But before anything else could happen, Vincent's "body" shattered without warning — and he was pulled back into Bernadette's.
"Aaahhhh!!!"
Every single brass eye erupted at once in agonised screaming. It sounded like mouths, the cries twisting and tearing into shrieks of mad, piercing ravings — ravings that clawed at Bernadette and Vincent both, filling them with unbearable pain. Her body dissolved into a stream of fragmented information-flows in the span of a heartbeat, as though she would lose control in the very next second.
This was a true god. Thousands of miles away, channelled through a ritual, not even a full descent — just the faintest wisp of a divine presence — and it had a Sequence 3 demigod on the verge of death and total loss of control.
"Suka ne blyad! Suka ne blyad! Suka ne blyad!"
The ravings that felt as though they would shred the very soul grew clearer in Vincent's ears — even as his mind felt like it was being fed into a blender and turned to mush.
The pain was absolute. And yet, somehow, he felt no will left to fight it. He simply wanted to lie still inside it and let it take him.
"I don't want to die!!!"
And then, out of nowhere, a furious roar erupted from somewhere deep inside him. That rage dragged him back from the edge. Without a second's hesitation, he threw himself into the Nation of Disorder.
The instant he crossed over, the lethal, terrible ravings fell away — distant, muffled, as though heard from the far end of a long tunnel. But the Nation of Disorder itself was shaking violently. The stone platform beneath him, the towering thirty-three-story structures in the distance — everything was trembling, cracking, beginning to crumble.
This can't hold. I'll be dragged back regardless.
His thoughts raced. Then something occurred to him. He drew a deep breath.
Only one thing left to try. Please let this work.
"Return to reality."
Before the black, white, and grey could fully fade from his vision, the ravings surged back into his ears. Vincent bit down and, with everything he had, forced open his mouth — and began to sing.
It was a song he had learned specifically for this. Prepared for this day. Prepared for this moment — facing the most notorious evil god in the world of Lord of the Mysteries.
A Soviet song — Katyusha:
"Расцветали яблони и груши,Поплыли туманы над рекой…"
"Suka ne blyad! Suka ne blyad!"
"Про степного сизого орла,Про того, которого любила,"
"Suka ne blyad!"
"Ты лети за ясным солнцем вслед,И бойцу на дальнем пограничье."
"Suka ne blyad…"
With each verse Vincent sang, the ravings grew quieter. The frantic, shrieking rhythm of them slowed, and slowed, until — haltingly at first, then with something like recognition — they began to follow his tune, humming softly along:
"…Поплыли туманы над рекой; Выходила на берег Катюша, На высокий берег, на крутой."
When the last line faded, the ravings fell completely silent. But in the ringing quiet that followed, Vincent could still catch it — the faint, ragged sound of heavy, laboured breathing somewhere near his ear.
There was nothing he could do now. Only wait.
Please — let this god, mad as He is, show at least a shred of mercy. For the sake of being a fellowcomrade.
A long, long silence.
Then, one by one, the brass eyes closed. The great curtain of shadow lifted and vanished — all of it retreating back into the inverted cross, which now sat silent and still. Only that single eye remained, open, watching Vincent quietly.
Bernadette slumped to the floor, drenched in sweat. The symptoms of losing control faded away, little by little. She asked inwardly, her voice still unsteady: "What... just happened?"
"We can talk about it later."
Vincent kept his gaze fixed on the inverted cross. "Pick it up," he said.
"???"
Bernadette blinked — then pressed down her questions. This wasn't the moment for them.
She pushed herself to her feet, fighting against the lingering wrongness emanating from all around her. She walked to the pile of bodies, hesitated for only a moment, then reached out and grasped the cross with the eye.
Hiss.
The moment her fingers closed around it, a scorching pain seared through her palm. Even a demigod's body was burned to the bone in an instant.
The cross drank the blood. The eye on it slowly closed, and it reverted back to an ordinary metal icon — no longer burning with divine heat.
Then the vast shadow that had flooded the pub retracted, retreating back into the cross and going still.
BOOM!!
Almost simultaneously, an earth-shaking crack of thunder split the sky, and a bolt of white lightning descended from the heavens, illuminating the entire surrounding area in a flash. In a single instant, the pub was reduced to rubble and ash. Several surrounding buildings sustained varying degrees of damage as well.
Floating in the empty air above, robes embroidered with storm sigils billowing around him, stood an old man — Ace Snake, the "Singer of the Divine." His expression was grave as he studied the ruined floor of what had been the pub — the charred remains, the blood-painted symbols, the residue of something vast that had come and gone.
From a nearby rooftop, the Archbishop of the Night Church, Saint Anthony, observed the scene with equal gravity and said quietly, "The Aurora Order again?"
"Mm."
Ace Snake's silver eyes swept the wreckage with the keenness of a hawk, then came to rest at Saint Anthony's side. "It seems someone got here ahead of us and stopped the ritual."
"Based on my experience with the Aurora Order — this wasn't originally meant to be a divine descent ritual. But the evil god descended anyway. We need to understand exactly what happened here."
"Mm."
Saint Anthony nodded. "We should seal off the area first."
The Emerald City.
Bernadette stepped out of the Spirit World and dropped the inverted cross on the table the moment she was through the door. She exhaled a long breath and sank back into the sofa.
"What a waste — I didn't even get a chance to extract Mr. A's Beyonder characteristic..."
Before Vincent could finish, Bernadette produced something — a translucent, greyish-white hand, detached at the wrist. "Got it."
"Oh — I figured you'd been too busy trying to survive to think about that."
Bernadette tilted her chin up, just slightly. "A Sequence 3 Sea King isn't enough to make me turn tail and run — forgetting to collect my spoils would be embarrassing."
Fair point. In the original story, she'd fought a Sequence 1 great angel head-to-head — albeit with the power of the Wishing Lamp behind her.
"So — what actually happened just now? And what's the story with that cross?"
Vincent wanted to scratch his head, but of course he couldn't manage it. "Well — you've probably already figured out who was behind those ravings, haven't you?"
"The True Creator — the evil god the Aurora Order worships?"
"Right, and — with that cross sitting right there, you might want to mind what you say."
"..."
"Did you hear the ravings of the True Creator as well? Could you make out what He was actually saying?"
Bernadette concentrated for a moment, then produced the syllables she'd caught: "Su... ka... ne... blyad?" The moment they were out of her mouth, she instinctively glanced at the cross. No reaction.
"That's exactly it. And 'suka ne blyad' — I've heard that phrase before. It's a Russian expletive. Roughly, it means... 'son of a bitch.'"
"???"
Bernadette went very still. She pressed a hand to her forehead — the universal gesture of give me a moment — and after a full thirty seconds, looked up with a profoundly complicated expression.
"So what you're telling me is — the True Creator also came from your world?"
To be continued…
Advance 100 Chapters are up on my Patreon!
pat reon.com/AlphaSenatus