Holy hell, p.1
Holy Hell, page 1
part #5 of Sins of the Father Series
Holy Hell
Nazri Noor
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This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
HOLY HELL
First edition. February 26, 2021.
Copyright © 2021 Nazri Noor.
All rights reserved.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Ex Nihilo
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Also by Nazri Noor
About the Author
1
“Does this breastplate make my butt look too big?”
I preened in the mirror, appraising my reflection in the polished gold. Then I looked over my shoulder, deliberately batting my lashes at the disapproving faces of my roommates. Realmmates? What do you call the people you live with in the same pocket dimension?
Artemis, goddess of the hunt, landlord of Paradise, and proud crazy cat lady rolled her eyes. “It’s a breastplate, stupid. It has no effect on your butt.”
I chuckled. “Made you look.”
Florian, my best buddy and master of all things botanical, gave a weary sigh. “Don’t indulge him. He’s getting cocky now that he has full access to the Vestments again.”
“Hah,” I said, thumping my fist on my chest, the breastplate’s divine steel clanging as I puffed myself up. “Not just full access. I’m better at it, too.” I flexed my arms, admiring myself in the golden mirror that I’d also conjured from the Vestments. The glyphs on my skin, embedded there as permanent heirlooms from my father, glowed as brightly as my mood. “Better, and stronger. Look at me. I’m a vision.”
In the mirror, black eyes stared at me from out of a gorilla’s irritated face, smoldering with feral disapproval. “Ook,” Priscilla said, a word she used for everything, but in that moment, she somehow managed to make it drip with so much derision.
“I would be less cavalier about expending so many uses of your power so freely, Mason Albrecht,’’ said a fourth voice. Raziel, angel of mysteries and feathery fashion buff, glared at the back of my head with a withering intensity.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m better at this now. I feel great. I know what I’m doing. Isn’t the whole point of our mentor-mentee deal seeing me actually grow in power?”
I caught a little glimmer of a smile, but Raziel quickly snuffed it out and replaced it with a stern thinning of his lips. He secretly liked it when I acknowledged that he was my mentor. It made me happy knowing he was proud of the ways I was developing my abilities, too, but we weren’t going to show that to each other. Raziel was way more fun to deal with when he had his buttons pressed.
“Be that as it may, Mason, it does you no good to drain your energies in such a frivolous manner. You may be more experienced now, but you are little different from a human mage. An empty oil lamp cannot burn.”
“Ugh. Whatever. Fine.” I snapped my fingers, appreciating the way the mirror and breastplate disintegrated into a cloud of golden dust as it returned to heaven’s armories. Glittering motes drifted upwards into the brightness of Paradise’s sun.
“And need I remind you that you should be practicing other applications of your powers?”
I folded my arms as I looked defiantly into Raziel’s eyes, my lower lip stuck out. Sure, I was being a huge brat, but once you got Raziel started on one of his lectures, it was next to impossible to get him to stop.
“For example,” he continued, “your gift of flight. Something that hasn’t been practiced in far too long. And what of your talent for actually manifesting objects? Creatio ex nihilo, Mason. You created a cannon out of nothing. How have you been practicing that?”
My lip stuck out even harder, and I quite literally felt my heels digging into the ground. Raziel was right, but again, I wasn’t just going to give him the satisfaction. “One thing at a time,” I said sullenly.
“Glorious,” he said, throwing up one hand. “And I suppose the demon princes and all the other entities of this known earth will be content to wait while you take things one at a bloody time. Belphegor is gone, yes, but for how long? And let’s not forget that you’ve attracted the attention of a far more powerful prince.”
“Lucifer Morningstar,” Florian said. “My mind was still pretty messed up when he showed up, but wow. What a sight.”
“Hush,” Raziel hissed, wrapping his arms and his clothes tighter around himself. Said clothes involved a strange combination of a sleeveless shirt under what appeared to be a sweater with a cowl and cape draping from the neck. Don’t ask. I never cared much for fashion, and if this was the height of it, I was happy to leave the posturing to Raziel.
Artemis yawned, patting her hand dramatically over her open mouth as she clapped Raziel across the back. “Chill out. What are you so afraid of? He didn’t seem too interested in killing any of us. Not at the time, anyway.”
Raziel narrowed his eyes, pulling his ridiculous cowl over his head, his arms gathered around himself as he shuddered. “One never knows, goddess. This is the Great Deceiver that you speak of, the Adversary himself.”
Artemis chuckled. “More like ass-versary, am I right? Did you guys see his butt? I wish more angels took his cue and walked around naked.” She let her hand trail down to Raziel’s waist, then pinched him. “You. Take a hint.”
