Chương 177: The Pure Line: Uriel

"But consider Marcus Aurelius in Meditations. Wouldn't you find it fascinating if everything within the universe- the trees, the grass, the people, especially the people… are all connected? All things were placed in this microcosm of reality to work together as one body, in a natural sense. All of us a part of one body. But the individual parts can't work together until they realize that they are one. And when they fight, it's like one foot tripping the other. So the body can't walk."

"God damn it. Damian, shut your fucking trap. I'm tryin to dig a hole here!" Damian glanced over from the bed of his prison cell to see his fellow inmate scraping at the wall with a serrated spoon. The man had been scraping for over an hour, long past lights out.

"Remind me, what are you serving time for?" Damain asked, scratching the dark brown of his hair. His cellmate growled and said, "I didn't do nothing wrong. Just liberated a few people from their meat prisons. But the game was rigged. Rigged, I tell ya. The jury didn't see what I saw. That judge… he was possessed by the spirit of Ajibaba." He sneered and scooped out a chunk of concrete.

"That's why someone's gotta get him."

"Is that why you're trying to escape?"

"Escape?" The man twisted his face. Then, without paying Damian any mind, he pulled down his pants and proceeded to fuck the hole in the concrete wall. Damian watched, not surprised but also not comfortable.

"Maybe you would've had better luck with an insanity plea."

"What? Why do you say that?"

"No reason…" In the late morning, Damian Siva sat alone in the prison courtyard, surrounded by guards, fences, and a hundred other prisoners of Burwood Penitentiary. Often, he would sit quietly near a wall with a book, a writing pad, and a ballpoint pen to gather his daily thoughts. He made extra effort not to bother anyone during recess, but the occasional thug would still try to bully him for the sake of it.

He was never a physically imposing man, so they often tried to make themselves feel some control in this place where no one had any.

"Heeyyyy…" Today, it was a bald, tattooed man, spitting through his wide, gapped front teeth.

"Don't pretend you don't see me… Hey." Damian looked up from his book.

"How may I help you, sir?"

"Imma need suma dat money."

"Excuse me, but money?" The man slapped his book to the ground.

"Don't fuckin lie to me! I know bout your lil bidness wit da guards. All the little shit you write and all that mail you be gettin'. They payin you, ain't dey? I know you best be sharin or we gone have problems."

"I'm sorry, was that English?" Damian squinted. The bald prisoner yanked him up by his neck and started spouting all types of threats while Damian put his hands in the air, trying to assure his attacker that he meant no harm. But it wasn't needed. Another man approached, extraordinarily tall and slender, with an unusually domesticated face for a lifelong inmate. But despite that, as soon as his shadow overtook the bald man, he let Damian go and scurried away.

The tall man smiled, picked up Damian's book, and handed it back to him.

"Hey there, David," Damian said.

"I'd say good morning, but it's been just like any other."

"It almost noon anyhow," David said in an accent that not a soul in his 10-year stint had ever figured out.

"It IS almost noon. You still seem to have a problem with contractions, but we'll get you there."

"Yes. Will continue work." Eventually the two sat down in the shade. It wasn't a hot day, but the sun still had a way of turning a concrete jungle to a sauna.

"I read latest writing," David admitted.

"And?"

"Tis good. Understandable, even to foreigner. But must say, consider not using example of murder to explain folly of retribution. Or reader might understand where reference come from. Might figure out who Uriel Grace is truly." Damian sighed.

"It's purely hypothetical. I doubt anyone would think anything more than that. Besides, would it really be so wrong if my readers did know who I was?"

"Me doubt… Mm, I doubt people accept message about togetherness from man who kill nother man and lover."

"What better man to explain it than one who has experienced the consequences of failing to walk with both his feet?"

"No understand these words. Tis bad metaphor, I think."

"Never mind. I know what you meant, my friend. One painful action has invalidated every peaceful thought I've ever had. My sins can never be cleansed. No matter what I try."

"I hear God may be pretty good at that." Damian grinned.

