From Heaven To Earth (The Faith of the Fallen) (18 page)

“It’s Shrazz, Keep.”

Keep’s chin wrinkled from concern and worry.

“Just think about it,” Keep said. “You’ll make the right decision.” Riell
did not look convinced. “I’m just trying to look at this from the right vantage
point.”

“I don’t want to hear this from you. You don’t trust him. I’m going to
check on Drean. Even though it would be nearly impossible for anyone to find my
apartment without my Inner invoking the key, I’m still worried.”

“I need to meditate on this,” he said, and looked at the bloodstained
boardwalk, the bodies floating in the water and the sky where Gerald had
surmounted the darbas so easily. “I have much to contemplate before I join this
war.”

“Maybe then you’ll see that Shrazz is only doing what he has to,” Riell
said.

“You were the one that seemed wary, Riell,” Keep said.

“I said what I said under the influence. I’ll see you later.” She walked
away.

She wanted to believe Shrazz, she wanted to have faith in him, and that
want made her discount Keep, though she knew Shrazz had probably already
fallen.

It had been centuries since Dejanto had used the cathedral for
genuflection. Doing so would draw the attention of God, reawaken his holy
abilities and bind him to God once again.

Keep stood at his bar’s bathroom door. He had waited a few minutes to
give Riell time to get through before he created his own portal.

A pitch-black hall lay before him. He entered without fear. His eyes could
penetrate the deepest darkness.

He made his way to the entrance of his sanctuary. When the light hit his
dilated eyes, Keep sighed. He walked into the cavernous sanctuary.

He had worked and lived in the sanctuary as a squire and then as a knight
when he came of age, but still the cathedral’s vastness awed him each time he
entered.

Its marble walls stretched three hundred feet into the air. Larger
versions of the mock columns in his bar connected the floor to the ceiling.
There were enough pews to accommodate thousands of worshipers.

Numerous large stained glass panels were on every wall and depicted icons
of famous holy figures: legendary priests and paladins. Light from the
spiritual plane of upper limbo shone through each of them and left myriads of
colors on the smooth tile of the sanctuary. Keep looked back out into the void
beyond the sanctuary’s door.

He considered changing his mind, but Keep knew that the war would soon
involve everyone. Even if he did not want to participate it would be at his doorstep
sooner than later.

He slammed the heavy wooden doors. A superimposed carving of a Chi-Rho
had divided the two doors. With the doors closed it was whole. Runes encircled
it and translated to: “May your eyes see, may your shield protect, may your sword
shine in the name of the Lord.”

“In the name of the Lord.”

Keep hadn’t said the Lord’s name in quite some time. It brought
excitement to his heart and anxieties to his head.

What if God decided I wasn’t worthy any longer?

“No, I cannot falter. It is time.”

Keep walked through the middle of the pews directly to the altar and
knelt.

A large wooden cross hung on the wall behind the altar, and beyond, a
stairway that led down to an area devoted to the memory of his family, the
Tregans.

As a paladin it was customary for him to kneel and raise his face and
hands: greeting the cross in proud exaltation. Today Keep came ashamed and
unsure. He kept his eyes and hands lowered as a sign of respect.

“Lord.”

There was only silence.

“I call upon your light.”

Have I forgotten how to begin a proper prayer?
Keep thought.
I
would not blame Him if He turned His back on me.

Keep continued, fearful but determined.

“I know I knowingly left your service and I apologize.” He bowed his
head. “I give you my life, my sword, my shield.”

He lifted his eyes up to the cross.

“My soul.”

Paralysis struck Keep. He struggled to lift his head.

“Dejanto.” The voice of the Lord was painful to Keep’s ears, but not to
his heart. Hope swelled in him, hope for the world, his friends and himself.
When the Lord spoke his name he realized neutrality had only brought shame to
himself and his family. Now he would have a chance to renew his vows and
restore his family’s name to the renowned and respected position it had so many
centuries ago. He would be a paladin once again.

Humble words to request this action of his Lord were on his lips, but he
found he could not speak or breathe. He did not question this though. War bred
mistrust, even in the eyes of God, but he knew that his Lord would search his
soul Himself and come to understand where his heart lay.

Leoran said nothing while he calculated the situation.

“Yes. I see how you could prove useful to me. Insurance. Yes, indeed.”

Keep knew then that the voice he heard was not the voice of his former
king. He struggled to move.

I won’t let you,
Keep thought.

“You have no choice.”

Keep’s eyes flared with white light, and all his muscles flexed tightly
enough to bring tears to his eyes. Leoran replenished Keep’s holy power and
removed all traces of human weakness. Keep was an instrument of the Lord once
again.

Dejanto opened his eyes. His pupils were black.

