutilation
2.12
Arthur’s mind went quiet, a divine stillness born inside previously unknown, flowing in purest witness of the god pouring through him.
Reflections of thought sputtered through his adrenaline fueled carnage; he’d not had this much fun since he was a child.
His power unrestrained — justice unleashed — spirit was out in full.
There would be no man in the galaxy to match Arthur Katrinus; might and wisdom themselves taken into form, foresight’s raging rapids to sweep both he and his goddess beside him towards their inevitable glory this night.
The Beast had become its namesake.
Wrath, the forging furnace — ruthlessness, its brutal bounty — the unholy, their deserving benefactors.
Carrigan’s horde were running, every last one of them, yet they’d nowhere to go.
Shinging of Omanium graphite homing knives reverberated from their unsheathings at speeds beyond Arthur’s capability to track, slicking blood from the throats they’d cut into their encasements upon the top panel of The Beast. They’d not stopped their clatterings for a moment. So back and forth, coming and going, embodying death itself in their graceful brutality. Marking moments within a stretched blur of time, pointing the assault on this devil known as Carrigan Marks, gutting his hoard so worthy of retribution for the depravity shown in their choice to compliantly follow Satan’s lead straight to hell.
Arthur was just helping them along the way.
Time-lines, visions, and choices were now resolving instantaneously within that space he’d previously boarded his minds anxieties. Gut singing in such harmony, clarifying new plethora of ever emerging pathways forward, allowing Arthur to transfigure the tides of reality before him.
A vault had opened through the portal of Arthur’s heart as the raid upon Persephone Station began, now discovering himself more than he’d ever been, a god realizing his newfound capabilities through instinctual manipulation of their most viscous and holy endowments.
Miriam was feeling his judgments instantaneously, finding her gut activated intuitively receiving those wisdoms from her god’s gift now streaming in, feeling spirit interpret and execute her lord’s commanded actions effortlessly.
Never had she felt so free to trust.
Enveloping Arthur’s surging godhood within her, the goddess was shining unencumbered through Miriam, form-fitting her honored liege’s will — lifted and emboldened to fly in the winds of spirit for his peace, unchained and encouraged to run with nature’s rivers by his foresight, held and supported to ground into her mother’s embrace beside his strength — empowering his most righteous transformation now blooming before her eyes in these passing seconds.
Time had been precious upon boarding, still emancipating the ick of that detestable liquid-metal gateway from her and Arthur’s aura, Miriam led the way towards a root-server access terminal she’d prelocated behind the locked passage of a security gateway The Beast had blown through clean.
Gary was ingested into the War Hawk, eager as always to offer support in their cause of ridding the galaxy from the presence of this terrible man. As Arthur and Miriam now struck through the main causeway towards The Wark Hawk’s command bridge, he was waging war with its own internal intelligence — signs everywhere, the whole ship was going nuts — sprinkler systems pouring, indecisive security doorways, hard-mounted defense cannons flip-flopping in allegiance.
Madness and brilliance at once submersing their egos through wrought intensity, surrender of chaos so sweeping them away in its storm, there would be no higher state of bliss for the gods within Arthur and Miriam.
Everything’s wrong — this can’t be.
Those had been the devil’s thoughts as he’d poured over the evidence before his eyes; he was losing the War Hawk. Retributive waves of reflection left previously unwitnessed were crashing down upon Carrigan Marks, all at once, and he was having trouble accepting the facts.
He was being outclassed.
Nothing made sense in his panicked mind, simply too much was happening.
By fortifying himself against honest opposition for so long, choosing to obscure himself so deeply within the shadows of denial, Carrigan thought himself strong exactly where he was weakest; this man was a coward, and he was coming to realize it.
The Justiceers had broken his spirit, and they were coming for his body. With his most shameless and dishonorable heart, so built upon casting terror at behest of his unfaced demons, Carrigan chose to retreat.
He’d live to fight them on another battlefield, these ‘fucking freaks’, they’d not end his eternal legacy.
Carrigan found their wrathful pursuit embedding a knot in his throat, emplacing those heaviest rocks into his gut, yet ever unseen were the unspoken truths of his buried heart.
Blocked in, with his entire ship-born hoard engaged, Carrigan was looking for a way out. There were things he couldn’t leave behind, so much unprocessed knowledge, schemes he’d not feel able to let go of.
Carrigan had made his plans. They were his to have and own. He’d not see these spiritual madmen take them away. There was a card tucked in his sleeve, a last play to save his pathetic hide, Carrigan would cut a hole for escape through the hearts of these Justiceers.
He would thrive again someday in the way he’d chosen; his way.