"David, if you're in the mood for another God debate, I've got the time." Though it was an incorrect statement because moments later, the ground began to shake. It wasn't a terrible quake from where they stood. In fact, earthquakes weren't all that uncommon on the west side of the country where they were, but the quake wasn't what got everyone concerned. It was the gunshots... And the screams. The sounds fled from far in the distance, out beyond the fences and the great walls that kept them contained.

The prisoners began to crowd, watching the grey walls beyond the barbed wire. It was silent for a while. Then they heard the first crack, and then the second. Then came the stampede and the circus of machine gun fire as unearthly creatures began storming the courtyard. Everyone panicked because, of course, they did. No one understood what was happening. No one could believe it, not even the most insane of them. But here it was: the end of the world.

The guards opened fire, even when the demons were right on top of the prisoners, eating them, flaying them, skewering them with strange magic. The demons were superpowered, some of them stronger than bulldozers, others summoning impossible things from their bodies. It was a wonder that the officers were able to kill any of them with measly bullets. But when they did, Damian noticed that the creatures weren't the only ones with superpowers.

Some of the other prisoners, like the bald tattooed man, started gaining them too. The man slapped the back of his neck, like he was catching a bee that suddenly stung him. Then his body cringed, and he yelled, and flames shot from his hands. He paused, then remembered every moment his correctional officers had mistreated him. So he aimed his arms and fired, not at the demons but at his enemies. Then the fight began between prisoners, guards, and demons, while Damian ducked for cover wherever he could.

It was all madness to him. Not that he had the power to process any of it.

"Damian! We must go!" David yanked him to attention, pointing at the holes the demons had made in the prison's defenses. He meant for them to escape. Damian shook his head.

"We can't. We're prisoners. I can't just walk out on my punishment."

"You not sentenced to die!" David pulled him by the arm, and Damian didn't argue because he knew deep down he didn't want to die. They succeeded in their escape, but if you had asked Damian whether he preferred prison or the world outside after Zero Day, he couldn't have answered. It was months outside for him and David. They scavenged. They hunted. They fought. They killed. They survived. Just survived for what felt like survival's sake.

Even though they did the same things as everyone else, he never stopped feeling like an escaped prisoner. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. That alter ego, that saving grace he named Uriel Grace, was gone. He doubted a single soul would still be reading his books now. It was that persona that made him feel like a real person again. It was Uriel who people listened to, while Damian was just a prisoner. But the books were pointless now.

"You have to understand. If we pool together, we can make sense of a dying world. Conflict and violence… their vicious cycles that will never end until the pieces become aware of the loop and willfully escape it." The two stragglers didn't have the mind to listen to his speech. They were just attacking a helpless man walking an old hiking trail. They were only focused on the resources he carried in his backpack. It didn't matter to them who held it or how they sought peace.

One of them attacked, blades emerging from his forearm, looking to skewer Damian through the nose. A force field deflected the attack as the other man tried to punch him with a handful of lightning. Damian continued to plead his case, and the two continued to attack his shield relentlessly, degrading it little by little until two well-placed gunshots ended them both. David emerged from the bushes nearby with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

"I was just about to get through to them," Damian complained.

"Bullet get through to them faster." David nodded in agreement with himself. Damian peered at the two corpses, sighed, and sat on the ground as the tall man looted them.

"Something bothering you today, Damian. Very gloomy. More than usual."

"I've spent so much time and thought on teaching people to live together. Not only me but thousands of years of progress... Only for the world to… devolve into this chaos. I mean, there's an obvious external threat in the demons, and people still choose to attack each other. I just know life can thrive again if only people focused on what they could give one another and not what they could take away… But I can't prove that by preaching at wild animals."

David dropped one of the bodies, realizing the only useful thing on it was a single piece of saltwater taffy. He chewed half of it.

"Animals is what we are. Animals with instinct. Be civilized mean we fight instinct. But survival always first. Then civilize later. And one thing I know: in survival, might make right." He offered Damian the other half of the taffy.