He stood, armored in corrupted celestinite plate mail. His blackened
armor reflected no light. Curved spikes extended from his pauldrons. His breastplate
had a silver, broken Chi-Rho embedded within it. His enormous frame seemed even
larger with the thick armor that covered it.

A full plate helmet lay before him, and a great sword of corrupted
celestinite jutted out of the altar.

“Lord. I am yours,” Dejanto said.

Satisfied with this, Leoran’s presence left the sanctuary.

Dejanto picked up the helmet and placed it on his head. His eyes fell on
the great sword.

A half Chi-Rho on the end of an upside down cross extended from the
bottom of the sword’s grip. Both sides of the sword were sharp for cleaving
flesh. Its blade was longer than Dejanto’s height with a flared tip to
facilitate thrusting maneuvers.

Dejanto went behind the altar, placed both his hands on the grip of the
sword. He heaved, loosened the black tooth and cracked the altar.

Dejanto pulled the sword out with a grunt and split the altar asunder.
Now free, the blade hummed and glowed with a violet light. Keep noticed that
the bright lights from the nearest stained glass window were focused on the
sword.

“The light isn’t focusing on it. The light is being absorbed.”

He heard banging on the door of the cathedral followed by a shriek.

Dejanto smiled. He willed tendrils of shadow to open the doors.

“Welcome!” he said to Teddy and Lei.

The darbas charged him while Lei fired arrows from the air. Dejanto let
the arrows strike his armor. Teddy assumed that his heavy sword would be too
slow to stop his rush, but to Dejanto the sword was merely an appendage.

Teddy did not perceive Dejanto’s strike, nor did he feel his sword divide
him in two.

When Lei saw Teddy in two halves on the tile she turned to flee but found
Dejanto in front of her. With a jab he shattered her ribs and mangled her
lungs. Blood sputtered from her mouth as she choked and died.

Dejanto wasted no more time.

My Lord must be preserved. Satan must be destroyed, and the infidels
must be slain.

Dejanto shouldered his sword and ventured beyond the doors without any
fear or after thought: not because his eyes could penetrate the darkness, but
because now he was part of it.

Piles of movies and books testified for the amount of time Riell had been
away. Drean had watched nearly half the movies Riell had in her apartment and
read a whole bookshelf of books. Sights and sounds contained in each tantalized
his imagination and gave him new impressions of Earth and its inhabitants.

This world brims with emotion, with creative energy. Why else would
these humans make movies like these and write so beautifully?

Drean removed a video from Riell’s VHS player and placed it on the coffee
table with the rest of the ones he had watched.

He had divided the books he had read into separate
piles—technology, social, religious, and historical.

The most intriguing books involved religion. He did not know the concept
had even existed while in Heaven.

Books regarding many different gods and many different beliefs, ideals
and principals, and the even more numerous ways that those beliefs, ideals and
principles were supposed to be followed per each religion, confused him.

He imagined that the humans were just as confused as he was: they were
the ones with all of these different gods and beliefs thrust before them.

Humans that chose to believe God did not exist or those that believed God
may or may not exist confused him even more.

What perplexed him the most was the fact that all of the texts in some
way, shape or form were wrong. They circled the true concepts of Heaven, God
and his celestial society but never scratched beneath the surface.

But in truth how much did Drean know? He felt lost himself.

As far as Drean knew there was only one god. After reading about
pantheons upon pantheons of other gods he wondered if they too had existed, or
still did in some unknown corner of the universe.

Up until he had met Gerald and learned of why Lucifer had revolted and
how paradoxical humans could be, he had believed in his Father’s inherent
purity and infallibility.

He was sure of one thing though. He believed that God represented true
love: that God gave His beings what they needed, not what they wanted, and that
was what He had always done.

Drean believed in God’s love, and he would fight for it.

He sighed and felt tears on his cheeks. At least he could fight in memory
of God’s love. He missed his creator, his Lord, his Father.

He wondered where Riell was and tried to pass the time as best he could.
Hours later he could barely keep his eyes open.

“Why am I tired?”

Drean heard a thumping sound above him.

A bright light flashed from behind the door that led to Riell’s room.

“Drean?” Riell called from her room.

“Riell!” Drean rushed into the room to meet her. “You’ve been gone so
long!” he said as he pushed open the door to Riell’s room.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry.”

Drean ran to embrace her and saw dried blood all over her.

“What happened?”

“I ran into some trouble. Give me a second to get cleaned up and I’ll
tell you all about it.”

“I missed you terribly,” Drean said as they parted from each other.

“I missed you too...” Riell’s eyes were downcast as she went into her
room. “Wait in the living room for me ok?”

“Alright.”

