Chapter 40: A cause
Baal hit the border road at a dead run, half his body still black-gold and smoking like a forge that refused to cool.
The burn was real, and the sensation and pain were new, but with the residual essence of Amon in his chest like a second heart that drummed every time it beat, he did not bother to cast a curse of healing. His body simply did.
And like usual, his form, his human form, came back, but with much darker and goldish hair, his body slightly taller, more lean and energetic.
"What is this... a test drive before I get the new car?" he asked himself.
He simply marched straight toward the thin line of tents and low stone barriers that marked Cheering’s temporary camp and roared at the top of his lungs.
"Where’s my new sensei’s brother-in-law?!"
Three demigods answered at once.
Athena’s daughter moved first, sensing that cryptic miasma.
He didn’t need to scream to be recognized; she was already ahead. She came in low and fast, spear already level, the tip burning with the pale blue of her mother’s domain.
"You fiend!" she bellowed in rage.
Two others flanked her, one carrying a shield that hummed with solar weight, the other already shaping a net of lightning between his hands.
They had orders, written in their blood and heart. Anything that arrived from the dark side was to be put down hard and questioned later, if it still had a mouth.
"Oh, it isn’t the needy remnants of an old era," Baal said.
He sidestepped, reading their moves. The spear punched through the space his ribs had occupied a heartbeat earlier and carved a clean groove in the dirt.
Baal kept spinning, still laughing, and the solar shield slammed into his shoulder hard enough to crack bone.
That mattered not; the bone healed before the pain finished traveling up his arm. The lightning net snapped shut around him, but he simply walked through it.
Sparks crawled over his skin, leaving burn marks, but it healed all the same.
"Disciple privileges!" he shouted, quoting the recording still looping in the back of his skull.
"Amon said I get to live. He didn’t say I have to be polite about it."
They had been taught the ways of the demons, but this, this didn’t look like that at all.
But she adjusted. Her next thrust was tighter, aimed at the soft place under the jaw. Baal caught the shaft with one hand, twisted, and used the momentum to throw her past him into a stack of supply crates.
Wood exploded. She rolled free, already rising, eyes bright with the kind of anger that meant she would not miss a second time.
"Okay, I am trying to be polite here. I know he is here..." Baal said.
The other two closed in, ignoring his words. Baal ducked under a horizontal cut, kicked the lightning user’s knee sideways, and took the solar shield’s edge across the face.
Blood sprayed. He spat out a tooth, watched it regenerate, and grinned wider.
"You’re all so serious," he said. "I just got out of a bubble that tried to eat my soul, and you’re treating me like a trespasser. So fucking rude."
Then finally Baal felt it, a similar presence.
Cheering arrived at a sprint. He took one look at Baal, the way his wounds healed with golden light, pulsing veins, and he raised a hand.
The demigods froze mid-motion.
"Stand down, guys..."
Athena’s daughter did not lower the spear. "He is surely a demon, Cheering. He reeks of the same corruption that nearly killed..."
"I know what he reeks of." Cheering’s voice cut clean. He pulled a small crystal recorder from his coat and activated it.
Amon’s voice filled the camp, calm and slightly amused even through the distortion of the recording.
This one is mine. Pretty useful for the keys. Treat him well for now, or I will be annoyed.
Silence stretched. The spear tip lowered a fraction. Cheering had already explained to them all that their prophecy was right, their family would be freed by the golden immortal.
Baal wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and gave Cheering a cheerful nod.
"Brother-in-law," he said. "Teacher said you’d be here. Also said you worry too much. Also said the third key is under the road, and it’s already waking up because of me... so we should actually start digging... before."
Cheering stared at him for three full seconds, knowing what "before" meant. His golden sight showed what others couldn’t, and he looked at the black-gold veins still crawling under Baal’s skin, and two keys inside of him, glowing.
"Dig," Cheering ordered.
They cleared a section of road in minutes. Demigods and some mortals who had decided to work for Cheering worked side by side, hauling stones and cutting through compacted earth with tools that glowed faintly under the overcast sky.
Even some of the demons came by, including the child who had his mouth tied up, while Baal did not help at all. He stood at the edge of the pit, head tilted, listening to the pulse that only he seemed to hear clearly.
Every few seconds the keys on his hand brightened, and the ground answered with a matching throb.
"There, that’s the way. I can feel it."
Athena’s daughter kept her spear ready, giving the demon side eyes. The other two demigods watched Baal the way one watches a rabid dog that has decided, for the moment, not to bite.