"I suppose I can't argue with that, but… you didn't get that line of thought from me, I don't think."

"In home country… everyone think that way. It basic."

"And which country is that again?" He put his hand to his chin, pretending he was thinking.

"Somewhere far away." Several nights later, the two made camp in a houseboat on a private dock on the ocean. Damian couldn't sleep because his mind was too far in the races, thinking about the things that could've been. The life he could've lived if only he had practiced restraint. Most of his time in prison, he tried to justify it. It was revenge, seeking justice. An eye for an eye for an eye. But it was double homicide. A man and the woman he happened to be dating at the time.

In his mind, that man had brutally robbed and murdered Nicole Siva. His wife. His love. His everything. But because of the most basic mistake, the man went free. A damning piece of evidence was missing the paperwork to justify its finding. He remembered feeling robbed. He remembered feeling like the world that operated this way couldn't go on. He remembered not caring about the consequences of his actions. Still, ten years later, he still felt that way. But that did not make him right to join the cycle.

That's why he should've been serving a life sentence now. That's why he had missed out on the last ten years of his life when he should've been teaching college classes on ethics and history. That's why anyone who looked up to him looked up to a fake name listed on a few books of shallow ideas. But he could have a million readers and still never be able to take back that one action. Two people were dead. And time could not be reversed. It could only be forgotten.

He found himself staring out the houseboat's window, longing for the ocean. But when he did, he noticed a strange light out in the distance, a purplish white light, emanating from the horizon. It didn't seem natural, like it came from a series of powerful man-made lights. Without thinking, he pushed David awake.

"What? What matter? We under attack?" The tall man shot up.

"No. Look. There's something out in the ocean." David groggily stared where he pointed.

"You only see light like that from big cities. Maybe not everyone's turned feral. There could be a civilization out there."

"In middle of ocean? Hmmm… doubt it."

"At the very least, shouldn't we go see what it is?"

"Sound like bad idea."

"I have my forcefield, and you have your loot too. I doubt anything out there can harm us…" It took a while of convincing, but eventually, David relented, and the two were rowing a small emergency raft into the ocean. The houseboat's owners didn't leave the keys behind. But as they got closer to the source of the strange light, its smoke began to cover the water around them in a sort of transparent fog. David voiced his displeasure, but Damian kept his sights dead ahead.

Eventually, the fog turned to sound—something like a melodic humming of an opera singer. They peered to find the source. To David, it was exactly what he feared.

"Another demon?"

"Wait… That's not it," Damian said. David was right to an extent. But this demon wasn't brutish and feral like the others. It was as tall as a lighthouse, and its slender body was feminine, glowing white, pink, and purple with no clear source of the light besides its own body. It had a head of long, beautiful white hair that flowed alongside the ocean waves. Above that hair was a crown… more like a halo invisibly connected to its head.

From the center of the halo, a dozen similarly feminine arms emerged, threading invisible string and spinning in the air. It had a twin halo, slightly larger but attached to its back with a dozen more hands that seemed to mold the air like tender clay. Both men fell silent at its beauty. It danced around a cauldron that stood on the ocean surface as if it were flat pavement. As the creature moved, its own feet touched the water but never sank below it.

In one of the halo's many hands, it held a small creature, a rodent that squirmed and squealed. But the creature didn't let it go. It observed and brought it closer to its loving gaze. Then another hand petted the creature, planting something on its neck. The rodent changed, growing three sizes larger, its limbs extending to resemble a man, and its squeals turned to roars. Despite its monstrous appearance, it was set gently on the ocean where it, too, stood without fear of falling into the water.

"What on Earth…" The words leaked from Damian's mouth. He had thought he was sure about loot and how the powers worked by now. To gain power, one had to kill first. That was the way of it. But this creature was different. It granted power, not by violence, but by love. It noticed them then, floating in their raft, unlike it and its animal companion. The womanly creature turned, showing a face with no mouth but wide, endlessly deep blue eyes.

The arms above the crown and behind its back began to shift, several of them suddenly clasping together. David assumed it was preparing to attack. He aimed his rifle, yelling for Damian to "GET DOWN!"

