The Arcana©
by VII
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The
ARCANA
by Matt Hiebert
I.
The demon is of the Baal caste, fifty-feet tall with vaguely feline features, mouth like a forest of fangs. Two thick, yellow horns curl from its forehead and a giant flaming pitchfork burns in its right hand. It stabs into a cluster of soldiers who scurry around its hooves, skewering a pair of them upon the fiery tines.
I’ve noticed a lot of the larger demons carrying pitchforks lately. They look just like the devils from old paintings.
The soldiers’ assault rifles are ineffective against the demon’s flesh. Stray rounds ricochet off its scaly goat legs and whizz over our heads like angry hornets. Many soldiers drop their guns and run into the abandoned streets of Dallas, fleeing for their lives. How can you blame them?
The Hand has just arrived and we’re still trying to get our bearings. This time it’s Justice, the Hermit, the World, the Hanged Man and me. The Chariot is there, of course, but he’s just the taxi. He doesn’t join in the fight.
“Tower!” Justice calls to me in the secret language of our kind, the language we are given once we’re chosen. “Come with me!”
Justice is always a woman. A few months ago, this woman was a school teacher in Beijing, married, mother to an eight-year-old boy. Very pretty. Now she wields a flaming blue sword that can cut through anything. She is our leader.
I follow her down an alley while the demon is preoccupied with the soldiers. She doesn’t want it to kill me before I get a chance to do my thing.
We crouch behind an abandoned beer truck, hidden from the demon’s sight.
“Wait here until I call for you,” she says.
I nod, always willing to lay low. The battles are horrific, nightmarish, filled with blood and mangled bodies. Fear burns from my center and makes my arms heavy. If I had a choice, I would leave the Arcana and move to a remote and empty place. Montana or Idaho. But I don’t have a choice. I am compelled to battle the demons. All of us are.
We are the Arcana.
Justice leaves me and returns to the fight. From my position in the alley I can see the Hanged Man and World ramping up their power. I have worked with this Hanged Man before, but I do not recognize the woman who is now the World. She is new. From Jamaica, I think.
I crouch behind the beer truck and wait. Soldiers and ordinary citizens run up the street, trying to escape the crushing footfalls of the Baal. An Army Humvee fires upon the demon with a .50-caliber machine gun from several blocks away. The pellets leave welts upon the creature’s flesh, and it shields its face with a clawed hand.
The demon holds out its gory trident and a red fist of fire shoots from the weapon’s prongs, roaring down the canyon of buildings like a comet, striking the Humvee head on. The vehicle and its inhabitants flash-burn into nothing.
I didn’t know the pitchforks could do that.
The World lifts her arms above her head and a chunk of the concrete street rises like a tidal wave. Cars fly into the air like toys. The gray wave crashes upon the Baal, and the giant stumbles backward into a ten-story building that calves like a glacier. I see people falling in the avalanche of glass, steel and concrete; flashes of clothing and flesh in the tumbling debris.
For a second, I hope the World has taken out the Baal without my help. I hope I won’t be needed.
But she hasn’t. The demon recovers from the blow and starts walking down the street, steel and concrete shedding from its shoulders.
“You must prepare,” a voice whispers from behind me. I turn and see the Hermit, a little old man who had lived his entire life in Kenya until being conscripted into the Arcana last year. I have never been in a Hand with him before, but I know his power. He can see ninety seconds, give or take, into the future. Or at least, a possible future. “The Hanged Man will momentarily bind the demon. You must strike then.”
“Justice hasn’t called for me,” I tell him.
“She won’t have time.”
I have to decide what to do. Justice is our leader. I am wired to respond to her commands. Yet I also know the Hermit can see the future.
I decide to listen to him.
I begin gathering my power from the invisible ether of the universe. Crackling arcs of energy crawl towards me from all directions, leaping into me from parked cars, fire hydrants, and drainage grates. The power pours into my body, and I feel myself becoming the Tower.
“Get ready,” whispers the Hermit.
I see the Hanged Man standing in a parking lot two blocks up the street. His arms are swirling around in large and small circles, gesturing in the air as if he is a mad man. He is tying knots.
The Baal charges toward the World, trying to get to her before she can strike again.
Suddenly, the Hanged Man drops to his knees and throws out his arms, pulling tight his knots. The demon stumbles, its arms and legs bound by invisible shackles. It hits the street face first. Pavement explodes into the air. Water mains snap and white geysers spray from cracks in the earth. I am several blocks away but the monster’s impact almost knocks me off my feet.
The demon is trapped, snared by the Hanged Man’s noose. This is the moment I must strike.