The Ravagers would see to that.
Granularities in the data were concerning Miriam’s visage — observing from the security hub in Persephone Station — quite coincidentally eight-hundred clicks directly below Arthur and Miriam aboard the War Hawk, making way across the sea of stars, its otherwise invisible orbit occasionally obscuring a distant sun.
Something had changed on the War Hawk, power consumption had dropped considerably in the blink of an eye.
Even from within this visage, Miriam was somehow transmitting through most soulful means this realization to herself so high above, feeling it as they’d passed back Arthur’s gut reaction intuitively — some divine chain of reaction which led her to know — making the call on her own, she’d take the shot.
She dialed Carrigan Mark’s personal comm-line.
His disgusting image appeared before her, befuddled beyond all manner of expectation.
“Why hello there,” she’d spoken.
The feed from his office set so perfectly in advance, not only for displaying both her smiling face and the letter’s of her soul sister so spread about, but to beckon his shame’s fury upon herself.
Miriam’s visage allowed the false grin to fall away, and spoke directly to this lost man’s soul.
“I’ve come home, my love.”
Mayhem fraught with a pervading and tangible sense of ominousness was surrounding Miriam and Arthur on the War Hawk. If this ship hadn’t been a soulless tool of the devil, even it would’ve know its time was nearing an end.
“I’ve got the fat one!” Miriam shouted.
Scorcher was ready, so salivating for its chance to melt shit, Arthur and his magnificent beast shredded this devil’s pathetic hoard so judiciously it’d not yet found an opportunity to join in.
Here it would, Miriam charging the squattest of these remaining abominations. The first two hadn’t lasted a moment, rushing idiotically into range of Arthur’s homing knives which cut them down in seconds.
These last two were proving more difficult.
Arthur found himself surrounded on either side. That ‘quick fucker’ having phased itself out and back from the physical to make the far end of the causeway and close him in. The ‘big-boy’, moving so slow, sporting some devilishly metallic coating to his skin which had seen to the end of The Beast’s remaining homing knives.
Before these newest fiend’s arrival, Arthur’s foresight had scrambled with everything changing too fast, so many possible outcomes he couldn’t grab one to hold before they’d gone. So he abandoned the process to work directly from his gut, with his eyes, wielding the outrage his soul felt in the presence of such evil.
The big one hadn’t liked Scorcher — he liked Miriam even less.
Her visage had joined the party and this foulest demon had lost track of who was who. Not too bright this one, movements glacial, reactions even slower.
Arthur had a sense of how he’d do this, staring down Carrigan’s Ravager so transfigured to evade and surprise, yet there was immense risk alongside it. Having come so deeply to trust his gut, and the god within, he’d known it the only choice to make.
The Beast shot back even with Miriam, allowing Arthur to face down this extra-dimensional soldier now pacing closer, he’d found Scorcher reducing the big one to a melted blob of gargling horror.
He’d shouted over the roar of its flames, “I gotta do something!”
“I know!” Miriam called back without taking her eyes from the dissolving experiment beneath her flame.
She’d eventually glance to Arthur in a solitary moment, catching his eyes for just a second, as he’d peeled them from his fast closing predator to look her way.
‘See you soon,’ he’d heard internally, in Miriam’s voice.
‘You go get ‘em.’
She’d smiled so quickly to her Arthur before refocusing onto this newly mollified foe still trying to slime its way towards her.
Arthur then centered back on his target, feeling time-lines coalesce, allowing his gut to choose.
He set The Beast’s throttle to full.
Persephone Station was in ruin. The War Hawk had been lost.
Carrigan was one with the currents of rage.
He’d not felt a thing like this lust for revenge, the desperation inside him to end this woman, fear burrowing into the back of his mind. Truth was not something monster’s like him faced. The choices of his past were no one’s business but his own.
There was a determination born from places he’d not understand to end her.
It wasn’t the magnitude in which he hated this woman that forged his purpose, or a thought it may bring some safety from the fate he now felt crashing upon him, nor her knowing of the horror he’d wrought inferred from those pages — he was just afraid.
Carrigan Marks didn’t even know why.
What had she meant?
Those were the words he’d been asking himself while storming the station.
Clouds of his own hatred building in pressure, some thunderous crescendo looming as a specter within his nearest future, a nosedive of soul into the depths of evil was coming to an end tonight. Even this man who was riding it downward knew that.
An enclosing sense of panic was confounding Arthur’s inner god.
Time-lines he’d seen so clearly of himself and Miriam walking free at the end of this were feeling frighteningly distant, separated now by such leaps of faith and hopes of chance, the path towards them blurred by chaos.