In about half an hour Riell had showered, changed and cleaned her
armaments. She came out of her door and found Drean there. He hugged her
tightly, and she hugged him back.

“Thanks, Drean, I needed that. Let’s go sit.”

“Is something wrong?” Drean sniffed the air around Riell’s mouth.

“Not anymore.” She backed off a little, taken aback by Drean’s action.
“Why are you sniffing the air around my mouth?” she asked.

“Your breath smells different. Not anymore? What happened?”

Riell laughed. “I helped myself to a couple shots before I left the bar.
I need to relax for a bit. Let’s go to the living room. I’ll explain what
happened in a minute.”

“Okay, Thanks for showing me how to use the VCR by the way,” Drean said
as they walked into the living room. “I learned a lot from those films and your
books.”

“So I see.” Riell chuckled. “How many did you watch?” Her question was
answered when she spotted the pile of movies and their boxes on the coffee
table. “Drean!”

“What?” He sat on the couch, and watched Riell sift through the tapes on
the table.

“How did you do all of this?”

“What?”

“How did you read all of these books and watch all of these movies?”

“You were gone a while?”

Riell frowned, picked one of the tapes up and shook it at Drean as she
spoke. “I thought I told you to rewind them!”

“I didn’t know how.”

Riell put the tape down and let out a small laugh.

“I guess I didn’t tell you how to do it.” She covered her mouth and a
belch escaped from her lips.

Drean looked at her curiously.

“Excuse me,” she said and smiled.

“I only remember how to start them and remove them. We didn’t perform the
rewinding on the movie we watched together,” he said, still watching her.

Riell giggled. “The rewinding...” She burped again.

“What’s so funny?” Drean asked.

“You just speak of it like it’s a sacred ritual or something.” Riell
popped a random tape in. “I’ll show you.” She pointed at the rewind button on
the VCR.

“When you’re done watching the tape push this.”

Riell pushed the button and the tape rewound. “When the tape is done
rewinding you’ll hear the VCR make a clicking sound.”

“Ahh. I see, but what does it do?”

“It allows you to watch the movies over and over again!” The VCR clicked.
Riell pushed the play button to demonstrate.

“See?” She gestured at the T.V. as the movie played. “Of course no one
really uses VCRs anymore, but I don’t really watch movies often enough to get
DVDs.”

“An important action indeed! It comforts me to know you can watch them
multiple times! What is a DVD?”

Riell shook her head and smiled.

“Just a different type of movie.”

“Alright let me try this rewinding now, so I have a complete understanding.”

“Well you can rewind all of these...” Riell waved her hand at all the
tapes. “I’m hungry so I’m going to make some food while you do that.”

“I want to learn this, but it can wait. What happened?”

“I know I said I would talk about it right after I cleaned up, but I’m
starving. Let me get my food on the table first.”

He rummaged through the pile of boxes on the table and matched the title
of the tape to the box it belonged to. He placed the movie with Riell’s other
movies in a large cabinet built into her entertainment center.

“Alright.”

They went into the kitchen. It had blue tile, its walls were white. A
white marble counter lined one of them. Drean sat in one of two
velvet-cushioned wooden chairs at a table in the center of the kitchen.

“Do you ever get hungry, Drean?”

Riell opened a cabinet underneath her sink and removed a large skillet
from it.

“Is there a way for me to tell?” He watched her place the skillet on her
gas stove. She turned a burner on.

“Well, does your stomach ever make noises?” She opened up her
refrigerator and drawers to assess what food she had. She opened up a cabinet
to the right of the fridge and pulled out a small bowl.

“Not that I can recall.”

Drean thought back, and tried to remember if he ever felt hunger pangs.

“Hmm.” Riell gathered some vegetables, meat and rice put them in the bowl
she held and closed the door. “Guess you don’t need to eat then.”

“I suppose.”

Drean put another video back on the shelf and chose another to rewind.

“But, I made this noise earlier.” Drean imitated a yawn. “I’ve seen it
before. You did it when we watched that movie together.”

Riell laughed. “Yes I suppose I did.” Riell took some cooking oil out of
a cabinet and squirted some into the skillet. It sizzled.

“Is it connected with being tired?”

“Yep, it’s called yawning. Why do you ask?”

She dug through a small drawer to the left of the stove until she found a
spatula.

“Well, I yawned earlier.” Drean put another video back on the shelf.

“So you’re tired?”

“My eyes were closing by themselves and my body felt like it was out of
energy.” He sighed and took another video from the table to rewind. “I think I
understand this rewinding. Can you finish putting them away later?”

“Strange that you’re tired and not hungry sometimes too, and no. You
watched them so you have to rewind them.”

Drean groaned.

“I’ve already done half of them though.”