Great ropes of lightning converge within my chest from thin air. Bolts the size of tree trunks disappear within me. A knot of boiling black clouds rages in the sky overhead, awaiting my command.
The Hermit mumbles something but I cannot hear him above the sound of crackling power all around me.
I let the tower fall.
“No! It’s a trick!” The voice of Justice enters my mind from somewhere unseen. I hear the command clearly, but it is too late.
The demon leaps to its feet, snapping the Hanged Man’s bonds, never truly restrained. My bolt falls from the sky: a pillar of twisting blue lightning, burning hotter than the sun. It hits the ground and misses the creature entirely. Uncontrolled power ricochets in all directions. One of the stray fragments of blue shoots across the street and strikes the Hanged Man. He disappears in a puff of smoke.
I now hear what the Hermit is mumbling.
“I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong.”
As the realization of what just happened sinks in, I see Justice peer over the edge of a high rooftop.
“World! Strike!” she commands.
“I can’t!” The World’s voice is shredded with panic. She is too afraid to summon her power.
Justice jumps, trying to strike the Baal from above.
The demon sees her. Its pitchfork shoots upward, impaling her upon a tine the size of a shovel. Her sword falls to the ground. She is still kicking and gripping the prong of the pitchfork when the demon brings her up to its mouth and eats her.
The World is frantically trying to gather her power, but she is too terrified and inexperienced.
The Baal charges. The World runs, but in a few strides the demon closes the distance and stomps on her. She disappears beneath the monster’s cloven hoof and I look away.
The demon turns and sees us in the alley.
“Run!” I scream and tear off in the opposite direction. I am forty-five years old and not endowed with any physical enhancements. I can bring down fire from the sky, but I am also twenty pounds overweight. My heart pounds against my rib cage until it hurts.
r /> The giant’s footfalls shake the earth behind me, closing with every step. They stop for a second and I hear The Hermit scream. I do not turn around.
“Tower!” I hear someone else call behind me in the language of the Arcana. This time I turn my head. The demon is three steps away, The Hermit’s legs hang from its fanged mouth, its pitch fork is raised to gig me like a frog. The Chariot is right in front of it. He tilts the white disk of light upon which he rides to allow me access, and I leap toward its featureless surface, clinging to it like iron to a magnet. The disk is magic that way.
The demon swings its trident and misses us by only a few feet. As we pull ahead, the Baal points the weapon and a rolling ball of fire explodes toward us.
“Hang on!” the Chariot screams. He has only had the job for a week. There is nothing to hang on to.
He banks the disk upon its side, at a right angle to the blast. Were it not for the jealous properties of the vehicle, we would be thrown to the ground and killed. But once a member of the Arcana is on the disk, he or she can never fall off.
The ball of fire scorches past us and I can feel its hell-spawned heat upon my face. It strikes a high rise in the distance and the building melts into a mound of steaming sludge. God knows how many people were inside.
The Chariot makes several more turns through the maze of buildings and we maneuver beyond the demon’s sight. The monster rages, smashing through a city block trying to catch us, but it heads in the wrong direction and we pull away.
“How long before you can generate another strike?” The Chariot asks. He is from the Middle East. This is only the second time he’s been out.
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. An hour?” I consider the prospect of facing down a Baal-caste demon by myself, without a Hand to protect me.
“It could destroy the entire city by then,” The Chariot says, his voice soft, as if he had already seen the destruction.
We take refuge beneath an overpass near the highway, far from downtown. The Chariot cannot help but stare at me. He paces upon the flat white disk, impatiently waiting for me to regenerate my strength, although he knows there is nothing I can do to speed things up.
The demon is a rumble in the distance. It has given up looking for us and is smashing everything in its path. It laughs and the sound carries through the air like stuttering thunder.
My hands are shaking and I want to throw up. Baals are the most powerful caste of demon we’ve encountered. This is only the second one to cross over since the invasion began. The first was last year. I wasn’t sent. It took two Hands to kill it, and even then, there were no survivors. What chance do I have alone?
The rumbling sound of a building toppling in the distance makes the Chariot stop pacing. His face is frozen in a look of agonized worry. There is nothing he can do but listen to the destruction and wait. Chariots do not fight. They are fragile and must avoid the demons. There have been many Chariots.
“How much longer?” he asks after an agonizing length of silence.
“A few minutes.” My power is growing, but still feeble.
Columns of smoke rise into the sky and fan out over Dallas. Fires cast orange light across the faces of shiny buildings.