He’d have to go on his gut.
“I need you to get off this ship,” Arthur directed to Miriam’s comm-piece.
She’d answered back in sharpest order.
“I felt that, I’m on my way back to the transporter now.”
Arthur took as long a moment he could afford to — resting before an energy-bath on the mechanical level, its swirling tank of phosphorescent-amber fusion powered biowaste, mounted beneath the looming structures of the War Hawk’s drive core.
This felt like a bad idea.
Yet when he’d conferred with his gut, spirit, and heart; the things which mattered, he’d heard it clear.
This would be the way. Mind would have to buckle down.
The Beast’s effector fields had been ready and waiting. He’d just been feeling out for that perfect moment, earning Miriam time to get clear, but not so long this ‘next-level tricky bitch’ would sniff out his trail.
It was the time and he knew it. There was a singular vision he’d seen then of an escape pod, knowing born beside it of his chance for survival here, a willingness forged by trust.
Arthur Katrinus made the call.
Carrigan’s office was in shambles, his letters everywhere, she’d torn it all to pieces; the witch wasn’t here.
He’d stood inside the doorway with his shoulders reared, all that fury with nowhere to go, and the devil was frozen in place. There wouldn’t be another day for this man, he knew it right there, clearer than anything.
To gut that woman and silence whatever slanderous lies she would speak of his name, to unhear those words she’d spoken, to see her dead; was the only thing left he wanted anymore.
Carrigan was a ghost of the demon he’d been, ground down into a man once more, realizing at last the only truth he’d ever find — he fucked up.
Her voice spoke as if the air itself.
“We’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done to us, Carrigan Marks.”
Fire raged his guts — fear twisted his thoughts — something in his chest hurt.
She’d appeared then, and there were tears in her eyes.
Miriam Halafax had never been more disappointed with anything in her life than this man before her. Her soul cried out for retribution to befall him. Her heart was screaming in sorrow for her sister of soul. Her teeth were bared to the devil when she’d told him.
“You’re going to die now.”
Arthur blew the send-receive station groundside and The Beast didn’t waste a second in blazing a trail to the offices at the far-side of the station.
He hadn’t needed that escape-pod after all.
There was something learned tonight — ‘tricky fucks’ who phase beyond three dimensions really don’t like the electromagnetic consequences of a drive-core explosion.
Throughout Arthur’s entire harrowing and explosive retreat from the War Hawk, so quickly degenerating around him, he’d heard their screams everywhere.
Whatever was left of that person had been dispersed throughout the craft, some soul’s last cry echoing its halls, soon to be floating in the void of space when the chain reaction Arthur had begun reached its climax.
The only threat he’d found — one which could have proven of mortal consequence, having been trapped inside a locked chamber as its atmosphere began bleeding into space — had been circumvented by a most fortunate happenstance in the war taking place between Gary and the War Hawk’s intelligence.
Arthur had almost given up in that causeway, zero choices to make, no time-lines manifesting into vision. Then the door had just opened.
His faith was rewarded.
Gary had done it, poor guy, going down with that dreadful ship. He’d even closed the door behind Arthur to keep the vacuum from spreading. It had been a clear shot from there, no choice but to push harder than he’d ever before, knowing he had to make it back and help his goddess finish this.
Carrigan Marks was still alive, and Miriam had gone quiet just moments before Arthur had reached the transporter. Gut wasn’t hurting, but he’d need to get there as soon as he could.
Nearing the man’s private den, where so much evil had been brought to bear on this planet, Arthur felt something come through which he’d not liked at all. There was imminent danger for Miriam.
He saw flashes of vision — sights of her demise happening right before him.
‘Not this again,’ he’d thought.
‘We’ve done that enough already.’
The Beast’s effectors widened Corrigan’s office doorway for its ease of entry, ripping the viscera of its architecture into the hallway, no chance he’d hurt his girl.
Within seconds Arthur was inside, finding the last thing he’d wish to see.
Carrigan Marks had both Miriam’s pinned to the wall by their throats, each staring into that man’s eyes with the fire of a goddess enflamed; strangling them.
Only as The Beast came to a full stop inside that desiccated doorway had both Miriams glanced his way, all four eyes going soft at once.
Carrigan had turned his head, finding Arthur and his beast with all its firepower, surrounded by the desecrated remains of what had been his life’s greatest shame, and he knew this would be the time.
That Cryptoid Queen had been such an inspiration to Carrigan — his operation to learn her ways quite successful — it seemed right to him this would be the way.
He’d exploded; the room gone white, a cacophony of destruction enveloping the space. It happened so fast.