Raziel yelped. “Blasphemy.”
“Ook,” Priscilla said. “Ook ook.”
“Now, that is an excellent point,” Artemis said, clapping her hands briskly, just once. “Priscilla says that there’s evolutionary evidence for a big butt on a man being an attractive asset.”
Florian laughed. “Haha. Asset.”
Artemis thrust her hips against thin air. “Stronger butt, stronger thighs, stronger thrusts. Circle of life. It’s all connected. Am I right?”
Raziel flustered, his face turning a deep red even in the dark of his cowl. “Now, that’s quite enough!”
“Ook, ook,” Priscilla said, this time gesturing at me. I frowned.
“Priscilla says you need to do more squats before you start bragging about tricking people into looking at your butt. You, specifically.” Artemis raised one eyebrow appraisingly, then tutted. “You’re looking a little flat in the backwoods area.”
I put up my hands, flushing, and wildly offended. “Whoa, now.”
“Ook ook, ook. Ook.”
I frowned harder. “What now?”
“She says it looks like a pair of pancakes,” Artemis said. “If those pancakes were left in the sun to shrivel, and also if a boulder fell on them and made them even flatter.”
I stomped one foot in the dirt, horrified. “She didn’t just say all that. There’s just no way.”
Priscilla smashed her fist into her open palm.
“See?” Artemis said. “Flat.” Florian, sprawled out in the grass, grabbed his stomach as he laughed.
“I will not stand for this body shaming,” I growled. I twisted around, craning my neck as if I could somehow get a good look at my own butt. “I think it’s a perfectly good butt.”
“Have I gone completely mad?” Raziel’s eyes went huge as he cast his gaze across all of us, his voice higher in pitch, all angelic decorum forgotten. “Why are we talking about posteriors and bottoms? What are they even for?”
Florian ran one finger under his eye, then stopped laughing. “You’re joking. They’re for, you know, eliminating, among other things. Making fertilizer. There’s a hole down there, for making poopy.”
“A hole? Preposterous.” Raziel glanced over his shoulder, very much mirroring me as he tried to inspect himself. I clapped a hand over my mouth, struggling not to laugh. “What hole? Stop making things up. You’re making things up, Florian. Fools. You’re all fools.”
Raziel, angel of mysteries, but apparent stranger to human biology, stalked off in a huff, then vanished mid-step, dissipating into a beam of golden light.
I laughed. Typical Raziel. “What’s up his butt?”
Artemis shrugged. “Nothing, apparently. No hole, didn’t you hear?”
2
A cool wind brought the smells and sounds of the night rushing through my senses. It was quiet on the hilltop, the vague, sweet scent of nature like faint perfume in my nostrils, with little to hear but the rustle of tall grass. Well, that, and the occasional twanging of a bowstring.
&nbs
So off to a hilltop it was, then, just outside of Valero, a lightly wooded area that was far enough from the nearest road to be secluded, but not so far that we couldn’t still hear the distant beep-beep of evening traffic streaming out of the city.
“You’re good with a sword and shield, sure,” Artemis said. “And you’ve got the mace and the morning star that you like so much. But what about a little ranged combat practice, huh? Couldn’t hurt.”
“I get it,” I whined, both hands planted in the grass, my not-at-all-flat butt settled in the cool earth. “I wouldn’t have agreed to come out here if I thought otherwise.”
“Geez,” Artemis mumbled, still loud enough for us to hear. “He’s so damn whiny all the time. Florian, fresh targets, please.”
Just a couple of feet away, sitting cross-legged in the grass, Florian chuckled. “Don’t pretend like you aren’t used to him yet.” I stared daggers at him, and he chuckled again as he waved his hand at the earth.
Three vaguely humanoid shapes in the darkness, all of them studded like pincushions with a multitude of Artemis’s arrows, receded into the ground, slithering at top speed towards Florian’s feet. They were vines, sculpted into shapes that more or less resembled three scarecrows.
The arrows surged and tumbled in the grass, the vines handling them with tendrils as delicate as fingers. The vines swerved towards Artemis, reshaping themselves into a hand that politely offered a dozen neatly bundled arrows up from the ground. Artemis received them with a wordless curtsey, then returned the missiles to her quiver as the vines rushed back out into the night, forming another set of three targets.
“It’s like those things that shoot tennis balls, kind of,” Artemis said. “Makes the game so much more convenient. Apollo and I used to play a lot of tennis, back when I would visit him in his domicile.” She nocked another arrow, her bowstring sighing as she did. “I wonder where the big lug is?”