Cheering stayed closest, one hand never far from a knife, also watching the kid, who looked tired and scared.
And finally, they found it at a depth of four meters.
A crystal sphere the size of a child’s fist, perfectly clear, with a small golden key shining steadily inside.
"Finally, I found it," he said, as he dropped into the pit without waiting for permission. He crouched, reached out, and touched the crystal with two fingers.
The world tilted.
The ground started to shake, an earthquake spreading around. The hole they’d dug started to collapse, and the demigods jumped out, the demons as well, leaving the kid, who couldn’t scream nor ask for help.
Cheering jumped toward him, protecting him from the rock and rubble, as both of them got buried.
Meanwhile, Baal, his hand still on the key, his eyes glowing with visions, saw sealed chambers far beneath older mountains. Gods older than names strained against chains of law and memory. Their eyes opened one by one as the heart beat.
One of them, vast, winged, face hidden behind a mask of broken stars, turned its head as if it could feel the touch through layers of earth and centuries.
The vision cut out the moment Baal’s fingers left the crystal, forced by the collapsing hole.
And there was darkness, everyone and everything buried.
Doom!
The ground collapsed on itself as two figures jumped out. Cheering, holding the child, and Baal, holding what was important.
The last key.
He sat back on his heels, breathing hard, the black-gold half of his body flaring brighter for a moment before settling, and his human form coming back.
"So this was what he was after. What in the name of shitfuck is he trying to release?" he said, then turned to Cheering.
"Yeah, you try it out too..." he said, throwing the key toward Cheering.
And seeing that, the demigods’ hearts shook heavy but eased right away, seeing Cheering catch it.
But the moment he did...
The vision that hit him was different.
Nyima stood in the Himalayan village square under a sky that had turned the color of old bruises. The air pressure had changed. People moved slower, as if the mountain itself were holding its breath.
Divine weight pressed down from every direction. In the vision, Nyima looked up, eyes wide, and whispered something Cheering could not hear. Then the pressure spiked, and the image shattered.
Cheering staggered. Baal caught his shoulder and kept him upright.
"Buddy... you okay there?" Baal said quietly. "You saw the same shit like it did, right?"
Cheering breathed heavily, his legs turning weak. "...Sis," he called. "Is she alive?" he said, as the key fell from his hand.
"Sis? You mean teacher’s... wife?" Baal asked, lifting the key carefully from the ground.
"That thing is not a key. Keys... do not do... that!" Cheering muttered.
Baal shrugged. "Teacher’s system called it the third key. I’m just the delivery boy who also happens to be a disciple. So, semantics can wait."
He slipped the key into an inner pocket of the coat someone had given him earlier. The fabric smoked slightly where the black-gold skin touched it, but the pocket held, for now.
"..." Cheering was quiet, until gradually her whisper became clear.
Stop him. Stop Amo...
"No..." Cheering’s voice, thinking it might be some trick, wondered why she would say that about her own husband.
"We need to go. The earthquake must have already given her our location..."
They had taken three steps toward the nearest transport when the air behind them tore.
A darkness portal opened without sound, and Liliana stepped through, as if the distance between her current location and the border no longer mattered to her anymore.
The grape-sized bubble of residual darkness floated above her open palm, rotating slowly. It was larger than it had been the last time Baal had seen it. Thin cracks of pure black light spiderwebbed across its surface.
Liliana’s gaze locked on Baal first.
"How did you get out?" she asked, genuinely. "And how in hell did you arrive here before I did?"
"...Because," Baal muttered, "I am... his favorite disciple!"
"Haa... hand it over," she said. "I can offer better terms than a dead man’s leftover favor."
"Huh... better terms, ha! Hahahaha!"
Baal laughed. The sound was loud and genuine and completely unsuited to the tension in the air.
"Like how you pushed me into that darkness," he said. "I knew I should not have trusted your species. Witches are the second blood of the devil. I should have known..."
He reached into the pocket, pulled the key free, and tossed it underhand to Cheering in one smooth motion.
Cheering caught it against his chest. The golden heart beat once, hard enough that everyone felt the vibration through the ground.
"I see. I should have given you a thousand deaths, then," she said, her fingers releasing vines with purple dark smoke.
Baal spread his arms, still grinning, black-gold veins now crawling brighter across his human skin.
"I too have disciple privileges," he said with a smile, " So, Try me."
Something about that smile un-nerved Liliana, as the smile which always looked faked and exaggerated, now looked...genuine.