Arthur was temporarily blinded by the blast, yet miraculously unharmed.
He saw no time-lines, heard no insights, felt nothing from his gut.
As the smoke cleared around him, distilling a sense of conclusion to the entirety of this terribly overlong endeavor of a night, he’d not believed it.
Miriam was gone, both of them, and Carrigan too.
That was exactly what Arthur had seen; the death of his Miriam witnessed in those resolving time-lines he’d not wanted to believe possible.
Yet, his heart still knew something. This wasn’t the time, it simply couldn’t be. Things weren’t going to end like this.
His gut would seemingly confirm this without evidence, so he’d just opened his comm link to Miriam and asked it.
“Where are you?”
She’d chimed right back, “On my way!”
Arthur didn’t respond, just sitting there in silence, knowing wherever Miriam was she’d feel exactly how pissed off he was right then.
“Oh shit, did I not tell you I can do two?” she’d asked in a panicked earnestness.
He’d know a lie, and she hadn’t deceived him again, there was just a little bit of that old Miriam still inside his goddess; the airhead. Yet that had been enough for Arthur to just drop it and be glad she was alive.
Before he could say anything else Miriam piped back in with further explanation.
“I just let Daemenos drive one.”
In the following few minutes, Arthur would come to realize it most peculiar there had been so many physical papers about the room — themselves a nearly bygone article amongst The Periphery.
He’d then lifted one after another with The Beast’s effector fields, retaining those which hadn’t been scorched beyond comprehension, and began reading.
The purest sense of horror emerged from within Arthur’s heart to realize who Carrigan was. After this entire saga of dispensing the most incalculable evil ever witnessed, all the nightmares seen brought upon the people of Grammaton, and now knowing it had all been the product of his own soul gone wrong — the pressure of it all was destroying the love Arthur had recently discovered for his godhood, eroding the trust he’d built with spirit, and making him feel like he was an evil in need of judgement himself.
Arthur cried there, with those weights of emotion crashing onto him in ways beyond his understanding.
“You’re not him, Arthur,” Miriam spoke through her own tears.
Arthur didn’t understand why he was hurting so badly. He knew this evil wasn’t him, there was so much good inside. It was all just so incredibly awful, and he’d not believed his soul could ever become that. It made him question all the ways he was — the ways he’d been — the ways he’d thought.
Without even thinking the question was spoken from his gut, which had known his Scribe’s words would hold her Judge’s answer within them.
“What makes me different?”
His goddess wouldn’t hesitate a second, letting a more profound truth pour forth than ever before. No more divinely honest thing would be said by Miriam Halafax’s tongue in her time amongst The Periphery.
“Arthur Katrinus, your heart was forged in the brightest light of this universe. I know that because its the same light I liked to pretend is mine — but its you that’s always been my grace, and my strength, and my gifts — your light is the power within my own heart, its how I always knew I loved you — I know my light, and its you — not your soul, not the god, the human being.”
Arthur cried a bit more then, Miriam’s words were cracking something open while gut spoke of their truth.
“I love you, Arthur,” she’d almost whispered.
Tears poured a little harder for Arthur, and then he’d finally said it back.
“I love you too, Miriam.”
There was time Miriam gave for Arthur to heal in his alchemical release of these stowed emotions held inside for so dreadfully long without knowing, born through connection to this monster that was not him.
Miriam didn’t wait too long though, asking in her cutest way.
“Can you meet me outside, hon?”
As Arthur had thrown Miriam against the wall of that escape-pod she’d ridden down from the War Hawk, herself the one who’d stayed behind to open the door for him, kissing her neck and hearing her moan. He’d realized it was always because of this very moment; that unknowably morbid reason they’d so love fucking in their escape pod on The Nebberath.
They’d been chasing this one the whole time.
She escaped his grasp for a moment, seizing the opportunity to tear off her top.
Arthur was unbuckling his pants by the time she’d gotten to her knees and helped them the rest of the way off. Miriam spread the god named Arthur Katrinus’ legs wide then, diving into her Arthur.
By this shared passion between a god and his goddess, forged in the fires they’d stoked of heart and soul, losing themselves in ecstasy’s ebbs and flows, something singular in the history of time had been born, forwards and back.
In wake of that unholy opposition’s hatred so boldly circumvented, the hardening trust and faith found in each other, their wills and bond to become legendary through this most righteous undoing the galaxy would ever witness — there was a cosmically omnipotent gift which had been bestowed upon Miriam Halafax, a blessing of most unique singularity throughout the eternal fabric of this universe.
Victory would never taste sweeter.
This took me 10 hours, and I was listening to that song for like 8 of them. Peacocking a little bit.