“About that, how did you watch all of those movies?”

Drean poked his head into the kitchen.

“Hmm?”

“How did you watch all of those movies?”

“I just watched them one after another,” Drean said, and watched her
cook.

“Looks delicious doesn’t it?” Riell asked. “I’m starving.”

Drean nodded in approval.

Riell removed a plate from the cabinet next to the stove and dished food
on it.

“But I was only gone for a little over two hours.” She turned the burner
off and put the skillet in the sink.

“It had to have been longer than that, Riell. It felt a lot longer in
fact.”

Riell set her place on the table behind her and took a seat. She
remembered Gerald had mentioned a time lapse. “Time must have been affected by
something.”

Drean took a seat next to her.

“How could that happen?”
“I don’t know, Drean.” Riell reached for her fork and realized she had
forgotten it. “Drean, that drawer to the left of the stove. No not that one. The
one further to the left.”

Drean opened a larger drawer next to the one he had originally opened.

“Yes, there. Can you get me a fork?” Riell then realized that Drean would
probably have no idea what a fork was. Before she could say anything Drean
lifted one up.

“One of these right?”

Riell was amazed.

“Right. Thanks, Drean.”

“Do you have any idea what could have caused such a large lapse in time?”
Drean asked. He chose a seat across from Riell and joined her at the table.

“I was thinking...” Riell took a bite of her food and chewed and
swallowed before continuing. “You remember Keep right?”

“Yes. The barkeep you went to see earlier.”

“Well, he was a paladin many years ago.”

“A paladin?” Drean asked. “I remember Gerald saying that he was a devout
worshiper but not to that extent.”

Riell chewed. Drean waited patiently for her to finish. She swallowed.

“Yeah, he was an influential holy knight centuries ago. His allegiance
and faith gave him an extremely resilient body and spirit.”

“That explains the power I felt when I first saw him,” Drean mused.

“What?” Riell asked.

“Never mind. What does this have to do with the lapse?”

“His cathedral,” Riell said between mouthfuls, “is connected to the same
plane as this apartment.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Well, he had retired from his position as a holy knight until tonight,”
Riell said.

Drean was silent.

The intervention of God on any level would leave some after effects,
and reawakening the powers of such a knight could cause a lapse in time
, he
thought.

“He must have invoked his power again,” Riell said.

Drean nodded and stared past her.

But, if anyone gave him that power... it would have been the one that
killed God. So what does that mean?

“Are you alright, Drean?” Riell asked.

“How would he have gone about this?” Drean asked.
“I can’t be sure, but it probably had something to do with prayer or
meditation,” Riell stated.

“But, Riell I already told you. God, he’s...” Drean’s face grew somber.

Riell almost choked on her food. She stood up and retrieved a glass from a
cabinet in the kitchen and ran to the sink to fill it with water. She drank
greedily and then set the empty glass on the counter.

“You’re right...” she breathed.

“Are you ok?” Drean asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just couldn’t breathe.”

“We have to find him,” Drean said.

“We will after I eat and rest for a bit. That battle drained me.”

“Battle? What exactly happened?”

“Dejanto and I were talking and Gerald showed up. Something’s different
about him.”

“So he did this to you?”

“No, no. He was caught in it too. Not but ten minutes after he got to the
bar a small army of half-breeds attacked us. They wanted information about
you.”

“I’m really sorry I pulled you all into this.”

“No, don’t be. We handled it. Gerald became some kind of giant angel and
turned the tide for us.”

“Giant?”

“Yeah, over one hundred feet tall. His skin looked like polished
obsidian. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“I wonder if the new God has turned him as well.”

“I don’t think so, Drean. He fought with us, not against us.”

“He could have communed with God after the battle.”

“True. We’re going to need to be more careful. I didn’t expect Verill to
have such numbers behind him. Even though most of the skia and exous were
novices at best, the fact that he has darbas in his organization is unnerving.”

“Exous? Isn’t that the race your boss belongs to? I’ve heard of darbas
but thankfully have never met one in combat.”

“Yes. He is an exous elite. But those exous were nothing. Dejanto handled
them easily..." Her voice trailed off. Drean saw her apprehension and
tried to take her mind off the situation.

“This is completely off topic,” Drean said. “But can I ask a question?”

“What’s that?”

“Do you have a religion?”

She laughed.

“You
have
been reading.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve always believed that there are good and evil powers that shape us
constantly, in this world and beyond it,” Riell said. “How many there are, what
they stand for and if they were the ones who created us in the beginning or
not, those are things I’m not sure of. Several humans have claimed to have
known more than others: about the powers that lie beyond and their principles.
There is really no way to know how close they were to those powers, but I can
believe in some of their principles.”