The sound of artillery pops in the distance, a string of firecrackers, far away. The Chariot gestures and the disk rises so we can get a better view of what’s going on. I wish he would just keep us hidden, but the frustration of the wait is too much for him. I can tell by the change on his face he is hopeful the Army can do something to halt the demon. I am more experienced and find that unlikely.
We can see the demon moving between the tall glass structures of downtown Dallas. Another spattering of heavy weapons fire reveals three tanks a good distance up the street. Their cannons spit great blooms of flame and cause the Baal to take cover behind a skyscraper. It is faster and more agile than the tanks. As we watch, the demon slips around the corner of one of the buildings and flanks the war machines. Again it raises its pitchfork. Any hope of the military taking out the creature ends when the tanks melt into lumpy blobs.
I am watching the scene when the Chariot turns my direction. The pinched expression of despair upon his face startles me.
“I’m almost ready,” I say. ”Start moving closer.”
Fear bores a hole in my center, and I wonder if I am compelled to say such things.
The Chariot takes it low and wide as we reenter the thick of the city. He peers around corners carefully before moving forward. Open spaces are not bridged before he is certain of the Baal’s location. When we set down in the alley a few blocks away from the demon, my power is still not fully rejuvenated and I’m worried.
“I only get one shot,” my voice catches as I state the known.
The Chariot nods. His expression has now caved inward. Darkness shadows his eyes. His mouth is a frown that would look comical were it not for the pain behind it.
“What should we do?” he asks.
I realize I don’t know. I have no plan. This is the first time it’s gotten down to just me.
“You’ll have to drop me off near it,” I say. “I can’t strike when I’m on the disk.”
The Chariot levitates and we move closer toward the sound of carnage. The demon is ramming itself into a twenty-story building. It backs up, charges, backs up, charges. Glass and rubble rain from the tilting structure. At last the demon smashes through a key support and the building topples like a hobbled mountain. A thick, gray cloud of dust billows down the city streets.
“Wait!” I shout at the Chariot as a strategy revels itself. “Put me right in front it.”
I hear the words but I can’t believe I am saying them.
The Chariot circles wide and fast around the Baal, no longer afraid of being seen. When The Chariot deposits me on the roof of a beautiful, asymmetrical skyscraper a mile or so up the street, the Baal is already charging toward us.
It is fast. Its hooves kick up explosions of concrete from the street. Cars and trucks scatter before its careless stride.
I struggle to summon my power. This is the first time I’ve tried to use it twice in one day. I can tell this strike will not be as strong as the first. I did not wait long enough.
Again, arcs of blue plasma crawl toward me as if alive. A whorl of black clouds clenches in the sky.
The demon is close. I can see the patina of cracks webbing its ancient horns. I can see the leaf-shaped golden scales upon its legs. The hair upon its torso. The variegate color of its red eyes. The fireball forming between the prongs of its weapon.
I am still not ready.
As the demon raises its burning trident, the Chariot comes out of nowhere and rams right into one of its eyes. The disk of light is insubstantial. It is only a form of mystical transportation. He has used his own body as a projectile. He strikes hard enough to pierce the Baal’s eye and his body disappears into the red goo.
The demon shrieks, grabs its eye and misfires the fireball straight into the sky.
Now I’m ready.
Within me, the lightning lives. It sees with my eyes, touches with my hands, feels with my heart. We are one. Where I command it to land, it shall land. And now, I bring the column down upon the demon’s head. A blue spear of power impales the behemoth from head to cloven hoof. Its flesh cracks like dry earth and spills azure flame. Screaming, the monster burns from the inside-out and turns to solid ash. There is a horrible silence.
The carbonized sculpture stands for a few moments, frozen in time. Then a tine from its raised pitchfork crumbles. Then an arm. The incinerated remains tumble upon themselves like clumps of dirty snow, crumbling into a gray, flaking dune that blankets the street below.
I do not collapse. My legs are shaking but I keep standing.
In a few minutes the military arrives. They want to make sure I’d killed the Baal before coming in. I take the stairs down twelve flights to meet them.
A captain in body armor walks up to me i
n the street. He doesn’t want to talk to me. There are a lot of justified superstitions circling the Arcana. It’s bad luck to interact with us.
“We’ll take you off site by helicopter,” he says, pointing in the direction he wants me to go.
Usually The Chariot speeds us away after we’ve taken out the demons. But not this time.
The helicopter is long, black and very loud. A huddle of armor-encased soldiers escorts me to the cargo hold of the craft and we rise into the sky. We pass through a cloud of blackness. I know they are taking me to the airport. There, a faster craft will be primed and ready to speed me back to Florida, to the Enclave, where I will be safe.