I smiled, but said nothing. Artemis didn’t mention her twin very often, but when she did, she spoke of him with a strange, fond derision, the kind of mocking affection you’d save for a close friend, a favorite cousin, or a sibling. She loosed her arrow, and it went singing through the night, slamming into the head of the middle target.
“Ooh,” Florian said. “Nice shot.”
Artemis flipped her hair. “I mean, duh.” She snapped her fingers, cocking her head towards me. “You. Step up. Time to show me what you’ve got.”
“Be gentle,” I said. “It’s my first time.”
“Stop flirting with me, Albrecht. You better get used to calling on bows and arrows from those Vestments you like so much. And if you can’t, then it’s time you learned how to conjure them with that – what was it? That creepy-o ex nihilo stuff you do.”
I rolled my eyes as I took the bow from her hands. “Wow, you sound so much like Raziel. It’s intense.”
“Shut up and take aim.”
She offered me a single arrow. It gleamed eerily in the moonlight. You could immediately tell that these things weren’t of this earth. The arrowhead was the shape and color of a leaf, and in fact would have passed for one, if I didn’t know how incredibly deadly these things could be. The fletching was made out of feathers that almost glistened. I didn’t know enough about birds, but I could certainly tell that these feathers weren’t just from any old city pigeon. My fingers brushed against them as I pulled on the bowstring, the plush softness of the feathers an odd contrast to the overwhelming power contained in each of Artemis’s bows. I could feel the enchantments stirring within them, a strange, subtly electrical charge when my skin met their wood.
“Now, this is a longbow,” Artemis said into my ear, her eyes focused on the target as she watched over my shoulder. “I use it when I need a little extra range or force. It’s bigger by far, and harder to pull – ”
“But it’ll give you more power than, say, a short bow. That’s why it’s so, you know, long.”
Artemis tilted her head, giving me a small smile. “That’s right.”
“I did my research,” I said, grinning.
Artemis grunted. “Don’t get so cocky. You haven’t even fired the damn thing yet. Now do it.”
I took aim, my own ingrained egoism somehow convinced that I could show up Artemis herself by landing my arrow in the target dummy’s face. Hell, maybe I could even split her arrow in half. Wouldn’t that be a sight? I released the arrow. It whistled through the air, then thunked far, far off where I hoped it would land.
“Oh, wow,” Florian said. “Right in the dick.”
Artemis chuckled. “You know what? Not bad. It won’t kill whoever you’re fighting, but it sure as hell is going to ruin their day.”
“I was aiming for the head,” I said, scratching my forearm.
“Right, right. But you have to take the wind into consideration, plus the strength of your pull, and a couple of other factors. You’ll get it right eventually, but for now, shooting people in the dick might not be so bad.”
I grumbled. “Hand me another arrow. I’ll do better this time.”
“Technically, if you aim a little higher, you might just get them in the heart,” Florian said, his hand over his eyes. “But Artemis is right, dick-shooting should suffice.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled. “Everyone’s a damn critic.” I steadied my breath, taking aim at the center target again, the man-shaped vines as still as statues in the night. Except – was one of them moving? One, two – yeah, there were only three targets before. Where did the fourth one come from?
I lowered the bow, loosening the string.
“Are you guys seeing that?”
Artemis snatched her bow back from me, eyes staring intently at the humanoid shape lumbering towards us. “I see it, and I don’t like it.”
“Oh, whoa,” Florian said, scrambling to his feet. “I didn’t make that. That’s not one of my targets.”
Clearly. It took a while for me to see it better, but the clouds parted as the thing drew nearer. The creature approaching us had the shape of a man – two arms, two legs – but it was shambling, not walking, moving as if with great difficulty. One leg dragged behind, perhaps broken or injured. Stranger still was the awful condition of the man’s clothing, not just rumpled and torn, but almost moldering, and uniformly murky and brown, like they were stained in mud, or earth.
Was this man injured? I held my breath as Artemis pulled tighter on her bowstring. The man came closer, close enough that I could see the rotting remains of his face.
Was this man dead?
3
I suddenly became very aware of how empty my hands were. I closed my fingers around thin air, wishing I had a bow and arrow.
“Mason,” Artemis snarled. “Use the Vestments, stupid. Arm yourself.”
“R-right.” I reached out to the armories, my mind instantly snapping to old favorites. I could try to get all fancy and flashy with arrows when I was better with them. A mace and shield materialized in my hands, bathed in golden light. Better safe than sorry.
To be fair to me, though, I wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind. The man was still approaching, eyes flickering as they searched our faces, slaver dripping out of the corner of his ruined mouth, lips as ragged as rotted leather. He issued a horrible sound from his throat, a repulsive combination of rattling and groaning.