"Wait!" But survival had conditioned David too well. He fired. However, he didn't hit the creature. Another fish-like beast shot up from the water, blocking the bullet with a steel shield before plunging back into the ocean. The womanly creature didn't have to move. But when it felt the attack, it pointed its hands, and several creatures leaped out of the water to attack them at its command. David stowed his gun, knowing it would be useless against the dozen creatures coming their way.

Instead, he resorted to his body-morph loot. He never liked using it, but it could change the composition of his body and make it strong enough or flexible enough to attack and defend. The fight rocked the little raft nearly to oblivion as David fought the creatures, not letting them anywhere near him or Damian for as long as he could. He was shouting, likely commanding Damian to activate his forcefield or try to row them away. But Damian's eyes were fixed on the creature, its giving hands, and its eyes.

And he felt something he had never felt before… transcendence. The creature felt his gaze and, in order to understand it, shrank down to human size and floated towards him until it was close enough for Damian to see the symbol on its crown: an extended hand presenting a single humble coin.

"Are you… the God of this world?" Damian unconsciously asked. The creature didn't respond. It didn't understand the words. But the creatures around had suddenly stopped attacking, leaving David with heavy breath. The tall man tried to get Damian's attention but was only met with a hand telling to him to wait. Damian continued to meet the creature in its eyes. And then put himself on his knees in the raft.

"Will you cleanse me of my sins? I've been desperately trying to find a way to make amends for what I've done, but I've never been able to find it. Please… show me the way." He reached his hand out to it, not knowing what he expected it to do. It observed, and then one of its many hands gently caressed his wrist until something appeared in its palm. He saw what it was and, without hesitation, put the loot to his neck. He searched for the change inside him and felt the loot command him to use it.

The creature's hand remained extended to him, and Damian reached back. But he was horrified at what he saw. It wasn't his hand he was reaching with. His arms were still by his side, and the arm in front of him was incorporeal. Mostly transparent. But it still came from his body. Then it wasn't just the arm, but his torso and his legs and then his head. It was like his very soul was separating from his body, and he suddenly saw himself as an outsider.

A thin man with long dark hair, desperately clinging to a life cursed by his own hand. And he floated away from it, sinking further and further into a voidless sky. He realized he wanted to leave his body. He wanted to experience true grace. But the god's hands wouldn't let him. It grabbed his temporal body by its arms and yanked him back down into reality. And against his will, he was forced back into his body. The act took his breath away and would've made him fall into the water if David hadn't caught him.

"Damian! You okay?"

"I'm fine… I'm fine."

"What happened? There were two of you… one in the sky and one down here."

"Exactly what I needed." Damian stood back up.

"To be shown how beautiful things can be." The feminine creature stared at him, and several of its hands presented themselves, each brandishing a distinct and powerful loot. Take your pick, it was telling him. He smiled.

"Thank you." He pulled a knife from his coat pocket and stabbed the creature in its neck… It screeched. As did the creatures surrounding it. A while later, the two men rowed the gentle waters back to the shore. David rowed while Damian, hair white as snow, stared at his own hands.

"You sure you okay, Damian? You look different. I don't know if it's sickness or—""Transcendence." Damian smiled.

"I know what must be done. I'm not allowed to leave. My punishment is here. I can't escape it. I am nothing but a sacrifice. If I have to commit an evil to show people the power of good. Then that is my punishment." He put his hand up, and David stopped rowing. Damian put his hand to the water, not his own hand but the aura of the soul the god showed him. He then, with his flesh body, stepped slowly out of the raft and walked upon the water as the back of his neck glowed with the power of giving.

When he turned around, the bewildered David felt a sudden urge to pray to him but refrained.

"The world simply had to be destroyed so it could be rebuilt with humility. I'll start with my own two hands, here on this very ocean in honor of God. This is where we'll build our city, and we'll make a statue so we never forget her." David nodded.

"Sure, Damian."

"It's Uriel. Uriel Grace."